"Equal Justice" is on the mark when a lead character declares: "We need to tell people that knowingly transferring the virus is criminal."

At one point a character declares, "All motion ain't progress."

Here they are ennobled in Beethoven's canonic quartet, in which characters declare their crossed purposes and create one of opera's enduring moments.

One character, a historian, declares that no woman's political movement has ever existed.

"We've created a marginalized class that has a lower stake in conforming to our laws," her character declares at one point.

Of men, one character declares, "Give them an inch, and they'll have things back the way they were, faster than you can say clitorectomy!"

Theron plays an unlikeable character and the film's director has declared that he hopes the film makes audiences cringe.

For example, one character declares: "I'm awake now, awake for the first time."

Once its characters have declared their sexual intentions, this German film, which opens today at the Quad Cinema, doesn't really know where to go next.

In one story, a character named Bosco declares: "Time's a goon, right?"