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<div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">1.1</span> <span><i>The Great Movies</i> Essay Collections</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-The_Great_Movies_Essay_Collections-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-Awake_in_the_Dark:_The_Best_of_Roger_Ebert_(2006)" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-2"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#Awake_in_the_Dark:_The_Best_of_Roger_Ebert_(2006)"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">1.2</span> <span><i>Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert</i> (2006)</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-Awake_in_the_Dark:_The_Best_of_Roger_Ebert_(2006)-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-Your_Movie_Sucks_(2007)" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-2"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#Your_Movie_Sucks_(2007)"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">1.3</span> <span><i>Your Movie Sucks</i> (2007)</span> </div> </a> <ul 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class="vector-toc-numb">1.5.4</span> <span>Two-and-a-half star reviews</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-Two-and-a-half_star_reviews-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-Two_star_reviews" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-3"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#Two_star_reviews"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">1.5.5</span> <span>Two star reviews</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-Two_star_reviews-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-One-and-a-half_star_reviews" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-3"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#One-and-a-half_star_reviews"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">1.5.6</span> <span>One-and-a-half star reviews</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-One-and-a-half_star_reviews-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-One-star_reviews" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-3"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#One-star_reviews"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">1.5.7</span> <span>One-star reviews</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-One-star_reviews-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-Half-star_reviews" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-3"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#Half-star_reviews"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">1.5.8</span> <span>Half-star reviews</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-Half-star_reviews-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-Zero_star_reviews" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-3"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#Zero_star_reviews"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">1.5.9</span> <span>Zero star reviews</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-Zero_star_reviews-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-No_star_rating" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-3"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#No_star_rating"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">1.5.10</span> <span>No star rating</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-No_star_rating-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-Quotes_about_Ebert" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-1 vector-toc-list-item-expanded"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#Quotes_about_Ebert"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">2</span> <span>Quotes about Ebert</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-Quotes_about_Ebert-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> <li id="toc-External_links" class="vector-toc-list-item vector-toc-level-1 vector-toc-list-item-expanded"> <a class="vector-toc-link" href="#External_links"> <div class="vector-toc-text"> <span class="vector-toc-numb">3</span> <span>External links</span> </div> </a> <ul id="toc-External_links-sublist" class="vector-toc-list"> </ul> </li> </ul> </div> </div> </nav> </div> </div> <div class="mw-content-container"> <main id="content" class="mw-body"> <header 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</div> </div> </nav> <h1 id="firstHeading" class="firstHeading mw-first-heading"><span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Ebert</span></h1> <div id="p-lang-btn" class="vector-dropdown mw-portlet mw-portlet-lang" > <input type="checkbox" id="p-lang-btn-checkbox" role="button" aria-haspopup="true" data-event-name="ui.dropdown-p-lang-btn" class="vector-dropdown-checkbox mw-interlanguage-selector" aria-label="Go to an article in another language. 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class="vector-body" aria-labelledby="firstHeading" data-mw-ve-target-container> <div class="vector-body-before-content"> <div class="mw-indicators"> </div> <div id="siteSub" class="noprint">From Wikiquote</div> </div> <div id="contentSub"><div id="mw-content-subtitle"></div></div> <div id="mw-content-text" class="mw-body-content"><div class="mw-content-ltr mw-parser-output" lang="en" dir="ltr"><figure class="mw-default-size mw-halign-right" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Roger_Ebert_cropped.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Roger_Ebert_cropped.jpg/220px-Roger_Ebert_cropped.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="251" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Roger_Ebert_cropped.jpg/330px-Roger_Ebert_cropped.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Roger_Ebert_cropped.jpg 2x" data-file-width="420" data-file-height="479" /></a><figcaption>Of what use is <a href="/wiki/Freedom_of_speech" title="Freedom of speech">freedom of speech</a> to those who <a href="/wiki/Fear" title="Fear">fear</a> to offend?</figcaption></figure> <figure class="mw-default-size mw-halign-right" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Russ_Meyer_and_Roger_Ebert_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Russ_Meyer_and_Roger_Ebert_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg/220px-Russ_Meyer_and_Roger_Ebert_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="232" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Russ_Meyer_and_Roger_Ebert_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg/330px-Russ_Meyer_and_Roger_Ebert_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Russ_Meyer_and_Roger_Ebert_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg/440px-Russ_Meyer_and_Roger_Ebert_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg 2x" data-file-width="1057" data-file-height="1117" /></a><figcaption><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Meyer" class="extiw" title="w:Russ Meyer">Meyer</a> is an auteur whose every frame reflects his own obsessions. Like all serious <a href="/wiki/Artists" class="mw-redirect" title="Artists">artists</a>, he doesn't allow any <a href="/wiki/Space" title="Space">space</a> between his <a href="/wiki/Work" title="Work">work</a> and his <a href="/wiki/Dream" class="mw-redirect" title="Dream">dream</a>.</figcaption></figure> <p><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ebert" class="extiw" title="w:Roger Ebert">Roger Joseph Ebert</a></b> (<a href="/wiki/18_June" class="mw-redirect" title="18 June">18 June</a> <a href="/wiki/1942" class="mw-disambig" title="1942">1942</a> – <a href="/wiki/4_April" class="mw-redirect" title="4 April">4 April</a> <a href="/wiki/2013" class="mw-disambig" title="2013">2013</a>) was an American <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_criticism" class="extiw" title="w:Film criticism">film critic</a>, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sun-Times" class="extiw" title="w:Chicago Sun-Times">Chicago Sun-Times</a></i> from 1967 until his death in 2013. He was the first film critic to win a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_Prize_for_Criticism" class="extiw" title="w:Pulitzer Prize for Criticism">Pulitzer Prize for Criticism</a>. </p> <meta property="mw:PageProp/toc" /> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Quotes">Quotes</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=1" title="Edit section: Quotes"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Roger_Ebert_crop_(retouched).jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Roger_Ebert_crop_%28retouched%29.jpg/220px-Roger_Ebert_crop_%28retouched%29.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="227" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Roger_Ebert_crop_%28retouched%29.jpg/330px-Roger_Ebert_crop_%28retouched%29.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Roger_Ebert_crop_%28retouched%29.jpg/440px-Roger_Ebert_crop_%28retouched%29.jpg 2x" data-file-width="505" data-file-height="520" /></a><figcaption><a href="/wiki/Art" title="Art">Art</a> is the closest we can come to <a href="/wiki/Understanding" title="Understanding">understanding</a> how a <a href="/wiki/Stranger" class="mw-redirect" title="Stranger">stranger</a> really <a href="/wiki/Feels" class="mw-redirect" title="Feels">feels</a>.</figcaption></figure> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Casablanca,_Trailer_Screenshot.JPG" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Casablanca%2C_Trailer_Screenshot.JPG/220px-Casablanca%2C_Trailer_Screenshot.JPG" decoding="async" width="220" height="170" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Casablanca%2C_Trailer_Screenshot.JPG/330px-Casablanca%2C_Trailer_Screenshot.JPG 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Casablanca%2C_Trailer_Screenshot.JPG/440px-Casablanca%2C_Trailer_Screenshot.JPG 2x" data-file-width="566" data-file-height="438" /></a><figcaption>Snobs exclude; they do not include. To exclude b&w from your <a href="/wiki/Choices" class="mw-redirect" title="Choices">choices</a> is an admission that you have a closed <a href="/wiki/Mind" title="Mind">mind</a>, a limited <a href="/wiki/Imagination" title="Imagination">imagination</a>, or are lacking in <a href="/wiki/Taste" class="mw-redirect" title="Taste">taste</a>.</figcaption></figure> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:BusterKeatonKBF1956.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/BusterKeatonKBF1956.jpg/220px-BusterKeatonKBF1956.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="291" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/BusterKeatonKBF1956.jpg/330px-BusterKeatonKBF1956.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/BusterKeatonKBF1956.jpg/440px-BusterKeatonKBF1956.jpg 2x" data-file-width="1150" data-file-height="1519" /></a><figcaption><a href="/wiki/Buster_Keaton" title="Buster Keaton">Buster</a> survives <a href="/wiki/Tornados" class="mw-redirect" title="Tornados">tornados</a>, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders, and falls from great heights, and never pauses to take a bow: He has his <a href="/wiki/Eye" class="mw-redirect" title="Eye">eye</a> on his <a href="/wiki/Goal" class="mw-redirect" title="Goal">goal</a>. And his movies, seen as a group, are like a sustained act of <a href="/wiki/Optimism" title="Optimism">optimism</a> in the face of <a href="/wiki/Adversity" title="Adversity">adversity</a>.</figcaption></figure> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:The_General,_front.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/The_General%2C_front.jpg/220px-The_General%2C_front.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="169" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/The_General%2C_front.jpg/330px-The_General%2C_front.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/The_General%2C_front.jpg/440px-The_General%2C_front.jpg 2x" data-file-width="480" data-file-height="368" /></a><figcaption>No silent star did more <a href="/wiki/Dangerous" class="mw-redirect" title="Dangerous">dangerous</a> stunts than <a href="/wiki/Buster_Keaton" title="Buster Keaton">Buster Keaton</a>. Instead of using doubles, he himself doubled for his actors, doing their stunts as well as his own.</figcaption></figure> <figure class="mw-default-size mw-halign-right" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Chaz_Hammel-Smith,_Roger_Ebert,_and_Nancy_Kwan_at_the_Hawaii_International_Film_Festival_in_October_2010.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Chaz_Hammel-Smith%2C_Roger_Ebert%2C_and_Nancy_Kwan_at_the_Hawaii_International_Film_Festival_in_October_2010.jpg/220px-Chaz_Hammel-Smith%2C_Roger_Ebert%2C_and_Nancy_Kwan_at_the_Hawaii_International_Film_Festival_in_October_2010.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="156" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Chaz_Hammel-Smith%2C_Roger_Ebert%2C_and_Nancy_Kwan_at_the_Hawaii_International_Film_Festival_in_October_2010.jpg/330px-Chaz_Hammel-Smith%2C_Roger_Ebert%2C_and_Nancy_Kwan_at_the_Hawaii_International_Film_Festival_in_October_2010.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cd/Chaz_Hammel-Smith%2C_Roger_Ebert%2C_and_Nancy_Kwan_at_the_Hawaii_International_Film_Festival_in_October_2010.jpg/440px-Chaz_Hammel-Smith%2C_Roger_Ebert%2C_and_Nancy_Kwan_at_the_Hawaii_International_Film_Festival_in_October_2010.jpg 2x" data-file-width="543" data-file-height="385" /></a><figcaption>It is <a href="/wiki/Human_nature" title="Human nature">human nature</a> to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality. That's why writing on the Internet has become a life-saver for me. My <a href="/wiki/Ability" title="Ability">ability</a> to <a href="/wiki/Think" class="mw-redirect" title="Think">think</a> and <a href="/wiki/Write" class="mw-redirect" title="Write">write</a> have not been affected. And on the Web, my <a href="/wiki/Real" class="mw-redirect" title="Real">real</a> <a href="/wiki/Voice" title="Voice">voice</a> finds expression.</figcaption></figure> <ul><li>One of the remarkable things about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Meyer" class="extiw" title="w:Russ Meyer">Russ Meyer</a>'s films is that they continue to live and play, long after the other work of the soft-core era has been forgotten. That is partly because of their craftsmanship, partly because of Meyer's leading ladies, and partly because of a spirit of paramilitary commitment that can be sensed as the cast and crew struggle through rugged terrain to enact their rural melodramas. But the central reason, I believe, is that Meyer is an auteur whose every frame reflects his own obsessions. Like all serious artists, he doesn't allow any space between his work and his dream. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/russ-meyer-busts-sleazy-stereotype">"Russ Meyer busts sleazy stereotype" <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> (15 November 1985)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>When I think about the kinds of movies that make me cry, that make tears come to my eyes, I usually don't think about sad films. Sad films, I sort of just look at it. It's movies that are about selflessness, that are about sacrifice, about humans that believe in the good of the human race that sometimes move me. <ul><li>Roger Ebert's DVD commentary for <i>Casablanca</i></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?</b> <ul><li><i>Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion</i> (1990 Edition), p. 735</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Art" title="Art">Art</a> is the closest we can come to <a href="/wiki/Understanding" title="Understanding">understanding</a> how a <a href="/wiki/Stranger" class="mw-redirect" title="Stranger">stranger</a> really <a href="/wiki/Feels" class="mw-redirect" title="Feels">feels</a>. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://video.cpt12.org/video/2364991008">"Living Testament" speech</a> at 11th Hour, Colorado Public Television (1994)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Well, what is a political film? A film about politicians? Or a film about issues — sexism, racism, the environment, nuclear policy? I decided on the broader definition. If I'd limited myself to films about politicians, it would have been a short list: How many characters in any mainstream American movie seem aware of the political process, or belong to a party? <ul><li>Ranking "the 20 best political films of the past two decades" in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.motherjones.com/arts/film/1996/05/ebert.html">"The Big Picture: Roger Ebert" in <i>MotherJones</i> (May/June 1996)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly. <ul><li>"Critical Eye" column, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Internet_Life" class="extiw" title="w:Yahoo! Internet Life">Yahoo! Internet Life</a></i> (September 1998), p. 66</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than <i>The Brown Bunny.</i> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/festivals-and-awards/gallo-goes-on-the-offensive-after-bunny-flop">Review</a> of an early version of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brown_Bunny" class="extiw" title="w:The Brown Bunny">The Brown Bunny</a></i>, when it was shown at the 2003 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannes_Film_Festival" class="extiw" title="w:Cannes Film Festival">Cannes Film Festival</a> (4 June 2003) <ul><li>After director <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Gallo" class="extiw" title="w:Vincent Gallo">Vincent Gallo</a> responded to the above criticism by mocking Ebert's obesity, Ebert responded: "It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of <i>The Brown Bunny.</i>" <a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030604/FILMFESTIVALS01/66010303">[1]</a> (4 June 2003)</li></ul></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_Theory" class="extiw" title="w:Film Theory">Film theory</a> has nothing to do with film.</b> Students presumably hope to find out something about film, and all they will find out is an occult and arcane language designed only for the purpose of excluding those who have not mastered it and giving academic rewards to those who have. No one with any literacy, taste or intelligence would want to teach these courses, so the bona fide definition of people teaching them are people who are incapable of teaching anything else. <ul><li>As quoted by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Weddle" class="extiw" title="w:David Weddle">David Weddle</a> in "<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://articles.latimes.com/print/2003/jul/13/magazine/tm-filmschool28">Lights, Camera, Action. Marxism, Semiotics, Narratology: Film School Isn't What It Used to Be, One Father Discovers</a>." <i>Los Angeles Times</i> (13 July 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Many moviegoers and video viewers say they do not "like" black and white films. In my opinion, they are cutting themselves off from much of the mystery and beauty of the movies. <br /> Black and white is an artistic choice, a medium that has strengths and traditions, especially in its use of light and shadow.</b> Moviegoers of course have the right to dislike b&w, but it is not something they should be proud of. It reveals them, frankly, as cinematically illiterate. <br /> <b>I have been described as a snob on this issue. But snobs exclude; they do not include. To exclude b&w from your choices is an admission that you have a closed mind, a limited imagination, or are lacking in taste.</b> <ul><li>First published in the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040725/ANSWERMAN/407250305">"Movie Answer Man" column (25 July 2004)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.</b> <ul><li>First published in the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050918/ANSWERMAN/509180304/1023">"Movie Answer Man" column (18 September 2005)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I didn't have a stop watch, but it seemed to me the elephantine action scenes were pretty much spaced out evenly through the movie. There was no starting out slow and building up to a big climax. The movie is pretty much all climax. The Autobots® and Decepticons® must not have read the warning label on their Viagra. <b>At last we see what a four-hour erection looks like.</b> <ul><li><i>The Fall of the Revengers</i>, discussing the film <i><a href="/wiki/Transformers:_Revenge_of_the_Fallen" title="Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen">Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen</a></i> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/06/the_fall_of_the_revengers.html">"Roger Ebert's Journal"</a> (24 June 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.</b> <ul><li>First published in the <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/cannes-7-a-campaign-for-real-movies">"Roger Ebert's Journal" column (19 May 2010)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I wear a pedometer, a little device that counts every step. It works as a goad, because you walk additional distances to pile up the numbers. The average person walks 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day. I walk 10,000 steps a day. I have lost a lot of weight as a result. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/magazine/13DOMAINS.html?ex=1266987600&en=ee5831db9aa9dafb&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt">"A Film Critic's Windy City Home' in <i>The New York Times</i> (13 February 2005)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ebert%27s_Overlooked_Film_Festival" class="extiw" title="w:Roger Ebert's Overlooked Film Festival">Golden Thumb</a> is not as good as the Oscar, but it is a lot of fun. <ul><li>"A Film Critic's Windy City Home' in <i>The New York Times</i> (13 February 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I lost faith in the Oscars the first year I was a movie critic — the year that <i><a href="/wiki/Bonnie_and_Clyde" class="mw-redirect" title="Bonnie and Clyde">Bonnie and Clyde</a></i> didn't win. <ul><li><i><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.playboy.com/magazine/20q_archive/siskel-and-ebert.html">Playboy 20q</a></i></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>For 40 years, I didn't miss a single deadline, but since July, I have missed every one. I also, to my intense disappointment, missed the Telluride and Toronto film festivals. Having just written my first review since June (<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Queen_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:The Queen (film)">The Queen</a></i>), I think an update is in order. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/roger-writes-to-readers">"Roger writes to readers" <i>Chicago Sun Times</i> (11 October 2006)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I have discovered a goodness and decency in people as exhibited in all the letters, e-mails, flowers, gifts and prayers that have been directed my way. I am overwhelmed and humbled. I offer you my most sincere thanks and my deep and abiding gratitude. If I ever write my memoirs, I have some spellbinding material. How does the Joni Mitchell song go? "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone"? One thing I've discovered is that I love my job more than I thought I did, and I love my wife even more! <ul><li>"Roger writes to readers" <i>Chicago Sun Times</i> (11 October 2006)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." That is why 90% of academic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/film_theory" class="extiw" title="w:film theory">film theory</a> is bullshit. <b>Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.</b> <ul><li>"<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/11/o_synecdoche_my_synecdoche.html">O, Synecdoche, my Synecdoche!</a>," (10 November 2008)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar" class="extiw" title="w:Pixar">Pixar</a> is the first studio that is a movie star. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://twitter.com/ebertchicago/status/16740535371">Twitter Feed</a> (21 June 2010)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality.</b> That's why writing on the Internet has become a life-saver for me. My ability to think and write have not been affected. And on the Web, my real voice finds expression. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.ted.com/talks/roger_ebert_remaking_my_voice.html">TED Talk</a> (March 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I support freedom of choice. My choice is to not support <a href="/wiki/Abortion" title="Abortion">abortion</a>, except in cases of a clear-cut choice between the lives of the mother and child. A child conceived through incest or rape is innocent and deserves the right to be born. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/how-i-am-a-roman-catholic">"How I am a Roman Catholic"</a> <i>Roger Ebert's Journal</i> (1 March 2013)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear... My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/go-gentle-into-that-good-night">"Go Gentle Into That Good Night"</a> <i>Roger Ebert's Journal</i> (2 May 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>I must slow down now, which is why I'm taking what I like to call "a leave of presence." </b><br /> What in the world is a leave of presence? It means I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers handpicked and greatly admired by me. What's more, I'll be able at last to do what I've always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review. … So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. <b>I'll see you at the movies.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/a-leave-of-presence">"A Leave of Presence" (2 April 2013)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="The_Great_Movies_Essay_Collections"><i>The Great Movies</i> Essay Collections</h3><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=2" title="Edit section: The Great Movies Essay Collections"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li><i><a href="/wiki/Dr._Strangelove" title="Dr. Strangelove">Dr. Strangelove</a></i>'s humor is generated by a basic comic principle: People trying to be funny are never as funny as people trying to be serious and failing. The laughs have to seem <i>forced</i> on unwilling characters by the logic of events. <b>A man wearing a funny hat is not funny. But if the man doesn't know he's wearing a funny hat--now you've got something.</b> The characters in <i>Dr. Strangelove</i> do not know their hats are funny. <ul><li><i>Vol. I</i> (2003), pp. 156-157</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>It's said that <a href="/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin" title="Charlie Chaplin">Chaplin</a> wanted you to like him, but <a href="/wiki/Buster_Keaton" title="Buster Keaton">Keaton</a> didn't care. I think he cared, but was too proud to ask.</b> His films avoid the pathos and sentiment of the Chaplin pictures, and usually feature a jaunty young man who sees an objective and goes for it in the face of the most daunting obstacles. <b>Buster survives tornados, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders, and falls from great heights, and never pauses to take a bow: He has his eye on his goal. And his movies, seen as a group, are like a sustained act of optimism in the face of adversity</b>; surprising, how without asking, he earns our admiration and tenderness. <br /> Because he was funny, because he wore a porkpie hat, Keaton's physical skills are often undervalued … no silent star did more dangerous stunts than <a href="/wiki/Buster_Keaton" title="Buster Keaton">Buster Keaton</a>. <b>Instead of using doubles, he himself doubled for his actors, doing their stunts as well as his own.</b> <ul><li><i>Vol. II</i> (2005), p. 94</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b> <i><a href="/wiki/Magnolia_(film)" title="Magnolia (film)">Magnolia</a></i> is a film of sadness and loss, of lifelong bitterness, of children harmed and adults destroying themselves.</b> As the narrator tells us near the end, "We may be through with the past, but the past is never through with us." In this wreckage of lifetimes, there are two figures, a policeman and a nurse, who do what they can to offer help, hope and love. … The central theme is cruelty to children, and its lasting effect. This is closely linked to a loathing or fear of behaving as we are told, or think, that we should. … <b>As an act of filmmaking, it draws us in and doesn't let go.</b> It begins deceptively, with a little documentary about amazing coincidences (including the scuba diver scooped by a fire-fighting plane and dumped on a forest fire) … coincidences and strange events do happen, and they are as real as everything else. If you could stand back far enough, in fact, everything would be revealed as a coincidence. What we call "coincidences" are limited to the ones we happen to notice. … In one beautiful sequence, Anderson cuts between <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNmKghTvj0E">most of the major characters all simultaneously singing</a> <a href="/wiki/Aimee_Mann" title="Aimee Mann">Aimee Mann</a>'s "It's Not Going to Stop." A directorial flourish? You know what? I think it's a coincidence. Unlike many other "hypertext movies" with interlinking plots, <i>Magnolia</i> seems to be using the device in a deeper, more philosophical way. <b>Anderson sees these people joined at a level below any possible knowledge, down where <a href="/wiki/Fate" title="Fate">fate</a> and <a href="/wiki/Destiny" title="Destiny">destiny</a> lie. They have been joined by their <a href="/wiki/Actions" class="mw-redirect" title="Actions">actions</a> and their <a href="/wiki/Choices" class="mw-redirect" title="Choices">choices</a>.</b> <br /> And all leads to the remarkable, famous, sequence near the film's end when it rains frogs. Yes. Countless frogs, still alive, all over Los Angeles, falling from the sky. That this device has sometimes been joked about puzzles me. <b>I find it a way to elevate the whole story into a larger realm of inexplicable but real behavior. We need something beyond the human to add another dimension.</b> Frogs <i>have</i> rained from the sky eight times this century, but never mind the facts. Attend instead to <i>Exodus</i> 8:2, which is cited on a placard in the film: "And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite your whole territory with frogs." Let who go? In this case, I believe, it refers not to people, but to <a href="/wiki/Fears" class="mw-redirect" title="Fears">fears</a>, <a href="/wiki/Shames" class="mw-redirect" title="Shames">shames</a>, <a href="/wiki/Sins" class="mw-redirect" title="Sins">sins</a>. <br /> <i>Magnolia</i> is one of those rare films that works in two entirely different ways. <b>In one sense, it tells absorbing stories, filled with detail, told with precision and not a little <a href="/wiki/Humor" class="mw-redirect" title="Humor">humor</a>. On another sense, it is a <a href="/wiki/Parable" title="Parable">parable</a>. The message of the parable, as with all good parables, is expressed not in <a href="/wiki/Words" title="Words">words</a> but in <a href="/wiki/Emotions" title="Emotions">emotions</a>. After we have felt the <a href="/wiki/Pain" title="Pain">pain</a> of these people, and felt the love of the policeman and the nurse, we have been <a href="/wiki/Taught" class="mw-redirect" title="Taught">taught</a> something intangible, but <a href="/wiki/Necessary" class="mw-redirect" title="Necessary">necessary</a> to <a href="/wiki/Know" class="mw-redirect" title="Know">know</a>.</b> <ul><li>Vol. III</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Awake_in_the_Dark:_The_Best_of_Roger_Ebert_(2006)"><span id="Awake_in_the_Dark:_The_Best_of_Roger_Ebert_.282006.29"></span><i>Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert</i> (2006)</h3><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=3" title="Edit section: Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert (2006)"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <dl><dd><small><a href="/wiki/Special:BookSources/0226182002" title="Special:BookSources/0226182002">ISBN 0226182002</a></small></dd></dl> <ul><li>I began my work as a film critic in 1967. I had not thought to be a film critic, and indeed had few firm career plans apart from vague notions that I might someday be a political columnist or a professor of English. <br /> Robert Zonka, who was named the paper's feature editor the same day I was hired at the <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i>, became one of the best friends of a lifetime. One day in March 1967, he called me into a conference room, told me that Eleanor Keen, the paper's movie critic, was retiring, and that I was the new critic. <b>I walked away in elation and disbelief, yet hardly suspected that this day would set the course for the rest of my life.</b></li></ul> <ul><li>In my very first review I was already jaded, observing of "Galia," an obscure French film, that it "opens and closes with arty shots of the ocean, mother of us all, but in between it's pretty clear that what is washing ashore is the French New Wave." My pose in those days was one of superiority to the movies, although just when I had the exact angle of condescension calculated, a movie would open that disarmed my defenses and left me ecstatic and joyful.</li></ul> <ul><li><b><a href="/wiki/Werner_Herzog" title="Werner Herzog">Herzog</a> by his example gave me a model for the film artist: fearless, driven by his subjects, indifferent to commercial considerations, trusting his audience to follow him anywhere.</b> In the 38 years since I saw my first Herzog film, after an outpouring of some 50 features and documentaries, he has never created a single film that is compromised, shameful, made for pragmatic reasons or uninteresting. <b>Even his failures are spectacular.</b></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Your_Movie_Sucks_(2007)"><span id="Your_Movie_Sucks_.282007.29"></span><i>Your Movie Sucks</i> (2007)</h3><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=4" title="Edit section: Your Movie Sucks (2007)"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Vampirefilm.png" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Vampirefilm.png" decoding="async" width="128" height="128" class="mw-file-element" data-file-width="128" data-file-height="128" /></a><figcaption>Your Movie Sucks.</figcaption></figure> <dl><dd><small><a href="/wiki/Special:BookSources/0740763660" title="Special:BookSources/0740763660">ISBN 0740763660</a></small></dd></dl> <ul><li><b>Some of these reviews were written in <a href="/wiki/Joyous" class="mw-redirect" title="Joyous">joyous</a> zeal. Others with glee. Some in <a href="/wiki/Sorrow" title="Sorrow">sorrow</a>, some in <a href="/wiki/Anger" title="Anger">anger</a>, and a precious few with venom, of which I have a closely guarded supply.</b> When I am asked, all too frequently, if I really sit all the way through these movies, my answer is inevitably: Yes, because I want to write the review. <br /> I would guess that I have not mentioned my Pulitzer Prize in a review except once or twice since 1975, but at the moment I read Rob Schneider's extremely unwise open letter to Patrick Goldstein, I knew I was receiving a home-run pitch, right over the plate. Other reviews were written in various spirits, some of them almost benevolently, but of <i>Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo</i>, all I can say is that it is a movie made to inspire the title of a book like this. <ul><li>Introduction</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Life_Itself_:_A_Memoir_(2011)"><span id="Life_Itself_:_A_Memoir_.282011.29"></span><i>Life Itself : A Memoir</i> (2011)</h3><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=5" title="Edit section: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011)"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:SecularHumanismLogo3DPrideRainbowColors.png" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/SecularHumanismLogo3DPrideRainbowColors.png/220px-SecularHumanismLogo3DPrideRainbowColors.png" decoding="async" width="220" height="434" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/SecularHumanismLogo3DPrideRainbowColors.png 1.5x" data-file-width="308" data-file-height="607" /></a><figcaption>We must try to contribute <a href="/wiki/Joy" title="Joy">joy</a> to the <a href="/wiki/World" title="World">world</a>. … I didn't always <a href="/wiki/Know" class="mw-redirect" title="Know">know</a> this and am <a href="/wiki/Happy" class="mw-redirect" title="Happy">happy</a> I <a href="/wiki/Lived" class="mw-redirect" title="Lived">lived</a> long enough to find it out.</figcaption></figure> <ul><li>I lay awake wondering how I could pray for faith to a <a href="/wiki/God" title="God">God</a> I could not believe in without faith. That seemed to leave me suspended between two questions. These logical puzzles were generated spontaneously within my mind. They didn’t come from my school or my family. Most of my neighborhood friends were Protestants who were not interested in theories about God, apart from the fact that of course he existed. <br /> I bought the teachings of the <a href="/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Church" class="mw-redirect" title="Roman Catholic Church">Roman Catholic Church</a> lock, stock, and barrel, apart from the God problem. <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>For many years I visualized the <a href="/wiki/Soviet_Union" title="Soviet Union">Soviet Union</a> as a land where the sun never came out and enslaved Catholic peasants labored under lowering skies for their godless rulers. <br /> But our theology was often very practical: All men are created equal. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you. Follow the Ten Commandments, which we studied at length, except for adultery, “which you children don’t have to worry about.” <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>As I grew I no longer lost any sleep over the questions of God and infinity. I understood they could have no answers. At some point the reality of God was no longer present in my mind. I believed in the basic Church teachings because I thought they were correct, not because God wanted me to. In my mind, in the way I interpret them, I still live by them today. Not by the rules and regulations, but by the principles. For example, in the matter of abortion, I am pro-choice, but by personal choice would have nothing to do with an abortion of a child of my own. I believe in free will, and believe I have no right to tell anyone else what to do. Popes come and go, and <a href="/wiki/Pope_John_XXIII" title="Pope John XXIII">John XXIII</a> has been the only one I felt affection for. Their dictums strike me as lacking in the ability to surprise. They have been leading a holding action for a millennium. <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Catholicism made me a humanist before I knew the word. When people rail against “secular humanism,” I want to ask them if humanism itself would be okay with them if it wasn’t so secular. Then I want to ask, “Why do you think it <i>is</i> secular?” This would lead to my opinion that their beliefs were not humanist.</b> <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God disappeared. I kept this to myself. I never discussed it with my parents. My father in any event was a nonpracticing Lutheran, until a deathbed conversion that rather disappointed me. I’m sure he agreed to it for my mother’s sake. Did I start calling myself an <a href="/wiki/Agnostic" class="mw-redirect" title="Agnostic">agnostic</a> or an <a href="/wiki/Atheist" class="mw-redirect" title="Atheist">atheist</a>? No, and I still don’t. I avoid that because <b>I don’t want to provide a category that people can apply to me. Those who say that “believer” and “atheist” are concrete categories do violence to the mystery we must be humble enough to confess. I would not want my convictions reduced to a word.</b> <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b><a href="/wiki/Absolutists" class="mw-redirect" title="Absolutists">Absolutists</a> frighten me.</b> During all the endless discussions on my blog about <a href="/wiki/Evolution" title="Evolution">evolution</a>, intelligent design, <a href="/wiki/God" title="God">God</a>, and the afterworld, numbering altogether thousands of comments, I have never <a href="/wiki/Named" class="mw-redirect" title="Named">named</a> my <a href="/wiki/Beliefs" class="mw-redirect" title="Beliefs">beliefs</a>, although readers have freely informed me that I am an <a href="/wiki/Atheist" class="mw-redirect" title="Atheist">atheist</a>, and <a href="/wiki/Agnostic" class="mw-redirect" title="Agnostic">agnostic</a>, or at the very least a secular <b><a href="/wiki/Humanist" class="mw-redirect" title="Humanist">humanist</a></b> — which I am. <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. That’s for them to believe. I don’t believe <a href="/wiki/Moses" title="Moses">Moses</a> came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with. I believe mankind in general has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn’t make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social. I’ve spent hours and hours in churches all over the world. I sit in them not to pray, but to gently nudge my thoughts toward wonder and awe. I am aware of the generations there before me and the reassurance of tradition. <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I have no patience for churches that evangelize aggressively. I have no interest in being instructed in what I must do to be saved. <b>I prefer vertical prayer, directed up toward heaven, rather than horizontal prayer, directed sideways toward me.</b> I believe a worthy church must grow through attraction, not promotion. <b>I am wary of zealotry; even as a child I was suspicious of those who, as I often heard, were “more Catholic than the pope.” If we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must regard their beliefs with the same respect our own deserve.</b> <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>That the <a href="/wiki/Universe" title="Universe">universe</a>, as was once thought, expands and contracts indefinitely, one <a href="/wiki/Big_Bang" title="Big Bang">Big Bang</a> collapsing into another one, seemed reasonable enough. But in both models of the universe, what caused the first Big Bang? Or was there a first Big Bang, any more than a last number? If there was a first cause, was there a first causer? Did Big Bangs just happen to happen? Can we name the first causer “God”? We can name it anything we want. I can name it after myself. It is utterly insignificant what it is called, because we would be giving a name to something that falls outside all categories of thought and must be unknowable and irrelevant to knowledge. So naming it is a futile enterprise. The word “God” is unhelpful because it implies it has a knowable definition. <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b><a href="/wiki/Quantum_theory" class="mw-redirect" title="Quantum theory">Quantum theory</a> is now discussing instantaneous <a href="/wiki/Connections" class="mw-redirect" title="Connections">connections</a> between two <a href="/wiki/Quantum_entanglement" title="Quantum entanglement">entangled quantum objects</a> such as <a href="/wiki/Electrons" class="mw-redirect" title="Electrons">electrons</a>.</b> This <a href="/wiki/Phenomenon" title="Phenomenon">phenomenon</a> has been <a href="/wiki/Observed" class="mw-redirect" title="Observed">observed</a> in laboratory <a href="/wiki/Experiments" class="mw-redirect" title="Experiments">experiments</a> and <a href="/wiki/Scientists" title="Scientists">scientists</a> <a href="/wiki/Believe" class="mw-redirect" title="Believe">believe</a> they have <a href="/wiki/Proven" class="mw-redirect" title="Proven">proven</a> it takes place. <b>They’re not talking about faster than the <a href="/wiki/Speed" title="Speed">speed</a> of <a href="/wiki/Light" title="Light">light</a>. Speed has <a href="/wiki/Nothing" class="mw-redirect" title="Nothing">nothing</a> to do with it. The entangled objects somehow <a href="/wiki/Communicate" class="mw-redirect" title="Communicate">communicate</a> instantaneously at a distance. If that is <a href="/wiki/True" class="mw-redirect" title="True">true</a>, distance has no <a href="/wiki/Meaning" title="Meaning">meaning</a>. Light-years have no meaning. <a href="/wiki/Space" title="Space">Space</a> has no meaning. In a sense, the entangled objects are not even communicating. They are the same thing. At the “quantum level” (and I don’t know what that means), everything may be actually or theoretically linked. <a href="/wiki/All" class="mw-redirect" title="All">All</a> <a href="/wiki/Unity" title="Unity">is one</a>. <a href="/wiki/Sun" title="Sun">Sun</a>, <a href="/wiki/Moon" title="Moon">moon</a>, <a href="/wiki/Stars" title="Stars">stars</a>, rain, you, me, everything. <a href="/wiki/Monism" title="Monism">All one</a>.</b> If this is so, then <a href="/wiki/Buddhism" title="Buddhism">Buddhism</a> must have been a quantum theory all along. No, I am not a Buddhist. I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. <b>I am more content with questions than answers.</b> <ul><li>Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Many readers have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without <a href="/wiki/Faith" title="Faith">faith</a>. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what is believed in. <ul><li>Ch. 55 : Go Gently</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Raised as a Roman Catholic, I internalized the social values of that faith and still hold most of them, even though its theology no longer persuades me. I have no quarrel with what anyone else subscribes to; everyone deals with these things in his own way, and I have no truths to impart. <b>All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.</b> I know a priest whose eyes twinkle when he says, “You go about God’s work in your way, and I’ll go about it in His.” <ul><li>Ch. 55 : Go Gently</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>"<a href="/wiki/Kindness" title="Kindness">Kindness</a>" covers all of my political beliefs.</b> No need to spell them out. <b>I believe that if, at the end, according to our <a href="/wiki/Abilities" class="mw-redirect" title="Abilities">abilities</a>, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.</b> To make others less happy is a <a href="/wiki/Crime" title="Crime">crime</a>. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. <b>We must try to contribute <a href="/wiki/Joy" title="Joy">joy</a> to the <a href="/wiki/World" title="World">world</a>.</b> That is true no matter what our <a href="/wiki/Problems" class="mw-redirect" title="Problems">problems</a>, our <a href="/wiki/Health" title="Health">health</a>, our circumstances. <b>We must try.</b> I didn't always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out. <ul><li>Ch. 55 : Go Gently</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading3"><h3 id="Reviews">Reviews</h3><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=6" title="Edit section: Reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="Four_star_reviews">Four star reviews</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=7" title="Edit section: Four star reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <figure class="mw-default-size mw-halign-right" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Amateur-made_Na%27vi.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Amateur-made_Na%27vi.jpg/220px-Amateur-made_Na%27vi.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="220" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Amateur-made_Na%27vi.jpg/330px-Amateur-made_Na%27vi.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Amateur-made_Na%27vi.jpg/440px-Amateur-made_Na%27vi.jpg 2x" data-file-width="1535" data-file-height="1535" /></a><figcaption><a href="/wiki/James_Cameron_(director)" title="James Cameron (director)">James Cameron</a>'s film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_(1997_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Titanic (1997 film)">Titanic</a></i> was. Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering <a href="/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)" title="Avatar (2009 film)">an extraordinary film</a>.</figcaption></figure> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Magn%C3%B2lia_a_Verbania.JPG" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Magn%C3%B2lia_a_Verbania.JPG/220px-Magn%C3%B2lia_a_Verbania.JPG" decoding="async" width="220" height="146" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Magn%C3%B2lia_a_Verbania.JPG/330px-Magn%C3%B2lia_a_Verbania.JPG 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Magn%C3%B2lia_a_Verbania.JPG/440px-Magn%C3%B2lia_a_Verbania.JPG 2x" data-file-width="4928" data-file-height="3264" /></a><figcaption><i><a href="/wiki/Magnolia_(film)" title="Magnolia (film)">Magnolia</a></i> is the kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave <a href="/wiki/Logic" title="Logic">logic</a> at the <a href="/wiki/Door" title="Door">door</a>. Do not expect subdued <a href="/wiki/Taste" class="mw-redirect" title="Taste">taste</a> and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic <a href="/wiki/Ecstasy" title="Ecstasy">ecstasy</a>.</figcaption></figure> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Raining_WikiWorld.png" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Raining_WikiWorld.png/220px-Raining_WikiWorld.png" decoding="async" width="220" height="278" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Raining_WikiWorld.png/330px-Raining_WikiWorld.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d0/Raining_WikiWorld.png/440px-Raining_WikiWorld.png 2x" data-file-width="600" data-file-height="759" /></a><figcaption><i><a href="/wiki/Magnolia_(film)" title="Magnolia (film)">Magnolia</a></i> is one of those rare films that works in two entirely different ways. In one sense, it tells absorbing <a href="/wiki/Stories" class="mw-redirect" title="Stories">stories</a>, filled with detail, told with precision and not a little <a href="/wiki/Humor" class="mw-redirect" title="Humor">humor</a>. On another sense, it is a <a href="/wiki/Parable" title="Parable">parable</a>.</figcaption></figure> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Eye_Black_and_White_with_Color.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Eye_Black_and_White_with_Color.jpg/220px-Eye_Black_and_White_with_Color.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="231" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Eye_Black_and_White_with_Color.jpg/330px-Eye_Black_and_White_with_Color.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f5/Eye_Black_and_White_with_Color.jpg/440px-Eye_Black_and_White_with_Color.jpg 2x" data-file-width="480" data-file-height="504" /></a><figcaption><i><a href="/wiki/Pleasantville" title="Pleasantville">Pleasantville</a></i>, which is one of the year's best and most original films, sneaks up on us. It begins by kidding those old black-and-white sitcoms like "Father Knows Best," it continues by pretending to be a sitcom itself, and it ends as a social commentary of surprising <a href="/wiki/Power" title="Power">power</a>. … <i>Pleasantville</i> is the kind of <a href="/wiki/Parable" title="Parable">parable</a> that encourages us to re-evaluate the good old days and take a fresh <a href="/wiki/Look" class="mw-redirect" title="Look">look</a> at the new <a href="/wiki/World" title="World">world</a> we so easily dismiss as decadent. Yes, we have more <a href="/wiki/Problems" class="mw-redirect" title="Problems">problems</a>. But also more <a href="/wiki/Solutions" class="mw-redirect" title="Solutions">solutions</a>, more <a href="/wiki/Opportunities" class="mw-redirect" title="Opportunities">opportunities</a> and more <a href="/wiki/Freedom" title="Freedom">freedom</a>. </figcaption></figure> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Roger_Ebert.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Roger_Ebert.jpg/220px-Roger_Ebert.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="147" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Roger_Ebert.jpg/330px-Roger_Ebert.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Roger_Ebert.jpg/440px-Roger_Ebert.jpg 2x" data-file-width="1600" data-file-height="1067" /></a><figcaption>I don't <a href="/wiki/Know" class="mw-redirect" title="Know">know</a> when a film has <a href="/wiki/Connected" class="mw-redirect" title="Connected">connected</a> more immediately with my own <a href="/wiki/Personal" class="mw-redirect" title="Personal">personal</a> <a href="/wiki/Experience" title="Experience">experience</a>. In uncanny ways, the central events of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Tree_of_Life_(film)" title="The Tree of Life (film)">The Tree of Life</a></i> reflect a <a href="/wiki/Time" title="Time">time</a> and <a href="/wiki/Place" class="mw-redirect" title="Place">place</a> I <a href="/wiki/Lived" class="mw-redirect" title="Lived">lived</a> in, and the boys in it are me. If I set out to make an autobiographical film, and if I had Malick's <a href="/wiki/Gift" class="mw-redirect" title="Gift">gift</a>, it would look so much like this.</figcaption></figure> <ul><li><b>Why did they give an R rating to a movie <a href="/wiki/Perfect" class="mw-redirect" title="Perfect">perfect</a> for teenagers?</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/almost-famous-2000">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Almost_Famous" title="Almost Famous">Almost Famous</a></i> (15 September 2000)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Old age isn't for sissies, and neither is this film.</b> … This is <a href="/wiki/Now" title="Now">now</a>. We are filled with <a href="/wiki/Optimism" title="Optimism">optimism</a> and <a href="/wiki/Expectation" class="mw-redirect" title="Expectation">expectation</a>. Why would we want to see such a film, however brilliantly it has been made? I think it's because a film like <i>Amour</i> has a lesson for us that only the cinema can teach: the cinema, with its heedless <a href="/wiki/Ability" title="Ability">ability</a> to leap across <a href="/wiki/Time" title="Time">time</a> and transcend <a href="/wiki/Lives" class="mw-redirect" title="Lives">lives</a> and dramatize what it means to be a member of <a href="/wiki/Humankind" class="mw-redirect" title="Humankind">humankind</a>'s <a href="/wiki/Eternal" class="mw-redirect" title="Eternal">eternal</a> audience. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/amour-2013">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amour_(2012_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Amour (2012 film)">Amour</a></i> (9 January 2013)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Watching <i><a href="/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)" title="Avatar (2009 film)">Avatar</a></i>, I felt sort of the same as when I saw <i><a href="/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_IV:_A_New_Hope" class="mw-redirect" title="Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope">Star Wars</a></i> in 1977.</b> That was another movie I walked into with uncertain expectations. <a href="/wiki/James_Cameron_(director)" title="James Cameron (director)">James Cameron</a>'s film has been the subject of relentlessly dubious advance buzz, just as his <i><a href="/wiki/Titanic_(1997_film)" title="Titanic (1997 film)">Titanic</a></i> was. <b>Once again, he has silenced the doubters by simply delivering an extraordinary film.</b> There is still at least one man in Hollywood who knows how to spend $250 million, or was it $300 million, wisely. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/avatar-2009">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)" title="Avatar (2009 film)">Avatar</a></i> (11 December 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Especially in its opening scenes, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballast_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Ballast (film)">Ballast</a></i> is "slower" and "quieter" than we usually expect. You know what? So is life, most of the time. We don't wake up and immediately start engaging with plot points. But <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballast_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Ballast (film)">Ballast</a></i> inexorably grows and deepens and gathers power and absorbs us. I always say I hardly ever cry at sad films, but I sometimes do, just a little, at films about good people. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ballast-2008">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballast_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Ballast (film)">Ballast</a></i> (29 October 2008)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>I said this is the Batman movie I've been waiting for; more correctly, this is the movie I did not realize I was waiting for, because I didn't realize that more emphasis on <a href="/wiki/Story" title="Story">story</a> and character and less emphasis on high-tech action was just what was needed.</b> The movie works dramatically in addition to being an entertainment. There's something to it. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/batman-begins-2005">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Batman_Begins" title="Batman Begins">Batman Begins</a></i> (13 June 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dances_With_Wolves" class="extiw" title="w:Dances With Wolves">Dances With Wolves</a></i> has the kind of vision and ambition that is rare in movies today.</b> It is not a formula movie, but a thoughtful, carefully observed story. It is a Western at a time when the Western is said to be dead. It asks for our imagination and sympathy. It takes its time, three hours, to unfold. It is a personal triumph for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Costner" class="extiw" title="w:Kevin Costner">Kevin Costner</a>, the intelligent young actor of <i>Field of Dreams</i>, who directed the film and shows a command of story and of visual structure that is startling; this movie moves so confidently and looks so good it seems incredible that it's a directorial debut. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dances-with-wolves-1990">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Dances_with_Wolves" title="Dances with Wolves">Dances with Wolves</a></i> (9 November 1990)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Admiration I did not feel. Sympathy I felt in the sense that I would feel it for a rabid dog, while accepting that it must be destroyed. I do not feel the film provides "a sufficient response to what <a href="/wiki/Hitler" class="mw-redirect" title="Hitler">Hitler</a> actually did," because I feel no film can, and no response would be sufficient. <b>All we can learn from a film like this is that millions of people can be led, and millions more killed, by madness leashed to racism and the barbaric instincts of tribalism.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/downfall-2005">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall_(2004_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Downfall (2004 film)">Downfall</a></i> (11 March 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about <i>Basketball Diaries</i>?" she asked. "Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it. The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory.<b> "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own.</b> When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. <b>The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous.</b> The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory." <br /> In short, I said, <b>events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them.</b> I commended the policy at the <i>Sun-Times</i>, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. <b>Of course the interview was never used.</b> They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/elephant-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_(2003_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Elephant (2003 film)">Elephant</a></i> (7 November 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Films like <i><a href="/wiki/Fargo_(film)" title="Fargo (film)">Fargo</a></i> are why I love the movies.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fargo-1996">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Fargo (film)">Fargo</a></i> (8 March 1996)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b> <i>Groundhog Day</i> is a film that finds its note and purpose so precisely that its <a href="/wiki/Genius" title="Genius">genius</a> may not be immediately noticeable. It unfolds so inevitably, is so entertaining, so apparently effortless, that you have to stand back and slap yourself before you see how good it really is.</b> <br /> Certainly I underrated it <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070930041716/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19930212/REVIEWS/302120302/1023">in my original review</a>; I enjoyed it so easily that I was seduced into cheerful moderation. But there are a few films, and this is one of them, that burrow into our memories and become reference points. When you find yourself needing the phrase <i>This is like "Groundhog Day" </i>to explain how you feel, a movie has accomplished something. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050615085737/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050130/REVIEWS08/501300301/1023">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Groundhog Day (film)">Groundhog Day</a></i>, in <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> (30 January 2005), also at <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-groundhog-day-1993">rogerebert.com</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The movie, as everyone knows, is about a man who finds himself living the same day over and over and over again. He is the only person in his world who knows this is happening, and after going through periods of dismay and bitterness, revolt and despair, suicidal self-destruction and cynical recklessness, he begins to do something that is alien to his nature. He begins to learn. <ul><li>Review of <i>Groundhog Day</i> (1993) in <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> (30 January 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>A long article in the British newspaper the Independent says "Groundhog Day" is "hailed by religious leaders as the most spiritual film of all time." </b>Perhaps not all religious leaders have seen anything by Bergman, Bresson, Ozu and Dreyer, but never mind: They have a point, even about a film where the deepest theological observation is, "<b>Maybe God has just been around a long time and knows everything.</b>" <br /> What amazes me about the movie is that Murray and Ramis get away with it. They never lose their nerve. <b>Phil undergoes his transformation but never loses his edge. He becomes a better Phil, not a different Phil.</b> The movie doesn't get all soppy at the end. There is the dark period when he tries to kill himself, the reckless period when he crashes his car because he knows it doesn't matter, the times of despair. <br /> We see that life is like that. <b>Tomorrow will come, and whether or not it is always Feb. 2, all we can do about it is be the best person we know how to be. The good news is that we can learn to be better people.</b> There is a moment when Phil tells Rita, "When you stand in the snow, you look like an angel." <b>The point is not that he has come to love Rita. It is that he has learned to see the <a href="/wiki/Angels" title="Angels">angel</a>.</b> <ul><li>Review of <i>Groundhog Day</i> (1993) in <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> (30 January 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This is a film about — and also for — not only obsessed clerks in record stores, but the video store clerks who have seen all the movies, and the bookstore employees who have read all the books. Also for bartenders, waitresses, greengrocers in health food stores, kitchen slaves at vegetarian restaurants, the people at GNC who know all the herbs, writers for alternative weeklies, disc jockeys on college stations, salespeople in retro clothing shops, tattoo artists and those they tattoo, poets, artists, musicians, novelists, and the hip, the pierced and the lonely. They may not see themselves but they will recognize people they know. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/high-fidelity-2000">Review of</a> <i><a href="/wiki/High_Fidelity" class="mw-redirect" title="High Fidelity">High Fidelity</a></i> (31 March 2000)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>It's so rare to find a movie that doesn't take sides.</b> Conflict is said to be the basis of popular fiction, and yet here is a film that seizes us with its first scene and never lets go, and we feel sympathy all the way through for everyone in it. <b>To be sure, they sometimes do bad things, but the movie <i>understands</i> them and their flaws. Like great fiction, <i><a href="/wiki/House_of_Sand_and_Fog_(film)" title="House of Sand and Fog (film)">House of Sand and Fog</a></i> sees into the hearts of its characters, and loves and pities them.</b> … "House of Sand and Fog" relates not a plot with its contrived ups and downs but a story. A plot is about things that happen. A story is about people who behave. <br /> To admire a story you must be willing to listen to the people and observe them, and at the end of <i>House of Sand and Fog</i>, we have seen good people with good intentions who have their lives destroyed because they had the bad luck to come across a weak person with shabby desires. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/house-of-sand-and-fog-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Sand_and_Fog" class="extiw" title="w:House of Sand and Fog">House of Sand and Fog</a></i> (26 December 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Seated in a dark theater, I reached out my hand for that of my wife’s. She and I had visited the same beach and discussed visiting it with our children and grandchildren. An icy finger ran slowly down our spines. <b>Such a connection can be terrifying.</b> What does it mean? We are the playthings of the gods. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-impossible-2012">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Impossible_(2012_film)" title="The Impossible (2012 film)">The Impossible</a></i> (19 December 2012)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The R rating refers to Logue's use of vulgarity. It is utterly inexplicable. This is an excellent film for teenagers. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-kings-speech-2010">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/The_King%27s_Speech" title="The King's Speech">The King's Speech</a></i> (15 December 2010)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b><i><a href="/wiki/Magnolia_(film)" title="Magnolia (film)">Magnolia</a></i> is <a href="/wiki/Operatic" class="mw-redirect" title="Operatic">operatic</a> in its <a href="/wiki/Ambition" title="Ambition">ambition</a>, a <a href="/wiki/Great" class="mw-redirect" title="Great">great</a>, <a href="/wiki/Joyous" class="mw-redirect" title="Joyous">joyous</a> leap into melodrama and <a href="/wiki/Coincidence" title="Coincidence">coincidence</a>, with ragged <a href="/wiki/Emotions" title="Emotions">emotions</a>, <a href="/wiki/Crimes" class="mw-redirect" title="Crimes">crimes</a> and <a href="/wiki/Punishments" class="mw-redirect" title="Punishments">punishments</a>, deathbed scenes, <a href="/wiki/Romantic" class="mw-redirect" title="Romantic">romantic</a> <a href="/wiki/Dreams" title="Dreams">dreams</a>, generational turmoil and celestial intervention, all scored to insistent music. It is not a timid film.</b> … The movie is an interlocking series of episodes that take place during one day in Los Angeles, sometimes even at the same moment. Its characters are linked by blood, coincidence and by the way their lives seem parallel. Themes emerge: the deaths of fathers, the resentments of children, the failure of early promise, the way all plans and ambitions can be undermined by sudden and astonishing events. … <b><a href="/wiki/All" class="mw-redirect" title="All">All</a> of these threads converge, in one way or another, upon an event there is no way for the audience to anticipate.</b> This event is not "cheating," as some critics have argued, because the prologue fully prepares the way for it, as do some subtle references to <i>Exodus</i>. It works like the <a href="/wiki/Hand" class="mw-redirect" title="Hand">hand</a> of <a href="/wiki/God" title="God">God</a>, reminding us of the <a href="/wiki/Absurdity" title="Absurdity">absurdity</a> of daring to plan. And yet plan we must, because we are human, and because sometimes our plans work out. <br /> <b><i>Magnolia</i> is the kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave <a href="/wiki/Logic" title="Logic">logic</a> at the <a href="/wiki/Door" title="Door">door</a>. Do not expect subdued <a href="/wiki/Taste" class="mw-redirect" title="Taste">taste</a> and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic <a href="/wiki/Ecstasy" title="Ecstasy">ecstasy</a>.</b> At three hours it is even operatic in length, as its themes unfold, its characters strive against the dying of the <a href="/wiki/Light" title="Light">light</a>, and the great wheel of chance rolls on toward them. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/magnolia-2000">Review of <i>Magnolia</i> in <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> (7 January 2000)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Empathy has been in short supply in our nation recently. Our leaders are quick to congratulate us on our own feelings, slow to ask us to wonder how others feel. But maybe times are changing. Every <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spike_Lee" class="extiw" title="w:Spike Lee">Lee</a> film is an exercise in empathy. He is not interested in congratulating the black people in his audience, or condemning the white ones. He puts human beings on the screen, and asks his audience to walk a little while in their shoes. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/malcolm-x-1992">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Malcolm_X_(film)" title="Malcolm X (film)">Malcolm X</a></i> (18 November 1992)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Moon" title="The Man in the Moon">The Man in the Moon</a></i> is like a great short story, one of those masterpieces of language and mood where not one word is wrong, or unnecessary. It flows so smoothly from start to finish that it hardly even seems like an ordinary film. Usually I am aware of the screenwriter putting in obligatory scenes. I can hear the machinery grinding. Not this time. Although, in retrospect, I can see how carefully the plot was put together, how meticulously each event was prepared for, as I watched the film I was only aware of life passing by. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-man-in-the-moon-1991">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Moon" title="The Man in the Moon">The Man in the Moon</a></i> (4 October 1991)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Sean_Penn" title="Sean Penn">Sean Penn</a> never tries to show <a href="/wiki/Harvey_Milk" title="Harvey Milk">Harvey Milk</a> as a hero, and never needs to. He shows him as an ordinary man, kind, funny, flawed, shrewd, idealistic, yearning for a better world. He shows what such an ordinary man can achieve. <b>Milk was the right person in the right place at the right time, and he rose to the occasion.</b> So was <a href="/wiki/Rosa_Parks" title="Rosa Parks">Rosa Parks</a>. Sometimes, at a precise moment in history, all it takes is for one person to stand up. Or sit down. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/milk-2008">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Milk_(film)" title="Milk (film)">Milk</a></i> (24 November 2008)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>American movies are in the midst of a transition period. Some directors place their trust in technology. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Spielberg" class="extiw" title="w:Steven Spielberg">Spielberg</a>, who is a master of technology, trusts only story and character, and then uses everything else as a workman uses his tools. He makes <i>Minority Report</i> with the new technology; other directors seem to be trying to make their movies from it. This film is such a virtuoso high-wire act, daring so much, achieving it with such grace and skill.<b> <i>Minority Report</i> reminds us why we go to the movies in the first place.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/minority-report-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Minority Report (film)">Minority Report</a></i> (21 June 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>What <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlize_Theron" class="extiw" title="w:Charlize Theron">Charlize Theron</a> achieves in Patty Jenkins' <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Monster (film)">Monster</a></i> isn't a performance but an embodiment.</b> With courage, art and charity, she empathizes with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aileen_Wuornos" class="extiw" title="w:Aileen Wuornos">Aileen Wuornos</a>, a damaged woman who committed seven murders. She does not excuse the murders. She simply asks that we witness the woman's final desperate attempt to be a better person than her fate intended. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/monster-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Monster (film)">Monster</a></i> (1 January 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of <a href="/wiki/Capital_punishment" title="Capital punishment">capital punishment</a> is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of <a href="/wiki/The_Holocaust" title="The Holocaust">the Holocaust</a>: <b>Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there?</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mr-death-the-rise-and-fall-of-fred-a-leuchter-jr-2000">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Death:_The_Rise_and_Fall_of_Fred_A._Leuchter,_Jr." class="extiw" title="w:Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.">Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.</a></i> (4 February 2000)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>To see strong acting like this is exhilarating. In a time of flashy directors who slice and dice their films in a dizzy editing rhythm, it is important to remember that films can look and listen and attentively sympathize with their characters. Directors grow great by subtracting, not adding, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Eastwood" class="extiw" title="w:Clint Eastwood">Eastwood</a> does nothing for show, everything for effect. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mystic-river-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Mystic_River_(film)" title="Mystic River (film)">Mystic River</a></i> (8 October 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This is a painful movie to watch. But it is also exhilarating, as all good movies are, because we are watching the director and actors venturing beyond any conventional idea of what a modern movie can be about. Here there is no plot, no characters to identify with, no hope. But there is care: The filmmakers care enough about these people to observe them very closely, to note how they look and sound and what they feel. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/naked-1994">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Naked_(film)" class="mw-redirect" title="Naked (film)">Naked</a></i> (18 February 1994)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Once (film)">Once</a></i> is the kind of film I've been pestered about ever since I started reviewing again. People couldn't quite describe it, but they said I had to see it. I had to. Well, I did. They were right. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/once-2007">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Once (film)">Once</a></i> (24 December 2007)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>In the twilight of the 20th century, here is a <a href="/wiki/Comedy" title="Comedy">comedy</a> to reassure us that there is <a href="/wiki/Hope" title="Hope">hope</a> — that the world we see around us represents <a href="/wiki/Progress" title="Progress">progress</a>, not decay.</b> <i><a href="/wiki/Pleasantville" title="Pleasantville">Pleasantville</a></i>, which is one of the year's best and most original films, sneaks up on us. It begins by kidding those old black-and-white sitcoms like "Father Knows Best," it continues by pretending to be a sitcom itself, and it ends as a social commentary of surprising <a href="/wiki/Power" title="Power">power</a>. <br /> … <br /> The film observes that sometimes pleasant <a href="/wiki/People" class="mw-redirect" title="People">people</a> are pleasant simply because they have never, ever been challenged. That it's scary and dangerous to learn new ways. The movie is like the defeat of the body snatchers: The people in color are like former pod people now freed to move on into the future. We observe that nothing creates <a href="/wiki/Fascists" class="mw-redirect" title="Fascists">fascists</a> like the threat of <a href="/wiki/Freedom" title="Freedom">freedom</a>. <br /> <i><a href="/wiki/Pleasantville" title="Pleasantville">Pleasantville</a></i> is the kind of parable that encourages us to re-evaluate the good old days and take a fresh look at the new world we so easily dismiss as decadent. <b>Yes, we have more problems. But also more solutions, more opportunities and more freedom.</b> I grew up in the '50s. It was a lot more like the world of <i>Pleasantville</i> than you might imagine. Yes, my house had a picket fence, and dinner was always on the table at a quarter to six, but things were wrong that I didn't even know the words for. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pleasantville-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasantville_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Pleasantville (film)">Pleasantville</a></i> (1 October 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Here is how [life] happens. We find something we want to do, if we are lucky, or something we need to do, if we are like most people. We use it as a way to obtain food, shelter, clothing, mates, comfort, a first folio of Shakespeare, model airplanes, American Girl dolls, a handful of rice, sex, solitude, a trip to Venice, Nikes, drinking water, plastic surgery, child care, dogs, medicine, education, cars, spiritual solace -- whatever we think we need. To do this, we enact the role we call "me," trying to brand ourselves as a person who can and should obtain these things.<p>In the process, we place the people in our lives into compartments and define how they should behave to our advantage. Because we cannot force them to follow our desires, we deal with projections of them created in our minds. But they will be contrary and have wills of their own. Eventually new projections of us are dealing with new projections of them. Sometimes versions of ourselves disagree. We succumb to temptation — but, oh, father, what else was I gonna do? I feel like hell. I repent. I'll do it again... This has not been a conventional review. There is no need to name the characters, name the actors, assign adjectives to their acting. Look at who is in this cast. You know what I think of them. This film must not have seemed strange to them. It's what they do all day, especially waiting around for the director to make up his mind. </p><ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/synecdoche-new-york-2008">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche,_New_York" class="extiw" title="w:Synecdoche, New York">Synecdoche, New York</a></i> (5 November 2008)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Sometimes when you've read the novel, it gets in the way of the images on the screen. You keep remembering how you imagined things. That didn't happen with me during <i><a href="/wiki/Sophie%27s_Choice_(film)" title="Sophie's Choice (film)">Sophie's Choice</a></i>, because the movie is so perfectly cast and well-imagined that it just takes over and happens to you. It's quite an experience. … The movie becomes an act of discovery, as the naive young American, his mind filled with notions of love, death, and honor, becomes the friend of a woman who has seen so much hate, death, and dishonor that the only way she can continue is by blotting out the past, and drinking and loving her way into temporary oblivion. …<b> <i>Sophie's Choice</i> is a fine, absorbing, wonderfully acted, heartbreaking movie. It is about three people who are faced with a series of choices, some frivolous, some tragic. As they flounder in the bewilderment of being human in an age of madness, they become our friends, and we love them.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sophies-choice-1982">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Sophie%27s_Choice_(film)" title="Sophie's Choice (film)">Sophie's Choice</a></i> (1 January 1982)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Here is a lovely film about two high school seniors who look, speak and feel like real 18-year-old middle-American human beings. Do you have any idea how rare that is? They aren't crippled by irony. They aren't speeded up into cartoons. Their sex lives aren't insulted by scenes that treat them cheaply. The story requires them to make love, but it doesn't insist we see her tits. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-spectacular-now-2013">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Spectacular_Now" title="The Spectacular Now">The Spectacular Now</a></i> (2 August 2013)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Films like <i>Speed</i> belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you're always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. Done wrong, they seem like tired replays of old chase cliches. Done well, they're fun. Done as well as <i>Speed,</i> they generate a kind of manic exhilaration. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/speed-1994">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Speed_(1994_film)" title="Speed (1994 film)">Speed</a></i> (10 June 1994)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>We are connected with some people and never meet others, but it could easily have happened otherwise.</b> Looking back over a lifetime, we describe what happened as if it had a plan. To fully understand how accidental and random life is — how vast the odds are against any single event taking place — would be humbling. … <b>This is the kind of film that makes you feel intensely alive while you're watching it, and sends you out into the streets afterwards eager to talk deeply and urgently, to the person you are with. Whoever that happens to be.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/red-1994">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Colors:_Red" class="extiw" title="w:Three Colors: Red">Three Colors: Red</a></i> (2 December 1994)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Malick" class="extiw" title="w:Terrence Malick">Terrence Malick</a>'s <i><a href="/wiki/The_Tree_of_Life_(film)" title="The Tree of Life (film)">The Tree of Life</a></i> is a film of vast <a href="/wiki/Ambition" title="Ambition">ambition</a> and deep <a href="/wiki/Humility" title="Humility">humility</a>, attempting no less than to encompass <a href="/wiki/All" class="mw-redirect" title="All">all</a> of <a href="/wiki/Existence" title="Existence">existence</a> and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal <a href="/wiki/Lives" class="mw-redirect" title="Lives">lives</a>.</b> The only other film I've seen with this <a href="/wiki/Boldness" class="mw-redirect" title="Boldness">boldness</a> of vision is <a href="/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick" title="Stanley Kubrick">Kubrick's</a> <i><a href="/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey" class="mw-redirect" title="2001: A Space Odyssey">2001: A Space Odyssey</a></i>, and it lacked Malick's fierce evocation of <a href="/wiki/Human" title="Human">human</a> <a href="/wiki/Feeling" class="mw-redirect" title="Feeling">feeling</a>. … <b>I don't <a href="/wiki/Know" class="mw-redirect" title="Know">know</a> when a film has <a href="/wiki/Connected" class="mw-redirect" title="Connected">connected</a> more immediately with my own <a href="/wiki/Personal" class="mw-redirect" title="Personal">personal</a> <a href="/wiki/Experience" title="Experience">experience</a>.</b> In uncanny ways, the central events of <i>The Tree of Life</i> reflect a <a href="/wiki/Time" title="Time">time</a> and <a href="/wiki/Place" class="mw-redirect" title="Place">place</a> I lived in, and the boys in it are me. If I set out to make an autobiographical film, and if I had Malick's <a href="/wiki/Gift" class="mw-redirect" title="Gift">gift</a>, it would look so much like this. … There is a father who maintains <a href="/wiki/Discipline" title="Discipline">discipline</a> and a mother who exudes <a href="/wiki/Forgiveness" title="Forgiveness">forgiveness</a>, and long summer days of <a href="/wiki/Play" title="Play">play</a> and idleness and urgent unsaid questions about the <a href="/wiki/Meaning" title="Meaning">meaning</a> of things. … The film's portrait of everyday life, inspired by Malick's memories of his hometown of Waco, Texas, is bounded by two immensities, one of space and time, and the other of <a href="/wiki/Spirituality" title="Spirituality">spirituality</a>. <i>The Tree of Life</i> has awe-inspiring visuals suggesting the <a href="/wiki/Birth" title="Birth">birth</a> and expansion of the <a href="/wiki/Universe" title="Universe">universe</a>, the appearance of life on a microscopic level and the <a href="/wiki/Evolution" title="Evolution">evolution</a> of species. <b>This process leads to the <a href="/wiki/Present" title="Present">present</a> <a href="/wiki/Moment" title="Moment">moment</a>, and to all of us.</b> We were created in the <a href="/wiki/Big_Bang" title="Big Bang">Big Bang</a> and over untold millions of years, molecules formed themselves into, well, you and me. <br /> And what comes after? In whispered <a href="/wiki/Words" title="Words">words</a> near the <a href="/wiki/Beginning" class="mw-redirect" title="Beginning">beginning</a>, "<a href="/wiki/Nature" title="Nature">nature</a>" and "<a href="/wiki/Grace" title="Grace">grace</a>" are heard. … <b>The film's coda provides a <a href="/wiki/Visions" title="Visions">vision</a> of an afterlife, a desolate landscape on which quiet people solemnly recognize and greet one another, and all is <a href="/wiki/Understood" class="mw-redirect" title="Understood">understood</a> in the fullness of <a href="/wiki/Time" title="Time">time</a>.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110602/REVIEWS/110609998">Review of <i>The Tree of Life</i> (2 June 2011)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>It is not too soon for "<a href="/wiki/United_93_(film)" title="United 93 (film)">United 93</a>," because it is not a film that knows any time has passed since 9/11.</b> The entire story, every detail, is told in the present tense. We know what they know when they know it, and nothing else. Nothing about Al Qaeda, nothing about Osama bin Laden, nothing about Afghanistan or Iraq, only events as they unfold. <b>This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130707210114/http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/united-93-2006">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/United_93_(film)" title="United 93 (film)">United 93</a></i> (27 April 2006)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Kids are not stupid. They are among the sharpest, cleverest, most eagle-eyed creatures on God's Earth, and very little escapes their notice.</b> You may not have observed that your neighbor is still using his snow tires in mid-July, but every four-year-old on the block has, and kids pay the same attention to detail when they go to the movies. They don't miss a thing, and they have an instinctive contempt for shoddy and shabby work. I make this observation because nine out of ten children's movies are stupid, witless, and display contempt for their audiences, and that's why kids hate them. Is that all parents want from kids' movies? That they not have anything bad in them? Shouldn't they have something good in them — some life, imagination, fantasy, inventiveness, something to tickle the imagination? If a movie isn't going to do your kids any good, why let them watch it? Just to kill a Saturday afternoon? That shows a subtle kind of contempt for a child's mind, I think. All of this is preface to a simple statement: <i>Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory</i> is probably the best film of its sort since "The Wizard of Oz." It is everything that family movies usually claim to be, but aren't: Delightful, funny, scary, exciting, and, most of all, a genuine work of imagination. <i>Willy Wonka</i> is such a surely and wonderfully spun fantasy that it works on all kinds of minds, and it is fascinating because, like all classic fantasy, it is fascinated with itself. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/willy-wonka-and-the-chocolate-factory-1971">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Willy_Wonka_%26_the_Chocolate_Factory" title="Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory">Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory</a></i> (1 January 1971)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>The elements in <i><a href="/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz" class="mw-redirect" title="The Wizard of Oz">The Wizard of Oz</a></i> powerfully fill a void that exists inside many children.</b> For kids of a certain age, home is everything, the center of the world. But over the rainbow, dimly guessed at, is the wide earth, fascinating and terrifying. There is a deep fundamental fear that events might conspire to transport the child from the safety of home and strand him far away in a strange land. And what would he hope to find there? Why, new friends, to advise and protect him. And Toto, of course, because children have such a strong symbiotic relationship with their pets that they assume they would get lost together. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-wizard-of-oz-1939">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz" class="mw-redirect" title="The Wizard of Oz">The Wizard of Oz</a></i> (22 December 1996)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="Three-and-a-half_star_reviews">Three-and-a-half star reviews</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=8" title="Edit section: Three-and-a-half star reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li>Burt and Verona are two characters rarely seen in the movies: thirtysomething, educated, healthy, self-employed, gentle, thoughtful, whimsical, not neurotic and really truly in love. Their great concern is finding the best place and way to raise their child, who is a bun still in the oven. For every character like this I’ve seen in the last 12 months, I’ve seen 20, maybe 30, mass murderers. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/away-we-go-2009">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Away_We_Go_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Away We Go (film)">Away We Go</a></i> (10 June 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Occasionally an unsuspecting innocent will stumble into a movie like this and send me an anguished postcard, asking how I could possibly give a favorable review to such trash. My stock response is Ebert's Law, which reads: A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/freeway-1997">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_(1996_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Freeway (1996 film)">Freeway</a></i> (24 January 1997)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Rarely has a movie this expensive provided so many quotable lines. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ghostbusters-1984">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Ghostbusters" title="Ghostbusters">Ghostbusters</a></i> (1 January 1984)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Anna’s reaction is more complex than you might imagine, and it’s at such a moment you appreciate the woman in the writer-director’s chair. Women, I suspect, are more likely than men to view sex from the over-all perspective of what we may call their lives. In a country like Saudi Arabia, whose citizens express discomfort about men and women even attending movies together, I have little doubt which gender is more concerned. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/humpday-2009">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpday" class="extiw" title="w:Humpday">Humpday</a></i> (22 July 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>[W]hat <i>Husbands and Wives</i> argues is that many "rational" relationships are actually not as durable as they seem, because somewhere inside every person is a child crying me! me! me! We say we want the other person to be happy. What we mean is, we want them to be happy with us, just as we are, on our terms... Beneath the urgency of all the older characters - both men, both women, and even the older dating partners they experiment with - is the realization that life is short, that time is running out, that life sells you a romantic illusion and neglects to tell you that you can't have it, because when you take any illusion and make it flesh, its hair begins to fall out, and it has B.O., and it asks you what your sign is. True love involves loving another's imperfections, which are the parts that tend to endure. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/husbands-and-wives-1992">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husbands_and_Wives" class="extiw" title="w:Husbands and Wives">Husbands and Wives</a></i> (18 September 1992)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It is strange how the romances of the teenage years retain a poignancy all through life - how a girl who turns you down when you're 16 retains an aura in your memory even long after you, and she, have ceased to be who you were then. I attended my high school reunion a couple of weeks ago and discovered, in the souvenir booklet assembled by the reunion committee, that one of the girls in my class had a crush on me all those years ago. I would have given a great deal to have had that information at the time. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/metropolitan-1990">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Metropolitan_(1990_film)" title="Metropolitan (1990 film)">Metropolitan</a></i> (10 August 1990)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>After seeing <i>Orphan,</i> I now realize that Damien of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Omen" title="The Omen">The Omen</a></i> was a model child. The Demon Seed was a bumper crop. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary%27s_Baby_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Rosemary's Baby (film)">Rosemary</a> would have been happy to have this baby. <br /> Do not, under any circumstances, take children to see it. Take my word on this. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/orphan-2009">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Orphan (film)">Orphan</a></i> (22 July 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The movie delights me with its cocky confidence that the audience can keep up. <i>Primer</i> is a film for nerds, geeks, brainiacs, Academic Decathlon winners, programmers, philosophers and the kinds of people who have made it this far into the review. It will surely be hated by those who 'go to the movies to be entertained', and embraced and debated by others, who will find it entertains the parts the others do not reach. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/primer-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Primer (film)">Primer</a></i> (29 October 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <figure class="mw-default-size mw-halign-right" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Heterosexual_symbol_(bold,_red_blue).svg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Heterosexual_symbol_%28bold%2C_red_blue%29.svg/220px-Heterosexual_symbol_%28bold%2C_red_blue%29.svg.png" decoding="async" width="220" height="220" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Heterosexual_symbol_%28bold%2C_red_blue%29.svg/330px-Heterosexual_symbol_%28bold%2C_red_blue%29.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7c/Heterosexual_symbol_%28bold%2C_red_blue%29.svg/440px-Heterosexual_symbol_%28bold%2C_red_blue%29.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="16" data-file-height="16" /></a><figcaption>It is better to find a partner you can contend with for a lifetime than one who accommodates you because he doesn't really care.</figcaption></figure> <ul><li>Life's missed opportunities, at the end, may seem more poignant to us than those we embraced — because in our imagination they have a perfection that reality can never rival. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-sleepy-time-gal-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleepy_Time_Gal_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:The Sleepy Time Gal (film)">The Sleepy Time Gal</a></i> (22 November 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It considers not only how we relate to others, but how we relate to our ideas of others — so that a completely phony, non-human replica of a dead wife can inspire the same feelings that the wife herself once did. That is a peculiarity of humans: We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars. Our idea of humanity bewitches us, while humanity itself stays safely sealed away into its billions of separate containers, or "people." <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/solaris-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(2002_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Solaris (2002 film)">Solaris</a></i> (22 November 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This movie was made by professionals. Do not attempt any of this behavior yourself. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/superbad-2007">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Superbad" title="Superbad">Superbad</a></i> (17 August 2007)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Why must a film explain everything? Why must every motivation be spelled out? Aren't many films fundamentally the same film, with only the specifics changed? Aren't many of them telling the same story? Seeking perfection, we see what our dreams and hopes might look like. We realize they come as a gift through no power of our own, and if we lose them, isn't that almost worse than never having had them in the first place?<p>There will be many who find "To the Wonder" elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a film that would rather evoke than supply. I understand that, and I think <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrence_Malick" class="extiw" title="w:Terrence Malick">Terrence Malick</a> does, too. But here he has attempted to reach more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in need. </p><ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/to-the-wonder-2013">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Wonder" class="extiw" title="w:To the Wonder">To the Wonder</a></i> (April 6, 2013)</li> <li><b>NOTE: This was the last movie review Roger Ebert filed.</b></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>To call it weird would be a cowardly evasion. It is creepy, eccentric, eerie, flaky, freaky, funky, grotesque, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, oddball, spooky, uncanny, uncouth and unearthly. Especially uncouth. What I did was, I typed the word 'weird' and when that wholly failed to evoke the feelings the film stirred in me, I turned to the thesaurus and it suggested the above substitutes - and none of them do the trick, either. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-triplets-of-belleville-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Triplettes_de_Belleville" class="extiw" title="w:Les Triplettes de Belleville">The Triplets of Belleville</a></i> (26 December 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>[D]oes the real world have any more substance than visions and hallucinations — when we're having them? At any given moment, what's happening in our minds is all and everything that happens. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/uncle-boonmee-who-can-recall-his-past-lives-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Boonmee_Who_Can_Recall_His_Past_Lives" class="extiw" title="w:Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives">Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</a></i> (14 April 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It is an interesting law of romance that a truly strong woman will choose a strong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along. Strength demands intelligence, intelligence demands stimulation, and weakness is boring. It is better to find a partner you can contend with for a lifetime than one who accommodates you because he doesn't really care. … Sixty seconds of wondering if someone is about to kiss you is more entertaining than 60 minutes of kissing. … Spill the beans, and the conversation is history. Speak in code, with wit and challenge, and the process of decryption is like foreplay. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-winslow-boy-1999">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winslow_Boy_(1999_film)" class="extiw" title="w:The Winslow Boy (1999 film)">The Winslow Boy</a></i> (28 May 1999)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Is <i>xXx</i> a threat to the Bond franchise? Not a threat so much as a salute. I don't want <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond" class="extiw" title="w:James Bond">James Bond</a> to turn crude and muscular on me; I like the suave style. But I like Xander, too, especially since he seems to have studied Bond so very carefully. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/xxx-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/XXx" class="mw-redirect" title="XXx">xXx</a></i> (9 August 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="Three_star_reviews">Three star reviews</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=9" title="Edit section: Three star reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li>I wonder who will find the film more uncomfortable - men or women? Both will recoil from the brutality of the scenes of the assault. But for some men, the movie will reveal a truth that most women already know. It is that verbal sexual harassment, whether crudely in a saloon back room or subtly in an everyday situation, is a form of violence - one that leaves no visible marks but can make its victims feel unable to move freely and casually in society. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-accused-1988">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Accused" class="extiw" title="w:The Accused">The Accused</a></i> (14 October 1988)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>As I swim through the summer tide of vulgarity, I find that's what I'm looking for: Movies that at least feel affection for their characters. Raunchy is OK. Cruel is not. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/american-pie-1999">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/American_Pie_(film)" title="American Pie (film)">American Pie</a></i> (9 July 1999)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>One hopeful sign that the filmmakers can learn and grow is that the sequel does not contain a single pie, if you know what I mean. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/american-pie-2-2001">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/American_Pie_2" title="American Pie 2">American Pie 2</a></i> (10 August 2001)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The movie cheerfully offends all civilized notions of taste, decorum, manners and hygiene... is the movie vulgar? Vulgarity is when we don't laugh. When we laugh, it's merely human nature. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/american-wedding-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/American_Wedding" title="American Wedding">American Wedding</a></i> (1 August 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The beautiful Monique insists on joining their expedition and cannot be dissuaded; we think at first she has a nefarious motive, but no, she's probably taken a class in screenplay construction and knows that the film requires a sexy female lead. This could be the first case in cinematic history of a character voluntarily entering a movie because of the objective fact that she is required. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/around-the-world-in-80-days-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_World_in_80_Days_(2004_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Around the World in 80 Days (2004 film)">Around the World in 80 Days</a></i> (16 June 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>...it is widely but wrongly believed that <i><a href="/wiki/Beavis_and_Butt-Head" class="mw-redirect" title="Beavis and Butt-Head">Beavis and Butt-Head</a></i> celebrates its characters, and applauds their sublime lack of values, taste and intelligence. I've never thought so. I believe Mike Judge would rather die than share a taxi ride to the airport with his characters — that for him, B&B function like Dilbert's co-workers in the Scott Adams universe. They are a target for his anger against the rising tide of stupidity. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/beavis-and-butt-head-do-america-1996">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Beavis_and_Butthead_Do_America" class="mw-redirect" title="Beavis and Butthead Do America">Beavis and Butthead Do America</a></i> (20 December 1996)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This sort of scenario has happened, I imagine, millions of times. It has rarely happened in a nicer, sweeter, more gentle way than in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Linklater" class="extiw" title="w:Richard Linklater">Richard Linklater's</a> <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Sunrise" class="extiw" title="w:Before Sunrise">"Before Sunrise,"</a></i> which I could call a <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Affair_(1939_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Love Affair (1939 film)">"Love Affair"</a></i> for Generation X, except that Jesse and Celine stand outside their generation, and especially outside its boring insistence on being bored. <br /> The R rating for this film, based on a few four-letter words, is entirely unjustified. It is an ideal film for teenagers. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/before-sunrise-1995">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Before_Sunrise" title="Before Sunrise">Before Sunrise</a></i> (27 January 1995)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Censors feel they are safe from objectionable material but must protect others who are not as smart or moral. The same impulse tempts the reviewer of 'The Believer'... If the wrong people get the wrong message - well, there has never been any shortage of wrong messages. Or wrong people. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-believer-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Believer" class="extiw" title="w:The Believer">The Believer</a></i> (14 June 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I missed the enormously popular movie that introduced these characters, <i>Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure</i>, and felt myself blessed at the time. But now I'm not so sure. Their <i>Bogus Journey</i> is a riot of visual invention and weird humor that works on its chosen sub-moronic level, and on several others as well, including some fairly sophisticated ones. It's the kind of movie where you start out snickering in spite of yourself, and end up actually admiring the originality that went into creating this hallucinatory slapstick. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bill-and-teds-bogus-journey">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Ted%27s_Bogus_Journey" class="extiw" title="w:Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey">Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey</a></i> (19 July 1991)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>In <i>Blue Crush</i>, we meet three Hawaiian surfers who work as hotel maids, live in a grotty rental, and are raising the kid sister of one of them. Despite this near-poverty, they look great; there is nothing like a tan and a bikini to overcome class distinctions. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blue-crush-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Crush" class="extiw" title="w:Blue Crush">Blue Crush</a></i> (16 August 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Much has been written about Generation X and the films about it. <i>Clerks</i> is so utterly authentic that its heroes have never heard of their generation. When they think of "X," it's on the way to the video store. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/clerks-1994">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Clerks" class="mw-redirect" title="Clerks">Clerks</a></i> (4 November 1994)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This film is based on an actual <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strip_search_prank_call_scam" class="extiw" title="w:Strip search prank call scam">2004 event</a> that took place at a McDonald's in Mount Washington, Ky. Google it and you'll find most of the same details. If you're not one of the film's walk-outs, you'll discover at the end that 70 similar deceptions have occurred in the United States... If the stunt worked 70 times, they must prove something — perhaps that we are afraid of authority. I know that when a traffic cop pulls me over, I'm frightened — scared enough that I drive safely and am almost never pulled over. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/compliance-2012">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Compliance (film)">Compliance</a></i> (29 August 2012)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>...If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that you never say no to an old gypsy woman with a blind eye and leprous fingernails. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/drag-me-to-hell-2009">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_Me_to_Hell" class="extiw" title="w:Drag Me to Hell">Drag Me to Hell</a></i> (7 June 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I read all the movie reviews, especially those of Ebert, a graceful and witty prose stylist with profound erudition, whose reviews are worth reading just for themselves, whether or not I have any intention of viewing the movie … Ebert, the smart and handsome one, gave thumbs up to my first movie [<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Garfield (film)">Garfield: The Movie</a></i>], but <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Roeper" class="extiw" title="w:Richard Roeper">[Richard] Roeper</a>, the other one, gave thumbs down and was particularly unkind. He went on forever attacking Ebert for liking <i>Garfield</i>. This from a man with enough taste to praise <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duma_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Duma (film)">Duma</a></i>. How very disappointing. One of Roeper's complaints was that I was animated and all of the other characters in the movie were "real." Do you have any idea how a statement like that hurts an actor who has worked all of his life as a media cat? Yes, Richard Roeper, I was animated. Read my lips: <i>I am a character in a comic strip</i>. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/garfield-a-tail-of-two-kitties-2006">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield:_A_Tail_of_Two_Kitties" class="extiw" title="w:Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties">Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties</a></i>, written in the first person as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garfield" class="extiw" title="w:Garfield">Garfield</a>. (16 June 2006)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I arrive at the end of this review having done my duty as a critic. I have described the movie accurately and you have a good idea what you are in for if you go to see it. Most of you will not. I cannot argue with you. Some of you will — the brave and the curious. You embody the spirit of the man who first wondered what it would taste like to eat an oyster. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gerry-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerry" class="extiw" title="w:Gerry">Gerry</a></i> (28 February 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It's strange: We leave the movie having enjoyed its conclusion so much that we almost forgot our earlier reservations. But they were there, and they were real. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-goodbye-girl-1977">Review of</a> <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Goodbye_Girl" class="extiw" title="w:The Goodbye Girl">The Goodbye Girl</a></i> (1 January 1977)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Formula comedies are a dime a dozen. Those based on an original idea are more rare, and <i><a href="/wiki/Groundhog_Day" class="mw-redirect" title="Groundhog Day">Groundhog Day</a></i>, apart from everything else, is a demonstration of the way <a href="/wiki/Time" title="Time">time</a> can sometimes give us a break.</b> Just because we're born as SOBs doesn't mean we have to live that way. <ul><li>Original 3-star review of <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070930041716/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19930212/REVIEWS/302120302/1023"><i>Groundhog Day</i> in <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> (12 February 1993)</a>; he later wrote a 4-star review for it in 2005 (quoted in the 4-star section above).</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>You should never send an expert to a movie about his specialty. Boxers hate boxing movies. Space buffs said 'Apollo 13' showed the wrong side of the moon. The British believe Mel Gibson's scholarship was faulty in 'Braveheart' merely because some of the key characters hadn't been born at the time of the story. 'Hackers' is, I have no doubt, deeply dubious in the computer science department. While it is no doubt true that in real life no hacker could do what the characters in this movie do, it is no doubt equally true that what hackers can do would not make a very entertaining movie. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hackers-1995">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Hackers (film)">Hackers</a></i> (15 September 1995)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Most people choose movies that provide exactly what they expect, and tell them things they already know. Others are more curious. We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-isle-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Isle" class="extiw" title="w:The Isle">The Isle</a></i> (31 January 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The charm of a Kevin Smith movie is that it assumes you do not enter the theater as a blank slate. "Chasing Amy" assumes a little knowledge of the world of serious comic books and collectors; "Dogma" required you to know something about Catholic theology, and "Jay and Silent Bob" has moments like the one where the Affleck character defines the Internet for Jay: "It's a place used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography together." This is a much more sophisticated idea of the Net than we find in high-tech cyberthrillers, where the Net is a place that makes your computer beep a lot. Whether you will like "Jay and Silent Bob" depends on who you are. Most movies are made for everybody. Kevin Smith's movies are either made specifically for you, or specifically not made for you. If you read this review without a smile or a nod of recognition, I would recommend "Rush Hour 2," which is for everybody or nobody, you tell me. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jay-and-silent-bog-strike-back-2001">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Jay_and_Silent_Bob_Strike_Back" title="Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back">Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back</a></i> (24 August 2001)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>These days too many children's movies are infected by the virus of Winning, as if kids are nothing more than underage pro athletes, and the values of Vince Lombardi prevail: It's not how you play the game, but whether you win or lose. This is a movie that breaks with that tradition, that allows its kids to be kids, that shows them in the insular world of imagination and dreaming that children create entirely apart from adult domains and values. There was a moment in the film when Rodriguez hit a line drive directly at the pitcher's mound, and I ducked and held up my mitt, and then I realized I didn't have a mitt, and it was then I also realized how completely this movie had seduced me with its memories of what really matters when you are 12. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-sandlot-1993">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Sandlot" title="The Sandlot">The Sandlot</a></i> (7 April 1993)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I recently published a book about movies I hated, and people have been asking me which reviews are harder to write — those about great movies, or those about terrible ones. The answer is neither. The most unreviewable movies are those belonging to the spoof genre — movies like <i><a href="/wiki/Airplane!" title="Airplane!">Airplane!</a></i> and <i><a href="/wiki/The_Naked_Gun" title="The Naked Gun">The Naked Gun</a></i> and all the countless spin-offs and retreads of the same basic idea... the bottom line in reviewing a movie like this is, does it work? Is it funny? Yes, it is. Not funny with the shocking impact of <i>Airplane!</i> which had the advantage of breaking new ground. But also not a tired wheeze like some of the lesser and later <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Nielsen" class="extiw" title="w:Leslie Nielsen">Leslie Nielsen</a> films. To get your money's worth, you need to be familiar with the various teenage horror franchises, and if you are, <i>Scary Movie</i> delivers the goods. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/scary-movie-2000">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Scary_Movie" title="Scary Movie">Scary Movie</a></i> (7 July 2000)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>What did I think about this movie? As a film critic, I liked it. I liked the in-jokes and the self-aware characters. At the same time, I was aware of the incredible level of gore in this film. It is *really* violent. Is the violence defused by the ironic way the film uses it and comments on it? For me, it was. For some viewers, it will not be, and they will be horrified. Which category do you fall in? Here's an easy test: When I mentioned <i>Fangoria</i>, did you know what I was talking about? <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/scream-1996">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Scream" title="Scream">Scream</a></i> (20 December 1996)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The star rating system is relative, not absolute. When you ask a friend if <i>Hellboy</i> is any good, you're not asking if it's any good compared to <i>Mystic River,</i> you're asking if it's any good compared to <i>The Punisher.</i> And my answer would be, on a scale of one to four, if <i>Superman</i> (1978) is four, then <i>Hellboy</i> is three and <i>The Punisher</i> is two. In the same way, if <i>American Beauty</i> gets four stars, then <i>[The United States of] Leland</i> clocks in at about two. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/shaolin-soccer-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaolin_Soccer" class="extiw" title="w:Shaolin Soccer">Shaolin Soccer</a></i> (23 April 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Khan is played as a cauldron of resentment by Ricardo Montalban, and his performance is so strong that he helps illustrate a general principle involving not only <i>Star Trek</i> but <i>Star Wars</i> and all the epic serials, especially the <i>James Bond</i> movies: Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-trek-ii-the-wrath-of-khan-1982">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_II:_The_Wrath_of_Khan" class="extiw" title="w:Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan">Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan</a></i> (1 January 1982)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Wild Things</i> is lurid trash, with a plot so twisted they're still explaining it during the closing titles. It's like a three-way collision between a softcore sex film, a soap opera and a B-grade noir. I liked it. Movies such as this either entertain or offend audiences; there's no neutral ground. Either you're a connoisseur of melodramatic comic vulgarity, or you're not. You know who you are. I don't want to get any postcards telling me this movie is in bad taste. I'm warning you: It is in bad taste. Bad taste elevated to the level of demented sleaze. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wild-things-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Things" class="extiw" title="w:Wild Things">Wild Things</a></i> (20 March 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="Two-and-a-half_star_reviews">Two-and-a-half star reviews</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=10" title="Edit section: Two-and-a-half star reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li>It's the kind of movie where you ask people how they liked it, and they say, "Well, it was well made," and then they wince. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dead-ringers-1988">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Ringers_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Dead Ringers (film)">Dead Ringers</a></i> (23 September 1988)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the <a href="/wiki/Holocaust" class="mw-redirect" title="Holocaust">Holocaust</a>, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for <a href="/wiki/September_11_attacks" title="September 11 attacks">9/11</a>. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close-2012">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Loud_and_Incredibly_Close_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (film)">Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close</a></i> (18 January 2012)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Is that a sacrilege that I praise a Holocaust movie [<i><a href="/wiki/Schindler%27s_List" title="Schindler's List">Schindler's List</a></i>] for being entertaining? The word doesn't imply that a movie need be cheerful. In my mind, entertainment in this genre springs from characters who are brought to full life, who we care about and who are set in a powerful story. My motto: "No good movie is depressing. All bad movies are depressing." <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/in-darkness-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Darkness_(2011_film)" class="extiw" title="w:In Darkness (2011 film)">In Darkness</a></i> (15 February 2012)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>A movie should present its characters with a problem and then watch them solve it, not without difficulty. So says an old and reliable screenplay formula. Countless movies have been made about a boy and a girl who have a problem (they haven't slept with each other) and after difficulties (family, war, economic, health, rival lover, stupid misunderstanding) they solve it by sleeping with each other. Now we have a movie about two homosexuals that follows the same reliable convention. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/latter-days-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latter_Days" class="extiw" title="w:Latter Days">Latter Days</a></i> (13 February 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>"The Lucky One" is at its heart a romance novel, elevated however by Nicholas Sparks' persuasive storytelling. Readers don't read his books because they're true, but because they ought to be true. You can easily imagine how many ways this story would probably go wrong in real life, but who wants to see a movie where a Marine leans over to pick up a photo and is blown up? And a mom trying to raise her son and feed lots of hungry dogs while her abusive ex-husband gets drunk and hangs around? That kind of stuff is too close to life. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120505180249/http://rogerebert.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120418/REVIEWS/120419985/1001">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_One" class="extiw" title="w:The Lucky One">The Lucky One</a></i> (18 April 2012)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I could list some Japanese films illustrating this, but the last thing the audience for <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_of_a_Geisha" class="extiw" title="w:Memoirs of a Geisha">Memoirs of a Geisha</a></i> wants to see is a more truthful film with less gorgeous women and shabbier production values. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/memoirs-of-a-geisha-2005">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memoirs_of_a_Geisha_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Memoirs of a Geisha (film)">Memoirs of a Geisha</a></i> (9 December 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It's the kind of movie home video was invented for: Not worth the trip to the theater, but slam it into the VCR and you get your rental's worth. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/my-cousin-vinny-1992">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/My_Cousin_Vinny" title="My Cousin Vinny">My Cousin Vinny</a></i> (13 March 1992)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I do not demand that all movies have a story to pull us from beginning to end, and indeed one of the charms of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Big_Lebowski" title="The Big Lebowski">The Big Lebowski</a></i>, the Coens' previous film, is how its stoned hero loses track of the thread of his own life. But with <i>O Brother, Where Are Thou?</i> I had the sense of invention set adrift; of a series of bright ideas wondering why they had all been invited to the same film. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/o-brother-where-art-thou-2000">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Brother,_Where_Art_Thou" class="extiw" title="w:O Brother, Where Art Thou">O Brother, Where Art Thou?</a></i> (29 December 2000)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Now that we know <a href="/wiki/Quentin_Tarantino" title="Quentin Tarantino">Quentin Tarantino</a> can make a movie like <i>Reservoir Dogs</i>, it's time for him to move on and make a better one. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/reservoir-dogs-1992">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Reservoir_Dogs" title="Reservoir Dogs">Reservoir Dogs</a></i> (26 October 1992)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It's in the action scenes that things fall apart. Consider the scene where Spider-Man is given a cruel choice between saving Mary Jane or a cable car full of school kids. He tries to save both, so that everyone dangles from webbing that seems about to pull loose. The visuals here could have given an impression of the enormous weights and tensions involved, but instead the scene seems more like a bloodless storyboard of the idea. In other CGI scenes, Spidey swoops from great heights to street level and soars back up among the skyscrapers again with such dizzying speed that it seems less like a stunt than like a fast-forward version of a stunt. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spider-man-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Spider-Man_(film)" class="mw-redirect" title="Spider-Man (film)">Spider-Man</a></i> (3 May 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tie-me-up-tie-me-down-1990">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tie_Me_Up!_Tie_Me_Down!" class="extiw" title="w:Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!">Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!</a></i> (25 May 1990)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This is a movie that comes in two parts: It knows exactly what to do with special effects, but doesn't have a clue as to how two people in love might act and talk and think. <br /> Movies like <i><a href="/wiki/Top_Gun" title="Top Gun">Top Gun</a></i> are hard to review because the good parts are so good and the bad parts are so relentless. The dogfights are absolutely the best since Clint Eastwood's electrifying aerial scenes in <i>Firefox.</i> But look out for the scenes where the people talk to one another. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/top-gun-1986">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gun" class="extiw" title="w:Top Gun">Top Gun</a></i> (16 May 1986)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>You want loud, dumb, skillful, escapist entertainment? <i>Twister</i> works. You want to think? Think twice about seeing it. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/twister-1996">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twister_(1996_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Twister (1996 film)">Twister</a></i> (10 May 1996)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="Two_star_reviews">Two star reviews</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=11" title="Edit section: Two star reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li>I have always had my doubts about any form of divine intervention in sports contests. The power of prayer may be remarkable in many other arenas, but why should God want my team to win instead of the other side? Isn't it insulting to request God to even take an interest in baseball? <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/angels-in-the-outfield-1994">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Angels_in_the_Outfield_(1994_film)" title="Angels in the Outfield (1994 film)">Angels in the Outfield</a></i> (15 July 1994)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Since the scenes where they're together are so much less convincing than the ones where they fall apart, watching the movie is like being on a double-date from hell. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-break-up-2006">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Break-Up" class="extiw" title="w:The Break-Up">The Break-Up</a></i> (2 June 2006)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>We'll probably be debating <i><a href="/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)" title="A Clockwork Orange (film)">A Clockwork Orange</a></i> for a long time — a long, weary and pointless time. The New York critical establishment has guaranteed that for us. They missed the boat on <i><a href="/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)" title="2001: A Space Odyssey (film)">2001</a></i>, so maybe they were trying to catch up with <a href="/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick" title="Stanley Kubrick">Kubrick</a> on this one. Or maybe the news weeklies just needed a good movie cover story for Christmas. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-clockwork-orange-1972">Review</a> of <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> (11 February 1972)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>When the film premiered at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Cannes_Film_Festival" class="extiw" title="w:2003 Cannes Film Festival">Cannes 2003</a>, <a href="/wiki/Lars_von_Trier" title="Lars von Trier">Lars von Trier</a> was accused of not portraying Americans accurately, but how many movies do? Anything by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Spade" class="extiw" title="w:David Spade">David Spade</a> come to mind? Von Trier could justifiably make a fantasy about America, even an anti-American fantasy, and produce a good film, but here he approaches the ideological subtlety of a raving prophet on a street corner. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dogville-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogville" class="extiw" title="w:Dogville">Dogville</a></i> (9 April 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The audience I joined was perhaps 80 percent female. I heard some sniffles and glimpsed some tears, and no wonder. <i>Eat Pray Love</i> is shameless wish-fulfillment, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin" class="extiw" title="w:Harlequin">Harlequin</a> novel crossed with a mystic travelogue, and it mercifully reverses the life chronology of many people, which is Love Pray Eat. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/eat-pray-love-2010">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_Pray_Love_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Eat Pray Love (film)">Eat Pray Love</a></i> (11 Aug 2010)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I know that the real <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Brockovich" class="extiw" title="w:Erin Brockovich">Brockovich</a> liked to dress provocatively; that's her personal style and she's welcome to it. But the Hollywood version makes her look like a miniskirted hooker, with bras that peek cheerfully above her necklines. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/erin-brockovich-2000">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Erin_Brockovich_(film)" title="Erin Brockovich (film)">Erin Brockovich</a></i> (17 March 2000)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Why bother to remake <i>Fame</i> if you don't have clue about why the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fame_(1980_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Fame (1980 film)">1980 movie</a> was special? Why take a touching experience and make it into a shallow exercise? Why begin with a R-rated look at plausible kids with real problems and tame it into a PG-rated after-school special? Why cast actors who are sometimes too old and experienced to play seniors, let alone freshmen? <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fame-2009">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fame_(2009_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Fame (2009 film)">Fame</a></i> (23 Sep 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>OK. We're on the sofa. We look at the scene. We take a second look. We focus on <a href="/wiki/John_Travolta" title="John Travolta">Travolta</a>. This is an athlete. His reflexes are on a hair trigger. He can deal with several enemies at a time. He can duck, jump, hurdle, spin and leap. One slight miscalculation, and he's dead. He doesn't miss a beat. He's in superb condition, especially for a guy whose favorite food is Cheese Royales. That's a little joke reminding us of "<a href="/wiki/Pulp_Fiction" title="Pulp Fiction">Pulp Fiction</a>," and <b>the last thing you should do is remind the audience of a movie they'd rather be home watching.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/from-paris-with-love-2010">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Paris_with_Love_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:From Paris with Love (film)">From Paris with Love</a></i> (3 February 2010)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>By the end of this long film, I would have traded any given gladiatorial victory for just one shot of blue skies... <i>Gladiator</i> lacks joy. It employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if the characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gladiator-2000">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Gladiator" title="Gladiator">Gladiator</a></i> (5 May 2000)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Call me hardhearted, call me cynical, but please don't call me if they make <i>Home Alone 3</i>. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/home-alone-2-lost-in-new-york-1992">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Alone_2:_Lost_in_New_York" class="extiw" title="w:Home Alone 2: Lost in New York">Home Alone 2: Lost in New York</a></i> (20 November 1992)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It was <a href="/wiki/W._C._Fields" title="W. C. Fields">W. C. Fields</a> who hated to appear in the same scene with a child, a dog, or a plunging neckline - because nobody in the audience would be looking at him. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Aniston" class="extiw" title="w:Jennifer Aniston">Jennifer Aniston</a> has the same problem in this movie even when she's in scenes all by herself. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/picture-perfect-1997">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_Perfect_(1997_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Picture Perfect (1997 film)">Picture Perfect</a></i> (1 August 1997)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>You used to be able to depend on a bad film being poorly made. No longer. <i>The Punisher: War Zone</i> [sic] is one of the best-made bad movies I've seen...Its only flaw is that it's disgusting. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/punisher-war-zone-2008">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punisher:_War_Zone" class="extiw" title="w:Punisher: War Zone">Punisher: War Zone</a></i> (3 December 2008)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Consider an opening musical number set in a maternity ward, where Tommy Pickles and his friends Chuckie Finster and Phil and Lil DeVille are hoping for a look at Tommy's new kid brother, Dilbert. (Dil Pickles — get it? For <i><a href="/wiki/Rugrats" title="Rugrats">Rugrats</a></i> fans, this is humor of the highest order.) They wake up the babies, who do a number that seems inspired by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busby_Berkeley" class="extiw" title="w:Busby Berkeley">Bubsy Berkeley</a>, except that the Berkeley girls never had to supply their own dancing waters, if you get my drift. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-rugrats-movie-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rugrats_Movie" class="extiw" title="w:The Rugrats Movie">The Rugrats Movie</a></i> (20 November 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="/wiki/Showgirls" title="Showgirls">Showgirls</a></i> is the first big-budget "adults only" movie in a few years and, to be sure, it contains so much nudity that the sexy parts are when the girls put on their clothes. It contains no true eroticism, however, and that's why I think it reflects a grounding in sexual fantasy: Eroticism requires a mental connection between two people, while masturbation requires only the other person's image. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/showgirls-1995">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Showgirls" title="Showgirls">Showgirls</a></i> (22 September 1995)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Troy</i> is based on the epic poem <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iliad" class="extiw" title="w:The Iliad">The Iliad</a></i> by <a href="/wiki/Homer" title="Homer">Homer</a>, according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/troy-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Troy_(film)" title="Troy (film)">Troy</a></i> (14 May 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Kaufman" class="extiw" title="w:Philip Kaufman">Philip Kaufman's</a> <i>Twisted</i> walks like a thriller and talks like a thriller, but it squawks like a turkey. <br /> But back to <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/deus_ex_machina" class="extiw" title="w:deus ex machina">deus ex machina</a></i>. This is a phrase you will want to study and master, not merely to amaze friends during long bus journeys but because it so perfectly describes what otherwise might take you thousands of words. Imagine a play on a stage. The hero is in a fix. The dragon is breathing fire, his sword is broken, his leg is broken, his spirit is broken, and the playwright's imagination is broken. Suddenly there is the offstage noise of the grinding of gears, and invisible machinery lowers a god onto the stage, who slays the dragon, heals the hero, and fires the playwright. He is the "god from the machine." <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/twisted-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisted_(2004_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Twisted (2004 film)">Twisted</a></i> (27 February 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Valentine's Day</i> is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it's more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/valentines-day-2010">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Valentine's Day (film)">Valentine's Day</a></i> (10 February 2010)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>There are few lonelier sights than a good comedian being funny in a movie that doesn't know what funny is. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wedding-crashers-2005">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Wedding_Crashers" title="Wedding Crashers">Wedding Crashers</a></i> (14 July 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="One-and-a-half_star_reviews">One-and-a-half star reviews</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=12" title="Edit section: One-and-a-half star reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Instinct_2" class="extiw" title="w:Basic Instinct 2">Basic Instinct 2</a></i> is not good in any rational or defensible way, but not bad in irrational and indefensible ways. I savored the icy abstraction of the modern architecture, which made the people look like they came with the building. I grinned at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_St_Mary_Axe" class="extiw" title="w:30 St Mary Axe">that absurd phallic skyscraper</a> that really does exist in London. I liked the recklessness of the sex-and-speed sequence that opens the movie (and, curiously, looks to have been shot in Chicago). I could appreciate the plot once I accepted that it was simply jerking my chain. You can wallow in it … <b>Footnote No. 2:</b> My 1-1/2-star rating is like a cold shower, designed to take my mind away from giving it four stars. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/basic-instinct-2-2006">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Instinct_2" class="extiw" title="w:Basic Instinct 2">Basic Instinct 2</a></i> (31 March 2006)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The movie stars <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Pfeiffer" class="extiw" title="w:Michelle Pfeiffer">Michelle Pfeiffer</a> as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LouAnne_Johnson" class="extiw" title="w:LouAnne Johnson">LouAnne Johnson</a>... [h]er teaching methods are inventive. She bribes them with candy bars and free trips to amusement parks, and involves them in the words of that important poet, <a href="/wiki/Bob_Dylan" title="Bob Dylan">Bob Dylan</a> (the Tambourine Man might have been a drug dealer!). Soon they're in the school library, finding connections between Bob Dylan and <a href="/wiki/Dylan_Thomas" title="Dylan Thomas">Dylan Thomas</a>... [w]hat, exactly, will these disadvantaged inner-city kids accomplish by being bribed with candy bars and the "<a href="/wiki/Relevancy" class="mw-redirect" title="Relevancy">relevancy</a>" of Bob Dylan? Can they read and write? Can they compete in the job market? An educational system that has brought them to the point we observe in the first classroom scene has already failed them so miserably that all of Miss Johnson's karate lessons are not going to be much help. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dangerous-minds-1995">Review of</a> <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangerous_Minds" class="extiw" title="w:Dangerous Minds">Dangerous Minds</a></i> (11 August 1995)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>In the upstairs bedroom, old Ann dies very slowly, remembering the events of the long-ago wedding night and the next morning...She is attended by a nurse with an Irish accent (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eileen_Atkins" class="extiw" title="w:Eileen Atkins">Eileen Atkins</a>), who sometimes prompts her: "Remember a happy time!" Dissolve to Ann's memory of a happy time. It is so mundane that if it qualifies as a high point in her life, it compares with <a href="/wiki/Paris_Hilton" title="Paris Hilton">Paris Hilton</a> remembering a good stick of gum. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/evening-2007">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evening_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Evening (film)">Evening</a></i> (29 June 2007)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>There's one thing to be said for a remake of a <a href="/wiki/Footloose" class="mw-disambig" title="Footloose">1984 movie</a> that uses the original's screenplay. This 2011 version is so similar — sometimes song for song and line for line — that I was wickedly tempted to reprint <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/footloose-1984">my 1984 review</a>, word for word. But That Would be Wrong. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/footloose-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footloose_(2011_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Footloose (2011 film)">Footloose</a></i> (12 October 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Here is a Civil War movie that <a href="/wiki/Trent_Lott" title="Trent Lott">Trent Lott</a> might enjoy. Less enlightened than <i><a href="/wiki/Gone_with_the_Wind_(film)" title="Gone with the Wind (film)">Gone with the Wind</a></i>, obsessed with military strategy, impartial between South and North, religiously devout, it waits 70 minutes before introducing the first of its two speaking roles for African Americans; <a href="/wiki/Stonewall_Jackson" title="Stonewall Jackson">"Stonewall" Jackson</a> assures his black cook that the South will free him, and the cook looks cautiously optimistic. If World War II were handled this way, there'd be hell to pay. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gods-and-generals-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gods_and_Generals_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Gods and Generals (film)">Gods and Generals</a></i> (21 February 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Going to see <i>Godzilla</i> at the Palais of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannes_Film_Festival" class="extiw" title="w:Cannes Film Festival">Cannes Film Festival</a> is like attending a satanic ritual in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter%27s_Basilica" class="extiw" title="w:St. Peter's Basilica">St. Peter's Basilica</a>. It's a rebuke to the faith that the building represents. Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. <i>Godzilla</i> is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/godzilla-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godzilla_(1998_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Godzilla (1998 film)">Godzilla</a></i> (26 May 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Immortals</i> is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiko_Ishioka" class="extiw" title="w:Eiko Ishioka">Eiko Ishioka</a>'s costume designs alone deserve an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Award_for_Best_Costume_Design" class="extiw" title="w:Academy Award for Best Costume Design">Oscar nomination</a>. "They weren't at all historically accurate," grumbled a woman in the elevator after the sneak preview, as if lots of documentation exists about the wardrobes of the gods. She added: "I guess that's what we deserve for using free tickets we got at a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Blackhawks" class="extiw" title="w:Chicago Blackhawks">Blackhawks</a> game." <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/immortals-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortals_(2011_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Immortals (2011 film)">Immortals</a></i> (9 November 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I saw <i>The Lonely Guy</i> all by myself. It was one of those Saturday afternoons where the snow is coming down gray and mean, and you can't even get a decent recorded message on the answering machines of strangers … "Good luck," an usher told me. "You're going to need it." He was right … <i>The Lonely Guy</i> is the kind of movie that seems to have been made to play in empty theaters on overcast January afternoons … [It] is the kind of movie that inspires you to distract yourself by counting the commercial products visible on the screen, and speculating about whether their manufacturers paid fees to have them worked into the movie. I counted two Diet 7-Ups, two Tabs, and <a href="/wiki/Steve_Martin" title="Steve Martin">Steve Martin</a>. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-lonely-guy-1984">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lonely_Guy" class="extiw" title="w:The Lonely Guy">The Lonely Guy</a></i> (1 January 1984)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I was noodling around Rotten Tomatoes, trying to determine who played the bank's security chief, and noticed the movie had not yet been reviewed by anybody. Hold on! In the "Forum" section for this movie, "islandhome" wrote at 7:58 a.m. Jan. 8: "review of this movie … tonight i'll post." At 11:19 a.m. Jan. 10, "islandhome" was finally back with the promised review. It is written without capital letters, flush left like a poem, and I quote it verbatim, spelling and all:</li></ul> <dl><dd><dl><dd><i>hello sorry i slept when i got back</i></dd> <dd><i>well it was kinda fun</i></dd> <dd><i>it could never happen in the way it was portraid</i></dd> <dd><i>but what ever its a movie</i></dd> <dd><i>for the girls most will like it</i></dd> <dd><i>and the men will not mind it much</i></dd> <dd><i>i thought it was going to be kinda like how to beat the high cost of living</i></dd> <dd><i>kinda the same them but not as much fun</i></dd> <dd><i>ill give it a 4 out of 10</i></dd></dl></dd> <dd>I read this twice, three times. I had been testing out various first sentences for my own review, but somehow the purity and directness of islandhome's review undercut me. It is so final. "for the girls most will like it/and the men will not mind it much." How can you improve on that? It's worthy of <a href="/wiki/Charles_Bukowski" title="Charles Bukowski">Charles Bukowski</a>. ...The bottom line is some girls will like it, the men not so much, and I give it 1½ stars out of 4. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-money-2008">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Money_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Mad Money (film)">Mad Money</a></i> (17 January 2008)</li></ul></dd></dl> <ul><li><i>Clerks</i> spoke with the sure, clear voice of an original filmmaker. In <i>Mallrats</i> the voice is muffled, and we sense instead advice from the tired, the establishment, the timid and other familiar Hollywood executive types. The year that <i>Clerks</i> played <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Cannes_Film_Festival" class="extiw" title="w:1994 Cannes Film Festival">at the Cannes Film Festival</a>, I was the chairman of a panel discussion of independent filmmakers. Most of them talked about their battles to stay free from Hollywood's playsafe strategies. But Kevin Smith cheerfully said he'd be happy to do whatever the studios wanted, if they'd pay for his films. At the time, I thought he was joking. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mallrats-1995">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Mallrats" title="Mallrats">Mallrats</a></i> (20 October 1995)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>We can laugh at comedies like this for two reasons: Because we feel superior to the characters, or because we pity or like them. I do not much like laughing down at people, which is why the comedies of <a href="/wiki/Adam_Sandler" title="Adam Sandler">Adam Sandler</a> make me squirmy (most people, I know, laugh because they like him). In the case of Napoleon Dynamite, I certainly don't like him, but then the movie makes no attempt to make him likable. Truth is, it doesn't even try to be a comedy. It tells his story and we are supposed to laugh because we find humor the movie pretends it doesn't know about. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/napoleon-dynamite-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Napoleon_Dynamite" title="Napoleon Dynamite">Napoleon Dynamite</a></i> (18 June 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>They say baseball is popular because everyone thinks they can play it. Similar reasoning may explain the popularity of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary-Kate_and_Ashley_Olsen" class="extiw" title="w:Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen">Olsen twins</a>: Teenage girls love them because they believe they could <i>be</i> them. What, after all, do Mary-Kate and Ashley do in <i>New York Minute</i> that could not be done by any reasonably presentable female adolescent? Their careers are founded not on what they do, but on the vicarious identification of their fans, who enjoy seeing two girls making millions for doing what just about anybody could do. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/new-york-minute-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Minute_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:New York Minute (film)">New York Minute</a></i> (7 May 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Pearl Harbor</i> is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on December 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle. Its centerpiece is 40 minutes of redundant special effects, surrounded by a love story of stunning banality. The film has been directed without grace, vision, or originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pearl-harbor-2001">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Pearl Harbor (film)">Pearl Harbor</a></i> (25 May 2001)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It's like the high school production of something you saw at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steppenwolf_Theatre_Company" class="extiw" title="w:Steppenwolf Theatre Company">Steppenwolf</a>, with the most gifted students in drama class playing the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Malkovich" class="extiw" title="w:John Malkovich">John Malkovich</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Allen" class="extiw" title="w:Joan Allen">Joan Allen</a> roles. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-pink-panther-2006">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Pink_Panther_(2006_film)" title="The Pink Panther (2006 film)">The Pink Panther</a></i> (10 February 2006)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Attending this new version, I felt oddly as if I were watching a provincial stock company doing the best it could without the Broadway cast. I was reminded of the child prodigy who was summoned to perform for a famous pianist. The child climbed onto the piano stool and played something by Chopin with great speed and accuracy. The great musician then patted the child on the head and said, 'You can play the notes. Someday, you may be able to play the music.' <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/psycho-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Psycho_(1998_film)" title="Psycho (1998 film)">Psycho</a></i> (6 December 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Here's a movie that stretches out every moment for more than it's worth, until even the moments of inspiration seem forced. Since the basic idea of the movie is a good one and there are talented people in the cast, what we have here is a film shot down by its own forced and mannered style. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/raising-arizona-1987">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Raising_Arizona" title="Raising Arizona">Raising Arizona</a></i> (20 March 1987)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>These aren't nerds. They're a bunch of interesting guys, and that's the problem with <i>Revenge of the Nerds II</i>. The movie doesn't have the nerve to be about real nerds. It hedges its bets. A nerd is not a nerd because he understands computers and wears a plastic pen protector in his shirt pocket. A nerd is a nerd because he brings a special lack of elegance to life. An absence of style. An inability to notice the feelings of other people. A nerd is a nerd from the inside out, which is something the nerds who made this movie will never understand. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/revenge-of-the-nerds-ii-nerds-in-paradise-1987">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenge_of_the_Nerds_II:_Nerds_in_Paradise" class="extiw" title="w:Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise">Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise</a></i> (13 July 1987)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I know aliens from other worlds are required to arrive in New Mexico, but why stay there? <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/thor-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Thor_(film)" title="Thor (film)">Thor</a></i> (10 May 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="One-star_reviews">One-star reviews</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=13" title="Edit section: One-star reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li>D. Kepesh of Chicago writes, "Do you ever find yourself distracted during a screening by thoughts of the review you will later write? Distracted to the point of missing part of the film?" Sometimes it gets much worse than that, D. Sometimes a movie is so witless that I abandon any attempt to think up clever lines for my review, and return in defeat to actually watching the film itself. I approach it as an opportunity for meditation. My mantra is "aargh ... aargh ... " <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-night-at-the-roxbury-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Night_at_the_Roxbury" class="extiw" title="w:A Night at the Roxbury">A Night at the Roxbury</a></i> (2 October 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I remember when hard-core first became commonplace, and there were discussions about what it would be like if a serious director ever made a porn movie. The answer, judging by <i>Anatomy of Hell,</i> is that the audience would decide they did not require such a serious director after all. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/anatomy-of-hell-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_Hell" class="extiw" title="w:Anatomy of Hell">Anatomy of Hell</a></i> (12 November 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. <i>Armageddon</i> is cut together like its own highlights. Take almost any 30 seconds at random, and you'd have a TV ad. The movie is an assault on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense, and the human desire to be entertained. <b>No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/armageddon-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Armageddon (film)">Armageddon</a></i> (1 July 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>So OK. Let’s say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, you’re an objectivist or a libertarian, and you’ve been waiting eagerly for this movie. Man, are you going to get a letdown. It’s not enough that a movie agree with you, in however an incoherent and murky fashion. It would help if it were like, you know, entertaining? <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/atlas-shrugged-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged:_Part_I" class="extiw" title="w:Atlas Shrugged: Part I">Atlas Shrugged: Part I</a></i> (14 April 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="/wiki/Blue_Velvet_(film)" title="Blue Velvet (film)">Blue Velvet</a></i> contains scenes of such raw emotional energy that it's easy to understand why some critics have hailed it as a masterpiece. A film this painful and wounding has to be given special consideration. And yet those scenes of stark sexual despair are the tipoff to what's wrong with the movie. They're so strong that they deserve to be in a movie that is sincere, honest and true. But <i>Blue Velvet</i> surrounds them with a story that's marred by sophomoric satire and cheap shots. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lynch" class="extiw" title="w:David Lynch">The director</a> is either denying the strength of his material or trying to defuse it by pretending it's all part of a campy in-joke. … What's worse? Slapping somebody around, or standing back and finding the whole thing funny? <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/blue-velvet-1986">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Blue_Velvet" class="mw-redirect" title="Blue Velvet">Blue Velvet</a></i> (19 September 1986)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>The Bucket List</i> is a movie about two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible. I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-bucket-list-2008">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bucket_List" class="extiw" title="w:The Bucket List">The Bucket List</a></i> (10 January 2008)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The director, whose name is Pitof, was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/catwoman-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catwoman_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Catwoman (film)">Catwoman</a></i> (23 July 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I've been reviewing movies for a long time, and I can't think of one that more dramatically shoots itself in the foot. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/diary-of-a-mad-black-woman-2005">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary_of_a_Mad_Black_Woman" class="extiw" title="w:Diary of a Mad Black Woman">Diary of a Mad Black Woman</a></i> (25 February 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The result is a horrible mess of a movie, without shape, trajectory or purpose — a one joke movie, if it had one joke. The two characters wander witlessly past the bizarre backdrops of Las Vegas (some real, some hallucinated, all interchangeable) while zonked out of their minds. Humor depends on attitude. Beyond a certain point, you don't have an attitude, you simply inhabit a state. I've heard a lot of funny jokes about drunks and druggies, but these guys are stoned beyond comprehension, to the point where most of their dialog could be paraphrased as "eh?"… As for <a href="/wiki/Johnny_Depp" title="Johnny Depp">Depp</a>, what was he thinking he made this movie? He was once in trouble for trashing a New York hotel room, just like the heroes of <i>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</i>. What was that? Research? After <a href="/wiki/River_Phoenix" title="River Phoenix">River Phoenix</a> died of an overdose outside Depp's club, you wouldn't think Depp would see much humor in this story — but then, of course, there *isn't* much humor in this story. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fear-and-loathing-in-las-vegas-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_in_Las_Vegas_(film)" title="Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (film)">Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas</a></i> (22 May 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Last year, I reviewed a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Taiga (film)">nine-hour documentary</a> about the lives of Mongolian yak herdsmen, and I would rather see it again than sit through <i>The Frighteners.</i> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-frighteners-1996">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frighteners" class="extiw" title="w:The Frighteners">The Frighteners</a></i> (19 July 1996)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>There is a word for this movie, and that word is: Ick. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/good-luck-chuck-2007">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Luck_Chuck" class="extiw" title="w:Good Luck Chuck">Good Luck Chuck</a></i> (21 September 2007)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Curious_(Yellow)" class="extiw" title="w:I Am Curious (Yellow)">I Am Curious (Yellow)</a></i> is not merely not erotic. It is anti-erotic. Two hours of this movie will drive thoughts of sex out of your mind for weeks. See the picture and buy twin beds... I think there actually is a director in Sweden who is dull and square enough to seriously consider this an art of moviemaking. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-am-curious-yellow-1969">Review</a> of <i>I Am Curious (Yellow)</i> (23 September 1969)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign... After the screening was over and the lights went up, I observed a couple of my colleagues in deep and earnest conversation, trying to resolve twists in the plot. They were applying more thought to the movie than the makers did. A critic's mind is a terrible thing to waste. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-1997">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Know_What_You_Did_Last_Summer" class="extiw" title="w:I Know What You Did Last Summer">I Know What You Did Last Summer</a></i> (17 October 1997)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>They say state-of-the-art special effects can create the illusion of anything on the screen, and now we have proof: It's possible for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Henson" class="extiw" title="w:Jim Henson">Jim Henson</a> folks and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Light_%26_Magic" class="extiw" title="w:Industrial Light & Magic">Industrial Light and Magic</a> to put their heads together and come up with the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects, and I am not forgetting the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chucky_(Child%27s_Play)" class="extiw" title="w:Chucky (Child's Play)">Chucky doll</a> or the desert intestine from <i><a href="/wiki/Star_wars" class="mw-redirect mw-disambig" title="Star wars">Star wars</a></i>. To see the snowman is to dislike the snowman. It doesn't look like a snowman, anyway. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jack-frost-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Frost_(1998_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Jack Frost (1998 film)">Jack Frost</a></i> (11 December 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>In this business one becomes a connoisseur. I can now see that <a href="/wiki/Jim_Carrey" title="Jim Carrey">[Jim] Carrey</a> is a virtuoso, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Farley" class="extiw" title="w:Chris Farley">[Chris] Farley</a> is at least hard-working, <a href="/wiki/Adam_Sandler" title="Adam Sandler">[Adam] Sandler</a> is hopeless and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauly_Shore" class="extiw" title="w:Pauly Shore">Pauly Shore</a> bypasses all categories to achieve a kind of transcendent fingernails-on-the-blackboard effect. His appeal must be limited to people whose self-esteem and social skills are so damaged that they find humor, or at least relief, in at last encountering a movie character less successful than themselves. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jury-duty-1995">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_Duty_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Jury Duty (film)">Jury Duty</a></i> (12 April 1995)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>...in <i>New Year's Eve</i>, we look out over the surging throng of ecstatic celebrants, and the sea of humanity is blue. They're all wearing freebie hats from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nivea" class="extiw" title="w:Nivea">Nivea skin creme</a>. No hats for the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Knicks" class="extiw" title="w:New York Knicks">Knicks</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser_(Anheuser-Busch)" class="extiw" title="w:Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch)">Budweiser</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_New_York" class="extiw" title="w:I Love New York">I Heart [sic] New York</a>. All Nivea skin creme. Countless hats of Nivea blue. I've heard of product placement, but this is carpet bombing. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/new-years-eve-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Year%27s_Eve_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:New Year's Eve (film)">New Year's Eve</a></i> (7 December 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Terri (<a href="/wiki/Hilary_Duff" title="Hilary Duff">Hilary Duff</a>)'s new roommate is Denise (Dana Davis), who plans to work hard for a scholarship, and resents Terri as a distraction. Sizing up Terri's wardrobe and her smile, she tells her: "You're like some kind of retro <a href="/wiki/The_Brady_Bunch" title="The Brady Bunch">Brady Buncher</a>." I hate it when a movie contains its own review. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/raise-your-voice-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raise_Your_Voice" class="extiw" title="w:Raise Your Voice">Raise Your Voice</a></i> (8 October 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I would rather eat a golf ball than see this movie again. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/seven-days-in-utopia-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_Utopia" class="extiw" title="w:Seven Days in Utopia">Seven Days in Utopia</a></i> (31 August 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Reader, I must confess that while attending the sneak preview with its overwhelmingly female audience, I was gob-smacked by the delightful cleavage on display. Do women wear their lowest-cut frocks for each other? <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sex-and-the-city-2-2010">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Sex_and_the_City_2" title="Sex and the City 2">Sex and the City 2</a></i> (25 May 2010)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Remember the words <a href="/wiki/George_Carlin" title="George Carlin">George Carlin</a> said could not be said on TV? There's now a kind of movie that cannot be made without using all of them except one. Even the online trailer may startle you. It's one of those adults-only Red Band Trailers which you have to give your age in order to view. I lied about my age. Nobody under 17 would ever do that. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-sitter-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sitter" class="extiw" title="w:The Sitter">The Sitter</a></i> (7 December 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It's the worst kind of bad film: the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down, instead of just being lousy from the first shot. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/snake-eyes-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Eyes_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Snake Eyes (film)">Snake Eyes</a></i> (7 August 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>But now here is the director's cut, which is 20 minutes shorter, lops off a couple of characters and a few of the infinite subplots, and is even more of a mess. I recommend that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kelly_(director)" class="extiw" title="w:Richard Kelly (director)">Kelly</a> keep right on cutting until he whittles it down to a ukulele pick. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/southland-tales-2007">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Southland_Tales" title="Southland Tales">Southland Tales</a></i> (16 November 2007)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination... The movie has been signed by Michael Bay. This is the same man who directed <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rock_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:The Rock (film)">The Rock</a></i> in 1996. Now he has made <i>Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.</i> <a href="/wiki/Faust" class="mw-redirect" title="Faust">Faust</a> made a better deal. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen-2009">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Transformers:_Revenge_of_the_Fallen" title="Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen">Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen</a></i> (23 June 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan. Never have teenagers been in greater need of a jump-start. Granted some of them are more than 100 years old, but still: their charisma is by Madame Tussaud. <i><a href="/wiki/The_Twilight_Saga:_New_Moon" title="The Twilight Saga: New Moon">The Twilight Saga: New Moon</a></i> takes the tepid achievement of <i>Twilight</i> (2008), guts it, and leaves it for undead. You know you're in trouble with a sequel when the word of mouth advises you to see the first movie twice instead. Obviously the characters all have. Long opening stretches of this film make utterly no sense unless you walk in knowing the first film, and hopefully both Stephanie Meyer novels, by heart. Edward and Bella spend murky moments glowering at each other and thinking, So, here we are again. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-twilight-saga-new-moon-2009">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Twilight_Saga:_New_Moon" title="The Twilight Saga: New Moon">The Twilight Saga: New Moon</a></i> (18 November 2009)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Wild Wild West</i> is a comedy dead zone. You stare in disbelief as scenes flop and die. The movie is all concept and no content; the elaborate special effects are like watching money burn on the screen. You know something has gone wrong when a story is about two heroes in the Old West, and the last shot is of a mechanical spider riding off into the sunset. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wild-wild-west-1999">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Wild_West" class="extiw" title="w:Wild Wild West">Wild Wild West</a></i> (30 June 1999)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Your Highness</i> is a juvenile excrescence that feels like the work of 11-year-old boys in love with dungeons, dragons, warrior women, pot, boobs and four-letter words. One of the heroes even wears the penis of a minotaur on a string around his neck. I hate it when that happens. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/your-highness-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Highness" class="extiw" title="w:Your Highness">Your Highness</a></i> (April 6, 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>There have been articles lately asking why the United States is so hated in some parts of the world. As this week's Exhibit A from Hollywood, I offer <i><a href="/wiki/Zoolander" title="Zoolander">Zoolander</a></i>, a comedy about a plot to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia because of his opposition to child labor. You might want to read that sentence twice. The logic: Child labor is necessary to the economic health of the fashion industry, and so its opponents must be eliminated...if the Malaysians made a comedy about the assassination of the president of the United States because of his opposition to slavery, it would seem approximately as funny to us as <i>Zoolander</i> would seem to them. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/zoolander-2001">Review</a> of <i>Zoolander</i> (28 September 2001)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="Half-star_reviews">Half-star reviews</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=14" title="Edit section: Half-star reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li>If you plan to miss this movie, better miss it quickly; I doubt if it'll be around to miss for long. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/americathon-1979">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americathon" class="extiw" title="w:Americathon">Americathon</a></i> (1 January 1979)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The dialogue consists almost entirely of terse screams: <i>Watch it! Incoming! Move! Look out! Fire! Move!</i> The only characters I remember having four sentences in a row are the anchors on cable news. … Young men: If you attend this crap with friends who admire it, tactfully inform them they are idiots. Young women: If your date likes this movie, tell him you've been thinking it over, and you think you should consider spending some time apart. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battle-los-angeles-2011">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle:_Los_Angeles" class="extiw" title="w:Battle: Los Angeles">Battle: Los Angeles</a></i> (9 March 2011)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Battlefield Earth</i> is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. The visuals are grubby and drab. The characters are unkempt and have rotten teeth. Breathing tubes hang from their noses like ropes of snot. The soundtrack sounds like the boom mike is being slammed against the inside of a 55-gallon drum. The plot. … The director, Roger Christian, has learned from better films that directors sometimes tilt their cameras, but he has not learned why. … Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fugitive_(1993_film)" class="extiw" title="w:The Fugitive (1993 film)">The Fugitive</a></i>. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battlefield-earth-2000">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_Earth_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Battlefield Earth (film)">Battlefield Earth</a></i> (12 May 2000)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The movie is being revived around the country for midnight cult showings. Midnight is not late enough. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-beyond-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beyond_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:The Beyond (film)">The Beyond</a></i> (3 July 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Boat Trip</i> arrives preceded by publicity saying many homosexuals have been outraged by the film. Now that it's in theaters, everybody else has a chance to join them. Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much. It is dim-witted, unfunny, too shallow to be offensive, and way too conventional to use all of those people standing around in the background wearing leather and chains and waiting hopefully for their cues. This is a movie made for nobody, about nothing. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/boat-trip-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boat_Trip" class="extiw" title="w:Boat Trip">Boat Trip</a></i> (21 March 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Nobody is going to <i>Bolero</i> for the plot anyway. They're going for the Good Parts. There are two Good Parts, not counting her naked ride on horseback, which was the only scene in the movie that had me wondering how she did it. The real future of <i>Bolero</i> is in home cassette rentals, where your fast forward and instant replay controls will supply the editing job the movie so desperately needs. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bolero-1984">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolero_(1984_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Bolero (1984 film)">Bolero</a></i> (1 January 1984)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Alfred_Hitchcock" title="Alfred Hitchcock">Hitchcock</a> said a movie should play the audience like a piano. <i>Death Race</i> played me like a drum. It is an assault on all senses, including common. Walking out, I had the impression I had just seen the video game and was still waiting for the movie. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/death-race-2008">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Race_(movie)" class="extiw" title="w:Death Race (movie)">Death Race</a></i> (22 August 2008)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Only enormously talented people could have made <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Smoochy" class="extiw" title="w:Death to Smoochy">Death to Smoochy</a></i>. Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/death-to-smoochy-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_Smoochy" class="extiw" title="w:Death to Smoochy">Death to Smoochy</a></i> (29 March 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This movie is not merely bad, but incompetent. I get tapes in the mail from 10th graders that are better made than this... I have often asked myself, "What would it look like if the characters in a movie were animatronic puppets created by aliens with an imperfect mastery of human behavior?" Now I know. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/friends-and-lovers-1999">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_%26_Lovers_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Friends & Lovers (film)">Friends & Lovers</a></i> (30 April 1999)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>"This sucks on so many levels." — Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/jason-x-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_X" class="extiw" title="w:Jason X">Jason X</a></i> (26 April 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The movie stars six teenage characters who have been marketed on TV and in toy stores. They have names, but no discernible personalities. None of them ever says anything more interesting than "You guys!" As teenagers, they are skilled in-line skaters and karate fighters, but they don't get their real powers until they turn into faceless clones in Power Rangers uniforms with plastic masks and helmets. Is that the message? Faceless conformity is the way to success? Certainly the Rangers are not individuals in or out of uniform, but I wonder if they don't represent a triumph of merchandising over creativity. Children's heroes have traditionally been individualistic and eccentric. The Rangers are not, properly speaking, even characters. They are color-coded products...Paging through the movie's press kit, I came across this quote attributed to Amy Jo Johnson, who plays Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger: " `Mighty Morphin Power Rangers™: The Movie' is a mix between <i><a href="/wiki/Star_Wars" class="mw-disambig" title="Star Wars">Star Wars</a></i> and <i><a href="/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Oz" class="mw-redirect" title="The Wizard of Oz">The Wizard of Oz</a></i>. " I wonder if Amy Jo actually said "TM" when she was delivering that wonderfully fresh and spontaneous quote, which is so much more involved than anything she says in the movie. More to the point, I wonder if she has ever seen "Star Wars" or "The Wizard of Oz." <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mighty-morphin-power-rangers-the-movie-1995">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mighty_Morphin%27_Power_Rangers:_The_Movie" class="extiw" title="w:Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie">Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie</a></i> (30 June 1995)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Parents: If you encounter teenagers who say they liked this movie, do not let them date your children. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/resident-evil-apocalypse-2004">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil:_Apocalypse" class="extiw" title="w:Resident Evil: Apocalypse">Resident Evil: Apocalypse</a></i> (10 September 2004)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Some of the acting is better than the film deserves. Make that all of the acting. Actually, the film stock itself is better than the film deserves. You know when sometimes a film catches fire inside a projector? If it happened with this one, I suspect the audience might cheer. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/revolver-2007">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolver_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Revolver (film)">Revolver</a></i> (7 December 2007)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(2002_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Rollerball (2002 film)">Rollerball</a></i> is an incoherent mess, a jumble of footage in search of plot, meaning, rhythm and sense. There are bright colors and quick movement on the screen, which we can watch as a visual pattern that, in entertainment value, falls somewhere between a kaleidoscope and a lava lamp. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/rollerball-2002">Review</a> of the 2002 film <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(2002_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Rollerball (2002 film)">Rollerball</a></i> (8 February 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_Silverman" class="extiw" title="w:Saving Silverman">Saving Silverman</a></i> is so bad in so many different ways that perhaps you should see it, as an example of the lowest slopes of the bell-shaped curve. This is the kind of movie that gives even its defenders fits of desperation. Consider my friend <a href="/wiki/James_Berardinelli" title="James Berardinelli">James Berardinelli</a>, the best of the Web-based critics. No doubt 10 days of oxygen deprivation at the Sundance Film Festival helped inspire his three-star review, in which he reports optimistically, "<i>Saving Silverman</i>" has its share of pratfalls and slapstick moments, but there's almost no flatulence." Here's a critical rule of thumb: You know you're in trouble when you're reduced to praising a movie for its absence of fart jokes, and have to add "almost"… as for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Diamond" class="extiw" title="w:Neil Diamond">Neil Diamond</a>, <i>Saving Silverman</i> is his first appearance in a fiction film since <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer_(1980_film)" class="extiw" title="w:The Jazz Singer (1980 film)">The Jazz Singer</a></i>, and one can only marvel that he waited 20 years to appear in a second film, and found one even worse than his first one. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/saving-silverman-2001">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_Silverman" class="extiw" title="w:Saving Silverman">Saving Silverman</a></i> (9 February 2001)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The <a href="/wiki/Spice_Girls" title="Spice Girls">Spice Girls</a> are easier to tell apart than the <a href="/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles" class="mw-disambig" title="Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles">Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles</a>, but that is small consolation: What can you say about five women whose principal distinguishing characteristic is that they have different names? They occupy <i>Spice World</i> as if they were watching it: They're so detached they can't even successfully lip-synch their own songs. During a rehearsal scene, their director tells them, with such truth that we may be hearing a secret message from the screenwriter, "That was absolutely perfect — without being actually any good." <i>Spice World</i> is obviously intended as a ripoff of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hard_Day%27s_Night_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:A Hard Day's Night (film)">A Hard Day's Night</a></i> which gave <a href="/wiki/The_Beatles" title="The Beatles">The Beatles</a> to the movies...the huge difference, of course, is that the Beatles were talented — while, let's face it, the Spice Girls could be duplicated by any five women under the age of 30 standing in line at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkin%27_Donuts" class="extiw" title="w:Dunkin' Donuts">Dunkin' Donuts</a>. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spice-world-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/Spice_World" title="Spice World">Spice World</a></i> (23 January 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>It amazes me that filmmakers will still film, and audiences will still watch, relationships so bankrupt of human feeling that the characters could be reading dialogue written by a computer. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/summer-school-1987">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_School_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Summer School (film)">Summer School</a></i> (22 July 1987)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>There is a scene in this film where a character is defecated on by several people at the same time, and I dunno … I didn't enjoy it. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tim-and-erics-billion-dollar-movie-2012">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_and_Eric%27s_Billion_Dollar_Movie" class="extiw" title="w:Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie">Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie</a></i> (29 February 2012)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="Zero_star_reviews">Zero star reviews</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=15" title="Edit section: Zero star reviews"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li><i>Caligula</i> is sickening, utterly worthless, shameful trash. <b>If it is not the worst film I have ever seen, that makes it all the more shameful: People with talent allowed themselves to participate in this travesty.</b> Disgusted and unspeakably depressed, I walked out of the film after two hours of its 170-minute length. That was on Saturday night, as a line of hundreds of people stretched down Lincoln Ave., waiting to pay $7.50 apiece to become eyewitnesses to shame..."This movie," said the lady in front of me at the drinking fountain, "is the worst piece of shit I have ever seen." <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/caligula-1980">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caligula_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Caligula (film)">Caligula</a></i> (22 September 1980)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Chaos</i> is ugly, nihilistic, and cruel -- a film I regret having seen. I urge you to avoid it. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's 'only' a horror film, or a slasher film. It is an exercise in heartless cruelty and it ends with careless brutality. The movie denies not only the value of life, but the possibility of hope. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/chaos-2005">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_(2005_Dominion_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Chaos (2005 Dominion film)">Chaos</a></i> (11 August 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Deuce Bigalow</i> is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes. … Does this sound like a movie you want to see? It sounds to me like a movie that Columbia Pictures and the film's producers … should be discussing in long, sad conversations with their inner child. <br /> The movie created a spot of controversy... Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> listed [2004's] Best Picture nominees and wrote that they were "ignored, unloved, and turned down flat by most of the same studios that … bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to <i>Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo</i>, a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic." <br /> Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in <i>Daily Variety</i> and the <i>Hollywood Reporter</i>. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: "Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind. … Maybe you didn't win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven't invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who's Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers..." As chance would have it, I <i>have</i> won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. <b>Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.</b>" <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/deuce-bigalow-european-gigolo-2005">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuce_Bigalow:_European_Gigolo" class="extiw" title="w:Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo">Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo</a></i></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>A burning at the stake, an afternoon in the rack, headscrews, a douche with boiling water, nails into hands, induced vomiting, ripped tongues, dead babes, human target practice, possession by devils, rape, transvestism, nude orgies in the nunnery. Put them all together and they spell Committed Art, because these are modern times and I certainly hope none of us is opposed to truth. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-devils">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devils_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:The Devils (film)">The Devils</a></i> (1 January 1971)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Crowds can be frightening. They have a way of impressing the low, base taste upon their members. <b>Watching the way thousands of people in his audience could not think for themselves, could not find the courage to allow their ordinary feelings of decency and taste to prevail, I understood better how demagogues are possible.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dice-rules-1991">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice_Rules" class="extiw" title="w:Dice Rules">Dice Rules</a></i> (17 May 1991)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Dirty Love</i> wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent... I am not certain that anyone involved has ever seen a movie, or knows what one is. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050922/REVIEWS/509220303/1023">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Love" class="extiw" title="w:Dirty Love">Dirty Love</a></i> (23 September 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The movie opens as the drifter "inadvertently" (Araki's word, in the press kit) blows off the head of a Korean convenience store owner... It continues as the "enigmatic Xavier" (I am again quoting from the wonderfully revealing press kit) "has such rotten karma that every time they stop the car for fries and Diet Cokes, someone ends up dying in one gruesome way or another." Wait, there's more: "As the youthful band of outsiders continues their travels through the wasteland of America, Amy finds herself (having sex with) both Jordan and Xavier, forging a triangle of love, sex and desperation too pure for this world." Now let's deconstruct that. (1) The correct word is "its," not "their." (2) "Band of outsiders" is an insider reference to A Band Apart," the name of <a href="/wiki/Quentin_Tarantino" title="Quentin Tarantino">Quentin Tarantino</a>'s production company, which itself is a pun on the title of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bande_%C3%A0_part_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Bande à part (film)">a film</a> by <a href="/wiki/Jean-Luc_Godard" title="Jean-Luc Godard">Godard</a>. (3) Is it remotely possible that America is a "wasteland" because Amy, Jordan and Xavier kill someone every time they stop for fries and a soda? That wouldn't have occurred to this movie. (4) The clause "someone ends up dying" is a passive way to avoid saying that the three characters kill them. <b>This is precisely the same construction used by many serial killers and heads of state, who use language to separate themselves from the consequences of their actions.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-doom-generation-1995">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doom_Generation" class="extiw" title="w:The Doom Generation">The Doom Generation</a></i> (10 November 1995)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels... The day may come when "Freddy Got Fingered" is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. <b>The day may never come when it is seen as funny.</b> <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/freddy-got-fingered-2001">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddy_Got_Fingered" class="extiw" title="w:Freddy Got Fingered">Freddy Got Fingered</a></i> (20 April 2001)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyana:_Crime_of_the_Century" class="extiw" title="w:Guyana: Crime of the Century">Guyana-Cult of the Damned</a></i> has crawled out from under a rock and into local theaters, and will do nicely as this week's example of the depths to which people will plunge in search of a dollar. The movie is a gruesome version of the Jonestown massacre of 1978, so badly written and directed it illustrates a simple rule of movie exhibition: If a film is nauseating and reprehensible enough in the first place, it doesn't matter how badly it's made - people will go anyway. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/guyana-cult-of-the-damned-1980">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyana:_Crime_of_the_Century" class="extiw" title="w:Guyana: Crime of the Century">Guyana-Cult of the Damned</a></i> (29 January 1980)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I do not often attribute motives to audience members, nor do I try to read their minds, but the people who were sitting around me on Monday morning made it easy for me to know what they were thinking. They talked out loud. And if they seriously believed the things they were saying, they were vicarious sex criminals. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-spit-on-your-grave-1980">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Spit_on_Your_Grave" class="extiw" title="w:I Spit on Your Grave">I Spit on Your Grave</a></i> (16 July 1980)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This despicable <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Spit_on_Your_Grave_(2010_film)" class="extiw" title="w:I Spit on Your Grave (2010 film)">remake</a> of the despicable 1978 film <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Spit_on_Your_Grave" class="extiw" title="w:I Spit on Your Grave">I Spit on Your Grave</a></i> adds yet another offense: a phony moral equivalency. In the original, a woman foolishly thought to go on holiday by herself at a secluded cabin. She attracted the attention of depraved local men, who raped her, one after the other. Then the film ended with her fatal revenge. In this film, less time is devoted to the revenge, and more time to verbal, psychological and physical violence against her. Thus it works even better as vicarious cruelty against women. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-spit-on-your-grave-2010">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Spit_on_Your_Grave_(2010_film)" class="extiw" title="w:I Spit on Your Grave (2010 film)">I Spit on Your Grave</a></i> (6 October 2010)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>This is a plot, if ever there was one, to illustrate <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear" class="extiw" title="w:King Lear">King Lear's</a> complaint, "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport." I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when <a href="/wiki/Eminem" title="Eminem">Eminem</a> simply will not do. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-life-of-david-gale-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="/wiki/The_Life_of_David_Gale" title="The Life of David Gale">The Life of David Gale</a></i> (21 February 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Little Indian, Big City</i> is one of the worst movies ever made. I detested every moronic minute of it...if you, under any circumstances, see <i>Little Indian, Big City</i>, I will never let you read one of my reviews again. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/little-indian-big-city-1996">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Un_indien_dans_la_ville" class="extiw" title="w:Un indien dans la ville">Little Indian, Big City</a></i> (22 March 1996)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Dog_Time" class="extiw" title="w:Mad Dog Time">Mad Dog Time</a></i> is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching <i>Mad Dog Time</i> is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line...<i>Mad Dog Time</i> should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-dog-time-1996">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Dog_Time" class="extiw" title="w:Mad Dog Time">Mad Dog Time</a></i> (29 November 1996)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandingo_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Mandingo (film)">Mandingo</a></i> is racist trash, obscene in its manipulation of human beings and feelings, and excruciating to sit through in an audience made up largely of children, as I did last Saturday afternoon. The film has an "R" rating, which didn't keep many kids out, since most came with their parents... if [Chicago] believes <i>Mandingo</i> should be shown to children, then there are no possible standards left and the only thing to do is transfer the censors to the parks department, where they can supervise paper‑plate‑ throwing contests. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mandingo-1975">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandingo_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Mandingo (film)">Mandingo</a></i> (25 July 1975)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/north-1994">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_(1994_film)" class="extiw" title="w:North (1994 film)">North</a></i> (22 July 1994)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The vast majority of the members of all religions, I believe and would argue, don't want to kill anybody. They want to love and care for their families, find decent work that sustains life and comfort, live in peace and get along with their neighbors. It is a deviant streak in some humans, I suspect, that drives them toward self-righteous violence, and uses religion as a convenient alibi... I am trying as hard as I can to imagine the audience for this movie. Every time I make any progress, it scares me. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/september-dawn-2007">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dawn" class="extiw" title="w:September Dawn">September Dawn</a></i> (24 August 2007)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>What planet did the makers of this film come from? What assumptions do they have about the purpose and quality of life? I ask because <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She%27s_Out_of_Control" class="extiw" title="w:She's Out of Control">She's Out of Control</a></i> is simultaneously so bizarre and so banal that it's a first: the first movie fabricated entirely from sitcom cliches and plastic lifestyles, without reference to any known plane of reality. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/shes-out-of-control-1989">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She%27s_Out_of_Control" class="extiw" title="w:She's Out of Control">She's Out of Control</a></i> (14 April 1989)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>The movie is an exhausted retread of the old campus romance gag where the pretty girl almost believes the lies of the reprehensible schemer, instead of trusting the nice guy who loves her. The only originality the movie brings to this formula is to make it incomprehensible, through the lurching incompetence of its story structure. Details are labored while the big picture remains unpainted... I was appalled by the poverty of its imagination. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/slackers-2002">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackers_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Slackers (film)">Slackers</a></i> (1 February 2002)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><i>Sour Grapes</i> is a comedy about things that aren't funny. It reminded me of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_(1996_film)" class="extiw" title="w:Crash (1996 film)">Crash</a></i>, an erotic thriller about things no one finds erotic. The big difference is that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cronenberg" class="extiw" title="w:David Cronenberg">David Cronenberg</a>, who made <i>Crash,</i> knew that people were not turned on by auto accidents. <a href="/wiki/Larry_David" title="Larry David">Larry David</a>, who wrote and directed <i>Sour Grapes</i>, apparently thinks people are amused by cancer, accidental castration, racial stereotypes and bitter family feuds... The more I think of it, the more <i>Sour Grapes</i> really does resemble <i>Crash</i> (except that <i>Crash</i> was not a bad film). Both movies are like watching automobile accidents. Only one was intended to be. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/sour-grapes-1998">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sour_Grapes_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Sour Grapes (film)">Sour Grapes</a></i> (17 April 1998)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I like good horror movies. They can exorcise our demons. <i>The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i> doesn't want to exorcise anything. It wants to tramp crap through our imaginations and wipe its feet on our dreams. I think of filmgoers on a date, seeing this movie and then — what? I guess they'll have to laugh at it, irony being a fashionable response to the experience of being had. … Do yourself a favor. There are a lot of good movies playing right now that can make you feel a little happier, smarter, sexier, funnier, more excited — or more scared, if that's what you want. This is not one of them. Don't let it kill 98 minutes of your life. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-texas-chainsaw-massacre-2003">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Texas_Chainsaw_Massacre_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (film)">The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</a></i> (17 October 2003)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I had a hard time watching <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Creek" class="extiw" title="w:Wolf Creek">Wolf Creek</a>.</i> It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women. When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her "a head on a stick," I wanted to walk out of the theater and keep on walking. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wolf-creek-2005">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Creek_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Wolf Creek (film)">Wolf Creek</a></i> (23 December 2005)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading4"><h4 id="No_star_rating">No star rating</h4><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=16" title="Edit section: No star rating"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <ul><li>It is all very well and good for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Lovelace" class="extiw" title="w:Linda Lovelace">Linda Lovelace</a>, the star of the movie, to advocate sexual freedom; but the energy she brings to her role is less awesome than discouraging. If you have to work this hard at sexual freedom, maybe it isn't worth the effort. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/deep-throat-1973">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(film)" class="extiw" title="w:Deep Throat (film)">Deep Throat</a></i> (6 March 1973)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine. <ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-human-centipede-2010">Review</a> of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Centipede_(First_Sequence)" class="extiw" title="w:The Human Centipede (First Sequence)">The Human Centipede</a></i> (5 May 2010)</li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Quotes_about_Ebert">Quotes about Ebert</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=17" title="Edit section: Quotes about Ebert"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <figure class="mw-default-size" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Roger_Ebert_Statue,_Virginia_Theater_(Champaign).JPG" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Roger_Ebert_Statue%2C_Virginia_Theater_%28Champaign%29.JPG/220px-Roger_Ebert_Statue%2C_Virginia_Theater_%28Champaign%29.JPG" decoding="async" width="220" height="165" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Roger_Ebert_Statue%2C_Virginia_Theater_%28Champaign%29.JPG/330px-Roger_Ebert_Statue%2C_Virginia_Theater_%28Champaign%29.JPG 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Roger_Ebert_Statue%2C_Virginia_Theater_%28Champaign%29.JPG/440px-Roger_Ebert_Statue%2C_Virginia_Theater_%28Champaign%29.JPG 2x" data-file-width="4320" data-file-height="3240" /></a><figcaption>Roger was the movies. When he didn't like a film, he was <a href="/wiki/Honest" class="mw-redirect" title="Honest">honest</a>; when he did, he was effusive — capturing the unique <a href="/wiki/Power" title="Power">power</a> of the movies to take us somewhere <a href="/wiki/Magical" class="mw-redirect" title="Magical">magical</a>. ~ <a href="/wiki/Barack_Obama" title="Barack Obama">Barack Obama</a></figcaption></figure> <dl><dd><small>Alphabetized by author </small></dd></dl> <figure class="mw-default-size mw-halign-right" typeof="mw:File/Thumb"><a href="/wiki/File:Boutte_and_Ebert.jpg" class="mw-file-description"><img src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Boutte_and_Ebert.jpg/220px-Boutte_and_Ebert.jpg" decoding="async" width="220" height="199" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Boutte_and_Ebert.jpg/330px-Boutte_and_Ebert.jpg 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2f/Boutte_and_Ebert.jpg 2x" data-file-width="432" data-file-height="391" /></a><figcaption> Here’s something you don’t hear said about many movie <a href="/wiki/Critics" class="mw-redirect" title="Critics">critics</a>: <a href="/wiki/People" class="mw-redirect" title="People">people</a> <a href="/wiki/Love" title="Love">love</a> Roger Ebert. ~ Rodney Welch</figcaption></figure> <ul><li><b>Roger Ebert is a national treasure.</b> He is the most recognizable and well known movie critic. He has been my favorite writer for some time now. I do not always agree with his <a href="/wiki/Opinions" class="mw-redirect" title="Opinions">opinions</a>, which is my right, but he always backs them up. He is not someone who will say that such and such about movie X is bad and leave it at that — he will give the <a href="/wiki/Reasons" class="mw-redirect" title="Reasons">reasons</a> for his <a href="/wiki/Thought" title="Thought">thought</a> process. <ul><li>Chris Beaumont, in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/10/15/001852.php">"Roger Ebert's Rehabilitation Going Well" at Blogcritics magazine (15 October 2006)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>Through his boorish, knee-jerk leftism, Ebert has become merely another Hollywood elitist thumbing his nose at America. Two thumbs down. <ul><li>Chris Reed, in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=9187">"Roger Ebert: The Shrill Shill" in <i>FrontPageMagazine</i> (1 August 2003)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>It would not be a stretch to say that Mr. Ebert was the best-known film reviewer of his generation, and one of the most <a href="/wiki/Trust" title="Trust">trusted</a>.</b> The <a href="/wiki/Force" title="Force">force</a> and <a href="/wiki/Grace" title="Grace">grace</a> of his opinions propelled film criticism into the mainstream of American culture. Not only did he advise moviegoers about what to see, but also how to think about what they saw. <ul><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Martin" class="extiw" title="w:Douglas Martin">Douglas Martin</a>, in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/movies/roger-ebert-film-critic-dies.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all">"A Critic for the Common Man" in <i>The New York Times</i> (4 April 2013)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>I was very saddened today to hear of the death of Roger Ebert. <b>Roger... has been my favorite film critic since forever. I did not always agree with him, but I always found him insightful and fun to read.</b> He was not just a terrific critic, he was a terrific WRITER. .. <b>A brilliant man, a good life. I give him two thumbs up.</b> <ul><li><a href="/wiki/George_R._R._Martin" title="George R. R. Martin">George R. R. Martin</a>, in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://grrm.livejournal.com/319625.html">RIP Roger Ebert</a>, <i>Not A Blog</i> (5 April 2013)</li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li>For a generation of Americans — and especially Chicagoans — Roger was the movies. <b>When he didn't like a film, he was honest; when he did, he was effusive — capturing the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere <a href="/wiki/Magical" class="mw-redirect" title="Magical">magical</a>.</b> <ul><li><a href="/wiki/Barack_Obama" title="Barack Obama">Barack Obama</a>, as quoted in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/movies/roger-ebert-film-critic-dies.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all">"A Critic for the Common Man" by Douglas Martin in the <i>The New York Times</i> (4 April 2013)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Nobody has been more important in telling Americans why we should love film than Roger Ebert.</b> <ul><li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Shamberg" class="extiw" title="w:Michael Shamberg">Michael Shamberg</a>, as quoted in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/departments/syndicates/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003577005">"Roger Ebert Makes First Public Appearance in 10 Months" in <i>Editor & Publisher</i> (26 April 2007)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b> "The movies won’t be the same without Roger," </b>the President of the United States said today in a statement upon the <a href="/wiki/Death" title="Death">death</a> of Roger Ebert, one of the most influential American writers and critics of the last quarter century. <b>He was, to begin, a great film critic, a <a href="/wiki/Joyful" class="mw-redirect" title="Joyful">joyful</a> viewer who always preached that <a href="/wiki/Great" class="mw-redirect" title="Great">great</a> <a href="/wiki/Art" title="Art">art</a> and popular entertainment were not exclusive.</b> … He was also a great essayist, and the <a href="/wiki/World" title="World">world</a> now begs some book publisher to come along to bind his best blog posts, if only so they can be preserved by others who loved the printed word as much as he did. <b>But most importantly, he celebrated <a href="/wiki/Humanity" title="Humanity">humanity</a>, and the things it creates.</b> <ul><li>Michael Scherer, in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/04/roger-ebert-rip/#ixzz2PhpDI5Ue">"Roger Ebert R.I.P." in <i>TIME</i> magazine (4 April 2013)</a></li></ul></li></ul> <ul><li><b>Here’s something you don’t hear said about many movie critics: people love Roger Ebert.</b> … There’s a good reason for this: Ebert doesn’t stand between moviegoers and the audience. Rather, his regular readers are serious movie-lovers who see him as their rep, the guy out there fighting to make movies less stupid, more entertaining, more intelligent, more everything. You don’t have to agree with him — and I certainly didn’t in this book, when he ragged on <i>Team America</i> and <i>Jesus is Magic</i>, two movies where I laughed myself sick — to know that he’s on your side. He sees the bad movies so you don’t have to, and he’s seen the same ones over and over. … Mere bile, though, isn’t his game; he’s as interested in why movies fail as why they work. A lot of the time, it’s obvious: because it’s made by morons for morons. In these cases, Ebert drags us through the plot in as entertaining a fashion as possible. … Forty years on, he’s still a moviegoer’s best friend. <ul><li>Rodney Welch, in <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.free-times.com/Portlet/Print_Friendly.php?Print=Article&z_Article_ID=11462205071445460">"Worst. Movies. Ever. A review of Roger Ebert's <i>Your Movie Sucks</i>" in <i>Free Times</i> </a></li></ul></li></ul> <div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2><span class="mw-editsection"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">[</span><a href="/w/index.php?title=Roger_Ebert&action=edit&section=18" title="Edit section: External links"><span>edit</span></a><span class="mw-editsection-bracket">]</span></span></div> <div class="noprint" style="clear: right; border: solid #aaa 1px; margin: 0 0 1em 1em; font-size: 90%; background: #f9f9f9; width: 250px; padding: 4px; spacing: 0px; text-align: left; float: right;"> <div style="float: left;"><figure class="mw-halign-none" typeof="mw:File"><a href="/wiki/File:Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg" class="mw-file-description" title="Wikipedia"><img alt="Wikipedia" src="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/50px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png" decoding="async" width="50" height="46" class="mw-file-element" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/75px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg/100px-Wikipedia-logo-v2.svg.png 2x" data-file-width="103" data-file-height="94" /></a><figcaption>Wikipedia</figcaption></figure></div> <div style="margin-left: 60px;"><a href="/wiki/Wikipedia" title="Wikipedia">Wikipedia</a> has an article about: <div style="margin-left: 10px;"><i><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ebert" class="extiw" title="wikipedia:Roger Ebert">Roger Ebert</a></b></i></div> </div> </div> <div class="noprint" style="clear: right; 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