Ebert

I read Ebert regularly. I disagree that he's the best of the mainstream critics, although he is certainly the most fair. He's just not analytical enough. He's written some puzzilingly dumb reviews in the past (one star for Blue Velvet? two for Brazil? two-and-a-half for Naked Lunch?), and lately, I have been finding his reviews to be rather questionable (he loved Black Hawk Down and Better Luck Tomorrow). His Great Movies articles are pretty good, however, and I like the fact that he has championed some great films that otherwise may have gone overlooked (Boyz N The Hood, Dark City, Minority Report, Being John Malkovich, A Simple Plan, Bringing Out the Dead).

I imagine a few unsuspecting families will wander into it, despite the "R" rating, and I picture terrified kids running screaming down the aisles. What I can't picture is, who will attend this movie? Anybody? Movies like this are a test of taste. If you understand why "Kill Bill" is a good movie and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is not, and "Bad Santa" is a good movie and "The Cat in the Hat" is not, then you have freed yourself from the belief that a movie's quality is determined by its subject matter. You instinctively understand that a movie is not about what it is about, but about how it is about it.

ok, i really need to take a nap so this isn't gonna come out too clearly and i can't write properly about film or music or anything anyway so blah bl-blah whatever who cares but man - bros - i really do not understand the praise 'dark city' gets. i mean, apart from the cool city-morphing fx and the creepy ghoulie dudes you've got average acting at best (and keifer's constipated snivelling at worst); a story that reads well on the back of the box, like, "dude, i gotta see this!" but plays out like one of those lame holodeck episodes of star trek where picard is playing a hardboiled private dick who ain't really all that hardboiled after all and the whole ep turns out totally limp and pedestrian without any excitement at all; and direction that comes off like a cheap music video from a dozen years ago or something - the shots in the scene where the fishbowl breaks near the beginning, for example, are cut in such an amateurish way but i think it's supposed to look stylish? like bowl falls !! fast cut to top view as bowl smashes on the floor !! is it in slow motion too? i can't remember. but it's just crappy. it makes me wanna stab myself in the neck. i've seen the thing twice - rented and hated it, and caught it on the teevee maybe a year later after reading a couple inexplicably glowing reviews and i still hate it. i just hate it! somebody make me like it! and i know there are only like three sentences in this mess of words and i don't care! i hate 'dark city' that much!

but uh, that ebert guy though, yeah, he's got his ups and downs. i figure maybe he wades out about chest high in a sea of mediocrity and mostly floats. i don't know what that means but i typed it. anyway, he's all about seeing thandie newton naked and i can really appreciate that, y'know. plus his work with russ meyer, of course. big ups for that. what was the question again?

blah blah zzz.

(Mind you, the same thing happens to me attempting to write on the great films 10 out of 10, I just expect a bit more from someone with the stature of an Ebert.)

there's a really long interview with him & siskel, I forget who by, but it's very fascinating and revealing. I'll try and dig it up.

I'm afraid of people who've been reviewing movies for decades but aren't pretty cynical.

His review of The Graduate is baffling. He starts by admitting that when he first saw the movie he cheered at the end, as did many people who did not understand what they had just seen. He then, without admitting to being young and foolish, attacks the values he imagined the movie to have had, and blames the movie for them. He says the Mrs. Robinson is the most sympathetic character in the movie, and then accuses the movie of not knowing that. It's nonsense.

And I wonder -- did he like Mulholland Drive alone among the Lynch films because it has the biggest boobs and the hottest lesbo scene? When he talks about sex, his motives are always suspect -- more suspect, I would argue, than his buddy Russ Meyer's. He praised the frank sexual talk in Gigli, fer chrissakes.

But I think I know what he'd say to that. He'd say, "Have we become so cynical that we cannot appreciate big boobs and hot lesbo sex in movies?"

Horror movies: the more existential, the better. I can appreciate a movie with underlying themes of the absence of God and/or the futility of existence (e.g. The Exorcist, The Others). And I really appreciated the first Final Destination, where the characters go so far as to actually have existential conversations. It was an acknowledgement, I felt, that all horror movies are based on that dread of meaninglessness. But most horror movies (yes, most) take these basic fears and do nothing new with them. They still work if you're young, but how anyone could watch a lot of horror movies, over many years of their life, is beyond me. Gets a bit repetitive, doesn't it?

"Repetition compulsion is a big item in art these days. As a form, the expectation of change vs. the reality of sameness once seemed like a strictly artworld/philosophical opposition, an exotic novelty in the writings of Deleuze and the music of Glass, Reich and Reilly. Now it's pervasive, the perfect form for a depressed age, from Atom Egoyan to Tsai Ming-liang, from Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us to Oliveira's I'm Going Home, from Phillip Roth's American trilogy to DeLillo's Underworld, from Seinfeld to Ghost World to In the Mood for Love to trip-hop."

as if the cheerful fascism in the movie wasn't satire

thats a tough issue. it is satire, but its kind of broad and silly as satire and the film has kind of gotten a free ride in certain quarters among people who "get" its satire. see noel carroll on this film--he's very critical of it

True, but that's one of the charming things about it. It helps, I guess, to be familiar with Verhoeven, to have seen Robocop ferrinstance, to understand the level of satire he's pitching. I love the way the future is blank and white and pretty and populated entirely by escapees from Melrose Place. I like the idea of fascism itself being kind of broad and silly.

Can't find this online. Any help?

how should satire be? inverted and morose?

(x-post)

Your probably very right ryan, but we might'n havin' a li'l provokin' contest.

I'm withholding judgement until I read some of the Noel Carroll article Am is referencing. Holes can be punched in the movie, I'm sure, and my suspicion is that Carroll finds the satire a bit sloppy, maybe even irresponsible. I'm very curious to find out.

OTM

C'mon get up and see some... swing-in... swang-in! That's really disgusting.

Yeah, probably. I like that rumour, though. It suits him.

"This is the kind of movie where..." yeah, we know, we know, you've written books on this sort of crap, Roger, can't you think of anything more interesting to say about this movie?

No, he can't. That's the point. There's nothing new to say about a movie that doesn't say anything new.

Does this make him a greedy, money-grabbing bastard or just more full of movie-love than his peers?

He reviews most major releases, and highlights minor ones. It's part of his job to warn people against movies they might see and regret.

(Roeper's contribution to journalism is a column that's half entertainment gossip, half "didja ever wonder" fluffery.)

That is nothing but an excuse for lazy criticism. He likes movies that don't say anything new and is able to talk about them without repeating himself so obviously. His review of Kill Bill - actually, many reviews of Kill Bill, hardly a movie that says anything new - was not hampered by this sort of material, if I remember correctly. And anyway : I would not mind the repitition so much if it was more interesting...

You can't expect any critic to write interesting essays on movies that bored them.

"[Reviewing] not only involves praising trash — though it does involve that, as I will show in a moment — but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever. The reviewer, jaded though he may be, is professionally interested in books, and out of the thousands that appear annually, there are probably fifty or a hundred that he would enjoy writing about. If he is a top-notcher in his profession he may get hold of ten or twenty of them: more probably he gets hold of two or three. The rest of his work, however conscientious he may be in praising or damning, is in essence humbug. He is pouring his immortal spirit down the drain, half a pint at a time."

i like kent jones sometimes but the phrase "depressed age" strikes me as very dumb

Criticism is irrelevant. Why are you even reading a review of "Club Dread"? You've seen the TV ads and you already know (a) you won't miss it or (b) not in a million years. There will be better movies playing in the same theater, even if it is a duplex, but on the other hand there is something to be said for goofiness without apology by broken lizards who just wanna have fun.

I think I'll give it two and a half stars plus a nudge and a wink, as a signal to those who liked "Super Troopers" and know what they're in for. I gave "Super Troopers" two and a half stars, too, but I'd rather see it again than certain distinguished movies I could mention.

This is one of things I like about Ebert. There's a certain world-weariness to this review (the subtext of "Why are you even reading a review of this?" is, of course, "Why am I even writing a review of this?"), but it's balanced by this playful attitude of "Hey, why not?" It's this sort of honesty I admire.

Now that's a list I want to see.

He's an intermittently bright man but his taste is just too dodgy.

>"If you understand why 'Kill Bill' is a good movie and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' is not"<

you have been reading too much Ebert.

How long will it be before we recover from "The Graduate" and can make a movie without half a dozen soul-searching pseudo-significant ballads? When we dump the songs, we'll also be able to get rid of all those scenes of riding on buses, walking the rainy streets, hanging around, etc., that are necessary while the songs are being sung. [See Semi-Obligatory Lyrical Interlude.]

i love the graduate but this is so fucking OTM!

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19801219/REVIEWS/12190301/1023

he makes a point of saying his thumbs-up has nothing to do with boob love, but of course it does.

"Watch Dolly. She's bouncing in and out, irrepressibly."

enjoyed his twilight new moon review