A piece on Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and Joe Pesci, and what they've meant to the career of Martin Scorsese.
A tribute to the late Penny Marshall, TV star and trailblazing director of Big, A League of Their Own and more.
The latest on Blu-ray, including Den of Thieves, Paddington 2, All the Money in the World, and The Virgin Suicides.
A list of films and special events to check out when attending this year's Chicago International Film Festival.
Walter Chaw revisits Oliver Stone's 1981 horror film "The Hand" and explores the director's fascination with nightmares and the uncanny.
A report on day two of Ebertfest with recaps and videos of Q&As after "Grandma," "Northfork" and "The Third Man."
A film-by-film preview of Ebertfest 2016, which runs from April 13 - 17.
A brief consideration of Michael and Mark Polish's Northfork, which will play Ebertfest 2016.
The latest and greatest on Netflix, VOD, and Blu-ray, including The End of the Tour, Southpaw, Inside Out, The Gift, Army of Darkness, Kwaidan, and more!
Nighthawks at the cinema; Rebecca Parrish on "Radical Grace"; Suicide harder to read than murder; John Carpenter on "Vampires"; "Sicario" not yet a reality.
A holiday gift guide compiling RogerEbert.com's reviews of Blu-ray/DVD releases and boxed sets and a few more books from 2014.
Picks for the best of the 2013-14 television season, in the form of a Dream Emmy ballot.
The verdict on "Orange Is The New Black: Season 2"; Three masters and their audience; Arthur C. Clarke predicts the Internet; Nathan Rabin on "Blue Steel"; Indie alternatives to "Edge of Tomorrow."
Marie writes: The West Coast is currently experiencing a heat wave and I have no air conditioning. That said, and despite it currently being 80F inside my apartment, at least the humidity is low. Although not so low, that I don't have a fan on my desk and big glass of ice tea at the ready. My apartment thankfully faces East and thus enjoys the shade after the sun has crossed the mid-point overhead. And albeit perverse in its irony, it's because it has been so hot lately that I've been in the mood to watch the following film again and which I highly recommend to anyone with taste and a discerning eye.
I'm fairly certain most Martin Scorsese fans prefer his Robert DeNiro period to the current one with Leonardo DiCaprio. The later entries may include the film that won him the Academy Award for Best Picture ("The Departed") and they've surely displayed signs of greatness, but I don't think any of them can be discussed as pinnacle achievements like his earlier ones.
Marie writes: you've all heard of Banksy. But do you know about JR...?(click to enlarge image)
The Grand Poobah writes: Here's a behind the scenes lookinside our control room! This is where the magic happens.
Legendary movie critic Pauline Kael formally recognized Morgan Freeman's talents in her review: "Morgan Freeman may be the greatest American actor." It's hard to argue with that title now, but it was in 1987 when she wrote her review for "Street Smart."
From the perspective of more than 20 years after its theatrical release in the US, it's rather surprising to think that this small, flawed movie boosted the career of one of the great American actors of our time. It garnered him his first Oscar nomination (he lost to Sean Connery in "The Untouchables") and that was just the start. He has been nominated for an Oscar five times in total and received the Oscar for best supporting actor for "Million Dollar Baby". He is now one of the most formidable actors in Hollywood and is consistently watchable on the screen.
Q. You're a lonely single film buff and it's Saturday night. Hitchcock or Kurosawa? (Matrcus Burciaga)
Arthur Penn's "Night Moves" (1975) is one of the great movies of the '70s. As a detective picture about a private eye with flawed vision -- in this case, a small-time independent dick and former football player named Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), who'd like to think he's Sam Spade -- it would make a great double bill with "Chinatown," released the previous year. Yesterday, when the news came of French director Eric Rohmer's death, a lot of people who apparently hadn't even seen "Night Moves" (or, perhaps, a Rohmer movie) were freely quoting Moseby's famous wisecrack in pieces about Rohmer without providing any context for it:
"I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry."
It wasn't long before it even became a Twitter meme: #nightmoves. (See examples below, after jump.)
What some (not all) of the quoters didn't seem to realize or remember is that Harry's remark, as scripted by Alan Sharp, is a brittle homophobic jab at a gay friend of his wife's. (Watch the clip above.) Ellen (Susan Clark) invites Harry to join her and Charles (Ben Archibek -- that's him at the end of the clip) for a movie: Eric Rohmer's classic "My Night at Maud's" (1970), about an engaged man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who spends a long, memorable night in conversation with a divorcee (Françoise Fabian). Moseby is asserting his macho credentials, and ends the scene by teasing Charles about going bowling again sometime. "You seem to get some weird kind of satisfaction from this sort of thing, don't you?" Charles replies. Later that night, Harry drives by the theater as the movie is letting out and sees something indicating that his wife may be having an affair.
PARK CITY, Utah--"Northfork" is about a Montana town that is buried forever beneath a lake, and about the agents who clear out the residents, and the angels who come to console those who linger behind. But that does not evoke it, it only describes it.
PARK CITY, Utah--Now the buzz has taken over, and I am seeing mostly good, sometimes great, films. You open the Sundance catalog on the first day of the festival and choose your films for the first weekend, and after that you go where the buzz sends you, because audiences are always honest.
PARK CITY, Utah--I have just spent an hour with the 2003 program for the Sundance Film Festival, and I am churning with eagerness to get at these films. On the basis of track records, this could be the strongest Sundance in some time--and remember, last year's festival kicked off an extraordinary year for indie films.
Great Movies
