Great Movies
TV/Streaming
Home Entertainment Guide: October 2021
The latest on Blu-ray and streaming services, including Free Guy, F9: The Fast Saga, Zola, and special editions of Legend and High Sierra.
The latest on Blu-ray and streaming services, including Free Guy, F9: The Fast Saga, Zola, and special editions of Legend and High Sierra.
An article featuring links to all eight episodes of Brian Raftery's podcast "Gene and Roger" about Siskel and Ebert on The Ringer/Spotify.
A look at Justin Lin's Better Luck Tomorrow almost 20 years after its controversial Sundance premiere.
An annotated table of contents including content both new and republished featured on RogerEbert.com in allegiance with the Black Lives Matter movement.
A special edition of Thumbnails chronicling the success of "Crazy Rich Asians" and the current state of representation in Hollywood.
A report from SDCC on an actor who has been in all three of the new "Star Trek" films. Well, sorta.
How we process movies in 2015; Top Ten Pixar Movies; Christopher McQuarrie on Minnelli and more; Dangers of auteur TV; Dorothy Arzner retrospective at UCLA.
A report on "The 360 Evolution: The future of movies" at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con.
A review of the new season of "True Detective," starring Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch.
Being young, white male directors with one indie hit gets you a blockbuster like Jurassic World. Why doesn't the same hold true for female directors and directors of color?
Ultra-indie director Cory McAbee ("The American Astronaut," "Stingray Sam") talks about making musical sci-fi cowboy movies, writing an opera and the Monkees.
Marie writes: If I have a favorite festival, it's SXSW and which is actually a convergence of film, music and emerging technologies. However it's the festival's penchant for screening "quirky" Indie movies which really sets my heart pounding and in anticipation of seeing the next Wes Anderson or Charlie Kaufman. So from now until March, I'll be tracking down the best with the zeal of a Jack Russell terrier! Especially since learning that Joss Whedon's modern B/W take on Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" is set to screen at SXSW 2013 in advance of its June 21st US release date; they'll cut an official trailer soon, rubbing hands together!
Marie writes: Ever since he was a boy, photographer John Hallmén has been fascinated by insects. And he's become well-known for photographing the creatures he finds in the Nackareservatet nature reserve not far from his home in Stockholm, Sweden. Hallmén uses various methods to capture his subjects and the results are remarkable. Bugs can be creepy, to be sure, but they can also be astonishingly beautiful...
Blue Damsel Fly [click to enlarge photos]
For tax day, the editors at MSN Movies came up with an idea for contributors to write short essays about the most, ahem, "taxing" people in modern movies. Each of us picked a person whose presence, behind or in front of the camera, we find wearisome and debilitating -- as in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of taxing: "onerous, wearing."
You've probably already guessed my choice. I've written quite a bit about why I find Christopher Nolan's post-"Memento" work lackluster, but this exercise gave me an opportunity to condense my reservations about his writing and directing into one relatively concise piece:
Let me say up front that I don't think Nolan is a bad or thoroughly incompetent director, just a successfully pedestrian one. His Comic-Con fan base makes extravagant claims for each new film -- particularly since Nolan began producing his graphic-novel blockbusters with "Batman Begins" in 2005 -- but the movies are hobbled by thesis-statement screenplays that strain for significance and an ungainly directing style that seems incapable of, and uninterested in, illustrating more than one thing at a time: "Look at this. Now look at this. Now look at this. Now here's some dialogue to explain the movie's fictional rules. Now a character will tell you what he represents and what his goals are." And so on ... You won't experience the thrill of discovery while looking around in a Nolan frame. You'll see the one thing he wants you to see, but everything around it is dead space. [...]
TORONTO, Ont. -- And now the ecstasy and madness begins. The 32nd Toronto Film Festival opens Thursday with no fewer than 15 films, and that’s before it gets up to speed. The Trail Mix Brigade is armed with their knapsacks, bottled water, instant snacks, text messengers and a determination to see, who knows, six, seven, eight films a day.
Q. I just saw "Better Luck Tomorrow" and enjoyed it tremendously. However, most of my friends were disappointed by the ending. I myself would have liked to see more of the characters' reactions to the killing (especially Ben's after Stephanie chooses him). Then I read in a review that Ben's concluding voice-over narrative was modified from the version shown at Sundance in 2002, ostensibly to soften the ending and make the film more palatable for a wider audience. What was different in the original version? (Brian Wong, New York NY)
PARK CITY, Utah--From despair to victory, the South African documentary "Amandla!" has the widest range of emotion of any film at this year's Sundance. It follows the history of the struggle for freedom in terms of the movement's music--which was, as one singer observes, a weapon the apartheid government could not disarm.
PARK CITY, Utah--The man in the audience was angry. "How could you," he asked the director, his voice trembling with sincerity, "despite your talented cast and great production values, make such a bleak, negative, amoral film? What kind of a portrait is this of Asian Americans? Don't you have a responsibility to paint a more positive and helpful portrait of your community?"
