Chaz Ebert and the RogerEbert.com group of writers wishes you Happy Holidays!
An interview with actress Agyness Deyn about her performance in Terence Davies' "Sunset Song."
A look at "Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy," a new Criterion release featuring "Alice in the Cities," "Wrong Move" and "Kings of the Road."
The movie questionnaire and 2015 reviews of RogerEbert.com film critic Peter Sobczynski.
The movie questionnaire and 2015 reviews of RogerEbert.com film critic Odie Henderson.
An appreciation of Nastassja Kinski, on the occasion of a tribute to her at the Film Society at Lincoln Center from November 27-December 3, 2014.
Writer Peter Sobczynski responds to our Movie Love Questionnaire.
Writer Odie Henderson responds to our Movie Love Questionnaire.
The 65th Cannes Film Festival's eleven days of prediction, wild speculation and gossip, some of it centering on the notoriously cranky personality of this year's jury president Nanni Moretti, came to an end Sunday evening in festival's business-like awards ceremony (or Soiree de Palmares, as the French call it) that traditionally lacks the extended let's-put-on-a-show aspect of the Oscars. The jury was seated onstage in a solemn group, and the awards given with a modest amount of fancy-dress formality, a bit of unrehearsed fumbling, and acceptance speeches that were short, dignified and to the point.
The foul weather that has marred the usually sunny festival continued to the end, and elite guests and movie stars alike walked a red carpet tented by a plastic roof as the rain fell on the multi-colored umbrellas of the surrounding crowds. Festival director Thierry Fremoux personally held an umbrella for Audrey Tautou, star of Claude Miller's closing night film, "Therese Desqueyroux," as she headed up the famous steps in a calf-length ivory lace gown with a bodice heavily embroidered in gold.
Actress Berenice Bejo, an international sensation since her starring role and subsequent Oscar nomination for "The Artist," performed mistress of ceremonies duties in a white, bridal-looking strapless sheath with long train, her only jewel an enormous heart-shaped emerald ring. Just about the only prediction this year that turned out to be accurate was the one that advised that all was unpredictable under the jurisdiction of the pensive and often-scowling Moretti.
Q. I noticed the letter in the Answer Man from Daniel Stender of Ames, Iowa, who had a project of paintings of scenes from movies featuring people dressed in bear suits but who could only think of two titles, "The Shining" and "The Science of Sleep."
Neil LaBute's new film doesn't take place in Los Angeles or New York or . . . anywhere in particular. There is not a single outdoor establishing shot anywhere in it. "Yeah," LaBute says. "There's no shot of the apartment building we're about to go into, in case you've forgotten what it looks like."
TORONTO -- Joe Eszterhas hasn't become history's highest-paid screenwriter by penning quirky little stories about coming of age in Cleveland - but one of the big hits of the Toronto Film Festival's closing weekend is just such a film.
CANNES, France If Stephen Hawking had not already used it, A Brief History of Time would be the perfect title for a book about the movies. No other medium allows us to look more carefully into the human face, and to reflect on the way it records the passage of time.
CANNES, FRANCE -- The great galleon Neptune rides high in the old yacht harbor, attracting thousands of gawkers who admire its weathered timbers, its 18th century riggings and its bizarre 20-foot figurehead. But Roman Polanski's "Pirates," the movie that used this ship as a prop and location, sank on launching at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
TORONTO, Canada - There is a time when a film festival looks just like a convention of hardware dealers, and that time is at 2 in the morning in the hotel hospitality suite when everyone has collapsed exhausted onto the couches and started to contemplate the possibility of dawn. Into the gloom that was enveloping him, the film director Paul Schrader poured a glass of Canadian whiskey. He was scheduled to have breakfast with me at 8:30 a.m., but now he thought it over and said it might be better if we just went ahead and talked now, because he doubted that he would make any sense in the morning.
CANNES -- The riots were Wednesday. Kinski was Thursday. Relative calm returned by the weekend. But it is safe to say that few entrances in the history of the Cannes Film Festival have rivaled the reception of Nastassja Kinski when she arrived here for the premiere of her latest film, the luridly stylistic "The Moon in the Gutter." The film was not a success, but Kinski was a triumph -- not because of her performance, but because of herself. Has there ever been an actress in the history of the cinema who has so fascinated so many people without yet having appeared in a single truly great movie?
Great Movies
