Great Movies
Ebert Club
#411 July 20, 2021
Matt writes: The 74th Cannes Film Festival came to a close this past Saturday, and RogerEbert.com was there every step of the way to provide readers with in-depth dispatches on the numerous enticing selections.
Matt writes: The 74th Cannes Film Festival came to a close this past Saturday, and RogerEbert.com was there every step of the way to provide readers with in-depth dispatches on the numerous enticing selections.
A tribute to the late filmmaker and actor Robert Downey Sr.
A tribute to the late, great Richard Donner.
A collection of all our tributes this past year to the unforgettable talent we lost.
A tribute to the late Margot Kidder.
The Passion of Emma González; Elizabeth Wood on "White Girl"; A driverless future; How to trick AI; The next great action director.
A look at the anti-Trump worldview that connects the 17 films recently inducted into the National Film Registry.
Margaret Betts on "Novitiate"; Alexandra Billings on transgender negativity; Visual language of oppression; Curious pleasure of TV edits; Collapse of "House of Cards."
Crying through the fight scenes in "Wonder Woman"; Behind Wonder Woman is a great man; How Patty Jenkins saved DC; Tributes to 1978's "Superman"; Ebert on Jenkins.
History of kids cursing onscreen; Capturing the process of dying; Interviewing Dorothy Arzner; A charming hostelry; Jerry and Dean meet again.
An appreciation of Richard Lester as a retrospective of his work is about to unfold in New York City.
The science, ethics and rubber suit of Godzilla; Ralph Bakshi on animation's past and future; Ellen Burstyn on acting and direction; what videogames taught movies.
Gerardo Valero reflects on "Man of Steel" and the challenges of making a good Superman movie.
We're counting down twelve great movie scenes set around Christmas. Here is the first batch, with #12 through #9.
Terence Stamp opens up about singing in "Unfinished Song," the long acting dry spell he had in the 1970s, and working with Steven Soderbergh.
Superman always seems to need to be revamped, revived, and recycled. He is, to use comics critic Tom Crippen's keen phrase, the mainstream comics' industry's "hood ornament." In this extensively annotated list, Simon Abrams picks the 10 most influential and astonishing visions of the Man of Steel.
"Maverick" starts with the protagonist in the middle of nowhere. He helplessly sits on a horse; his neck is at the end of a noose tied to a tree branch. The men who put him in this vulnerable situation surround him. They drop a bag containing a snake and ride away. If the horse bolts, Bret Maverick dies. It is one of the most attention-grabbing opening scenes in film.
UPDATED (08/01/12): Scroll to the bottom of this entry to see my first impressions of the newly announced critics' and directors' poll results.
Vittorio De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves" (1948) topped the first Sight & Sound critics' poll in 1952, only four years after it was first released, dropped to #7 in 1962, and then disappeared from the top ten never to be seen again. (In 2002 only five of the 145 participating critics voted for it.) Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" (1941) flopped in its initial release but was rediscovered in the 1950s after RKO licensed its films to television in 1956. From 1962 to 2002 "Kane" has remained at the top of the poll (46 critics voted for it last time). This year, a whopping 846 top-ten ballots (mentioning 2,045 different titles) were counted, solicited from international "critics, programmers, academics, distributors, writers and other cinephiles" -- including bloggers and other online-only writers. Sight & Sound has announced it will live-tweet the 2012 "Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time" (@SightSoundmag #sightsoundpoll) August 1, and as I write this the night before, I of course don't know the results. But, for now at least, I'm more interested in the process.
Given the much wider and younger selection of voters in 2012, ist-watchers have been speculating: Will another movie (leading candidate: Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo," number 2 in 2002) supplant "Kane" at the top of the list? Will there be any silent films in the top 10? (Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" and Murnau's "Sunrise" tied for #7 on the 2002 list, but the latter was released in 1927 with a Fox Movietone sound-on-film musical score and sound effects.)
Though there's been no rule about how much time should pass between a film's initial release and its eligibility (the Library of Congress's National Film Registry requires that selections be at least ten years old), most of the selections ten to have stood the test of time for at least a decade or two. The newest film on the 2002 list was the combination of "The Godfather" (1972) and "The Godfather, Part II" (1974) -- but they won't be allowed to count as one title for 2012.
Published with Press Play on Indiewire
With the unparalleled box office success of The Avengers, superheroes are back in the spotlight. Most comic book aficionados are delighted with the recognition. But believe it or not, there are those such as myself who are dismayed at how superhero films, though more popular than ever, seem to be losing their luster.
Is it love at first sight? It's certainly lust at first sight between them in the beginning. Something clicks inside. They soon begin their secret affair, and then, motivated by their common desire to escape from the world they're stuck in, they hatch a scheme to solve their problems once for all. They have a good plan. They can succeed if they carefully tiptoe along the thin line they draw. However, in the world of film noir, it is usually easier said than done.
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László Kovács (May 14, 1933 – July 22, 2007)
Kovács emigrated to the United States with his lifelong friend Vilmos Zsigmond, who became another great Hungarian-American cinematographer.
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For me, perhaps the most indelible image in Kovács' work is the last shot of "Five Easy Pieces" (Bob Rafelson, 1970), a long stationary take of a gray, rainy stretch of Pacific Northwest highway, stuck in the muddy pavement outside an isolated gas station. The only camera movement is a slight pan. All the loneliness, frustration and alienation of the whole movie culminates (in a diminuendo, if that's possible) in this damp, atmospheric image.
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Other notable Kovács films include:
"Psych-Out" (Richard Rush, 1968) "Targets" (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968) "Easy Rider" (Dennis Hopper, 1969) "That Cold Day in the Park" (Robert Altman, 1969) "Getting Straight" (Rush, 1970) "Alex in Wonderland" (Paul Mazursky, 1970) "The Last Movie" (Hopper, 1971) "What's Up, Doc?" (Bogdanovich, 1972) "The King of Marvin Gardens" (Bob Rafelson, 1972) "Paper Moon" (Bogdanovich, 1973) "Shampoo" (Hal Ashby, 1975) "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (Steven Spielberg, 1977 -- additional photography) "New York, New York" (Martin Scorsese, 1977) "The Last Waltz" (Scorsese, 1978 -- additional photography) "Ghostbusters" (Ivan Reitman, 1984) "Mask" (Bogdanovich, 1985) "Say Anything..." (Cameron Crowe, 1989) "Radio Flyer" (Richard Donner, 1992) "My Best Friend's Wedding" (P.J. Hogan, 1997)
Kal-El descends to Earth in his Super Jesus Christ Pose
The figure responsible for last year's so-called Hollywood slump may just be be the savior of this year's summer grosses, according to some biz types. Yes, we're talking about Jesus Christ. Mel Gibson's blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ" attracted so many people who don't ordinarily go to the movies in the spring of 2004, that it made the revenues for 2005 look out of whack in comparison. But this year, JC helped inspire "The Da Vinci Code" to a miraculous opening (despite generally bad reviews -- a miserable 24% on the TomatoMeter). It's been the top grosser for five weeks overseas, where Box Office Jesus has trumped all the X-Men's superpowers combined. Next, the King of the Jews is poised to take on "Forrest Gump," making "The Da Vinci Code" the biggest Tom Hanks movie ever. Holy Fool!
(Second) Coming Soon: "Superman Returns." He's been away, but now he's back. Just like You Know Who....
