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Roger Ebert
Tomatometer-approved critic
Chicago, IL
http://rogerebert.com/
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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Home (2008) |
What happens would not make sense in many households, but in this one, it represents a certain continuity, and confirms deep currents we sensed almost from the first. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 29, 2024
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Seven (1995) |
Seven, a dark, grisly, horrifying and intelligent thriller, may be too disturbing for many people, I imagine, although if you can bear to watch it, you will see filmmaking of a high order. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 29, 2024
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Almost Famous (2000) |
Oh, what a lovely film. I was almost hugging myself while I watched it. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 26, 2024
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Pulp Fiction (1994) |
Quentin Tarantino is the Jerry Lee Lewis of cinema, a pounding performer who doesn't care if he tears up the piano, as long as everybody is rocking. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 01, 2024
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Amélie (2001) |
Amelie is a delicious pastry of a movie, a lighthearted fantasy in which a winsome heroine overcomes a sad childhood and grows up to bring cheer to the needful and joy to herself. You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Feb 13, 2024
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The White Girl (1990) |
Brown turns in a smooth, professional job in his debut as a writer-director, but the movie is undermined somewhat by his single-minded vision of it as a message picture. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Dec 26, 2023
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Heat (1995) |
Above all, the dialogue is complex enough to allow the characters to say what they're thinking: They are eloquent, insightful, fanciful, poetic when necessary. They're not trapped with clichés. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Dec 21, 2023
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Home Alone (1990) |
If Home Alone had limited itself to the things that might possibly happen to a forgotten 8-year-old, I think I would have liked it more. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Nov 29, 2023
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Phantasm (1979) |
It's put together rather curiously out of disjointed scenes, snatches of dialog, and brief strokes of characterization. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Nov 28, 2023
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Cocoon (1985) |
"Cocoon" is one of the sweetest, gentlest science-fiction movies I’ve seen, a hymn to the notion that aliens might come from outer space and yet still be almost as corny and impulsive as we are. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Nov 12, 2023
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Un Chien Andalou (1929) |
A movie like this is a tonic. It assaults old and unconscious habits of moviegoing. It is disturbing, frustrating, maddening. It seems without purpose... - RogerEbert.com
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| Posted Nov 02, 2023
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Play It as It Lays (1972) |
Play It as It Lays is an astringent, cynical movie that ultimately manages to spin one single timid thread of hope. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Sep 28, 2023
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Night Games (1966) |
It is a film made entirely in the mind, as if the heart were no concern, and it can be seen that way -- as a cold, aloof study of human neurosis. But not for a moment did I care about any of the characters. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Sep 20, 2023
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Traffic (2000) |
Soderbergh's film uses a level-headed approach. It watches, it observes, it does not do much editorializing. The hopelessness of anti-drug measures is brought home through practical scenarios, not speeches and messages -- except for a few. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Sep 08, 2023
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Lone Star (1996) |
John Sayles' Lone Star contains so many riches, it humbles ordinary movies. And yet they aren't thrown before us, to dazzle and impress: It is only later, thinking about the film, that we appreciate the full reach of its material. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Sep 06, 2023
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When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) |
Alcoholism has been called a disease of denial. What When a Man Loves a Woman understands is that those around the alcoholic often deny it, too, and grow accustomed to their relationship with a drunk. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Sep 01, 2023
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Moscow on the Hudson (1984) |
[This] is the kind of movie that Paul Mazursky does especially well. It's a comedy that finds most of its laughs in the close observations of human behavior, and that finds its story in a contemporary subject Mazursky has some thoughts about. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Aug 22, 2023
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Batman (1989) |
The Gotham City created in Batman is one of the most distinctive and atmospheric places I’ve seen in the movies. It’s a shame something more memorable doesn’t happen there. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 25, 2023
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La Haine (1995) |
Hate is, I suppose, a Generation X film, whatever that means, but more mature and insightful than the American Gen X movies. In America, we cling to the notion that we have choice... In France, Kassovitz says, it is society that has made the choice. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 20, 2023
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Magnolia (1999) |
Magnolia is operatic in its ambition, a great, joyous leap into melodrama and coincidence, with ragged emotions, crimes and punishments, deathbed scenes, romantic dreams, generational turmoil and celestial intervention, all scored to insistent music. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 15, 2023
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Mulholland Dr. (2001) |
The movie is a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir, and the less sense it makes, the more we can't stop watching it... This is a movie to surrender yourself to. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 11, 2023
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The Color Purple (1985) |
It is a great, warm, hard, unforgiving, triumphant movie, and there is not a scene that does not shine with the love of the people who made it. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 31, 2023
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Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) |
[Raiders of the Lost Ark] grabs you in the first shot, hurtles you through a series of incredible adventures, and deposits you back in reality two hours later -- breathless, dizzy, wrung-out, and with a silly grin on your face. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 04, 2023
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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) |
As I watched it, I felt a real delight, because recent Hollywood escapist movies have become too jaded and cynical, and they have lost the feeling that you can stumble over astounding adventures just by going on a hike with your Scout troop. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 01, 2023
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Boys on the Side (1995) |
It's an original, and what it does best is show how strangers can become friends, and friends can become like family. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 15, 2023
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Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1992) |
Why is that animation can't seem to free itself from subtly racist coding? That objection aside, Little Nemo is an interesting if not a great film, with some jolly characters, some cheerful songs, and some visual surprises. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 07, 2023
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A Dry White Season (1989) |
Here, with a larger budget and stars in the cast, [Palcy] still has the same eye for character detail. This movie isn't just a plot, trotted out to manipulate us, but the painful examination of one man's change of conscience. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jan 04, 2023
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The Penthouse (1967) |
The Penthouse, quite simply, is a pretty good shocker. Shockers are standard fare in the movies and always have been, but successful ones are rare. It's a relief to find one that's made with skill and a certain amount of intelligence. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Aug 16, 2022
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Terms of Endearment (1983) |
The most remarkable achievement of Terms of Endearment, which is filled with great achievements, is its ability to find the balance between the funny and the sad, between moments of deep truth and other moments of high ridiculousness. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 21, 2022
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Amadeus (1984) |
This is Mozart as an eighteenth-century Bruce Springsteen, and yet (here is the genius of the movie) there is nothing cheap or unworthy about the approach. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 11, 2022
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Up the Down Staircase (1967) |
We need more American films like Up the Down Staircase. We need more films that might be concerned, even remotely, with real experiences that might once have happened to real people. And we need more actresses like Sandy Dennis. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 06, 2022
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Tess (1979) |
It is a beautifully visualized period piece that surrounds Tess with the attitudes of her time -- attitudes that explain how restricted her behavior must be, and how society views her genuine human emotions as inappropriate. This is a wonderful film. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jun 17, 2022
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I Like It Like That (1994) |
I Like It Like That looks more unconventional than it is, but Martin puts a spin on the material with lots of human color and high energy. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 02, 2022
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Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964) |
It's one of the most unusual films I've seen, a barrage of images, music and noises, shot with such an active camera we almost need seatbelts. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Feb 28, 2022
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Cleo From 5 to 7 (1961) |
The passage of time has been kinder to [Varda's] films than some of theirs, and Cléo from 5 to 7 plays today as startlingly modern. Released in 1962, it seems as innovative and influential as any New Wave film. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Feb 17, 2022
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Just Tell Me What You Want (1980) |
This is a film that could have just been high-class, soft-core trash, but it sneaks in a couple of fascinating characters and makes them real. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Feb 15, 2022
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Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) |
It's not the equal of Pandora's Box, but [Brooks's] performance is on the same high level. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Nov 30, 2021
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El Mariachi (1992) |
An enormously entertaining movie. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Aug 30, 2021
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The Decalogue (1989) |
The 10 films are not philosophical abstractions but personal stories that involve us immediately; I hardly stirred during some of them. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 01, 2021
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Flashpoint (1984) |
"Flashpoint" is such a good thriller for so much of its length that it's kind of a betrayal when the ending falls apart. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Apr 15, 2021
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The Warriors (1979) |
No matter what impression the ads give, this isn't even remotely intended as an action film. It's a set piece. It's a ballet of stylized male violence. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 07, 2021
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Starting Over (1979) |
Starting Over actually feels sort of embarrassed at times, maybe because characters are placed in silly sitcom situations and then forced to say lines that are supposed to be revealing and real. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Dec 17, 2020
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Galia (1966) |
Georges Lautner's Galia opens and closes with arty shots of the ocean, mother of us all, but in between it's pretty clear that what is washing ashore is the French New Wave. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Oct 11, 2020
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I, A Woman, Part II (1968) |
If you can miss only one movie this year, make it I, A Woman. Here is a Swedish film which very nearly restores my faith in the cinema, demonstrating that all the other crummy movies I've had to sit through in this job weren't so bad. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Sep 26, 2020
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Cell 211 (2009) |
In addition to its effectiveness as a thriller, it is also a film showing a man in the agonizing process of changing his values. And it is a critique of a cruel penal system. - RogerEbert.com
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| Posted Sep 23, 2020
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Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969) |
I have to admit, however, that I did enjoy the movie and found myself drawn into it. Director Ted Kotcheff is good with his actors. - RogerEbert.com
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| Posted Jul 28, 2020
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Married to the Mob (1988) |
The results are very good - far better and funnier than most of what is being made these days. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 18, 2020
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Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) |
There's no tragedy in this movie, no sense of the vast scale of suffering outside the bunker. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jun 13, 2020
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Essential Killing (2010) |
With "Essential Killing," [Jerzy] Skolimowski comes closer than ever before to a pure, elemental story. - RogerEbert.com
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| Posted May 05, 2020
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Like Father, Like Son (1987) |
[This] is one of the most desperate comedies I've ever seen, and no wonder. The movie's premise doesn't work -- not at all, not even a little, not even part of the time -- and that means everyone in the movie looks awkward and silly all of the time. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Apr 22, 2020
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