Roger Ebert of the Sun Times
07/24/2008
The X-Files: I Want to Believe / ***1/2 (PG-13)
By Roger Ebert
"The X-Files: I Want to Believe" arrives billed as a "stand-alone" film that requires no familiarity with the famous television series. So it is, leaving us to piece together the plot on our own. And when I say "piece together," trust me, that's exactly what I mean. In an early scene, a human arm turns up, missing its body, and other spare parts are later discovered.
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07/24/2008
The Dark Knight / **** (PG-13)
by Roger Ebert
“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.”
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07/17/2008
Mamma Mia! / ** (PG-13)
"Mamma Mia" (PG-13, 98 minutes). Movie version of the hit stage musical, with Meryl Streep as the villa owner on a Greek isle, and Amanda Seyfried as her about-to-be married daughter. The girl doesn't know who her father is, but finds an old diary and invites three likely candidates to her wedding: Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth and Stellan Skarsgård. Wall-to-wall with ABBA songs, of course, and energetic dancing. I was underwhelmed and don't much like ABBA, but this movie wasn't made for me. It was made for the people who will love it, of which there may be a multitude. You know who are are. Rating: Two stars.
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07/17/2008
Space Chimps / *** (G)
"Space Chimps" (G, 80 minutes) is a goofy animated space opera that sends three U.S. chimpanzee astronauts rocketing to a galaxy, as they say, far, far away. There they encounter strange life forms, and the evil Zartog, who has captured an earlier space probe. Not in the same science fiction league as WALL-E, but successful with lots of whiz- bang action and some witty dialogue. Rating; Three stars.
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07/17/2008
The Last Mistress / ***1/2 (No MPAA rating)
By Roger Ebert
In "The Last Mistress," a passionate and explicit film about sexual obsession, everything pauses for a scene depicting a marriage. It is 1835, in a church in Paris. Vows are exchanged between Ryno de Marigny, a notorious young libertine, and the high-born Hermangarde, whose wealth will be a great comfort to the penniless Ryno. The film opens with two gossipy old friends wondering why the Marquise de Flers would sacrifice her beloved granddaughter to this rake.
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07/17/2008
Elsa & Fred / **1/2 (PG)
By Roger Ebert
Elsa and I have one big thing in common. We both love the famous scene in Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" when Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni wade in the waters of the Trevi Fountain in Rome at dawn. That shared love is almost but not quite enough to inspire a recommendation for "Elsa & Fred," which is a sweet but inconsequential romantic comedy.
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07/17/2008
The Exiles / ***1/2 (No MPAA Rating)
"The Exiles" (Unrated, 72 minutes). Pristine 35mm UCLA restoration of a film shot circa 1960 and virtually unseen until now. Writer-director Kent MacKenzie follows a group of American Indians for most of a day and all of a night, in a hybrid of documentary and fiction. It's like opening a time capsule; it records people and a part of Los Angeles that have alike vanished. They drink, they smoke, they fight, they start over again, and the camera records haunting images. Rating: Three and a half stars.
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07/17/2008
Lights in the Dusk / ***1/2 ()
by Roger Ebert
More and more I am learning to love the films of Aki Kaurismaki, that Finnish master of the stories of sad and lonely losers. Like very few directors (like Tati, Fassbinder, Keaton, Fellini), he has created a world all his own, and you can recognize it from almost every shot. His characters are dour, speak little, expect the worst, smoke too much, are ill-treated by life, are passive in the face of tragedy. Yes, and they are funny.
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07/17/2008
The Visitor / ***1/2 (No MPAA Rating)
"The Visitor" (Unrated, 103 minutes). Richard Jenkins is superb, playing a professor who has essentially shut down all his emotions when he is unexpectedly stirred by meeting interlopers, the man Syrian, the women Senegalese, in his Manhattan apartment. Betraying little emotion, the professor becomes involved in their lives, and reawakens his own. Written and directed by Tom McCarthy. Rating: Three and a half stars.
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07/10/2008
Great Movie: Cool Hand Luke (1967)
by Roger Ebert
All these years after the release of "Cool Hand Luke" in 1967, all you have to do is say, "What we have here is--failure to communicate." Everyone knows the line, and everyone can identify the film, even those who may not have seen it. And here's the curious part. As they make the connection, they'll invariably smile, as if recalling a pleasant experience, a good time at the movies. Have you seen "Cool Hand Luke" lately? I have. Rarely has an important movie star suffered more, in a film wall-to-wall with physical punishment, psychological cruelty, hopelessness and equal parts of sadism and masochism.
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07/17/2008
Movie Answer Man: Gods and monsters
Q. In your review of "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," you justly praise the film for director Guillermo del Toro's fantastic visual imagination in populating his world with unique monsters. But can these things only exist in the realm of computer-generated bits and bytes? You call the Hellboy character "CGI for the most part" and say the film's sights were "created by CGI, of course, but how else?" I was delighted when watching the credits to see whole teams of artists who brought the movie to life with special effects makeup, prosthetics and animatronics (just like the original inhabitants of the Mos Eisley Cantina bar).
After reading an article in the Los Angeles Times, I learned that some of the film's best fantasy visuals, such as the multi-ocular Angel of Death, were created and puppeted in the "real" world and captured that way in del Toro's camera lens. CGI is, of course, just another kind of paint on a filmmaker's palette. But let's not forget the hard work and tremendous artistry of those who continue to push the limits of what can be achieved the old-fashioned way.
Alex Meeres, Regina, Saskatchewan
A. I wrote hastily and overlooked del Toro's love of the whole vast craft of traditional special effects.
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Movies In Theaters
07/25/2008
The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) continue their hunt for the truth.
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07/25/2008
Step Brothers
Two spoiled men (Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly) become rivals when their parents marry.
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07/25/2008
American Teen - Opens Limited Friday, July 25
Four teenagers navigate through their senior year at an Indiana high school.
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07/25/2008
Brideshead Revisited - Opens Limited Friday, July 25
In 1925 England, an Oxford student becomes involved in the complicated lives of British aristocrats.
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07/25/2008
CSNY Deja Vu - Opens Limited Friday, July 25
Anti-war songs highlight Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in concert.
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08/15/2008
Henry Poole is Here - Opens Limited Friday, July 25
After learning he has only a short time to live, a man undergoes a miraculous transformation.
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07/23/2008
Boy A - Opens Limited Friday, July 25
A young man (Andrew Garfield) tries to live a normal life following his release from prison.
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06/13/2008
Baghead - Expands Friday, July 25
Two couples retreat to a log cabin to write the great American screenplay only to find themselves stalked by a mysterious man with a bag on his head.
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