The closing shots of Steven Spielberg's "War Horse" will stir emotions in every serious movie lover. The sky is painted with a deeply red-orange sunset. A lone rider is seen far away on the horizon. The rider approaches and dismounts. He embraces a woman and a man. They all embrace the horse's head. Music swells. This footage, with the rich colors and dramatic framing on what is either a soundstage or intended to look like one, could come directly from a John Ford Western.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
Showing posts with label Movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movie. Show all posts
Friday, March 30, 2012
War Horse
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Great Movies: The First 100
Every other week I visit a film classic from the past and write about it. My "Great Movies" series began in the autumn of 1996 and now reaches a landmark of 100 titles with today's review of Federico Fellini's "8 1/2," which is, appropriately, a film about a film director. I love my job, and this is the part I love the most.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
Directors
Orson Welles
Luis Bunuel
John Ford
F.W. Murnau
Buster Keaton
Alfred Hitchcock
Billy Wilder
Akira Kurosawa
Jacques Tati
Movies
Mr. Hulot's Holiday
Metropolis
Children of Heaven
Nosferatu
The Third Man
Ikiru
Written on the Wind
Last Year at Marienbad
2001: A Space Odyssey
Battleship Potemkin
Floating Weeds
The Great Movies
Movie history did not begin in 1967, but my career as a movie critic did.
Since then I've reviewed most of the new movies as they've opened, but there is almost never time to go back and write about the great movies of the past. Three or four times a year, when a classic movie is re-released in a restored version, I'll write something about it (recently I've revisited ``Belle de Jour,'' ``Taxi Driver,'' and ``The Umbrellas of Cherbourg''). But in general I press forward into the future.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
Belle de Jour
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061395/
Taxi Driver
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075314/
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058450/
Casablanca
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034583/
Magnificent Ambersons
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035015/
Mr. Hulot's Holiday
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046487/
Vertigo
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/
8 1/2
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056801/
Floating Weeds
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053390/
The General
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0017925/
Citizen Kane
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033467/
The Third Man
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/
La Dolce Vita
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053779/
Psycho
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/
The Godfather
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/
Apocalypse Now
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078788/
Raging Bull
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081398/
E.T
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083866/
2001: A Space Odyssey
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/
The Music Room
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051792/
Singin' in the Rain
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045152/
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Footnote
When I describe "Footnote," you may conclude that it offers little for you. In fact, it's one of the smartest and most merciless comedies to come along in a while. It centers on an area of fairly narrow interest, but in its study of human nature, it is deep and takes no prisoners. Two main characters: The father has devoted his life to scratching out minute inconsistencies in various versions of the Talmud. His son is a great popularizer of Judaic lore, whose books are best-sellers and whose face is often on television.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Into the Abyss: A Tale of Death, A Tale of Life
"Into the Abyss" may be the saddest film Werner Herzog has ever made. It regards a group of miserable lives, and in finding a few faint glimmers of hope only underlines the sadness.
The documentary centers on two young men in prison. Michael Perry is on Death Row in Huntsville, Texas, America's most productive assembly line for executions, and on the day Herzog spoke with him had eight days to live. Jason Burkett, his accomplice in the stupid murders of three people, is serving a 40-year sentence. They killed because they wanted to drive a friend's red Camaro.
Saving Face
Every year in Pakistan, at least 100 men feel entitled to throw acid into the faces of their wives, some of them still in early adolescence. Many of these attacks go unreported. In some cases, the women feel they must return to their husband's home after the hospital, because they have no other way to pay for the care of their children.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Hugo
"Hugo" is unlike any other film Martin Scorsese has ever made, and yet possibly the closest to his heart: a big-budget, family epic in 3-D, and in some ways, a mirror of his own life. We feel a great artist has been given command of the tools and resources he needs to make a movie about — movies. That he also makes it a fable that will be fascinating for (some, not all) children is a measure of what feeling went into it.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
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Kinyawanda
I thought I knew something about Rwanda, but I didn't really know very much. I was moved by "Hotel Rwanda" (2004), but not really shaken this deeply. Not like this. After seeing "Kinyarwanda," I have a different kind of feeling about the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. The film approaches it not as a story line but as a series of intense personal moments.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
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Monday, March 5, 2012
The Descendants
"The Descendants" has a happy ending. Therefore, technically, it's a comedy. It takes place in the paradise of Hawaii. It stars George Clooney. That may lead you to expect a pleasant good time, but this film is so much more than that. Clooney gives one of his best performances in this film directed and co-written by Alexander Payne, who in "Sideways" (2004) and "About Schmidt" (2002), showed a special affinity for men learning to accept their better feelings.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
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Shame
There's a close-up in "Shame" of Michael Fassbender's face showing pain, grief and anger. His character, Brandon, is having an orgasm. For the movie's writer-director, Steve McQueen, that could be the film's master shot. There is no concern about the movement of Brandon's lower body. No concern about his partner. The close-up limits our view to his suffering. He is enduring a sexual function that has long since stopped giving him any pleasure and is self-abuse in the most profound way.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
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Friday, March 2, 2012
Silent Souls
Road movies take many forms, and "Silent Souls" is the road movie as metaphysical memory and meditation. This profound and immensely touching film in only 75 perfect minutes achieves the profundity of an epic. I read the description (two friends from the ancient Merjan tribe in Russia take a funeral trip involving the wife of one) and wasn't much interested; it sounded like ethnography without impact. Yet not often have I been more deeply touched.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
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Thursday, March 1, 2012
The Artist
Is it possible to forget that "The Artist" is a silent film in black and white, and simply focus on it as a movie? No? That's what people seem to zero in on. They cannot imagine themselves seeing such a thing. At a sneak preview screening here, a few audience members actually walked out, saying they didn't like silent films. I was reminded of the time a reader called me to ask about an Ingmar Bergman film. "I think it's the best film of the year," I said. "Oh," she said, "that doesn't sound like anything we'd like to see."Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
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Wednesday, February 29, 2012
We Need to Talk about Kevin
It must be something like this to have a nervous breakdown. We find ourselves inside the mind of a woman whose psychopathic son has driven her over the edge. This is not entirely his fault. We gather she didn't want to get pregnant, isn't sure why she's married, is a mother who tries to mask hostility with superficial kindness. If she had her way, she would put her life on rewind and start all over again — maybe even as somebody else, since she's not very fond of herself.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
Audio:
A Separation
"A Separation" is a film in which every important character tries to live a good life within the boundaries of the same religion. That this leads them into disharmony and brings them up before a judge is because no list of rules can account for human feelings. The film involves its audience in an unusually direct way, because although we can see the logic of everyone's position, our emotions often disagree.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
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Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Rampart
Woody Harrelson is leaner in "Rampart," the skin tight over the skull, the jawline defiant. His eyes are busy. He is a cop in the Los Angeles police district that became notorious in 1999 as a cesspool of corruption, but this man takes corruption with him wherever he goes. The movie is co-written by the unsurpassed crime writer James Ellroy, who no doubt knows enough stories about Rampart to write a dozen movies, but his inspiration here is to make this cop a stand-alone character study, isolated within himself. He doesn't require the reprehensible environment of Rampart. He's self-fueled.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
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"The Artist" and "Hugo": A very French Oscars
It was like an episode from "The Twilight Zone." The Academy Award for best picture went to a silent film in black and white. The unstoppable "The Artist," which had nothing going for it but boundless joy, defeated big-budgeted competitors loaded with expensive stars because … well, because it was so darned much fun. Its victory will send Hollywood back to its think-tanks.Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com
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Sunday, September 5, 2010
Movie: Enter the Void
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| Enter the Void |
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