Roger Ebert
Tomatometer-approved critic
Chicago, IL
http://rogerebert.com/
Movies reviews only
| Rating | T-Meter | Title | Year | Review |
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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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Copycat (1995) |
Movies like these are a safe way to meet our fears vicariously, and to exorcise them. - RogerEbert.com
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| Posted Aug 10, 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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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 Mar 30, 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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Pale Flower (1964) |
Pale Flower is one of the most haunting noirs I've seen, and something more; in 1964 it was an important work in an emerging Japanese New Wave of independent filmmakers, an exercise in existential cool. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Apr 06, 2020
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King Lear (1971) |
Shakespeare's Lear survives in his play and, will endure forever. Brook's Lear is a new conception, a rethinking, and a critical commentary on the play. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 18, 2020
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(undefined) |
[Beyond the Law] is a pretty inept movie. But it is funny at times, and interesting if only because Mailer reveals so much of his glorious ego. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Mar 17, 2020
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Echoes of Silence (1967) |
Echoes of Silence is hardly a movie at all, in the way we ordinarily use the word, and yet it is a sincere and rather effective film. Its flaws are honest ones, made for the right reasons, and there is not a false moment in it. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Feb 01, 2020
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Lies My Father Told Me (1975) |
No attempt is really made to make these people more than stereotypes, but they play their roles with sufficient gusto to make them interesting. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jan 10, 2020
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Saving Face (2011) |
This heartbreaking film has relevance to the cruelties toward women that are sanctioned in many lands. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jan 07, 2020
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Le Havre (2011) |
Here is the sunniest film I've seen by Aki Kaurismaki, and he reveals a lot of sunshine inside for a director whose world is usually filled with deadpan losers. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jan 07, 2020
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(undefined) |
[Venice/Venice] exists on the flimsiest premise, and yet while you're watching it you're interested - sort of. It's hard to recommend a movie like this, however, because it is so determined to be talky, amateurish and self-indulgent. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Oct 26, 2019
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La Caza (1966) |
Director Saura's fine sense of pace is greatly responsible for the growth of tension in a film which, for most of its length, pretends to be just an ordinary record of an unremarkable day. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Sep 10, 2019
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Me, Natalie (1969) |
Me, Natalie is a pleasant film, very funny at times, and the evidence in the audience was that women liked it enormously. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Aug 29, 2019
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Working Girls (1986) |
The director, Lizzie Borden, has created characters who seem close to life, and her movie helps explain why the world's oldest profession is, despite everything, a profession. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Aug 27, 2019
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The Original Kings of Comedy (2000) |
The Original Kings of Comedy doesn't have the theatrical subtext or, let it be said, the genius of Richard Pryor. But then again Pryor went out for an hour or 90 minutes and just talked. These guys are working in a revue format. - RogerEbert.com
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| Posted Aug 07, 2019
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Borom Sarret (1963) |
It is a powerful piece of filmmaking. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 22, 2019
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Serial (1980) |
... for all of that, Serial just isn't very good. I think maybe that's because the characters are seen almost exclusively as caricatures. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 22, 2019
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Guns of the Trees (1961) |
What Jonas Mekas has made in this film, perhaps without fully intending to, is a documentary of a style of life. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted Jul 11, 2019
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Immortal Beloved (1994) |
There is an image in Immortal Beloved as evocative as any I can remember -- as complete as the sled in Citizen Kane, or the shadowy doorway in The Third Man. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 24, 2019
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Hair (1979) |
Maybe it's just as well that this version had to wait a decade to be filmed so Forman could be hired to do it. He brings life to the musical form in the same way that West Side Story did, the last time everyone was saying the movie musical was dead. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 16, 2019
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Real Life (1979) |
A great idea. But the movie that Albert Brooks has made from it, alas, gets most of its laughs in the first 10 minutes, slides into a long middle stretch of repetitive situations and ends on a note of embarrassing hysteria. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 16, 2019
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A Time for Dying (1969) |
Too slight, too flat and too unintentionally ludicrous. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 13, 2019
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The Secret Policeman's Other Ball (1981) |
The material photographed in The Secret Policeman's Other Ball is sometimes pretty funny, but it tends to get sidetracked by the low-budget videotape recording of the show, and the result is seen through a lens, darkly. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 13, 2019
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(undefined) |
When Chytilova gets Forman alone, however, the results are different. As fellow visitors to a strange land, they have a natural rapport. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 08, 2019
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Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again (1982) |
This kind of movie, the slapstick, anything-goes satire, is getting awfully old very fast. - Chicago Sun-Times
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| Posted May 08, 2019
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