Roger Ebert Movie Review

Roger Ebert Movie Review

Weekend Box Office: October 30-November 1, 2009

Michael Jackson's This Is It tops the box office with $23.2 million

Daily Box Office: Thursday, November 5, 2009

Michael Jackson's This Is It tops Thursday's box office with $2.2 million

"A Christmas Carol" (PG, 95 minutes) An exhilarating visual experience that proves for the third time Robert Zemeckis is one of the few directors who knows what he's doing with 3-D. The story that Dickens wrote in 1838 remains timeless, and if it's supercharged here with Scrooge swooping the London streets as freely as Superman, well, once you let ghosts into a movie there's room for anything. In motion-capture animation, Jim Carrey does the movements and voice of Ebenezer Scrooge, never thinner, never more stooped, never more bitter. The A-list cast also includes Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Bob Hoskins, Robin Wright Penn and Cary Elwes. Four stars

Precious / **** (R)

"Precious" (R, 109 minutes). School is an ordeal of mocking cruelty for a fat teenager, and home is worse. Precious avoids looking at people, hardly ever speaks, is nearly illiterate, is pregnant. One of her teachers (Paula Patton) and a postal worker (Mariah Carey) see something in her, or simply react to her obvious pain. They try to coax her out of her shell. She's not stupid, but feels defeated. Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe gives a powerful performance in the title role, and Mo'Nique is frighteningly effective as her abusive mother. Directed by Lee Daniels, based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire. Four stars.

The Men Who Stare at Goats / ***1/2 (R)

"The Men Who Stare at Goats" (R, 93 minutes). A weirdly funny comedy that seriously claims to be based on an actual U.S. Army interest in using paranormal soldiers as a weapon. Ewan McGregor plays a reporter who encounters George Clooney, a "Jedi Warrior" graduate of these secret program; flashbacks show Jeff Bridges as an officer who seems very much like The Big Lebowski. Could they kill goats by staring? Well, if you can bend a spoon with your mind, why not a rifle? Three and a half stars

The Box / *** (PG-13)

"The Box" (114 minutes, PG-13). A preposterous but never boring sci-fi movie where a mysterious stranger (Frank Langella) gives a couple (Cameron Diaz and James Marston) a box with a button on top, and tells them if they oust out they'll get $1 million in cash -- but someone unknown to them will die. Well, what would you do? And then the plot really gets wild. Stay way if you expect it to add up and make sense. You're entering?the Twilight Zone. Three stars.

(Untitled) / ***1/2 (R)

"(Untitled") (R, 96 minutes). A good, smart comedy about the fringes of the New York art world, starring Adam Goldberg as an impossible experimental musician and Marley Shelton as a chic Soho gallery owner. The art on display is good enough to be plausible, and weird enough to be funny. It's worthy of the best Woody Allen, and Adrian is not unlike Woody's persona: A sincere, intense, insecure nebbish, hopeless with women, aiming for greatness. Directed by Jonathan Parker. Three and a half stars

The Fourth Kind / *1/2 (PG-13)

"The Fourth Kind" (PG-13, 98 minutes). Nome, Alaska (pop. 3,750) has so many disappearances and/or alien abductions that the FBI has investigated there 20 times more than in Anchorage. So it's claimed by this pseudo-doc that goes to inane lengths to appear factual. Milla Jovovich is good as a psychologist whose clients complain that owls stare at them in the middle of the night. One and a half stars. One and a half stars.

The Horse Boy / *** (No MPAA rating)

"The Horse Boy" (Unrated, 94 minutes). A four-year-old Texas boy with autism has angry seizures and isn't potty-trained. His parents fly with him to Mongolia, drive nine hours into the steppes, and then journey by horseback to a sacred mountain where he undergoes a miraculous cure at the hands of shamans. A remarkable story, but containing unanswered questions. Three stars.

Great Movie: Mon oncle d'Amerique (1980)

Three children are born in France. One, Rene, is the son of struggling farmers. One, Janine, a daughter of proletarians. The third son, Jean, is born in a manor house to wealthy bourgeois. These children grow up, are educated, find occupations often against the will of their parents, and enter relationships. They don't much think of themselves as laboratory rats, but they might be surprised how consistently their behavior is consistent with the involuntary responses of a rat. This observation is not intend as an insult to them, or to the rat.

Movie Answer Man: A remake of "The Third Man?"
Say it ain't so, Leonardo

Q. I need to share this blasphemous rumor with you; it is said Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire will co-star in a remake of "The Third Man." Can't we just all agree that some movies are sacred? Hisham Teymour, Mount Prospect A. My instinctive reaction was to throw up. On second thought, I'll reserve judgment until I see this shameless project. Some remakes are good enough to stand beside their originals; Herzog's "Nosferatu," for example. The screenplay is allegedly being written by Steven Knight, who wrote "Dirty Pretty Things" and "Eastern Promises," two splendid films. The original film was written by (*cough*) Graham Greene. A director isn't set. But it's not the story, is it, so much as the look and feel and sound of that supreme masterpiece. Can a remake even be contemplated without zither music and the immortal "The Third Man" theme? Will the tilt shots and oblique POV angles be preserved? Will the classic chase through the sewers of Vienna, with one (1) off-screen gunshot, be preserved? Will it be shot in color, when "The Third Man" is one of the most black and white films of all time? And what actor dares to invoke Orson Welles as Harry Lime? The undertaking seems foolhardy.

acrimonious - November 7, 2009

(adjective) biting, harsh, caustic.