Roger Ebert Movie Review

Roger Ebert Movie Review

Weekend Box Office: June 26-28, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen tops the box office with $109.0 million

Daily Box Office: Friday, July 3, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen tops Friday's box office with an estimated $17.8 million

by Roger Ebert "I rob banks," John Dillinger would sometimes say by way of introduction. It was the simple truth. That was what he did. For the 13 months between the day he escaped from prison and the night he lay dying in an alley, he robbed banks. It was his lifetime. Michael Mann's "Public Enemies" accepts that stark fact and refuses any temptation to soften it. Dillinger was not a nice man.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs / ***1/2 ()

by Roger Ebert "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" is the best of the three films about our friends in the inter-species herd of plucky prehistoric heroes. And it involves some of the best use of 3-D I've seen in an animated feature. It also introduces a masterstroke that essentially allows the series to take place anywhere: There is this land beneath the surface of the earth, you see...

Julia / **** (R)

"Julia" (R, 140 minutes). Tilda Swinton as an alcoholic slut who agrees to help a mother with the kidnapping of her young son. But she's also am habitual liar, and talks her way into deeper and deeper waters, in a hell of a great thriller with acting as good as it gets, and the use of seedy U.S. and Mexican locations that look real because are they ever. Strong supporting work by Saul Rubinek as her one remaining friend, and Bruno Bichir as Diego, a guy she meets in Tijuana. You want to be careful who you meet in Tijuana. Directed by Erick Zonca. Four stars.

The Girl From Monaco / *** (R)

"The Girl from Monaco" (R, 94 minutes). An attorney fro Paris, hired to defend a wealthy widow from murder charges, finds himself shadowed by an unwanted bodyguard, and pursued by an ambitious weathergirl who decides they were destined for one another. The weathergirl and the bodyguard are both from Monaco, and know each other from an earlier time. This works out in entirely unanticipated ways, in an ironic, well-oiled romantic thriller. Three stars.

I Hate Valentine's Day / *1/2 (PG-13)

"I Hate Valentine's Day" (PG-13, 98 minutes). Geneveive (Nia Vardalos) has has an unbreakable policy regarding men: Five dates, and she's out the door. she likes only the falling in love part of an affair, and not the inevitable breaking up. Genevieve is a woman beloved by all who encounter her, when in life I would be terrified of her. But not John Corbett, also her co-star in "My Big Fat Greek wedding," who agrees to the terms, in a painfully klutzy comedy that adores a character who, in my opinion, is stark staring mad. Written and directed by Vardalos. One and a half stars.

Great Movie: Man With a Movie Camera (1929)

by Roger Ebert In 1929, the year it was released, films had an average shot length (ASL) of 11.2 seconds. "Man With a Movie Camera" had an ASL of 2.3 seconds. The ASL of Michael Bay's "Armageddon" was -- also 2.3 seconds. Why would I begin a discussion of a silent classic by discussing such a mundane matter? It helps to understand the impact the film made at the time. Viewers had never seen anything like it, and Mordaunt Hall, the horrified author of the New York Times review, wrote: "The producer, Dziga Vertof, does not take into consideration the fact that the human eye fixes for a certain space of time that which holds the attention." This reminds me of Harry Carey's advice in 1929 to John Wayne, as the talkies were coming in: "Stop halfway through every sentence. The audience can't listen that fast."

Movie Answer Man: Was Natalie Wood really John
Wayne's daughter, or what?

Q. I’ve long suspected that not so deeply layered in the John Wayne’s and John Ford’s “The Searchers” (1956) is the idea that Debbie isn’t Ethan’s niece — she is his daughter. Ethan’s sister-in-law Martha (Dorothy Jordan) is clearly in love with Ethan (Wayne) by the way she treats him and by the way she holds his clothes close to her when she believes no one is looking. The sheriff (Ward Bond) pointedly ignores what is going on behind him when Ethan and Martha interact. Her daughter Debbie (Natalie Wood) is the apple of Ethan’s eye. Ethan’s reactions are driven by something deeper than a man’s unrequited love for the woman who married his brother, seen in his pursuit to at first rescue Debbie, and then to kill her to save her from a “fate worse than death.” If Ford did intend to hint at this, then the story takes on a deeper, and more awful meaning. I guess the wonderful thing about art is that it can be interpreted in many ways. Matt Kaufman A. I found your idea intriguing and turned for help to people who know more about films than just about anybody else: The legendary critic Andrew Sarris and his wife, the equally legendary Molly Haskell, and the noted University of Wisconsin scholar and author David Bordwell. Molly tells me: “Although that interpretation is certainly possible, Andrew and I both felt it to be improbable, it just doesn’t belong in the Fordian universe. The feelings between the two are palpable, but never (it seems to both of us) overtly expressed. That tacit love is quite sufficient to explain Ethan’s special feeling for his niece.” David writes: “In grad school long ago we talked about this; good to know that some people are still doing so. Still, I’m skeptical, since there’s little evidence of the sort that I guess lawyers call ‘probitive’” Ethan loves Debbie, true, but his expression of affection is typical of how you’d treat a child; he’s quite affectionate to little Lucy, too. Of course Martha is in love with Ethan, but there’s no direct evidence that that love has been consummated. Ward Bond does avert his eyes, but that’s just as likely because a moment of tenderness between Martha and Ethan would be something he’d overlook out of gallantry in any event. “Ethan’s reactions are driven by something deeper than revenge for the death of his brother and his family, but there is evidence that that something is racism — as indicated in his comments, before the attack, about the obvious Indian ancestry of Martin Pawley. Finally, if Ethan were trying to save Debbie from rape at the hands of the Comanche, several characters point out that he’s long since failed; she’s obviously come of age and probably has become a warrior’s wife. It’s that state of sexual maturity, at least according to the orthodox reading, that impels the later years of his quest: Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) is convinced that Ethan means to kill her for becoming defiled and his struggle to keep Ethan from doing so is the engine driving the last portion of the film. “All of this is more interesting, at least to me, than some hidden blood tie. It presents a more complex portrait of a man so blinded by codes of honor, family loyalty, masculine pride, sexual jealousy and racial prejudice than would a reading that indicates he’s out to rescue his daughter. This mix alone is extraordinarily edgy for an American movie. It seems to me that everything we see in the film supports this interpretation. I think we’d need some anomaly or extra clue to infer that Debbie is Ethan’s child. “And the context of Ford’s other work doesn’t suggest the hidden-affair account: Think of the unrequited yearning of Maureen O’Hara and Walter Pidgeon in ‘How Green Was My Valley,’ or Wyatt Earp and the schoolmarm in ‘My Darling Clementine,’ or even Lincoln and Ann in ‘Young Mr. Lincoln.’ For Ford, as for many of his contemporaries, it seems that unconsummated love is deeply poignant. Something else we’ve lost, maybe.”

People: Karl Malden: In Memory

by Roger Ebert Karl Malden, who won an Academy Award for one of the best American films and became a household name for a TV commercial, is dead at 97. He died at home in Brentwood of natural causes, according to his family.

exculpate - July 4, 2009

(verb) to free from blame or guilt.