Roger Ebert Movie Review

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Weekend Box Office: January 9-11, 2009

Gran Torino tops the box office with $29.5 million

Daily Box Office: Sunday, January 11, 2009

Gran Torino tops Sunday's box office with $7.7 million

Bride Wars / ** (PG)

"Bride Wars" (PG, 90 minutes). Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway play girlhood friends who made a vow to realize their dreams of both getting married at the Plaza. As adults, they are bubble-brains with vacuous fiancees, and their dialogue is fiercely on-topic, dictated by the needs of the plot, pounding down the home stretch in clichés, obligatory truisms and shrieks. A sitcom of consumerism. Rating; Two stars

Gran Torino / ***1/2 (R)

by Roger Ebert I would like to grow up to be like Clint Eastwood. Eastwood the director, Eastwood the actor, Eastwood the invincible, Eastwood the old man. What other figure in the history of the cinema has been an actor for 53 years, a director for 37, won two Oscars for direction, two more for best picture, plus the Thalberg Award, and at 78 can direct himself in his own film and look meaner than hell? None, that's how many.

The Reader / ***1/2 (R)

by Roger Ebert The crucial decision in "The Reader" is made by a 24-year-old youth, who has information that might help a woman about to be sentenced to life in prison, but withholds it. He is ashamed to reveal his affair with this woman. By making this decision, he shifts the film's focus from the subject of German guilt about the Holocaust and turns it on the human race in general. The film intends his decision as the key to its meaning, but most viewers may conclude that "The Reader" is only about the Nazis' crimes and the response to them by post-war German generations.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button / **1/2 (PG-13)

by Roger Ebert "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is a splendidly made film based on a profoundly mistaken premise. It tells the story of a man who is old when he is born and an infant when he dies. All those around him, everyone he knows and loves, grow older in the usual way, and he passes them on the way down. As I watched the film, I became consumed by a conviction that this was simply wrong.

Moscow, Belgium / *** (No MPAA rating)

"Moscow, Belgium" (Unrated, 106 minutes). Matty is a 41-year-old postal worker in Belgium, raising her three kids after her husband and walked out. Johnny is a late-20s truck driver who falls in love with her. Then her husband wants to come home. Could have been a sitcom, but owes more to the Mike Leigh tradition of daily lives observed with humor and a little sadness. Rating: Three stars

Timecrimes / *** (R)

"Timecrimes" (R, 88 minutes). Like a temporal chess game, with Hector (Karra Elejalde) involved in a labyrinthine time travel shuttle during which he is sometimes present twice, or maybe three times. Ingenious and entertaining, and maybe the plot holds water, but don't drive yourself nuts trying to prove it. Rating: Three stars

House of the Sleeping Beauties / * (No MPAA rating)

by Roger Ebert "House of the Sleeping Beauties" has missed its ideal release window by about 40 years. It might -- might -- have found an audience in that transitional period between soft- and hard-core, when men would sit through anything to see a breast, but even then, I dunno. It's discouraging to see a movie where the women sleep through everything. They don't even have the courtesy to wake up and claim to have a headache.

Movie Answer Man: Starry, starry nonsense

Q.While I loved the book Marley and Me, I found the movie to be a typical "zany" Hollywood comedy. On the other hand, "Benjamin Button" had me bawling throughout. You write: "But it's so hard to care about this story. There is no lesson to be learned. No catharsis is possible." That is simply that reason why the movie works so well. The viewer knows there is no happy ending here. The ending is only the worst possible thing to happen. I think you are incorrect in assuming people will not go to see this movie twice. I saw it tonight and plan on going later in the week to pick up any nuances I may have missed. I think a review that drives home the point of the movie has been written by Capone over at AintItCool.com. Neal Greenberg, Freehold, N.J. A. Well, at least you chose another one of our excellent Chicago critics. I gave "Marley" half a star more than "Benjamin," although, of course, star ratings are relative, not absolute, and are nonsense either way.