Roger Ebert Movie Review

Weekend Box Office: January 23-25, 2009

Paul Blart: Mall Cop tops the box office with $21.6 million

Daily Box Office: Sunday, January 25, 2009

Paul Blart: Mall Cop tops Sunday's box office with $5.9 million

"Waltz With Bashir" (R, 87 minutes). A devastating Israeli animated film that tries to reconstruct how and why thousands of innocent civilians were massacred because those with the power to stop them took no action. During Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. the Palestinian refugees were killed by a Christian militia. Blame has never been clearly assigned. Rating: Three and a half stars

The Secret of the Grain / ***1/2 (No MPAA rating)

"The Secret of the Grain" (Unrated, 151 minutes). A sprawling family story of Tunisian immigrants in a French port city, where the patriarch hopes to open a restaurant aboard a ship in the harbor. Writer-director Abdellatif Kechiche enters into a flood of life with wonderful actors, including a star-making turn by Hafsia Herzi. Winner of the 2008 French awards for best film, direction, screenplay and most promising actress. Rating: Three and a half stars.

Inkheart / ** (PG)

"Inkheart" (PG, 105 minutes). Brendan Fraser plays a man who has the gift, when reading aloud, of bringing fictional characters to life and trapping living people in the pages of a book. He and his daughter (Eliza Hope Bennett) find a copy of Inkheart, the novel he was reading when her mother was sucked into its pages. Now they compete with demonic spirits freed from its pages at the same time. Ingenious, yes, but it all descends into basic action scenes and skullduggery. Rating: Two stars.

Outlander / ** (R)

"Outlander" (R, 115 minutes). An alien space ship crash-lands in a Viking fjord in the Iron Age, bringing one alien (Jim Caviezel) who appears to be human, and another (the Moorwen) who is a speedy giant armored hippo-beetle with fearsome teeth. The local village is suspicious of the outlander until he saves the king (John Hurt) from the Moorwen. Then he leads them into battle, while romance blossoms with the king's daughter (Sophia Myles). A collision of genres, interesting as a curiosity, otherwise preposterous, climaxing with violent and incoherent special effects. Rating: Two stars

The Dark Knight / **** (R)

The movie phenomenon of 2008, "The Dark Knight," is being re-released nationwide in IMAX and regular theaters to coincide with the Oscar nominations. by Roger Ebert “Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.”

Great Movie: After Hours (1985)

by Roger Ebert "After Hours" approaches the notion of pure filmmaking; it's a nearly flawless example of -- itself. It lacks, as nearly as I can determine, a lesson or message, and is content to show the hero facing a series of interlocking challenges to his safety and sanity. It is "The Perils of Pauline" told boldly and well.

Movie Answer Man: Does your intelligence provide
little or no survival value?

Q. In your review of "Defiance," you mentioned the character Shimon Haretz, who tells the group he is an intellectual. You wrote, "This is no use to the partisans, although he is allowed to stay. ... I thought, I'm also an ... intellectual. Of what use would I be in the forest?" This reminded me of a comment by John W. Campbell Jr., science-fiction writer and editor of Astounding/Analog magazine. Campbell threw this provocative thought at his readers: "It has yet to be proven that intelligence is of any survival value." That shook up a lot of his readers. He then went on to explain, by way of example, that if a group of intellectuals and strong men were trapped in a cave by falling boulders, no amount of logical thought would move those boulders an inch. Obviously, Campbell was not abandoning logic (he codified Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"), but pointing out that it had limits. To me, it suggested that it would be a good idea to build body and mind! Mike Reese, Chicago A. Of course intelligence would be useful in knowing survival skills, such as how to tell direction or start a fire. But as several reality shows have demonstrated, it is of no use in becoming a TV star.