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: Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Paul Blart: Mall Cop tops Wednesday's box office with $1.2 million

"The Uninvited" (PG-13, 87 minutes). Emily Browning from "Lemony Snickett" in a very different role in a well-made horror film, about a troubled teenager whose mother died in a fire, and whose father (David Strathairn) is now living with her mother's nurse (Elizabeth Banks). Skillfully constructed, with some genuine scares. Rating: Three stars

Wendy and Lucy / ***1/2 (R)

"Wendy and Lucy" (R, 80 minutes). Michelle Williams plays a lonely and brave young woman, bound for uncertain reasons to Alaska, whose car breaks down in Oregon and who loses the dog who is her only companion. Broke, hungry, she wanders an unfamiliar town, is threatened once but is mostly befriended, in an evocation of resolve in the face of emptiness. Sad and beautiful. Directed by Kelly Reichardt. Rating: R, for language.

Taken / **1/2 (PG-13)

"Taken" (R, 91 minutes). Liam Neeson plays a semi-retired CIA man whose daughter is kidnapped in Paris by traffickers in human bodies. Turning into a preposterously versatile one-man killing machine, he determines to track her down and save her from a fate worse than death, followed by death. If you can't wait for the next Bourne thriller, you don't have to. Rating: Two and a half stars.

The Romance of Astrea and Celadon / **1/2 (No MPAA rating)

"The Romance of Astrea and Celadon" (Unrated, 209 minutes). At 88, the French New Wave pioneer Eric Rohmer says this will be his last film. It's a pastoral romance set in Fifth Century Gaul, involving shepherds, shepherdesses, druids and nymphs. Astrea and Celadon are tragically separated, reunited in a plot hinging on disguise, and spend a great deal of time debating the loopholes of romantic love. Charming, sweet, languid, too leisurely. Rating: Two and a half stars.

New in Town / ** (PG-13)

"New in Town" (PG, 96 minutes). Renee Zellweger is a high-powered exec from Miami who flies into tiny New Ulm, Minn., to downsize the food plant. There she meets Blanche Gunderson (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), who talks just like Marge Gunderson's sister, and the plant's union rep, Harry Connick Jr., the only eligible man in town, so do the math. An awfully nice movie about very nice people in a very awfully predictable formula. Rating: Two stars.

Waltz With Bashir / ***1/2 (R)

"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: Secrets & Lies (1996)

by Roger Ebert Too much attention is paid to Mike Leigh's famous method for "devising" his screenplays. It is well known that he imagines characters and a situation, casts actors to play the characters, joins with them in workshops where the dialogue and the plot take shape, and only then writes the screenplay. Quite true, but that doesn't mean he's winging it; his "Secrets & Lies" (1996) reveals a filmmaker who works with the most delicate precision to achieve exactly what he desires. The payoff for his method comes in scenes like the film's two very long and unbroken takes, when he calls on his actors to use the disciplines of the stage as well as the screen.

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.