Roger Ebert Movie Review

What If Darth Vader Worked At McDonalds
Tell the fry tech to drop more fries before the lunch rush...

Weekend Box Office: March 14-16, 2008

Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! tops the box office with $45.0 million

Daily Box Office: Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! tops Wednesday's box office with $4.0 million

Chop Shop / **** (No MPAA rating)

By Jim Emerson, Editor Three shots into Rahmin Bahrani's "Chop Shop," and you're already pulled into its world with an effortless economy and precision that leave you no doubt you're in the best of cinematic hands.

Married Life / *** (PG-13)

By Roger Ebert Remember the time businessmen were expected to drink martinis at lunch, and the time they were expected not to? Ira Sachs' "Married Life" begins with Harry taking Richard into his confidence at a martinis-and-cigarettes lunch that confirms the movie is set in 1949. Harry (Chris Cooper) is a buttoned-down, closed-in, respectable type. Richard (Pierce Brosnan) is more easygoing. You can tell by the way they smoke. Harry is painfully earnest as he tells his friend that he plans to leave his wife for a much younger woman. The younger woman truly and deeply loves him. All his wife wants is sex.

Funny Games / 1/2 (R)

"Anyone who leaves the cinema doesn't need the film, and anybody who stays does." -- Michael Haneke on his previous version of "Funny Games" By Jim Emerson, Editor The new Hollywood edition of "Funny Games," writer-director Michael Haneke's clinical reenactment of his Austrian torture-comedy experiment from 10 years ago, is an attempt to replicate the earlier study under English-language conditions.

Paranoid Park / ***1/2 (R)

By Jim Emerson, Editor The title of Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park" refers to a rough skateboard park underneath a bridge in Portland, Ore. -- a place where, they say, "dead bodies" are buried beneath the contoured cement. It also describes the confused conscience of Alex (Gabe Nevins), the emotionally isolated teenager who narrates the movie and who actually sounds like a teenager while doing it. In voiceover, Alex reads aloud from his journal as if he were delivering a book report in class, but he's trying to confess the darkest secret of his young life.

Let's Get Lost / *** (No rating)

By Jim Emerson, Editor In the center of the frame, very close to the camera, hangs a studio microphone that could be mistaken for a vintage Soviet communications satellite. Chet Baker, 58, is recording Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke's "Imagination." His voice isn't quite as soft and papery as it used to be, but the image -- like every shot of Baker in Bruce Weber's "Let's Get Lost" -- is about the face, not so much the music.

Great Movie: Ordet (1955)

By Roger Ebert For the ordinary filmgoer, and I include myself, "Ordet" is a difficult film to enter. But once you're inside, it is impossible to escape. Lean, quiet, deeply serious, populated with odd religious obsessives, it takes place in winter in Denmark in 1925, in a rural district that has a cold austere beauty.