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 28-30, 2008

21 tops the box office with $24.1 million

Daily Box Office: Wednesday, April 2, 2008

21 tops Wednesday's box office with $1.7 million

Shine a Light / **** (PG-13)

By Roger Ebert Martin Scorsese's "Shine a Light" may be the most intimate documentary ever made about a live rock 'n' roll concert. Certainly it has the best coverage of the performances onstage. Working with cinematographer Robert Richardson, Scorsese deployed a team of nine other cinematographers, all of them Oscar winners or nominees, to blanket a live September 2006 Rolling Stones concert at the smallish Beacon Theatre in New York. The result is startling immediacy, a merging of image and music, edited in step with the performance.

Leatherheads / *** (PG-13)

By Jim Emerson, editor In sports and in movies, star quality counts. We may already know the rules of the game, and what strategy is going to be used in each inning, but it can be a joy just watching the pros perform. George Clooney's "Leatherheads" goes into overtime for no good reason, and the only high-wattage star in the lineup is Clooney himself, but man, he knows how to play. The guy's got smarts, wit, timing, a winning face, a good eye -- hell, he's probably even got great legs.

Shelter / ** (R)

By Jim Emerson, editor In the 1970s there flourished a phenomenon known as the Movie of the Week. These television productions were often issue-oriented dramas about individuals learning to overcome obstacles: disabilities, diseases, drugs, pollution, killer semis, teen waywardness, nuclear annihilation, being "different." Sometimes they won Emmys. Mostly they mediocre, generally described as "well-intentioned" and even, occasionally, "daring" in their subject matter.

21 / *1/2 (PG-13)

By Jim Emerson, editor If the thrill of gambling were really about winning, there would be too few gamblers to support the multibillion-dollar Vegas gambling industry. Everybody knows that the odds are predetermined to favor the house, and that people play the games for the rush, not the payoff. Bettors are many, winners are few. That's what makes it a reliably profitable business. Like insurance. The premiums for participating in the game outweigh the payouts the company makes as incentives to keep the players playing.

Teeth / *** (R)

By Jim Emerson. editor "Teeth" sinks its incisors into a cross-cultural myth known as vagina dentata. Or, as Juno might call it, "Vaggie D." Depending on who you ask (not that you should bring it up in polite intercourse), it is said to represent the male fear of castration and of feminine sexuality in general. It also symbolizes the woman's anxieties about penetration, and/or her desire to devour her mate, who is attempting to fulfill his own bio-mythological destiny by returning upstream to spawn in the womb from whence he originated. (Or, as the movie puts it, "the dark crucible that hatched him.")

CJ7 / *** (PG)

By Jim Emerson, editor Do you hate it when a review more or less regurgitates the pitch that probably got the project green-lighted in the first place?

People: Ebert announces his return

April 1 was Roger Ebert's 41st anniversary as film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times (no fooling) -- and the occasion for declaring his imminent return to reviewing movies. Dear Readers: I am at last returning to the movie beat. After my current stay at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, I’m looking forward to opening night of my annual film festival at the University of Illinois on April 23, and I will resume writing movie reviews shortly thereafter. Are you as bored with my health as I am? I underwent a third surgery in January, this one in Houston, and once again there were complications. I am sorry to say that my ability to speak was not restored. That would require another surgery.

Editor's Notes: The legend of Richard Widmark

by Jim Emerson You may have heard some version of this story about Richard Widmark, who died last week at age 93. I was there, at the Telluride Film Festival in 1983 when it happened, and I was in the audience both nights at the Sheridan Opera House for the tributes to Andrei Tarkovsky and Widmark. Emotions were heightened, perhaps, not only by the thin mountain atmosphere, but but by a terrifying Cold War showdown between Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union and Ronald Reagan's USA (I don't know which scared me more at the time) over the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which we didn't learn about until we got to Telluride. Things were chilly up there.