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: April 4-6, 2008

21 tops the box office with $15.3 million

Daily Box Office: Wednesday, April 9, 2008

21 tops Wednesday's box office with $1.1 million

Street Kings / *1/2 (R)

By Jim Emerson, editor The alarm clock buzzes.. Keanu Reeves wakes up fully dressed in a striped shirt, raises his gun and rolls out of bed. He puts his piece on the bathroom sink, next to his toothbrush, and takes a good long look at himself in the mirror. Then he pukes in the toilet. He climbs into the car and heads down the freeway as a glowing orange orb shimmers behind the skyscrapers of Los Angeles. Only the sun isn't rising. It's setting.

Chaos Theory / ** (PG-13)

By Jim Emerson, editor Here' s how it ends: Ed gets married, anyway. Why no spoiler warning? Two reasons: 1) You already know it (and you know that it doesn't matter) within the first three minutes of "Chaos Theory," and 2) "Ed" is an entirely disposable component of the framing device. He' s not even really in "Chaos Theory," he's just at either end of it. True, you should never judge a book by its bookends, but if you put the bookends too far apart, they're not going to do much to hold the book up, either. That's Ed for you.

Smart People / **1/2 (R)

By Jim Emerson, editor Ask most reasonably bright, movie-review-reading people what qualities they value most in a mate or a motion picture, and the winning combo will likely be "smart and funny." "Beautiful" is right up there, too, though not everybody wants to volunteer as much in the first round of questioning.

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.

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.

People: Charlton Heston, Richard Widmark:
Tough guys, strong presences

by Roger Ebert Recently we lost two American actors who embodied widely different styles, and their passing is a reminder that the very presence of an actor can suggest everything about a film. Charlton Heston was tall, outward, masculine, exuding bravado, often cast in larger-than-life roles. Richard Widmark was lithe, inward, sardonic. Heston's characters stood on mountaintops and divided the Red Sea. Widmark's often lived in the shadows. Heston played some smaller roles, but there was always the danger he would be too big for them. Widmark often played mainstream roles, but was always more interesting when he was an outsider on the run.