You better watch out
You better not cry
You better have clout
I'm telling you why
Two Thumbs Down
are comin' to town
He's making a list,
Checking it twice;
Gonna find out whose
movie was scheiss.
Sandy Claws is comin' to town.
He sees you when you're (bleeping),
He knows when you're a fake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for cinema's sake!
With little but scorn
and pounding of drums,
Rooty toot hoots
and rummy tum thumbs
Sandy Jaws is comin' to town
As I dream back over many happy years of movie going, some of my favorite lines from old reviews dance in my head like visions of sugarplums. Good movies, bad movies, doesn't matter, just so the line dances. I thought I'd share them in the holiday spirit. Curiously, most of the lines come from movies so bad I didn't want a refund, I wanted to collect damages. Movies like "Freddy Got Fingered," of which I wrote:
This movie doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn't below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.
The movie is being revived around the country for midnight cult showings. Midnight is not late enough. -- Review of "The Beyond"
That makes "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" an ideal movie for audiences with little taste and atrophied attention spans who want to glance at the screen occasionally and ascertain that something is still happening up there. If you fit that description, you have probably not read this far, but what the heck, we believe in full-service reviews around here.
You are a fount of my wisdom. -- e-mail to a plagiarist
Violet and Corky have a secret tete-a-tete, and vice versa .--"Bound"
Maybe another 200 cigarettes would have helped; coughing would be better than some of this dialogue. -- "200 Cigarettes"
Doris: Would you please tell her that you're not really Santa Claus, that actually is no such person?
Kris Kringle: Well, I hate to disagree with you, but not only IS there such a person, but here I am to prove it.
Eventually the secret of Those, etc., is revealed. To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. And then keep on rewinding, and rewinding, until we're back at the beginning, and can get up from our seats and walk backwards out of the theater and go down the up escalator and watch the money spring from the cash register into our pockets. - "The Village"
I know full well I'm expected to Suspend My Disbelief. Unfortunately, my disbelief is very heavy, and during "Ocean's Thirteen," the suspension cable snapped.--"Ocean's Thirteen"
"Oh Heavenly Dog" becomes another one of those insufferable movies in which the plot grinds to a dead halt while the trained dog does his tricks. You know: A-ha! The dead woman is connected in some way with the art gallery! Now let's watch Benji pick up a pencil in his teeth and dial the telephone!
I found a big poster that was fresh off the presses with the quotes of junket blurbsters. "It will obliterate your senses!'' reports David Gillin, who obviously writes autobiographically. "It will suck the air right out of your lungs!'' vows Diane Kaminsky. If it does, consider it a mercy killing. -- "Armageddon"
No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out. --"Armageddon"
Keanu Reeves is often low-key in his roles, but in this movie, his piano has no keys at all. He is so solemn, detached and uninvolved he makes Mr. Spock look like Hunter S. Thompson at closing time. -- "The Day the Earth Stood Still"
If there is one thing you should know before driving cross-country in an RV, it is: Never eat organ meats supplied by a man you have never seen before, just because he happens to turn up with a lot of organs. -- "RV"
Up in the old gothic horror house on the hill, he has found a note from his mother, asking him to meet her in Cabin Number 12. We know that although his mother may have frequent conversations with him, she is in no condition to write him a note. Norman knows that, too. He stuffed her himself.-- "Psycho III"
"Mr. Magoo is transcendently bad. It soars above ordinary badness as the eagle outreaches the fly.
According to the press kit, "Straight to Hell" was filmed in three weeks on a shoestring budget of $1 million, but looks more as if it were filmed in one week on Cox's MasterCard.
Did you know that if a certain kind of worm learns how to solve a maze, and then you grind it up and feed it to other worms, the other worms will then be able to negotiate the maze on their first try? That's one of the scientific nuggets supplied in "Phantoms," a movie, based on the popular Dean Koontz novel, that seems to have been made by grinding up other films and feeding them to this one.
A sullen lout who lurks about looking like a charade with the answer, "Leonardo DiCaprio." -- "Marie Baie des Anges""
I am informed that 5,000 cockroaches were used in the filming of "Joe's Apartment." That depresses me, but not as much as the news that none of them were harmed during the production.
I know what I'm gonna do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next year, and the year after that.
Through a stroke of good luck, the entire third reel of the film was missing the day I saw it. I went back to the screening room two days later, to view the missing reel. It was as bad as the rest, but nothing could have saved this film. As my colleague Gene Siskel observed, "If the third reel had been the missing footage from Orson Welles' 'The Magnificent Ambersons,' this movie would still have sucked." -- "Little Indian, Big City"
Last week I hosted the first Overlooked Film Festival at the University of Illinois, for films that have been unfairly overlooked. If I ever do a festival of films that deserve to be overlooked, "Friends & Lovers" is my opening night selection.
I stopped taking notes on my Palm Pilot and started playing the little chess game. --"Masterminds "
John Waters' "Pink Flamingos" has been restored for its 25th anniversary revival, and with any luck at all that means I won't have to see it again for another 25 years. If I haven't retired by then, I will.
They arrive on this "mortal coil" (Shakespeare) from that level "higher than the sphery chime" (Milton), and we expect their speech to flow in 'heavenly eloquence' (Dryden). But when they open their little mouths, what do they say? "Diaper gravy"--a term used four times in the movie, according to a friend who counted (Cleland). -- "Baby Geniuses"
Going to see "Godzilla" at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica.
Film noir is not about action and victory, but about incompetence and defeat. If it has a happy ending, something went wrong. -- "After Dark, My Sweet"
If Almadovar is right, some of our most exciting sexual experiences take place entirely within the minds of other people. -- "Bad Education"
There's always a kid who has to see for himself
The Soderbergh film makes the point that few things are more boring than what arouses someone else -- unless it also arouses you, of course, in which case you can forget the other person and just get on with it. -- "Eros"
Later Ollie gives her a camera and she becomes a photographer, and even has a gallery exhibit of her works, which look like photos taken on vacation with cellphone cameras and e-mailed to you by the children of friends. -- "A Lot like Love"
He's not an alcoholic, you understand; he's an oenophile, which means he can continue to pronounce French wines long after most people would be unconscious. We realize he doesn't set the bar too high when he praises one vintage as "quaffable." No wonder his unpublished novel is titled (ital) The Day After Yesterday; (unital) for anyone who drinks a lot, that's what today always feels like.--"Sideways"
"Show me a man who is not afraid of being eaten by an alligator in a sewer, and I'll show you a fool." -- "Alligator"
Stamp, as Brigham Young, comes across as the kind of man you'd find at the back of a cave in a Cormac McCarthy novel. -- "September Dawn"
The Silver Sphere is about twice the size of a billiard ball. It has a couple of very sharp hooks built into it. It flies through the air, attaches itself to your forehead, and digs in. Then a drill comes out and pierces your skull just above the bridge of the nose, while blood spurts out the other end. I hate it when that happens. -- "Phantasm"
That creature is called The Licker because it has a nine-foot tongue. At one point it has its tongue nailed to the track and is dragged along the third rail. I hate when that happens. -- "Resident Evil"
This is an ideal first movie for infants, who can enjoy the bright colors on the screen and wave their tiny hands to the music. -- "Viva Rock Vegas"
She and Daredevil are powerfully attracted to each other, and even share some PG-13 sex, which is a relief, because when superheroes have sex at the R level, I am always afraid someone will get hurt. -- "Daredevil"
Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly. -- column for Yahoo! Internet Life
I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny. -- Response to Vincent Gallo's hex to give me colon cancer
Sixty seconds of wondering if someone is about to kiss you is more entertaining than 60 minutes of kissing. -- "The Winslow Boy"
I am aware this is the second time in two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when Eminem simply will not do. -- "The Life of David Gale"
It was W. C. Fields who hated to appear in the same scene with a child, a dog, or a plunging neckline--because nobody in the audience would be looking at you. Jennifer Aniston has the same problem in this movie even when she's in scenes all by herself. -- "Picture Perfect"
The beautiful Monique insists on joining their expedition and cannot be dissuaded; we think at first she has a nefarious motive, but no, she's probably taken a class in screenplay construction and knows that the film requires a sexy female lead. This could be the first case in cinematic history of a character voluntarily entering a movie because of the objective fact that she is required. -- "Around The World In 80 Days"
The movie delights me with its cocky confidence that the audience can keep up. 'Primer' is a film for nerds, geeks, brainiacs, Academic Decathlon winners, programmers, philosophers and the kinds of people who have made it this far into the review. It will surely be hated by those who 'go to the movies to be entertained', and embraced and debated by others, who will find it entertains the parts the others do not reach. -- "Primer "
These people are hanging on by each other's fingernails. -- "Winter Passing"
He and the women make out in this movie as if trying to apply unguent inside each other's clothes. -- "Ulysses' Gaze"
She is the kind of person who can put two and two together using one two." -- "Manhattan Murder Mystery"
She and I stripped, covered ourselves with talcum powder, and went
bareback riding on a water-smooth silver stallion under the smiling Norwegian moon. We found bliss beside an ancient fjord where the Vikings sailed their dragon ships. Oh, what a night it was!" -- In Time Out magazine, in response to a query about the first time I made love
Ralphie about to maybe shoot someone's eye out.
"Heaven's Gate" is the most scandalous cinematic waste I have ever seen, and remember, I've seen "Paint Your Wagon."
Two things that cannot be convincingly faked are laughter and orgasm. If a movie made you laugh, as a critic you have to be honest and report that. Not so much with orgasms.
Ron Jeremy, for those not willing to admit they know who he is, has been in more porn films than anyone else. His popularity is easily explained: Every man alive believes that any woman would prefer him to Ron Jeremy. -- "Orgazmo"
I have often asked myself, "What would it look like if the characters in a movie were animatronic puppets created by aliens with an imperfect mastery of human behavior?" Now I know. -- "Friends and Lovers"
This film obtained a PG-13 rating, depressing evidence of how comfortable with vulgarity American teenagers are presumed to be. Apparently you can drink shit just as long as you don't say it. -- "Austin Powers II"
Samantha doesn't speak English at first, but quickly learns, no doubt in the same way the other actors have learned: by speaking their usual language, and having it dubbed. -- "Mighty Peking Man"
I had a nice conversation with seven or eight people coming down on the escalator after we all saw "Silent Hill." They wanted me to explain it to them. I said I didn't have a clue. They said, "You're supposed to be a movie critic, aren't you?" I said, "Supposed to be. But we work mostly with movies."
Among the lessons every young man should learn is this one: All women who like you because you make them laugh sooner or later stop laughing, and then why do they like you? -- "Igby Goes Down"
Here is a useful lesson. When you go to the pet lady and she shows you a group of Labrador puppies and one is cheaper than all the others, this is not the time to go bargain-hunting. -- "Marley & Me"
"This may be the first time in history that people have been asked to pay money to see an annuity in action. -- "Smokey and the Bandit Part 3"
North Pole! Final stop! (Clickable to visualize 3-D effect)
All comes together at the end. Landmarks are saved, hearts are mended, long-deferred love is realized, coincidences are explained, the past is healed, the future is assured, the movie is over. I liked the last part the best. -- "Till There was You"
Forget about fighting the ghosts; they ought to attack the sub-woofer. -- "13 Ghosts"
All I want for Christmas is to never see "All I Want for Christmas" again.
Ellen Brody has become convinced that the shark is following her. It wants revenge against her entire family. Her friends pooh-pooh the notion that a shark could identify, follow or even care about one individual human being, but I am willing to grant the point, for the benefit of the plot. I believe that the shark wants revenge against Mrs. Brody. I do. I really do believe it. After all, her husband was one of the men who hunted this shark and killed it, blowing it to bits. And what shark wouldn't want revenge against the survivors of the men who killed it? -- "Jaws: The Revenge"
The nauseating sight of baby Sly on a disco floor, dressed in the white suit from "Saturday Night Fever'' and dancing to "Stayin' Alive," had me pawing under my seat for the bag my Subway Gardenburger came in, in case I felt the sudden need to recycle it. -- "Baby Geniuses"
Here it is at last, the first 150-minute trailer. "Armageddon" is cut together like its own highlights. -- "Armageddon"
The Psychlos can fly between galaxies, but look at their nails: Their civilization has mastered the hyper drive but not the manicure. -- "Battlefield Earth"
For stunning displays of stupidity, Terl takes the cake; as chief of security for the conquering aliens, he doesn't even know what humans eat, and devises an experiment: "Let it think it has escaped! We can sit back and watch it choose its food." Bad luck for the starving humans that they capture a rat. An experiment like that, you pray for a chicken. -- "Battlefield Earth"
"Charlie's Angels' is eye candy for the blind."
On the first page of my notes, I wrote "Starts slow." On the second page, I wrote "Boring." On the third page, I wrote "Endless!" On the fourth page, I wrote: "Bite-size shredded wheat, skim milk, cantaloupe, frozen peas, toilet paper, salad stuff, pick up laundry. -- "Exit to Eden"
There's a French actor named George Coraface in the title role, he looks great, he has a terrific smile, his teeth are brushed, but if he were leading me across the street I'd be afraid I'd fall off the other curb. -- "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery"
There's children throwing snowballs / instead of throwing heads / they're busy building toys / and absolutely no one's dead!
As Torquemada, the inquisitor, Brando sulks about the set looking moody and delivering his lines with the absolute minimum of energy necessary to be audible. He's phoned in roles before, but this was the first time I wanted to hang up. -- "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery"
They say state-of-the-art special effects can create the illusion of anything on the screen, and now we have proof: It's possible for the Jim Henson folks and Industrial Light and Magic to put their heads together and come up with the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects, and I am not forgetting the Chucky doll or the desert intestine from "Star Wars." To see the snowman is to dislike the snowman. -- "Jack Frost"
Among the great unrecorded conversations in Hollywood history, we must now include the one in which Chevy Chase's agent convinced him that playing Benji would be the right career move. -- "Oh Heavenly Dog"
Every once in a while a movie comes along that makes me feel like a human dialysis machine. The film goes into my mind, which removes its impurities, and then it evaporates into thin air. --"Erik the Viking"
"Mad Dog Time' is the first movie I've seen that doesn't improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. It is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line.
Hitchcock said a movie should play the audience like a piano. "Death Race" played me like a drum. It is an assault on all the senses, including common.
The characters have no small talk. Their dialogue consists of commands, explanations, exclamations and ejaculations. Yes, an ejaculation can be dialogue. If you live long enough you may find that happening frequently. --"Resident Evil"
The end of a long, hard day
This movie is a real curiosity. It's dead. I don't mean it's bad. A lot of bad movies are throbbing with life. 'Mannequin' is dead. Halfway through, I was ready for someone to lead us in reciting the rosary."-- "Mannequin"
The press notes say it comes 'from the comedy laboratory of HBO's Emmy Award-winning Chris Rock Show.'' It's like one of those lab experiments where the room smells like swamp gas and all the mice are dead. -- "Pootie Tang"
I don't recall the Spot books describing the hero rolling around in doggy poo, or a gangster getting his testicles bitten off, but times change. -- "See Spot Run"
During the past week, I have seen the end of "The Blind Dead," the beginning of "The Devil's Widow," and two of the three dimensions of "Prison Girls." Here is my report. 'Prison Girls' was the toughest because the right lens fell out of my 3-D glasses and got lost on the floor. That was the whole ball game right there.
This movie has to be seen to be believed. On the other hand, maybe that's too high a price to pay." --"Highlander 2: The Quickening"
It is an astounding fact. The snowman on Charlie's front lawn is a living, moving creature inhabited by the personality of his father. It is a reflection of the lame-brained screenplay that despite having a sentient snowman, the movie casts about for plot fillers, including a school bully, a chase scene, snowball fights, a hockey team, an old family friend to talk to Mom--you know, stuff to keep up the interest between those boring scenes when the snowman is TALKING. -- "Jack Frost"
I didn't feel like a viewer during "Frozen Assets." I felt like an eyewitness at a disaster. If I were more of a hero, I would spend the next couple of weeks breaking into theaters where this movie is being shown, and leading the audience to safety.
Call me hardhearted, call me cynical, but please don't call me if they make "Home Alone 3." -- "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York"
The priest, however, has the movie's best line: "I'm busy! I've got chicken entrails to read!" -- "Rapa Nui"
I knew we were in trouble when Karen Allen told Thierry Lhermitte he had the most beautiful eyes she'd ever seen. His eyes looked more to me like the kind of eyes where, when you turned up looking like that, the nuns sent you to see the school nurse. -- "Until September"
A lifetime dedicated to the study of the cinema and I'm analyzing Goobot and Ooblar. -- "Jimmy Neutron"
This movie is shameless. It's not merely a tearjerker. It extracts tears individually by liposuction, without anesthesia. -- "Patch Adams"
If this guy broke into my hospital room and started tap-dancing with bedpans on his feet, I'd call the cops. I've been lucky enough to discover doctors who never once found it necessary to treat me while wearing a red rubber nose. -- "Patch Adams"
This is a role Robin Williams was born to play. In fact, he was born playing it. -- "Patch Adams"
This illustration appeared in a magazine about 20 years ago. When he saw it, Gene said, "Thank God I had my hands above the blanket." (Clickable)
After his big speech, the courtroom doors open up, and who walks in? All those bald little chemotherapy kids Patch cheered up earlier. And yes, dear reader, each and every one is wearing a red rubber nose. Should these kids be out of bed? Their immune systems are shot to hell. If one catches cold and dies, there won't be any laughing during the malpractice suit. -- "Patch Adams"
I waited all through the closing credits hoping to see a blooper reel from Strom Thurmond's birthday party which would have brought this film to it's logical conclusion. - Gods and Generals"
"Pearl Harbor' is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle.
She gobbles down tuna and sushi. Her eyes have vertical pupils instead of round ones. She sleeps on a shelf. The movie doesn't get into the litter box situation. -- "Catwoman"
The director, whose name is "Pitof," was probably issued with two names at birth and would be wise to use the other one on his next project. -- Catwoman
Some of the acting is better than the film deserves. Make that all of the acting. Actually, the film stock itself is better than the film deserves. -- "Revolver"
Any movie that employs an oven mitt and a plumber's friend in a childbirth scene cannot be all bad. -- "Big Momma's House"
Will there be a scene where Sara's faithful gay friend bathes and comforts her? Yes, because it is a convention of movies like this that all sexy women have gay friends who materialize on demand to perform nursing and hygiene chores. (Advice to gay actor in next remake: Insist, "Unless I get two good scenes of my own, I've emptied my last bedpan." -- "Sweet November"
Pamela Anderson Lee, while not a great actress, is a good sport. She's backlit in endless scenes where, if she could have figured out a way to send her breasts in separately, she could have stayed at home. -- "Barb Wire"
"Dear God" is the kind of movie where you walk out repeating the title.
This is a rare movie with enough common sense that after Crawford has been blown up, dumped in the sea, shot at during a shower and dragged through a parking garage, her co-star has the consideration to say, 'Hey, if you need a clean shirt or something, better do it now." -- Fair Game
I began to flash back to "Trog" (1970). This is an example of camp that was found, not made. That it was directed by the great cinematographer Freddie Francis, I have absolutely no explanation for. That it starred Joan Crawford, in almost her final movie role, I think I understand. Even though she was already enshrined as a Hollywood goddess, she was totally unable to stop accepting roles, and took this one against all reason. The plot of "Trog," which I will abbreviate mercilessly, involves a hairy monster. When it goes on a killing spree and is captured, Joan Crawford, an anthropologist, realizes it is a priceless scientific find: The Missing Link between ape and man. Then Trog kidnaps a small girl and crawls into a cave, and reader, although many years have passed since I saw the movie, I have never forgotten the sight of Crawford in her designer pantsuit and all the makeup, crawling on her hands and knees into the cave and calling out, "Trog! Trog!" As if Trog knew the abbreviation of its scientific name. -- "The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra."
There is a scene in "Exit to Eden" in which the hero butters Dana Delaney's breast, sprinkles it with cinnamon, and licks it before taking bites from a croissant. I'm thinking: The breast or the croissant, make up your mind.
If you, under any circumstances, see "Little Indian, Big City," I will never let you read one of my reviews again.
Thanks to reader Jerry Roberts of Birmingham, Alabama, and WikiQuotes for some of these.
A package arrives at dinner time
I triple-dog-dare-you to watch this review
A friend, who writes part time for heavemedia.com, recently posed this issue. Whether to write a negative review of a cd he really disliked, or to not write the review at all. I offered up the advice that it might at least allow him an opportunity to sharpen his sword. This entry just solidified my reasoning. I can't wait to forward it to him. I look forward to more compilations like this in the future. Perhaps an entry that compiles all your plot explanations of far flung sci-fi movies (think Eagle Eye)?
Oh, Roger, brilliant as usual. So is Freddy Got Fingered the worst movie you have ever seen?
Ebert: Ha!
Nice to see you're in the holiday spirit, Roger. ;)
I wanted to be a movie critic for the longest time, but recently I've felt I would be directing my energies at something so... small. I don't mean to demean either cinema or you, Roger; I just wouldn't want to be "analyzing Goobot and Ooblar" when my energies would be better spent analyzing—well, anything's better than Goobot and Ooblar.
Maybe if I could only review good movies...
Ebert: If only. Humor is a saving grace.
I'm sure Gene Siskel wasn't the only one who was grateful that his hands were painted above the blanket. I'm still laughing about that one. And Trog. And the mental image of you dressed up as some eighties action hero, a la Stallone or Arnold, bursting into a movie theatre, M-60 blazing at the projection booth, protecting people from "Frozen Assets."
"This is not a book to be set aside lightly. It is to be hurled, and with great force." Dorothy Parker
You've already posted Mark Twain's brilliant Cooper bashing.
A former co-worker once said of "The Ninth Gate:" "That's two hours of my life that I want Roman Polanski to give back."
You know, I'm supposed to be asleep right now, but I'm too busy re-reading this post and cracking up. When I drag my ass into work tomorrow, I'll tell my boss it was your fault.
I asked for "Your Film Sucks" for Christmas (along with ("Awake In The Dark"). If this is a preview of what's to come, this could be the best Christmas in years!
"Of course it's a lamp, you nincompoop! It's also a major award! I won it!"
"My father wove a tapestry of obscenities that, as far as we know, is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan."
"Oh, my God, I shot my eye out!"
"I can't put my arms down!"
"Well, put your arms down when you get to school."
"Now, I had heard that word at least ten times a day from my old man. He worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium; a master. But, I chickened out and said the first name that came to mind."
Are these excerpts from reviews on Christmas releases? (I'm a little unfamiliar as to movie release dates for anything before 2006 when I landed in the US). If not, what exactly is the point of this collection (apart from reminding us all of how hilarious your reviews can be)
Ebert: They're mostly from older movies. I thought that after nearly 1,000 comments on the Theory of Evolution, we all deserved a little holiday break.
"I didn't feel like a viewer during "Frozen Assets." I felt like an eyewitness at a disaster. If I were more of a hero, I would spend the next couple of weeks breaking into theaters where this movie is being shown, and leading the audience to safety."
This one was so funny. I had to read the review and watch it on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ctXHoudenc
I post on the Rotten Tomatoes message boards and at the end of the year I do extensive writeups on the year's worst films. In the grand scheme of things, most bad reviews don't deter people from movies that were bad to begin with, but it sure makes me feel better talking about how awful "One Missed Call" was and wondering why I wasted my money on it.
Sometimes I think the joy of tearing a bad movie to shreds is easier and more fun than writing about Godard or Scorsese. I think it must tap into our general love of watching people suffer. but after watching a bad movie or reading a bad book, it's certainly easy to cast suffering on others.
For anyone who cares and wants to kill some time, here's my Worst Of lists from years past;. I'm obviously the threadstarter in each of them:
2006: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?referrerid=249406&threadid=526239
2007:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?referrerid=249406&threadid=604619
2008 (incomplete, still needs number 1):http://www.rottentomatoes.com/vine/showthread.php?t=659658
All things considered, I suppose you might get coal for this post. But, as I'm sure you understood before you started typing, those filmmakers will get even bigger chunks of it.
For me, the hardest part about seeing a bad movie is wondering whether or not the filmmakers approached it like a child on Christmas morning, allowing their exuberance to blind them to their utter clumsiness, or like, well, Scrooge.
Although, come to think of it, it's hard to imagine a film made by someone with genuine exuberance being wholeheartedly bad (and yes, I've seen "Plan 9 From Outer Space"--I found it bad, but charmingly so). It's usually the ones made by Michael Bay that cause problems. But, on the other hand, I suppose he might be exuberant but just too incompetent to let it count for anything.
And just for the record, the phrase "eye candy for the blind" could describe a far, far more interesting film than "Charlie's Angels". I'd like to see someone attempt to film it.
I don't know what's more sad, that upon browsing Metacritic's all time low scores I've read half of these comments prior to this post, or that (with the exception of Little Indian, Big City) I've actually seen, talked about or even heard of half of these awful movies.
By the way, I thought you liked Sideways, like a lot. I can't say I share your sentiments but that one quote sums it up pretty nicely.
So much for the appetizers. Now, we're ready for the main course.
Your review of Samuel L. Jackson's performance in "The Spirit."
Ebert: Here's a teaser:
"The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson) heroically overacts, devouring the scenery as if following instructions from Gladstone, the British prime minister who attributed his success to chewing each bite 32 times."
Do you find it easier from a writing perspective to write a good good review or a good bad review? btw - that was on purpose - sort of.
Ebert: Oddly enough, the hardest ones are the ones in between.
Christmas Song redactions, clarifications: http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/002660.html
Remembered it too late for the last blog post. Dream conveyances, picked with a keen sense of the cool, absurd, and historical: http://retrocrush.buzznet.com/articles/vehicles/index.html
I just graduated from the Arizona State University film school and it's comforting to know that the man in charge of my film program produced one of those films...Trog. I'll send him the link.
I had to stop reading before I could reach the end of the fourth quote. Every film interested friend of mine on Facebook now has an urgent message to read this blog entry.
Greatest Movie Critic Ever.
And a quick question, "Why don't more critics make movies?" We know of your time with Russ Meyer. But really, why don't more critics make movies?
I may be alone in this opinion, but I think Hellraiser 2 has aged rather well. It's still not very good, but the passage of time has matured it a little, given it a bit of class and sophistication. Then again, anything looks like Shakespeare compared to the modern gore films that try to ape it. "Ape" being the key word in that sentence.
Silent Hill? God, what a waste. On paper this seemed foolproof, good director, oscar winning writer, great actors, based on one of the only video games to be both genuinely cinematic and written by people who knew how to read. I should have remembered that Exorcist 2 also had a similarly reputable pedigree; and that trusting a movie will be good because of the names attached to it is like trying to guess a woman's personality by knowing her chest measurements. I think there's something really wrong when the video game that the movie is based on has more heart and soul and genuine human moments than the movie itself.
One of my favorite "Ebert" quotes is from your 1997 re-review of The Graduate:
"The Graduate," released in 1967, contains no flower children, no hippies, no dope, no rock music, no political manifestos and no danger. It is a movie about a tiresome bore and his well-meaning parents. The only character in the movie who is alive--who can see through situations, understand motives, and dare to seek her own happiness--is Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Seen today, ``The Graduate'' is a movie about a young man of limited interest, who gets a chance to sleep with the ranking babe in his neighborhood, and throws it away in order to marry her dorky daughter.
I love that line. In one sweep of the pen you've taken all the balls out of the movie while at the same time nailing down exactly what's wrong with it. If anyone was to ask me how to write a movie review, I'd tell them "Do THAT!" and point to that line. It's poetry.
I was taken aback by the apparent implication that you didn't like Bound, so I went and looked up your review. You gave it four stars; deservedly so, as far as I'm concerned. It was precisely because I liked Bound so much that I found The Matrix such a disappointment.
But you forgot about NORTH!
No one can forget about NORTH.
That is its horrible power.
That is its horrible penalty.
Ever thought of writing a skit for SNL?
I must add two recent gems:
"Edward is 114 years old. He must be really tired of taking biology class. Darwin came in during his watch, and proved vampires can't exist." - Twilight
"Keanu Reeves is often low-key in his roles, but in this movie, his piano has no keys at all. He is so solemn, detached and uninvolved he makes Mr. Spock look like Hunter S. Thompson at closing time." - The Day The Earth Stood Still
And two relatively older ones:
It is curiously touching, in the middle of this polluted wasteland, to see a car that was towing a boat that still has its outboard motor attached. No one has explained what the boat was seeking at that altitude. - The Hills Have Eyes
If there is one thing you should know before driving cross-country in an RV, it is: Never eat organ meats supplied by a man you have never seen before, just because he happens to turn up with a lot of organs. - RV
Ebert: Two of these have been added as we speak.
Always very funny, and I actually remembered many of these from the original reviews, they were so good. I especially like the Exit to Eden croissant line, which I laughed at for literally two minutes.
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Every year I open my Writing for the Media class, which includes some film criticism, with a reading of your "Armageddon" review. At the end of the academic year, after some Chayefsky, Goldman, the obligatory McKee and Kaufman, the students walk away reciting the "Armageddon" review.
Very nice, but can the films be all bad if they inspire such delightful put downs? I especially liked your quotes in relation to Armageddon, a film that I still remember for its uniquely unoriginal concussive effect, what I called "a testosterone-dazed celebration of endangered straight white male American values." I still sometimes get excited by a really bad film since I know it will be great fun to skewer.
This movie is absolutely the pits-Gene Siskel on Cannonball Run II (1984)
An immoral and reprehensible piece of trash-Roger Ebert on Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
In order to have a great holiday season, we have to avoid two types of movies.
Those that...
a) are the absolute pits
and...
b) are immoral and reprehensible pieces of trash.
After looking at My Dinner With Andre, The Silence, Belle de Jour, and Grand Illusion, I can safely say that I'm having a really good holiday season. I hope everyone else is too.
Just watched A Christmas Story again for the umpteenth time. I first saw it as a college sophomore. I just stumbled upon it on cable. It was a rare evening when my entire family happened to be sitting together, watching TV. My father and I laughed ourselves silly. Last night I watched it with my wife and 14 year old daughter, and we laughed ourselves silly.
Even the tossed off, odd lines in that movie are gems. Sort of like your quotes above.
Merry Christmas, Mr. Ebert. Many blessings to you.
Obviously this post, combined with new years, calls for a '10 worst' list. I honestly don't know why it isn't a tradition already. The 'razzies' set the precedent, but I think we all know that only you can take it to the next level.
My initial understanding of this posting was that it was about bad movies, until it came to your quote on 'Bound.' That's a four-star review. I guess that something happened as you pulled your quotes. Anyway, those're all some great shots.
Ebert: All the movies aren't bad. My intro was misleading. Nobody has ever mentioned that line* in my "Bound" review. They may not have stopped to think it through. If my editors had, they might not have printed it.
* "They had a tete-a-tete, and vice-versa."
Roger, it was an honor to dive headfirst into your old reviews and unearth the gems for your blog.
What I found was an treasure chest of great quotes. I could request a book called "The Quotable Ebert" because there are so many great quotes, quips and one-liners that I wasn't able to submit.
I think writing reviews of bad movies are a defense against them, like MST3K, it's the ability to strike back at those films that take chunks of time out of our busy lives and, at the very least, get something worthwhile from them.
Once again, I am faced with the dilemma: Is Ebert the most brilliant movie critic in the universe, or the most brilliant writer?
Dilemma 2, the Sequel: can he possibly be BOTH?
Ebert: Neither, actually, but you can keep right on telling everyone.
Where is this review of "Marley & Me"? That would have been useful advice. I found my lab for free on the internet. She ate a substantial portion of our garage.
Ebert: Coming this week. The movie is not bad.
Reading Ebert's In The Meadow We Can Pass A Snowman I found myself wondering what took longer, him to look through all his reviews for the quotes, or me to actually read them?
:)
Seriously though, I have to wonder sometimes how awkward it is when you find yourself standing next to some guy who's movie you trashed. Any actor/director ever tell you to go eff yourself?
Ebert: Not yet. But after Gene Siskel said Lauren Bacall didn't deserve her Oscar nomination, the great lady crossed a room to tell me, "You can tell your friend Siskel that he is a c*********."
Thanks for the laugh, Roger. Few critics write negative reviews the way you can.
One thing does puzzle me: You include quotes from your reviews of BOUND and SIDEWAYS, both of which you rated very highly. Why mention them with such undeserved company?
Ebert: This is just a collection of nice lines, wherever they appeared. Inclusion doesn't mean a movie is bad.
I've always had a special fondness for "Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor." and "Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time."
That settles it. "Your Movie Sucks" is now on my wish list.
Yeah, the "Two thumbs down are coming to town" does lead one to think the following quotes will be from negative reviews.
For a minute there, I was wondering if you were testing your readers so to speak with some kind of commentary on soundbites taken out of context of the full review. Like how Terminator 3 quoted you as saying "wall to wall action!" (snip snip)
I do have a question, though, Mr Ebert. We always hear about filmmakers getting defensive and lashing out when critics give negative reviews because that makes a better news story. But do you ever run into a filmmaker and they just shrug it off and say, "You're entitled to your opinion; I hope you like my next one better"?
My favorite quote by you is definitely of 'Freddie Got Fingered'. I reread it recently in 'Your Movie Sucks'. It had no bearing on me deciding not to see it however, advertising did that. I took the money I would have spent on it and bought stock in Washington Mutual. I remain happy with the decision.
My favorite reviews I've given others are of 'Eyes Wide Shut' to which I told my friend to keep his "Wallet wide shut", and my response to the same friend when he asked how I enjoyed listening to my recently purchased Pink Floyd album 'Umma Gumma': "Umma gumma throw it in the garbage".
It is sad how much more enjoyable are the sharp bites in negative criticsim, and not quite so the reviews praising brilliant films. I must admit also that I stop watching American Idol once they start showing people with actual talent. "I'm a baaaaaad boy."
Without a doubt, my all time favorite Siskel & Ebert (AND Ebert & Roeper) review is that of PATCH ADAMS, a movie they've shown on cable dozens of times but I've never bothered to watch in its entireness (or majority), in other words, the review packs infinitely more entertainment in its +/- 3 minutes than the movie in its entirety . I listened to it countless times (when the show's sound was all that was available on the internet) and watched even more frequently since old video reviews appeared at your old web site last year.
They say Siskel & Ebert were at their best when they fought each other, if any good came out of PATCH ADAMS, it was proving this theory incorrect. I can't remember another review in which BOTH of you were as great.
Ebert: You know who hates,. hates, hates "Patch Adams?" Patch Adams. A nice guy. Met him at the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder.
My beautiful friend Roger,
I am also from B'ham. Perhaps a Ebert fan gettogether would be good...
thanks for this very amusing post to read this morning of my wife and
my first anniversary. All I can do is add a couple more from my
favorite bad movie review of a film "Taste of Cherry" recommended to me by a friend
as being from one of the greatest living directors in competition to my
choice being Clint Eastwood.
"A case can be made for the movie, but it would involve transforming the experience of viewing the film (which is excruciatingly boring) into something more interesting, a fable about life and death. Just as a bad novel can be made into a good movie, so can a boring movie be made into a fascinating movie review."
Wonderful list as always, Roger! I think I was channeling you when I wrote this not long ago of a truly berserk Japanese film named "Machine Girl": "... this movie not only goes over the top, it tears the top off, sets it on fire, and throws it back at you."
Ebert: [A]fter Gene Siskel said Lauren Bacall didn't deserve her Oscar nomination, the great lady crossed a room to tell me, "You can tell your friend Siskel that he is a c*********."
She called him a cantaloupe?
Ebert: Hardly anyone guesses that.
I oved how you had two from Resident Evil which, beieve you me, I saw for free on TV and still wanted my money back, but the ine about teenage vulgarity from your Austin Powers II review was flat out hysterical! Your opinions, particularly your negative ones, come highly recommended to all my friends :-)
"Paint Your Wagon," "Simpson's" style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHT4QBwCicw
"...when superheroes have sex at the R level, I am always afraid someone will get hurt"
This reminds me of a wonderfully eye-rolling scene in Frank Miller's comic The Dark Knight Strikes Again, where Superman and Wonder Woman have sex, and upon climax, volcanoes around the world erupt and mountains crumble. Wonder Woman to Superman: "Clark, the Earth moved!"
And that, my friends, is why humorless comic readers call Frank Miller an indulgent hack.
Ebert: "Was it as good for you as it was for the cruise business to Krakatoa?"
You actually missed my favorite one, from "Highlander 2": "If there is a planet somewhere whose civilization is based on the worst movies of all time, 'Highlander 2: The Quickening' deserves a sacred place among their most treasured artifacts."
When he saw it, Gene said, "Thank God I had my hands above the blanket."
Gene should have had his hands in front of his eyes. You are not a good (sleigh) driver. ;-)
Thanks so much for the blast from the past! Enjoyed rereading the scathing bits from some of your reviews. Still miss Gene a lot.
I want you to promise me that if I ever get a film made and you think it's bad, you will mercilessly eviscerate it with long, imaginative prose. At least I'd get something out of it. Oh, and you'll know my film when you see it. Lots of random orgies and nuns exploding.
Ebert: I hate it when that happens.
I have too much Christmas on the brain to devour the whole lot of quotes at this moment, and am thankful for backlogs.
Chevy Chase appeared in your one star review of "Heavenly Dog" and was nowhere to be seen in the superior-by-leaps-and-bounds-and-I-don't-care-what-Gene-said-Godlovehim, "Benji the Hunted."
Ebert: I bow to your superior scholarship.
Great quotes all around, but all I could think after the halfway point of the post is, "I really want to see Bad Santa again". Now there's a holiday staple... (BTW, I think one of your best reviews ever)
I know it's a terrible, mean thing to say, but I wouldn't give up those bad movies for anything. When you watch something like Patch Adams or Catwoman, it's a lot like what the Jackass guys do, suffering needlessly for the amusement of others.
Ebert: Because I know I can write a review, it can actually be very enjoyable.
"a few haunting spectres cloud my visions of sugarplums" Ebert
To quote Nichiren Daishonin(1222-1281)
"Human beings are formed of thirty-six elements: excrement, urine, saliva, flesh, blood, skin, bone, the five solid internal organs, the six empty internal organs, the hair of the head, the hair of the body, energy, life, and so forth."
Life too is a tapestry of diverse components. As the bard observes with such infinite delicacy
"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not;
and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues"
The human body, Life, art Cinema are all facets of a single reality which combines the sublime with the profane....yada....the present post only goes to show that your adventure through cinema was complete and you did not shirk at any point, doing a thorough job...
Ebert: I did my duty...sir!
You looked yourself up on WikiQuote? That's pretty surreal.
Ebert: Laziness.
Roger,
I remember a line you used in your review of "Viva Rock Vegas" which had me crying when I read it. So, I have retreived it from your site.
"This is an ideal first movie for infants, who can enjoy the bright colors on the screen and wave their tiny hands to the music."
Priceless, thanks
Ebert: Now added!
Are all these great insults hand-crafted for the specific movie you're reviewing? I'm thinking some of them probably popped into your head at a random moment, and you saved them up for a few weeks or months, until a deserving movie came along.
After reading all of your pans. all I can think is that you have a lot of hate inside of you. I'm glad you found a way to vent all of that hate, but I guess you didn't get all of it out, becuase there was enough left inside of you to fester and make you sick.
Ebert: I've never festered one day in my life, but of course I've got my fingers crossed.
These quotes are the reasons why you are who I look up to most when it comes to writing about film.
Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Hi Mr. Ebert,
Thanks for the early Christmas present. Your two collections of bad movie reviews - "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie" & "Your Movie Sucks" - always make me laugh. Whenever you get out the scalpel I'm reminded of Anton Ego's line "Negative criticism...is fun to write and read". What's troubling to me is that most of your quotes come from the last 25 years or so, which lends me to believe that the overall quality is declining like our stock market.
Here's a recent favorite of mine:
"[Charles Bronson] was publicizing Death Wish(1974). He gets a gun and starts posing as bait for muggers, a middle-aged guy with a bag of groceries. Bronson went on to make...Death Wish V (1994) by which time he was 73 and didn't need the bag of groceries as bait"
-From your review of "Death Sentence" 08/31/2007
And one from a dearly departed:
"Screenwriter Roger Ebert nervously asked the bartender for a shot and beer chaser. That was bold drinking for so young a man. Sure enough, he coughed on the shot. I had always assumed, since I didn't know any better, that creeps wrote all the dirty, violent movies. But Ebert is not a creep. He is a peaceful, pleasant, thoughtful young man, only 26 or 27, with a cherubic face and a great writing talent. While still a student, he wrote a history of a university, and it was a clean book, which used to be possible when writing about universities."
-Mike Royko, Chicago Daily News 07/10/1973(I believe you did a public reading of this at the Harold Washington Library in 1999.)
Merry Christmas to you and your wife
"Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom."
Good, great, bad or zero-star terrible? I know you never wrote a review -- but I'm certain it would have been full of memorable quotes.
Did you review the film "White Heat"? ,i wanted to read your review for that film but i couldn't find in your site.
Isn't it a bit unedifying/self congratulatory to write an article of "my funniest moments"? I'm a fan of yours, Mr Ebert, but this was a bit cringey.
Ebert: Self-congratulatory, certainly. But unedifying?
Better watch it, fella--there is not all that much difference between these quotes and crack cocaine, if you are an Ebert enthusiast. What is the withdrawal going to be like??!
Wasn't "Keanu Reeves is often low-key in his roles, but in this movie, his piano has no keys at all. He is so solemn, detached and uninvolved he makes Mr. Spock look like Hunter S. Thompson at closing time." from the review of "The Day the Earth Stood Still", not "Twilight"? Unless he was in "Twilight" and was so low-key I didn't notice him.
Ebert: Neither did I.
Oh, this is fun. Two more favs:
Southland Tales (which I actually liked, but this is still a great line):
"I recommend that Kelly keep right on cutting until he whittles it down to a ukulele pick."
September Dawn:
"Stamp, as Brigham Young, comes across as the kind of man you'd find at the back of a cave in a Cormac McCarthy novel."
This blog post really needs a link to the entire "North" review. Then again; that review really wasn't as eloquent or witty as it was straight forward...
From your review of "The Dark":
The creature's favorite means of attack is to pull of his victim's heads. Wonderful. The press nicknames him "The Mangler," a title that could more accurately be bestowed on the director.
If you like this Ebert post, here's another Defective Yeti link that should satisfy your love of a well turned panning:
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/archives/cat_bad_review_revue.html
Had Oscar Wilde lived long enough, he would have made a swell film critic.
-J
The Samuel L. Jackson Drinking Game
Reply to: I want you to promise me that if I ever get a film made and you think it's bad, you will mercilessly eviscerate it with long, imaginative prose. Oh, and you'll know my film when you see it. Lots of random orgies and nuns exploding. - Future Studio Exec
Arguably, "The Spirit" would have been a better movie if Scarlett Johansson had played the primary villain, Dr. Cobra. (I could tell you why, but it's a spoiler and "The Spirit" hasn't officially opened yet.)
In the comics, Silken Floss was a nuclear physicist and a brilliant surgeon. In the movie, she's been demoted to secretary to The Octopus (given name Zitzbath Zark). a psychopathic criminal mastermind who was never seen in the comics, except for his distinctive gloves.
So, the game becomes: find a way to insert an unnecessary role for Samuel L. Jackson into future movies.
If you need an example, think of Frozone in "The Incredibles." Mace Windu in "Star Wars." Colonel Nick Fury in "Iron Man". Roland in "Jumper." Dr. Harry Adams in Michael Crichton's "The Sphere." Ray Arnold in "Jurassic Park." Zeus Carver in "Die Hard With A Vengeance."
OK, I'll go first. In the next Indiana Jones movie, Marion dies. Indy finds a supernatural artifact that allows him to communicate with the dead. When he uses it to make contact with Marion's ghost.... he learns that she's living in the Elysian Fields with Colin Williams, also a ghost, a former RAF pilot whom she started dating three months after Mutt was born, and married. Indy then enters into a combative relationship with the two of them, much like Leo G. Carroll in "Topper." Colin insists on repeating the story of how he died in aerial combat, making machine gun sounds...
What kind of role could Samuel L. Jackson possibly play in the "Twilight" franchise? Maybe there are some fans out there who could help me out.
Ebert: Obviously, he could be the school nurse,
I know some folks may think it breaks a cardinal rule of comedy to laugh at your own jokes, but sometimes it is quite necessary to draw attention to such a high level of wit. Next time I get accused of laughing at my own joke, I am going to send my accuser this article. I've been know to deliver some great lines, and I understand how much more difficult it is to do it with the written word, as opposed to letting a great line fly in the midst of a conversation. Often times, when I say something worth repeating, I end up having to say, well I guess you had to be there. Thankfully, for many of these movies, you were there, and we didn't have to be, and still got to share in your wit and wisdom. You have a great gift and it has kept me a loyal reader for decades.
Roger:
I've been reading your pieces since 1966 or 1967. In those days, the arrival of the Sun-Times would awaken me because my bedroom window was next to the porch that received the paperboy's throw at 6:00 a.m. In the summer, if the Cubs won the previous day, I'd go back to sleep peacefully; if not, I'd just toss and turn, knowing about all the crap I'd be reading and reliving later that morning. Obviously, this has nothing to do with your blog--I just had to get it off my chest. Maybe you should direct some of your barbs at the world of sports.
Anyway, I've always enjoyed your reviews and the quotes above are among the best things in your columns. Just keep on going and happy holidays.
I didn't think Lauren Bacall could electrify me anymore than she did in "The Big Sleep"
One of my favorite lines from an Ebert review is from Not Another Teen Movie:
"I have here a heartfelt message from a reader who urges me not to be so hard on stupid films, because they are "plenty smart enough for the average moviegoer." Yes, but one hopes being an average moviegoer is not the end of the road: that one starts as a below-average filmgoer, passes through average, and, guided by the labors of America's hard-working film critics, arrives in triumph at above-average."
Oh, wait...that was Martha Vickers. I still wish I was there to see Lauren Bacall in bitch mode...I mean that as a compliment.
Since it was mentioned (and a rare occasion this is, rarer than Christmas), I have to add that SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT 3 is the most amazingly incompetent hack job of the "modern" film era - they simply don't make (or release, I guess) those kinds of band-aid jobs anymore. Everything is wrong with it, or broken - everything!
It's so off the rails, SUCH a mish-mash of bad dubbing, dada-ist nonsense, and obviously scaled-down smut humor, that I highly, highly recommend it as a legitimate object of fascination from a bygone era. They still make awful movies, but they never let the seams show any more, and that was the lion's share of the fun.
Hell, I'd give SMOKEY 3 **** on entertainment value alone (and that's four stars, not a horribly puritan censoring of any four-letter pejorative), and I am NOT someone who likes to waste time laughing at things when I could be laughing with them. But SMOKEY 3 is essential viewing. (Somehow, The Great One manages to get through the picture w/o much embarrassment, although I'd pay a good wad of money to anyone who can score me a copy of the original 'Gleason-as-Smokey-and-Bandit' version)
Why, SMOKEY 3 is so bad, it's (to this day) the only movie I've ever seen three times in one day. This was during my early twenties, when time was just a box of crackers.
"After reading all of your pans. all I can think is that you have a lot of hate inside of you. I'm glad you found a way to vent all of that hate, but I guess you didn't get all of it out, becuase there was enough left inside of you to fester and make you sick."
I hate this kind of argument against film criticism. As if it takes a real grinch to dislike Jack Frost. Indeed, it would take a true misanthrope to say something good about that movie, and risk having that being misconstrued as a recommendation. Saying something positive about Jack Frost is exactly what I would do if I hated somebody and wanted to ruin their Christmas.
It's like someone tells you "Don't eat that, it's poisoned!", and you say "On the plus side, it's delicious. Why do you always have to focus on the negatives?"
My uncle died of cancer a few years ago, and he visited me in his last weeks, asking "Is that Bulletproof Monk movie any good?" I knew that he was terminally ill, so I didn't want to be too negative. I said "It has its moments", so the last movie he ever saw was Bulletproof Monk. My uncle's favorite movie was Casablanca, and the last chapter of his life as a film lover was Bulletproof Monk. Maybe it wasn't entirely my fault, but I could have prevented it. I could have told him that one of the primary antagonists is named Mister Funktastic. Don't let this happen to you. If a movie sucks, say so.
Love the quote from "Alligator" which I'll always recall seeing you and Gene Siskel review on my very first exposure to "Sneak Previews". You two were my first exposure to movie criticism, and all these years later, I enjoy your work more than ever. Merry Christmas to you Mr. Ebert!
"This blog post really needs a link to the entire "North" review."
I thought of sending Roger the quote "I hated, hated, hated this movie" among the quotes I sent to him but I figured everyone has already heard that one. I was shooting for those that not many people had either heard or remembered.
There was one that I sent him but he didn't add it. It was the opening line to his review of The Blue Lagoon: "This movie made me itch".
Or the one from The Blues Brothers: "This is the Sherman Tank of musicials".
He's got a million of 'em!
Here's a few others I liked.
"I was shaken but not stirred." (GoldenEye)
"Thurman wears a costume identical to one Bruce Lee wore in his last film. Is this intended as coincidence, homage, impersonation? Not at all. It can be explained by quantum physics: The suit can be in two movies at the same time." (Kill Bill: Vol 1)
"Moviegoers who knowingly buy a ticket for "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" are going to get exactly what they expect: There is a mummy, a tomb, a dragon and an emperor." (The Mummy: Tomb of... well, you get the idea)
Some quotes from the show from imdb.com:
Roger Ebert: [reviewing "Freddy Got Fingered"] What is the most disgusting film of 2001? Well, let's see, in a field that includes "See Spot Run", "Monkeybone", "Tomcats", and "Joe Dirt", so we've got some great contenders; the champion is "Freddy Got Fingered", with Tom Green making David Spade look like Jim Carrey, and Jim Carrey look like Laurence Olivier.
Gene Siskel: [reviewing "Stargate"] Do you know that the budget, supposedly, of this picture was fifty-five million dollars?
Roger Ebert: Boy, they must've had some great lunches.
Gene Siskel: [reviewing Highlander 2:The Quickening] I read about this picture and do you know that it cost 34 million dollars to make?
Roger Ebert: You’re kidding me!
Gene Siskel: Shot in Argentina....where did the money go?
Roger Ebert: 34 million, they must have had a limousine every time they went to the john.
I knew who you were for a long time, and in college, I started reading your web site reviews, especially the ones about movies I loved. I typed in "Dumb and Dumber," a movie that every person under 30 can quote from beginning to end, a movie that is not considered "good," but my opinion of you shot up 500% when I saw this line in your opening paragraph:
"The purpose of a comedy is to make you laugh, and there is a moment in "Dumb and Dumber" that made me laugh so loudly I embarrassed myself. I just couldn't stop. It's the moment involving the kid who gets the parakeet."
Thank you for being the People's Critic, and admitting when something is just damn funny.
" Synecdoche, New York ' should only be seen by people who have already seen it once, is pretty damn good.*
Happy, warm( I hear the wind-chill is -30), safe,sometimes crowded,sometimes quiet, holidays.
*I hope I got that right: I can't find the article now.
Roger, I'm very disappointed you haven't reviewed Righteous Kill.
Here's another opportunity to add to your list of memorable quotes!
You forgot your review of "The Story Of Us." The "long ride in a small car with the Bickersons" line, still among my favorite of yours. That and your joke about the lazer beam corridor in Resident Evil having a sense of humor.
One thing I've also found infinitely amusing is audience reactions to bad movies. When I saw the remake of The Wicker Man, by the end of the movie, everyone in the theater was laughing at it. I have never seen an audience, a packed house on a Friday night, so fully rebel against a film. But I relate a couple other amusing stories:
BATTLEFIELD EARTH: I read the book and enjoyed it. It's one of my stepfather's favorites. I went with him and my mother on opening night in a sold out theater. By the end of the film, the theater was at least half empty. PEople were standing up to leave almost every five minutes, and most of them were vocal in their disgust. My stepdad, who had been anticipating the film for months, literally got up around the 45 minute mark and told my mother and me he would wait for us in the lobby. I was 12 at the time and probably enjoyed the movie, but wathcing it many years later, I too found it to be laughably bad. And when the credits finally rolled, the man sitting behind me simply said, "What a piece of shit."
MONSTER- Great film, but it inspired one of the strangest walkouts I've ever seen. It was right after the Oscar nominations had been announced and it was a fairly full theater. About two rows in front of me were some older women, probably late 40's, early 50's. The film began, and the first scene in the gay bar inspired some gruff mutterings from the women. During the roller rink scene, when Selby and Aileen skate to "Don't Stop Believing," the murmers grew a bit louder and the women shifted in their seats. When it cut to Aileen and Selby making out, they got up and left, still murmuring angrily. Because horrific violence was OK for them, but two women kissing to an 80's song was just too much.
Also, when I saw "Lakeview Terrace" back in September, the theater manager loaded the film incorrectly, so the third and second to last reels played in reverse. I went and talked to the manager, and he said the only complaint he had gotten about it at that point was about how the theater could have shown a movie depicting an interracial marriage.
I'd be curious to hear what other people's movie horror stories are.
And to think that I almost made it through the rest of my life without once thinking of Oh Heavenly Dog after seeing it when it first came out.
Aaargh!!!!
Great list. :)
What kind of role could Samuel L. Jackson possibly play in the "Twilight" franchise? Maybe there are some fans out there who could help me out. (Quoted from Billy Hayes)
Ebert: Obviously, he could be the school nurse,
I am SICK of these m**f**ing vampires in my m**f**ing clinic!
It would add something to the films.
My favorite Ebert review is the Little Indian, Big City one. But I must confess it gave me a hankering to watch a small boy in a loincloth climb the Eiffel Tower. Alas, time constraints have made such a treat impossible and I am the lesser for it.
Don't feel too bad for not understanding the premise to "Silent Hill". Most of us who knew the source material didn't get it either. The same for the shopping-list dialogue of "Resident Evil".
Video game movies, it seems, are made for a quick buck; studios will rush through whatever script comes in the mail so they can bank solely on name recognition. Think what you want about video games; there are people out there who put their blood, sweat and tears into the craft, and you may not think of them as works of art but at their best they can be as evocative. The video game movie only cheapens the effort of these talented people, just like any blockbuster remake (one comes to mind that premiered just the other day). I ask you, Roger, in your infinite wisdom, to use your powers for good and stop this madness.
One of my favourites is "...The plot tries to thicken." from A Low Down Dirty Shame. And how can you bring up Mad Dog Time ("the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time") without also adding its follow-up in Frogs for Snakes ("the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of 'Mad Dog Time.'")?
In response to Wes Lawson (a few comments above) mentioning an audience laughing at "The Wicker Man" remake, I had the same experience when I saw the first "Saw" movie. Cary Elwes was hurt and crying and everyone in the audience was laughing. I felt bad for him and angry at the movie (in the midst of my own laughter, of course. I was torn).
Anyway, I loved your Keanu Reeves line, Roger. As soon as I heard that he was going to be in the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still", I immediately decided not to see it. Why? Because it's implied that aliens are smarter, more sophisticated and more advanced than us. Keanu doesn't really emit that vibe. In the same vein, I wouldn't cast Christopher Lee in a "High School Musical" movie.
Roger, it has been a delight to watch you get so meta here, in this new age of Ebert. I am not being ironic or sarcastic - it has truly been a delight.
I was wondering if you would consider writing an entry on movies that you absolutely panned but which, freed from the timeframe and the year it was made, have come to have a respect, a love, or something other than a delightful dressing down for.
Is there anything an older Ebert has loved that a younger Ebert hated?
I chuckled at many of the quotes, but was most amused by the quote by Lauren Bacall. She brought tears to my eyes, she did.
"I despair. I grieve. I utter wild goat cries at the moon." - Roger Ebert (in response to a statement about current generations watching movies on Ipod devices)
My favorite quote, and ten times funnier if you use it out of context altogether.
Ebert: A little homage to Thomas Wolfe in there...
I was surprised not to see a quote from your review of Caligula. It's easily one of the best 'bad' reviews I've ever read.
The eloquence and razor sharp perception of the lady you met at the water fountain could not have been more precise.
Ebert: It unfortunately could be quite that precise in the newspaper, if you see what I mean.
I wanted to enumerate how many times I laughed out loud, chuckled or grinned at this post, but I lost count on the laughed out loud category. Seriously, I have read 3 of your books, but don't remember being so tickled. I recalled a 1976 voyage from KC to Chicago by Greyhound bus reading Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" for the 1st time and being embarrassed by the stares of my fellow passengers as I guffawed through the hinterlands of Iowa and Illinois.
THE EXISTENTIAL LONE RANGER DRINKING GAME
(Spoilers for "The Lone Ranger")
Reply to: Ebert: Obviously, he could be the school nurse.
"I never thought of that." Eric Bogosian's last words as super-terrorist Travis Dane, Under Seige 2: Dark Territory (1995)
Now I'm going to be disappointed if Sam Jackson doesn't show up as the school nurse in "New Moon." Of course, Meryll Streep could use the job. Or Conchata Ferrell (Two and a Half Men). I remember Streep bragging at the Academy Awards about how she walked into the "Mama Mia" audition and took the lead role away from Jackson...
Anyway, we're about to enter the Year of the Werewolf. At least in Hollywood.
The "Twilight" sequel is going to be full of werewolves. Benicio Del Toro plays Lawrence Talbot aka The Wolf Man in Victorian England. The Lone Ranger is going to fight werewolves with his silver bullets.
We know that Johnny Depp is going to play Tonto in Jerry Bruckheimer's new version of "The Lone Ranger" for Disney. What we don't know is.... who is going to play "The Lone Ranger"?
Should there be a write-in campaign for Samuel L. Jackson to don the mask? Should the mask be white, to show that he's a good guy? If not Samuel L. Jackson, then who?
Maybe we could save time by trashing the movie now, BEFORE they make it. If the Bad Guys are werewolves, and werewolves are part of traditional Indian legend... how much do we actually know about Indian shapeshifters?
http://supernaturalfanwiki.wetpaint.com/page/Shape+Shifters
In Native American and Norse legend, a skin-walker is a person with the supernatural ability to turn into any animal he or she desires. The Mohawk Indian word "limikkin" is sometimes used to describe all skin-walkers. It is also known as the Yenaldooshi.
Shapeshifting is also known as transformation and transmogrification. It can also be a change in appearance from one person to another.
“Every culture in the world has a shapeshifter lore. Legends of creatures who can transform themselves into animals or other men.” Usually, the animal involved in the transformation is indigenous to or prevalent in the area from which the story derives.
http://www.eaglespiritministry.com/SilverEagleGathering/2bears/shapes.htm
LINK: Shape shifting occurs in American Indian culture in song and dance, hunting, healing, and warfare. Only in the white man's world does it take on the dark side, appearing as werewolves and bats (Dracula). As always, between the red man and the white man, there is a vast difference in point of view.
In some tribes, shamans - wearing feathers, or the hide of his guardian spirit - perform the animal's actions to imbue its healing powers in both himself and the patient. Belief in the healer and his shape shifting often could mean the difference between life or death.
To become a great hunter, an Indian boy would choose an animal to study. It was usually the wolf, noted for its cunning and survival skills. For years, the boy would devote time each day to be near the wolf, alone, observing its ways. In time, he learned to imitate its ways, and understood its thinking so well he could become the wolf himself.
Shape shifting to his wolf counterpart was an asset to the Indian in warfare. His ability to silently track an enemy was often superior to an enemy's gun. In actual battle, calling on one's spirit animal, and becoming that animal, gave a warrior uncanny OHITIKA (courage) in the face of unbelievable odds.(end)
The Samuel Jackson role? A shaman. A shaman in a purple robe who practices the healing arts, and has taken on the appearance of his guardian spirit, a black wolf...
Is the world ready for an existential Lone Ranger, where Tonto comes from a tribe that practices shapeshifting?
Ebert: Write the screen play. Working title: "Tonto: Ranger Dangerfield," starring Samuel L. Jackson as the Lone Ranger and Rodney the She-Wolf of the SS.
Ellen Brody has become convinced that the shark is following her. It wants revenge against her entire family. Her friends pooh-pooh the notion that a shark could identify, follow or even care about one individual human being, but I am willing to grant the point, for the benefit of the plot. I believe that the shark wants revenge against Mrs. Brody. I do. I really do believe it. After all, her husband was one of the men who hunted this shark and killed it, blowing it to bits. And what shark wouldn't want revenge against the survivors of the men who killed it? -- "Jaws: The Revenge"
You forget, Mr. Ebert, that the shark was able to identify that Brody's son was hired as a deputy sheriff, on night duty a particular evening and responsible for removing debris in the ocean that, by the way, the shark was able to craft for use in an ambush attack.
Then, the shark, sensing Ellen Brody's dismay and the possibility of taking a vacation to visit her marine biologist son, started swimming to the Bahamas from Amity Island and made it within just a couple of days. Never mind that great white sharks like colder, deeper waters. That's just the repressed ichthyologist talking.
Further, the shark was able to discern that Michael was also a Brody and managed to terrorize him by even swimming through a shipwreck to catch him (which presupposes that if the shark was smart or prescient enough to do all of the above, the shark would have just hung out and waited for Michael's scuba tank to empty).
Let's not discuss the shark leaping 10 feet up in the air to be impaled on the ship's bow. Or Michael Caine's ability to land a plan in the ocean, swim to the boat, and miraculously be dry upon entering the boat.
Jaws 4 - The Revenge....but who's revenge? The shark's? Ellen Brody's? Or common sense's?
Ellen Brody has become convinced that the shark is following her. It wants revenge against her entire family. Her friends pooh-pooh the notion that a shark could identify, follow or even care about one individual human being, but I am willing to grant the point, for the benefit of the plot. I believe that the shark wants revenge against Mrs. Brody. I do. I really do believe it. After all, her husband was one of the men who hunted this shark and killed it, blowing it to bits. And what shark wouldn't want revenge against the survivors of the men who killed it? -- "Jaws: The Revenge"
You forget, Mr. Ebert, that the shark was able to identify that Brody's son was hired as a deputy sheriff, on night duty a particular evening and responsible for removing debris in the ocean that, by the way, the shark was able to craft for use in an ambush attack.
Then, the shark, sensing Ellen Brody's dismay and the possibility of taking a vacation to visit her marine biologist son, started swimming to the Bahamas from Amity Island and made it within just a couple of days. Never mind that great white sharks like colder, deeper waters. That's just the repressed ichthyologist talking.
Further, the shark was able to discern that Michael was also a Brody and managed to terrorize him by even swimming through a shipwreck to catch him (which presupposes that if the shark was smart or prescient enough to do all of the above, the shark would have just hung out and waited for Michael's scuba tank to empty).
Let's not discuss the shark leaping 10 feet up in the air to be impaled on the ship's bow. Or Michael Caine's ability to land a plane in the ocean, swim to the boat, and miraculously be dry upon entering the boat.
Jaws 4 - The Revenge....but who's revenge? The shark's? Ellen Brody's? Or common sense's?
Ebert: Didn't Caine have to abandon the plane after the shark ate it?
Roger,
You are a riot.
Thanks for all the laughs over the years. Just reading some of these quotes had me cracking up all over again. Especially the "Dear God" one. Hilarious. And you haven't lost your touch either.
From your review of "Punisher: War Zone":
"The city, Montreal playing New York, has a small population, consisting only of good guys and bad guys and not much of anybody else. I'd get out, too. It's the kind of violence the president should fly over in Air Force One and regard sadly through the window."
Very, very funny...
I remember as a kid reading a one line review in the Boston Globe of the movie "Thank God It's Friday" -
"Like being in a trash can with someone banging on the lid."
Man, did I laugh.
And some of your reviews over the years have evoked similar tears of laughter. Thanks again for sharing some of the best...
Merry Christmas and best wishes,
--J
Call me hardhearted, call me cynical, but please don't call me if they make "Home Alone 3." -- "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York"
This made me chuckle because if I recall correctly, you liked Home Alone 3.
Mr. Lawson wrote: "I'd be curious to hear what other people's movie horror stories are."
I once attended a midnight screening of "Mad Max" at the IFC's theater where a large group came in with smuggled vodka, got drunk and screamed out lines of dialougue along with the characters. Then, when the romantic scene with Max's wife came up, they all dove for the bathrooms- at the exact same time my friend and I got up to use the ladies' room! I had to dance on one leg and then another and then go back and listen to them act like animals escaped from a zoo.
I was ticked but, actually, I didn't mind too much in the long run because I found the movie so despicable and bankrupt.
Also, I saw "Me and You and Everyone We Know" the summer I was in Gdansk in Poland and some poor woman brought a baby to the theater which woke up and cried throughout the movie. She looked very young and totally embarrassed and I wondered if she had counted on the baby being asleep.
The kid wailed and wailed and then stopped and wailed and wailed and stopped. On and off throughout the movie. The other patrons were livid and the woman sitting next to me was about ready to murder the young mother whenever the baby started up again. The lady could hardly sit still in her seat.
Finally she had enough and asked the mother "Ma'am, am I bothering you? Am I screaming and shrieking throughout the movie? What did you bring your kid here for?". Except she said it in Polish.
She then stomped out of the theater. I wished I had done the same.
Your review of "Little Indian, Big City" is hilarious. One of my favorite inet activities is looking up your reviews to crappy movies. Always a guaranteed smile.
Agatha, I had a similar experience with The Ring. Again, full house, Friday night, at the Streets of Woodfield theater, just outside of Woodfield Mall. I only mention the theater because if you plan to go to it on Frday nights, expect a steady stream of infants, obnoxious teenagers, and obnoxious kids in the parking lots reving the engines on their souped up Mitsubishis.
Anyway, this woman near the front had a baby, and the baby absolutely would not stop crying for the first hour of the film. Not a full on cry, but an audible whimper that remained consistent for the majority of the film. Around the hour mark, a woman stood up about four rows in from of me and yelled "WOULD YOU SHUT THAT FUCKING BABY UP? HIRE A BABYSITTER, FOR CHRISSAKES!" The theater erupted in applause. The mood of the film was ruined, but watching that woman storm out, baby and diaper bag in tow, was worth the price of admission by itself.
Pineapple Express was an interesting movie too, because the theater manager stood in front of us at the beginning of the film and warned that if anyone was caught smoking weed on theater property, he would call the police. Apparently, earlier in the day, people had literally been standing at the exit door to the theater and smoking a blunt while the movie was playing.
I would throw flowers at your feet, Roger, if I could stand before you. Hilarious reviews- you don't even have to list them, since they too still dance before me. I remember them very, very well.
I love your reviews of bad movies more than the ones of great movies. I think it was Dave Barry who said that one of life's pleasures is hearing a pretty good critic review a very bad movie.
Very bad movies do have value. Either they are so bad, they are good or they are very useful to study. It's good to examine and analyze why they are bad. English teachers once in a while give students the assignment of writing a bad poem so they can see what makes a unworthy work of art.
Plus, they make you want to see great movies so much more. There wouldn't be great movies without bad ones, mediocre ones and good-but-not-great movies to compare to.
I'd see exactly why the mediocre "Eh..." movies would be the hardest to write about- it's difficult to point out what they do wrong. Or right.
They just sorta sit there and don't do much.
"This movie doesn't contain "offensive language." The offensive language contains the movie." from your review of Sex Drive is my personal favorite.
That review also contains this wonderful riff on the Amish, an unfortunate target in this dreadful film: "As they motor south, they pass through Amish country. Luckily it's the day of the annual Amish sex orgy, and Ian meets sexy Mary (Alice Greczyn), who falls in love with him, flashes her boobs, etc. The director, Sean Anders, should be ashamed of himself. Lucky the Amish don't go to movies, or he'd be facing a big lawsuit. Better be nice to the Amish. In a year, we'll be trading gold bars for their food, haha."
That is why, good or bad, I never miss one of your reviews.
The big revelation is that Jabba has an infant to be kidnapped. The big discovery is that Hutts look like that when born, only smaller. The question is, who is Jabba's wife? The puzzle is, how do Hutts copulate? Like snails, I speculate. If you don't know how snails do it, let's not even go there. The last thing this movie needs is a Jabba the Hutt sex scene. -- "Star Wars: The Clone Wars"
Am I the only person in the world who liked "Freddy Got Fingered"? I don't think it's fair to call it a "bad movie," mainly because I don't think it's aiming to be anything close to a "good movie" or even a "movie" (in the traditional sense). It's not even in the same league as your average Rob Schneider or Adam Sandler film, as those films are very much trying to be funny (and fail miserably). Freddy Got Fingered, on the other hand, is cinematic anarchy. It resists (at the same time that it acknowledges and destroys) in a spectacular and excessive fashion every single convention of the typical gross out comedy, and at times I think it works as a savage satire of your typical Schneider/Sandler comedy. At other times it's just insane, and even when it isn't funny (and it often isn't), I don't think you could ever call it mediocre. It's either spectacularly bad or spectacularly great. I don't think there's any in between.
Anyways, I'm still waiting for it to take its rightful place as a classic of modern surrealism. Although, I suspect I'll be waiting an awfully long time.
Ebert: You make a good case for the movie. Maybe the only case that could be made.
The movie doesn't exactly work, but sometimes when a car won't start, it's still fun to look at the little honey gleaming in the driveway. -- Bubba Ho-Tep
My favorite character in A Room with a View is George Emerson, the earnest, passionate young man whose heart beats fiercely with love for Lucy Honeychurch. ... He takes her and kisses her, and, for him, something "great and important" has happened between them. -- A Room With A View
The movie's a challenge to our intelligence, takes delight in playing with our expectations, and has one other considerable achievement as well: It entertains admirers of Fowles's novel, but does not reveal the book's secrets. If you see the movie, the book will still surprise you, and that's as it should be. -- The French Lieutenant's Woman
I hate things that come in threes. When people back me into a corner and tell me a joke that begins, "There were these three...," I squirm. I know the classic pattern for a joke is three times through, with the punch line at the end of the third movement, but (forgive me) I think straightforward narrative jokes that tell a story without repetition are funnier. I don't like much of anything else in threes, either. -- Fiddler on the Roof
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Roger, I just had to add a fourth excerpt, seeing as how you hate things that come in threes.
Ebert: So considerate of you.
You were good in your thrashing of Jaws 4, but the title goes to the late, great, Richard Jeni: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUkeyw7xdb4
You included one line from "Catwoman," but forgot the better one:
She gobbles down tuna and sushi. Her eyes have vertical pupils instead of round ones. She sleeps on a shelf. The movie doesn't get into the litter box situation.
Ebert: It's in now!
From your review for "Playtime":
"Playtime is a peculiar, mysterious, magical film. Perhaps you should see it as a preparation for seeing it; the first time won't quite work."
Excellent advice - and yes, it is worth seeing again.
Ebert: Basically the same thing I thought about "Synecdoche."
Ebert: Didn't Caine have to abandon the plane after the shark ate it?
He did Roger. Michael and Mario Van Peebles (and his OUTRAGEOUS Jamaican accent (like an African American couldn't have been a marine biologist specializing in mollusks?)) dove straight in the ocean to get to the boat, and Michael Caine's character Hoagie was waxing poetic about staying with the plane, when the shark attacked the plane. Hoagie muttered "Oh Christ" or something to that effect, and the plane was taken under. The tension was unbearable since everyone in the audience thought Hoagie was gone. Some actually began to cry. Then Hoagie emerges climbing over the bow, sopping wet, and then when the camera pans to him later in the scene - bone dry. Maybe it was his wit that did it.
Nance said:
You included one line from "Catwoman," but forgot the better one:
She gobbles down tuna and sushi. Her eyes have vertical pupils instead of round ones. She sleeps on a shelf. The movie doesn't get into the litter box situation.
When that review first came out, everything was the same in the above passage but for one word. It led to one of the funniest Answerman exchanges, which you can find here
Ebert: He told me that just watching "WALL-E" made him salivate at the sight of all those tin cans.
Your blog remiunds me of
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott
I'm smiling or LOL at the clever writing, but I can't share the disgust with you. I have never paid for a movie which earned less than 2 stars and probably about 98% of the "thumbs down" variety. I have 532 good-to-great movies still to see and endless favorites to see again...and again. Belated thanks for your priceless guidance.
I'm sorry....you can't make me see these movies. I can't waste time. Please...don't...make...me. Bad...taste...in ...mouth. Got to go replay "Local Hero" and/or "The Third Man". OK, someday I will see "Battlefield Earth".
Health and love for the holidays. Bless you and your (fascinating-sounding) wife.
Roger, isn't about time you wrote a novel?...
I am both exhausted and exhilarated by reading your posts that it seems futile to me now to even bother leaving comments. One saving grace is that I believe you actually read the responses, and that makes me glad. Most people wouldn't and that's understandable due to the sheer volume of posts. While I'm sure you enjoy the hell out of them, I'm sure that you're tired of hearing hundreds of bloggers comment on how brilliant, great or funny you are; or how they've watched your program or read your stuff since they were toddlers in Wisconsin, etc. etc. etc.
I only wish I had the right words to illustrate some of my great thoughts on movies with you. I fear that I neither have the time nor the will to do so. That is, completely and thoroughly--The way I'd really like to; as I'm sure so many others would. That is the great thing about novels. They allow strangers to peer into the thoughts of somebody they might otherwise never have met (often without ever leaving the house or public library). Think of the company you'll have if you decide on such an undertaking. Benjamin Franklin, D.H. Lawrence, Sigmund Freud, Malcolm X, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cormac McCarthy, William Shakespeare... Roger Ebert.
To come back to bad films, there have been so many that it's hard for me to choose. There are a lot of movies that critics have historically panned that I've really enjoyed despite their apparent flaws: Big Trouble in Little China, The Cable Guy, North (Just Kidding!), Mortal Kombat, (Not Ishtar), more recently: Australia and The X-Files: I Want to Believe.
There have been movies that critics have loved that I didn't like. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days... Yes, you know what? That one didn't do it for me. Aesthetically, technically; no complaints, marvelous. The acting, stupendous, the atmosphere and mood, great. There's just no soul to that film. Its all so empty. It has a narrative compass that seems to have been manufactured by artistic gusslers (as I like to call them--these are the kinds of people that try to make movies look like Wes Anderson or Fellini films, when they're clearly not Wes Anderson or Fellini). I mention contemporary film makers like Wes Anderson, because to me he is one of the last directors/artists to actually have a unique language of film. Of course there are those posers like M. Night Shamaylan whom in my opinion have little to no focus or vision (disagree if you will). To come back to the point, its not how you make a movie but rather its what the movie IS actually about. They must explode with this intangible narrative drive to arrive to conclusion. Mainstream Hollywood films have done this so well over the years that both critics and audiences have taken them for grantide. I'm not referring to form or the so-called 3 Act structure mind you; this is something far more elemental at work. As people so often forget, movies need that familiar driving force, they need to be about something MORE than simply what they ARE about. I'm not necessarily saying this is something you can plan to happen. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is primarily about two things, abortion and letting go of old ways and moving ahead in time. That’s all well and good, but what am I getting out of the screen? If you analyze the movie for what it is, there's not much there. I find that it is primarily an exercise in mood and craft.
People will disagree with my opinion, alas it is my opinion. I've had professors who hated "The Lost Weekend", I've always felt it Billy Wilder's strongest work next to Sunset Boulevard; which is a bona fide masterwork. Though I'd still prefer Holden's performance to Milland's Oscar-Winning turn, I like The Lost Weekend a lot better, but Holden's movie gets all the attention. Movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days are like good movies masquerading as great ones. I tend to dislike movies that are too smart or too "good" for their own good. I like to be manipulated, deceived and swept up. I enjoy being part of an experience that may or may not have any connections to realistic emotions. I prefer films like "Australia" to movies like "The Lives of Others", not because I believe them to have been meticulously planned out, but rather because they seem to be unfolding as I watch them. A film like "Australia" is gorgeous to look at and emotional in the way you can allow yourself to be swept up in the idea of a "movie". Films that do all the work for you, but which at the same time show you more or less everything, either subtlety or intelligently as the film maker's intended are not fun to watch at all. The Rules of the Game is not the most exhilarating movie to sit through, however "Laura" and "Casablanca" are. But perhaps I have this backwards.
To give another example, show an 8 year old a movie like "Schindler's List"; though he might be traumatized by it, he'll understand what the story is about. Show him a movie like "4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days" I guarantee you he won't know what the hell's going on. Show him "How The West Was Won" he just might stay awake, show him "McCabe and Mrs. Miller", he'll no doubt fall asleep. Then again, I only know how I feel when I watch the films, people have disagreed with me heavily one way or another. Perhaps I'm thinking too much, or maybe I'm taking this way too seriously. Then again, part of the joy of study and appreciation of certain things in life is that you don't repeat the same mistakes made by those who came before you; so that you might improve for future generations. If ever I was to make a movie, I would no doubt want it to be worthy of peoples' time and money. Still, comparing works of art to one another is quite insane.
If I was to name the best film I've ever seen, not my favorite movie, just the "best" movie, it would probably have to be "Schindler's List". As an artistic achievement in trying to create something onscreen, it is an undeniable triumph. It is a masterwork of art direction, editing, vision, acting and mood. A technical masterwork and marvel of sound design, research, costumes, lighting and camerawork. All in all, a director's movie. One that is completely sure of what it's trying to do. Again, I did not say it was my favorite movie, just probably the best I've ever seen. Again, there are just so many.
As for the Worst film I've ever seen, that's a simple choice for me. It's "Swordfish", starring John Travolta, Halle Berry and Hugh Jackman... It's not that the film is all that terrible, its just all so pointless. No film making aesthetic except to excite and titillate some cheap thrills. No story rhythm, no acting, no real script; completely derivative. A tendency to want to blow stuff up and for no apparently good reason. An unrealistic plot that doesn't even try to admit that it is one. No real sense of honest fun. Cheap nudity for 'mark the box', we've gotten that A-list star to show some skin check list; thrills. Terrible performance by lead actor. Sad waste of talent in Don Cheadle and Hugh Jackman. Needlessly sadistic and violent for no apparent reason. Fully self-conscious that it is a commerical endeavor and yet devoid of any sense of honest fun... Again, not a good film.
My favorite movie... Hmmm, that's tough. Though I really don't have one, I'd have to go with "My Bodyguard" (1980). Yeah, definitely, "My Bodyguard".
Ebert: That is, in fact, a very good movie.
I doubt if I'll ever write a novel. I'm a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. And plese take me off that list including Shakespeare! It's unseemly!
Roger,
I wanted to write something clever. But I'm still thinking about your reference to "Pamela Anderson back lit". I'm a dog. So sorry.
Ok, all carnality aside, I wish you Joy and Peace and HEALTH in the new year.
Kerry
PS. If this your first "season's cheer/Merry Christmas" greeting that includes any form of the word "carnal", my mission here is accomplished. And I can start getting out more.
Roger, allow me to mention the entire review for "Wet Hot American Summer". It was the first time I ever read one of your more whimsical reviews, and the first time I read the review, I wondered what in the world you were doing. I read the review a second time and felt I had a handle on the movie (and no need to see it).
See
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20010831/REVIEWS/108310303/1023
Ebert: Just sent a plea to the web gods to insert line breaks in the thing!
It wouldn't be an Ebert list without a proper calling-out of the MPAA, and this may be my favorite:
"Failure to Launch" is rated PG-13 and "Joyeux Noel," about enemy soldiers in World War I celebrating Christmas together, is rated R. I mention that as additional evidence that the MPAA ratings people have cut loose from sanity and are thrashing about at random.
Since the christmas game this year is finding funny Ebert review quotes, allow me to throw in an obscure one from 1985's "Silver Bullet".
"If you are sick up to here of horror movies in general and Stephen King in particular, this is the movie for you. If you have impeccable taste and high artistic standards, why have you read this far in the first place?"
Copyright © 1996 Microsoft Corporation and/or its suppliers. All rights reserved. (Because the CD made me say it.)
Merry Christmas, Big Rog. God bless us every one.
I've read critics who were more enamored of their sarcastic wit than interested in honest criticism. Thankfully, I've never sensed that in your reviews. The intensity of your excitement at a good movie seems to equal your disgust at a bad one. Even so, I have to admit that I do enjoy the pans more than the kudos.
You doubt you'll ever write a novel. What about more screenplays?
Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Wouldn't you know it, as I came across the first "Exit to Eden" quote, I asked myself, "Where's the line about the butter and the cinnamon?" Then, of course, I read further down and saw that you had included it. I knew I could count on you.
Funnily enough, Goobot and Ooblar are possibly the reasons I study film now.
The gist of the story: I was 8, about to turn 9, when the Jimmy Newtron movie came out. My standards at the time were, like most young kids, pretty low: if I understood a movie and it didn't completely frighten me, I'd say it was "good". Of course, I saw that certain movies, like the Pixar films, were above just "good" and achieved a level of "magical", but if there was anything to latch onto in a much crappier movie, I'd appreciate it. I had just gotten a DVD player and in love with the visual and audio quality of DVDs, I was renting tons of movies, a few "magical" and a lot that I'm sure I'd cringe watching today. Now, due to Pixar and Dreamworks having been the only games in town at that time in the CGI movie world, I had this connection between CGI and "magical" movies. Jimmy Newtron was the first CGI movie released below that standard, and I was disappointed but tried to appreciate it as just "good". However, my mom, who loves a fun cartoon and was looking forward to the movie, was really bummed by how mediocre the movie was. No longer could I think low-quality movies were just there for my entertainment and that I should be greatful; this movie had hurt my mom's feelings. Now it was personal, and so I went on my quest to develop the critical thinking skills I have today.
The next year, I saw Spiderman and Spirited Away, two movies that really shaped my current tastes. Both scared me at the time and I didn't totally understand everything in Spirited Away, but both films struck me as "magical". From then on, crap just wouldn't do it: it had to be magic.
Roger:
Have you ever viewed John Cleese's eulogy of Graham Chapman? Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsHk9WC7fnQ.
After reading your blogs for the last few months, I think you should have been a Monty Pythoner.
An At The Movies Experience
Yes I did watch The Da Vinci Code opening weekend, but my wife and I only spent five dollars for two tickets at cheap movie theater and we have since made up for our aid in America's recent recession. However, if you know you are going to watch a bad movie at least watch it with it's target audience. SPOILER ALERT!!! When the woman in front of me found out that one of the characters was the last descendant of Christ she wondered out loud to her friend sitting next to her stating, "I don't know what I would do if I was related to Jesus." I would therefore insist that she should be paid for making the movie an enjoyable experience for my wife and myself. In all of my movie experiences I have found that any movie I keep in high regard is often one that I have seen people walk out of or as the credits roll are being bashed for appearing "stupid?" (recent examples include: Synecdoche, New York, Slumdog Millionaire, A Christmas Tale, and Happy Go Lucky). I have lived in Dallas, Texas all of my life. Should I move before my wife and I decide to start a family?
Ebert: If it was good enough for Molly Ivins...
Reply to: IF I was to name the best film I've ever seen, not my favorite movie, it would probably have to be "Schindler's List". As an artistic achievement in trying to create something onscreen, it is an undeniable triumph. It is a masterwork of art direction, editing, vision, acting and mood. A technical masterwork and marvel of sound design, research, costumes, lighting and camerawork. All in all, a director's movie.
I knew someone was going to spoil the mood, while we were discussing "The Tragic Cinema of Samuel L. Jackson" and how it has ruined Western Civilization. The cult of personality, gang violence, the greed of corporate CEO's, global warming... it's all there.
My candidate for "best" movie is still "The Sound of Music." And I'm ready to defend it.
First, half of the movie-going experience comes from the music. Most movies wait for the audience to experience some emotion, instead of grabbing them by the cochlea and screaming, "Jurassic Park is the most wonderful place you've ever visited. It has real live dinosaurs. FEEL the wonder of the dinosaurs roaming free, born free, with no walls to confine them..."
Got the idea? Here's how it's done at the Master Class level:
Julie Andrews: The hills are alive
With the sound of music,
With songs they have sung,
For a thousand years.
My heart wants to...
...sing through the night,
Like a lark who is learning to pray.
I go to the hills
When my heart is lonely.
...My heart will be blessed
With the sound of music
And I'll sing once more.
Before John McCain nominated Sarah Palin, I didn't fully understand why Americans respond to these lyrics.
Julie Andrews is a lark who is learning to pray. Powerful visual image.
Even though she lives in an abbey with nuns, she's lonely. And she doesn't understand how she can still be lonely and unfulfilled.
The hills have sung for thousands of years, waiting for young girls to climb up to the meadow and listen. Maria hears that music, when no one else does. That makes her out viewpoint character, our heroine.
And this is the very first scene. Five minutes into the movie and we're already locked into our relationship with Maria, and all the hard work is done. Then, later, we learn that Maria's long walks across the mountain has given her the stamina to lead children escaping from the Nazis... and we go, "Everything does happen for a reason."
And this is how you create a great movie. You confirm everything the audience already believes. You find their subconscious memories and their moral dilemmas and you tug at them, so you're sitting there crying and don't know why.
A nun... who wants to marry God... but falls in love with a wealthy man who refuses to become a Nazi... so she can save his children from concentration camps.
Number one on my list is "uses music to compel emotional response." Number two is "relationships." Ever hear of Truby's character web? Maria developes relationships with Liesl, and Gretl, and "Uncle Max" Detweiler, and the Baroness... and without wearing clown make-up or even pulling a gun, she changes everything that's important in their lives.
One woman. Eight chidren. This time... it's personal.
And then there's the love triangle between Maria, Captain Von Trapp and God. The scene where she returns to the abbey, kneels down in prayer, and tells God that she's fallen in love with another man... and God gives her a little beam of light to make her feel better.... priceless!
Let's look at The Mystery Review. Of course, Roger knows what movie this is:
EBERT: ...this edges us into a consideration of why we are at the movies in the first place, and what works, and what does not work. I got involved. I felt real suspense. I thought (...) gave a nuanced performance as the mother, who is deeper than we first think, and that the tension between her and (her son) was plausible.... I went to a regular theater to see it Friday afternoon, knowing nothing about it except that the buzz was lethal, and sat there completely absorbed.... A very, very rich young man named Clay Beresford (...) lives with his loving but dominating mother, and fears to tell her about his engagement to the beautiful Samantha (...). A rich kid believes he can never live up to his father, a mother who believes she cannot surrender her son, and the beautiful Samantha coming between them.
Need a clue? Samuel L. Jackson isn't in the movie, but Terence Howard is.
So many of the same plot elements that worked in "The Sound of Music" also work in other movies. Relationships. A man tormented by an inner Moral dilemma. How can I live up to my father's legacy? Should I put my children in danger by refusing to join the Nazi Party?
And the love triangle, where the older woman (the boy's mother, the Baroness) realizes she isn't going to be able to hold on, that Captain von Trapp has decided to marry the children's baby sitter instead.
Once you realize that "The Sound of Music" isn't aimed at you, but at the much larger audience that loves "good people" who sing like angels, and fall in love so deeply and passionately, it actually hurts... then you can start to appreciate why it works.
Always enjoyed the print reviewer who, when assigned Mario Puzo's latest, wrote:
Fools Die: Fools Buy.
Three words, one colon, one review. Reminds me of Brown Bunny!
Roger, I have three quotes from reviews that have soothed me at some point in my life (I read them during all-nighters in the Architecture Grad Studio at Oklahoma University. We take lots of all-nighters!)
From CALIGULA:
"I wanted to tell them ... what did I want to tell them? What I'm telling you now. That this film is not only garbage on an artistic level, but that it is also garbage on the crude and base level where it no doubt hopes to find its audience. "Caligula" is not good art, It is not good cinema, and it is not good porn."
From TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE:
"Can you sit through it? There were times when I intensely wanted to walk out of the theater and into the fresh air and look at the sky and buy an apple and sigh for our civilization, but I stuck it out."
From AMADEUS:
"This is not a vulgarization of Mozart, but a way of dramatizing that true geniuses rarely take their own work seriously, because it comes so easily for them. Great writers (Nabokov, Dickens, Wodehouse) make it look like play. Almost-great writers (Mann, Galsworthy, Wolfe) make it look like Herculean triumph. It is as true in every field; compare Shakespeare to Shaw, Jordan to Barkley, Picasso to Rothko, Kennedy to Nixon. Salieri could strain and moan and bring forth tinkling jingles; Mozart could compose so joyously that he seemed, Salieri complained, to be 'taking dictation from God.'"
Awful movies and great movies inspire equally impassioned responses. The last passage is one of those moments where your writing just sings. I think, yeah, I think I've read them all.
Merry Christmas.
Your friend,
Brandon
Roger,
Absolutely love it! Not to sound too much like a fanboy but this post reminds me why I enjoy reading not only your website reviews (especially of bad movies) but also your two collections of them, I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie and Your Movie Sucks. I've read each at least 3 times. And if you'll indulge me, one of my favorite endings to a scathing review:
"Is there any redeeming facet to this movie? Anything at all that makes it worth seeing? Maybe some nice scenery or a small, funny moment or a flash of charm? Let me think. I'm sitting here. I'm thinking. I'm looking at the list of cast members, to see if anything jogs my memory. Nothing. Tell you what. I'm going to turn off my portable computer and close my eyes and meditate, and if anything at all occurs to me, then this will not be the last sentence of the review." (End of Review) - One Woman Or Two
Priceless!
Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy New Year to you and Chaz!!
Your friend,
Chris Ortman
I think Guido Nazzo can finally rest in peace.
Ebert: About the New York debut of an Italian tenor named Guido Nazzo, Dorothy Parker wrote: "Guido Nazzo is nazzo guido."
This was really funny.
By coincidence, my Mom took us to the Northern Indiana Center for History today, which includes the Studebaker Museum. (We were going to go to Chicago, but the weather is just too lousy.) There is a new exhibit of British racing cars. I looked for a Golden Hawk postcard to send to you at the Sun Times building, to no avail. A 1950 Champion Convertible will have to do. Thanks for having such a great blog.
Merry Christmas,
David
It has been cited above, but the "ukulele picks" line from the "Mad Dog Time" review is one of my favorites and was, I suspect, a watershed moment for the ukulele industry.
Another favorite line of mine comes from your review of "I Spit on Your Grave":
"I do not often attribute motives to audience members, nor do I try to read their minds, but the people who were sitting around me on Monday morning made it easy for me to know what they were thinking. They talked out loud. And if they seriously believed the things they were saying, they were vicarious sex criminals."
Ebert: I am not 100% positive the ukulele picks line was original with me. I was using it in conversation for a long time before I wrote the review, so maybe I heard it somewhere. I don't know. I'm paranoid about the slightest hint of plagiarism, although I do have a hobby of occasionally sneaking little phrases from famous poems into my reviews. The point is not to steal but to provide an instant of pleasure, however small, to those who recognize them.
My favorite quote from one of your negative reviews is:
"...in 20th century slasher movies, knife blades make a sharpening noise when being whisked through thin air. In the 21st century, large metallic objects make crashing noises just by being looked at." - Resident Evil
Roger, when you recommend a film, I enjoy your review and almost always enjoy seeing the movie.
When you pan a film, I ALWAYS enjoy your review.
Best wishes for 2009!
Although you didn't write it, I think this is the greatest single sentence pan anyone has ever written:
Saying Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark is better than his 2003 American debut House of the Dead—possibly the worst horror film of the past decade—is akin to praising syphilis for not being HIV.
-Nick Schager, Slant Magazine
I'm trying to remember in which movie's review you wrote "adolescent boys once paid to see Emmanuelle undulate, now they pay to see Neo levitate." I'm pretty sure it wasn't one of your "Matrix" reviews.
Why do we like bad films so much?
If you ask me, it's the same reason we're obsessed with the snot the comes out on the tissue and the crap in the toilet bowl. A "good" bad film is like that scar on your ballsack that sorta, kinda resembles Richard Nixon.
It's horrible in an oddly familiar way that seems earnest and quirky, if not a bit disgusting. Like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" it's so perfectly bad you can see all the fracture lines and count them off and laugh at their unique deformations.
I should probably shut up now and just say I found the post hilarious Roger, thank ya kindly.
It's an extremely gallows bit of humor, but somehow, I think you, and especially the sorely missed Mr. Siskel, would appreciate this zinger lobbed at the Jerry Stiller roast by comedian and current head writer for Conan O'Brien Jeffrey Ross:
"Gene Siskel was going to review Ben Stiller's & Janeane Garofalo's MYSTERY MEN, but he took the coward's way out."
Just wanted to let you know, while it wasn't the most clever line on the page, this is the one that had me laughing out loud at my desk after 11pm.
On the first page of my notes, I wrote "Starts slow." On the second page, I wrote "Boring." On the third page, I wrote "Endless!" On the fourth page, I wrote: "Bite-size shredded wheat, skim milk, cantaloupe, frozen peas, toilet paper, salad stuff, pick up laundry. -- "Exit to Eden"
Trick for anybody who is having trouble loading a review:
While is it loading, (or seemingly not loading), just right click and it will come on in two shakes of a lamb's tail.
Nice entry, Roger. I'm a first-time poster here.
I do wish you'd edit your original post for "Hellbound: Hellraiser II" and include the follow-up line, "You're welcome." That line nailed the review, and even as a fan of the film (saw it on the big screen twenty years ago and loved it then--er, sorry!), it's one of my favorite zingers you've ever written.
Keep up the great work! You're an inspiration to me, and your reviews (especially online) have called my attention to many films I may have otherwise missed.
Best Regards,
Petch Lucas
I thought Benjamin Britton was going to be about something that I think may be true about the world: that time may, in fact, be going backwards. I don't really watch commercials, but I thought that's what the theme of the movie saying as I glanced over. But if it wasn't about that, I have to say I was pretty uncomfortable too with the premise of the movie, but thought that it was about that interesting feeling that one may get...like when I was watching "The Wizard of Oz" on television yesterday, when Dorothy was telling the lion and the scarecrow how she had this strange feeling she knew who they were and that they have met before (well, what else could account for that reality, unless time were going backwards--see?). I thought that was the territory Benjamin Button was going in--a kind of cosmic journey into the strange reality of reaity. Then life would be a series of births, not deaths. Instead of the universe dying, it travels towards the big bang and what happened there, which would probably make it make more sense than just sitting there dead in space not doing anything. It explains the imperfection of our lives: It is imperfect because it hasn't really happened yet, and what is going to happen, has happened already. Doesn't life feel like that sometimes, like Deja Vu..why not Vu Deja? It is said that if we knew everything life wouldn't be worth living, so why is it that, if there really are pyschics--why don't they kill themselves...especially, those ones that claim to talk to your dead relatives? Wait, those ones don't claim to know the future...damn it. Are we literally the masters of our fate: the captains of our soul?
Here you gave us your "best on the worst." One would look forward to a compilation (if not embarrasing, since it would be far more than self congratulatory ) of those "golden" moments when the words would have soared with the film.....I remember the peacock scream in Amarcord.....
What I was saying was, what if God's plan is predestined, except presdestined backwards?
I always thought your review of "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties" was hilarious. My friend, on the other hand, hated the review so much that she wrote a biting editorial about it in the DePaulia (DePaul University's prestigious newspaper). I can't remember all the details of her argument, but she essentially thought the piece was a blight on film criticism. I reminded her you were reviewing a film that starred a scary, bug-eyed cat who liked to dance and sing, and that "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties" may be the first film in history to have not one, but TWO puns in the title. I think that may have softened her opinion of your review a little.
You always make me laugh, Roger. Thank you. And Merry Christmas to you and your family.
Ebert: Good gravy! I love that review! It is affectionate, clever and appeals to cat lovers. And it achieves the neat trick of being entertaining to those who have zero interest in the movie. I could, however, understand your friend's objections if I had reviewed "The Dark Knight" in the first person as Garfield.
Here it is: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060615/REVIEWS/60606005/1023
The above comments saying that you're mean-spirited for panning bad movies are obviously a little ass-headed. Isn't there a grain of truth in it, though? I mean, mea culpa, I occasionally search your archive for zero-star reviews, even of films I haven't seen, because they're a lot of fun to read. I'm still a little uncomfortable with the idea of it. At the end of the day you're saying unkind things about other people's work, even if it's shit, and some of the fun is that you're setting yourself up as superior to them because you recognize it as shit, and that I can share a little bit of that sense of superiority because I agree with you (even without having seen it!) about how shitty their work is.
Just to be clear, this is the opposite of a personal attack. The reason I read your writing is that you have an enormous love for movies and that comes through in your writing. (My favorite Ebert description is Nathan Rabin's that you're "a man of Falstaffian appetites".) But I'm sure that you've thought about the issue and I'd like to know how you come at it.
As a p.s., I really agree with the people who've been defending Freddy Got Fingered. The typical gross-out out comedy tries to walk the tightrope between socially acceptable and over the line; they usually come off as fearfully and tentatively anarchic, and so kind of pathetic. FGF ignores the line and takes the idea to its logical extreme. That's BETTER than mediocrity, isn't it? Even admirable, sort of? I wouldn't call it funny but it's a helluva whatever-it-is.
Ebert: Less boring, perhaps. I don't set myself up as superior, but as an audience member who has had the experience and needs to describe it.
It's Christmas now in Korea. I've watched 'The Day the Earth Stood Still", released two days ago, and the subtitle for my review was "It was a dark and stormy day". By the way, I saw only animals moving in the movie. I wondered how plants were moved. Surely, they said all animals and plants were inside spheres. Were plants beamed?
I could have watched "Little Indian, Big City" when I was young. Thank god I didn't watch. Actually, I became curious about the movie after reading your scathing review, but I took your words seriously. Reading your opinions about upcoming movies is important than that movie.
I watched "Bad Santa" yesterday because I decided to write review for Christmas Eve. It's not for everyone, but it's hilarious Christmas movie. I've been recommending it to my friends with warning. By the way, I promised to myself I would watch "A Chirstmas Stroy" someday, but I didn't even buy DVD. Now, it has been released on Blue-ray, and I will buy Blue-ray player soon.
Too bad you didn't write the review for "Silent Night, Deadly Night". After watching YouTube clip of "Siskel & Ebert", I checked some clips from the movie. They were repulsive, and, in case of one certain sequence, "Bad Santa" dealt it with much more skill and humor. I was amused to know that they *did* release "Silent Night, Deadly Night" on VHS in Korea years ago.
"Silent Night, Deadly Night" reminds me of other murderous Santa Claus. In animation series "Futurama", the robot company built Robot Santa, who think almost everyone is naughty due to programming error. As a result, joyful Chistmas becomes brutal X-mas because of his annual rampage with Chistmas-themed weapons. However, Christmas episode with Robot Santa is always hilarious.
"Fry and Leela, you've both been very naughty! I checked my list!"
"Well, check it twice!"
"I perform over fifty mega-checks per second!"
They were afraid to show this episode on Christmas, but they're willing to do that this year. Ho-ho-ho!
Ebert: I love that dialogue! Never heard of the movie.
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=tl-b7vGZL3g
Ebert: Siskel & Ebert on "Silent Night Deadly Night." Thanks.
Ebert: I could, however, understand your friend's objections if I had reviewed "The Dark Knight" in the first person as Garfield.
Or, I suppose, if you reviewed "Garfield" as The Dark Knight.
Ebert: You know what? I doubt Batman would be up to the job. How about reviewing "Benjamin Button" as Methuselah?
"You think this guy has it bad? At least he has an exit strategy..."
I would love to read Garfield's review of "Marley & Me."
"Futurama" is a cartoon series from Matt Groening of "The Simpsons". Reruns currently air on Comedy Central.
End of plug.
More fun with audience comments:
I attended, by myself, a showing of "An American Werewolf in London" in Boston in the 80's. It was crowded, and the audience seemed to be enjoying the movie. Except for one guy, a few rows ahead of me, who kept mumbling incoherently and saying random things, none of which I remember. There might have even been the sound of a bottle clanking on the floor. In any case it was clear he was drunk. I was extremely annoyed. Until -- after a particularly nasty werewolf attack, with blood fangs and ripping flesh all over the screen, this guy stood up and announced to the entire audience" "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm gonna go home and shoot my dog!"
Ebert: This absolutely beats Mort Sahl's funniest line ever overheard at the movies.
He walked onstage at Mister Kelly's and said he had just come from the Clark Theater, a repertory house in the Loop, where he heard this:
"You pissed on my wife, but you're sorry?"
Oh, thank you for quoting your review of "Highlander 2: The Quickening". I re-read it every few years. A fun collection that has kept me laug-- uh, prevented me from working today.
P.S.-- Just watched "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls". I enjoyed it!
In a previous entry, we were discussing the cars that inspired us as children. Now that it's Christmas Eve, I thought I could talk about presents. When you work in the movie business, there's one bestest present ever.
A movie screen in your living room that makes your neighbors green with envy when they step into the room.
but... how to do it?
You can now buy a 100" Runco plasma for $100,000. But there's a better method.
This Christmas, the big present in Tinseltown is a solid glass projection screen that has to be built into your home. A rear-projection screen, which means the projector is in the room behind the screen, while you sit in a different room in front of the screen. Or, you can build the screen into an outside wall, and watch movies from your pool. (Unless you live in the Chicago area.) The idea is, you can always buy a new projector when the prices come down, so you invest more of your budget in a better screen. Sony is now selling a 4K projector. Unless you have access to 4K material, you can't take advantage of it.
I couldn't find a lot of photos, but here's the idea:
http://www.stewartfilmscreen.com/Starglas.html
http://www.stewartfilmscreen.com/commercial_market/iac/starglas_iacbuilding.html
The InterActiveCorp (IAC) headquarters in NYC. IAC is an umbrella organization comprising such familiar brands as Ask.com, Expedia, HSN (Home Shopping Network), Match.com and Ticketmaster. They have a video wall in their lobby that raised the bar:
http://www.soundandcommunications.com/applications/2007_08_apps.htm
McCann conferred with Stewart Filmscreen about the videowall material just as the company was about to introduce a new rear-projection screen material that consists of a proprietary diffusion screen layer laminated between specially formulated glass substrate, called StarGlas. “Our next challenge was finding someone with an autoclave large enough to handle the large sheets of Euro White glass.” Stewart had a relationship with Glas Trouche in Switzerland. “The glass came out superb! No errors. No flaws. And it all installed flawlessly. It’s a very durable projection surface. It can be polished. It can handle wear and tear.”
http://www.avrev.com/home-theater-video-projector-screens/video-projector-screens/stewart-filmscreen-starglas-video-screen-3.html
You can order the screen any size. From 60" inches to 200". And it's bright enough that you can - literally - make a wall-sized movie screen in your living room. There are some substantial shipping costs because it's heavy. But... $ 8,500 for a 100" screen, vs. $100,000 for a 100 inch plasma?
Reply to: Ebert: Less boring, perhaps. I don't set myself up as superior, but as an audience member who has had the experience and needs to describe it.
The future of movies... is having a better screen at home than your local mega-plex. Where you can control the brightness and sound, and repeat the good parts of "Beyond The Valley of the Dolls". Or, record a TV program and play it back without commercials.
Merry Christmas.... don't forget to leave Santa milk and cookies when he drops this baby off.
Ebert: This is real news. Hadn't heard about it I would love a wall like that. But how far back does the projector have to be in the next room?
I actually fear that too many people prefer reading negative reviews to positive ones. It's much easier to express disdain in this culture then wonderment and awe; I've known a lot of people from my generation who like disliking movies more than they like liking them - because panning a bad movie gives them ammo to be snarky and superior, while praising a good movie requires a humility that most people my age can't seem to muster.
This has nothing to do with Mr. Ebert's great slag-offs, though. I do, however, prefer Roger's positive reviews (always have) to his negatives. He expresses wonderment and awe awfully wonderfully.
Merry X-mas, Happy Holiday to all.
Ebert: You've hit on a truth. In an age of irony, some people are reluctant to reveal themselves as sincere.
To Zach Brutsche, if he still hasn't figured it out: it's "Once teenage boys wanted to see Emmanuelle undulating; now they want to see Keanu Reeves levitating" not "adolescent boys once paid to see Emmanuelle undulate, now they pay to see Neo levitate." and it is from Swordfish.
I'm rather pleased at knowing that off the top of my head :P.
More audience member stories: at the Museum of Modern Art, there was this tiny crazy old woman who would go to every screening and sit in the front row and gasp, scream and hiss at events on screen.
At "Like Water for Chocolate", she yelled "You bitch!" when the ghost of the mother appeared.
I remember thinking that Pauline Kael was still alive.
Ebert: This is real news. I would love a wall like that. But how far back does the projector have to be in the next room?
StarGlas is a product of Stewart, which is the most popular home screen by far. So, even if there isn't a projector specifically made for StarGlas, there could be next July.
You've seen home theaters. The bigger the screen, the farther back the projector.
Let's say you want to watch a movie at 2.40:1
Most plasmas and flat panels are 1.78 to 1, which is about halfway between the best movie screens and a 4:3 old-style TV screen. You need a huge plasma to watch a 2:40:1 image with "movie screen impact."
So, a screen with a ratio of 2.40:1, wide enough to fill your wall. Wide enough to be worth the trouble. Eight feet wide? Ten feet? Call it roughly 16 feet back to the projector.
But you can go with short-throw lenses, or you can use mirrors. For the state-of-the-art system, I'd pass on the mirrors, but they might give you exactly what you need. Admit that you're going to get a better projector in five years, and leave a lot of extra room. Or, find a way to move the projector into a storage closet when you're not using it, and put it in a guest bedroom.
I think you could build a decent project with the projector less than ten feet back... but please, call Stewart directly and ask them. They're in Torrance. California. I don't know of anyone else making this particular product, but it's a competitive industry.
The StarGlas is now. However, the Ghost of Christmas Two Years In The Future... might bring this:
http://gizmodo.com/5045389/jvc-dla+sh4k-is-worlds-smallest-4k-resolution-projector-10-gorgeous-megapixels-in-yer-face
Well I hate to write this, but I pulled my "channel" down on YouTube with most of the shows devoted to you and Gene's work. I had over three hundred videos posted. In the past few days, YouTube has been going overboard in pulling videos off there site. It seems FOX does not want to see any of their "entertainment" posted from anyone else except FOX -- even if it was on your show. The latest casualty on Monday goes as follows:
Dear firstmagnitude,
In response to your dispute of a video identification match, FOX reviewed your video Johnny Dangerously Siskel & Ebert At the Movies 1984 and confirmed their claim to some or all of its audio and visual content. Copyright owner: FOX Content claimed: Some or all of the audio and visual content Policy: Block this content. Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the suspension of your account and all videos uploaded to that account.
As much as I have enjoyed uploading your past shows, and over a million people having watched them on YouTube, I closed my channel including the link you have of your review of A Christmas Story at the top of this blog. (The Silent Night Deadly Night was originally posted by me, but I am glad someone else grabbed it.)
Until I or YouTube can get a better grasp on third parties and copyrights and whatnots, sharing one's memories (copyrighted or not) may have to remain in the darkened corners of one's closet.
My apologies for putting a humbug in your blog (if posted), otherwise, a merry Christmas to you Roger!
Ebert: This is such BS. They never had anything to do with the show, but object to our use of brief clips that were specifically supplied to the press. Since "Johnny Dangerously" is still available on DVD and cable, our review still applies. And they would kill the whole show because of a few seconds of their 24-year-old film.
As a professional journalist, I have admired and envied your turns of phrase many times. But perhaps my favorite came from your review of "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," when you uttered the immortal words:
"If you bleeped this movie for broadcast TV, it would sound like a conga line of Iron Men going through a metal detector."
Priceless. Thank you and keep up the bon mots!
Hello my friend, once more.
Merry Christmas!
Boy, you sure can write! Do you get payed for this?
What do you think are some of your LEAST favorite memories?
NS
http://sciencedefeated.wordpress.com/
Dear Roger,
Merry Christmas to you and your family. Thanks for the early present. Hilarious stuff.
Funny that these quotes actually make me want to Netflix two awful films I’ve already seen: “Exit to Eden” and “Trog.” I’ll be sure to curse your name, but man, I’ve just got to see Dana Delaney’s rack. And yes, I know “Light Sleeper” is a better chance to do so.
Which brings me to your “Bound” quote. Are you making a tit for tat joke?
Know who else hates, hates, hates “Patch Adams?” Its producer, actor/activist and M*A*S*H guy, Mike Farrell. He lays the blame squarely on Robin’s ex wife, Marsha, in his autobiography.
And in regards to “Armageddon,” I think your next Michael Bay movie review ought to use the term “Michael Bayhem.”
I’ve been thinking you should start an empty section online where we, your constant readers, can cut and paste your choicest bits. I realize you would look like an egomaniac doing this, but we would all enjoy it. I would start with these lines from you that aren’t funny, just brilliant (sorry but I’m pressed for time, gotta pick up a ham for tomorrow, so I’ll just quote from memory):
“We live in a box of time and space. Movies are windows in its walls.” –from the “Up” series.
“Miles makes plans for the weekend. When an alcoholic makes plans, it’s a plan to drink.” –from “Sideways.” I quote that anytime a heavy drinking friend and I make any sort of plan to hang out.
I am agog. No, make that two gogs and a bucket of popcorn.
A wonderful yuletide present that had me laughing 'til my sides hurt and reading quotations to my wife.
But I would like to thank you for something else: the memories you share of Gene Siskel. What you share makes him more defined and present. He grows in the practice. We should each of us be partially so lucky as to have a man like you remember us in asides.
Thank you
Many thanks for gathering some of the best review lines ever. I have been re-reading them and chuckling all day.
A couple of true movie experiences of my own:
In the packed opening night crowd of "Aliens" there was a rather annoying African American male moviegoer who exclaimed his inner thoughts--using his outside voice--throughout the movie. But in the exact moment when the plot revelation came that Paul Reiser was a bad guy, his voice rose above the crowd to express genuine shock: "Sumbitch!" Well, the audience broke into laughter and I have to admit it made the showing that much more memorable.
Many of your readers probably don't recall that "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Clash of the Titans" opened on the same day in 1981 (my birthday). Back then Louisville had only one big multiplex, and my wife and I had seen both pictures at sneaks the week before but came back on opening day to see "Raiders" a second time. Inexplicably, our local newspaper critic had given "Clash" a 4-star review and "Raiders" a middling one, and there was a long line to see "Clash" but none for "Raiders." A teenaged usher with a bullhorn came out to direct the crowds toward the proper entrances, and we fought the temptation to grab that bullhorn and tell those poor folks in line that "Clash" was mediocre and that "Raiders" was really the one to see! (Unlike today's overhyped openings, "Raiders" had very little pre-release publicity. It earned its success through word-of-mouth.) I'm a Harryhausen fan, but honestly, there was no comparison.
Speaking of the incredible Mr. H, he once summed up his opinion of modern graphic horror movies thusly: "I fail to see why one should spend good money to look into a garbage can!" Amen.
Roger, thanks for making it a merrier Christmas!
I saw Armageddon in Sweden when I was 11 years old because we were staying with friends of our parents who had it on video and the hosts decided to entertain my sister and me by putting it on and handing us frozen treats while the adults did their thing.
I haven't seen it since but I still remember how awfully, amazingly, incredibly bad it was.
What do you make of the Criterion Collection issuing the DVD? I think it's mindblowing.
Ebert: It could introduce its fans to the Criterion Collection...
Well, you covered two of my three all-time favorites ("The Village" and "Godzilla"), but I remain in awe of the elegance of this line from a four-star review: "'Mississippi Burning' is set in a time so recent that its cars are still on the road and its newspapers have not yet started to yellow." A very merry Christmas to you and Chaz.
Digressingly
"The struggle against aging is a struggle against cowardice, the propensity to shun new challenges. It is a struggle against our complacent belief that we have done enough, an egocentric unwillingness to help younger people develop, and an attachment to our past glory. Aging sneaks in through such chinks of our soul. The life of one who continues to challenge to the end remains youthful, ageless, and victorious."
Daisaku Ikeda on "Youth and Aging"
Ebert: This will be my reminder for 2009.
If you catch the TV ads for "The Spirit," they quote an enthusiastic reviewer.
http://www.moviepicturefilm.com/film.php?itemid=2048
If the link doesn't work, here's the gist:
I loved "The Dark Knight" just like everyone else, but this is not the same thing. "The Spirit" has 100% more playfulness and humor than the aforementioned film and doesn't take it self as seriously. It's a flamboyant fantasy, a 1940's comic book mixed with a dash of zany cartoonish humor, a swig of blood red severity, complete with all the twists of a 50's detective novel. It's over the top, off the wall and brilliant. Most people will just not understand it.
-Scott Hoffman
Brilliant?
Hmmm. OK, I'll add that "Doubt" would not be on my personal list of best films, or even my Top Ten films with Philip Seymour Hoffman. Roger Deakins’ cinematography might be recognized at award time.
Ebert: Scroll down to read the entire TV ad eviscerated: http://www.themovieblog.com/
'A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it' - Roger Ebert
Here's some lovin': Excerpts for reviews of bad movies and you pointing out subtext.
Roger:
Great collection of quotes, but the one that made me laugh longest and loudest when I originally read it was from your 2002 review of the Jackie Chan movie "The Tuxedo":
"My wife is of the opinion that I do not drink enough water. She believes the proper amount is a minimum of eight glasses a day. She often regards me balefully and says, "You're not getting enough water." In hot climates her concern escalates. In Hawaii last summer she had the grandchildren so worked up they ran into the bedroom every morning to see if Grandpa Roger had turned to dust."
Merry Christmas.
Roger:
I don't know how you do it without becoming as bitter as Bierce. Your reviews are good intellectual vitamins and mostly effective innoculation - a real public service. It's amazing that you keep up an obvious affection for the art. Me? I watch 1 or 2 per week, and grow weary at the prospect of traversing that scrubby wilderness known as the video store. Even the free movies at the library offer only the solace of not paying admission to watch pretty sorry fare. Mind you, there are movies of breathtaking visual splendor -but they would be better as stills, certainly as silents. The big screen is mostly a big disappointment any more.
It's a sad state of affairs when the critic is more quotable than most movies. I love a quotable movie, and can endure a bad one if only it has one-just one- good line. Geez! What's the point of having talkies if there's no memorable dialogue? Are scriptwriters kept at the bottom of a pit, never listening to live humans?
You know, actors may fall into drug and alcohol just because there aren't enough interesting lines to go around. Someone should check into that shortage. Maybe TMZ or ET will. You could suggest it.
Ebert: I'm picturing a merger between the Betty Ford Center and the Sundance Writers' Workshop.
I hope you and Chaz had a wonderful Christmas. I certainly had a great Christmas. In fact, I found you under my Christmas tree. Among my gifts this year were Roger Ebert's Yearbook 2009, Awake In the Dark, and Scorsese by Ebert. To learn about film is a great Christmas gift.
Since the thread has partly wandered to the subject of "The Spirit," I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone who's posted here how cool the original Will Eisner comic series was. Since I really have no intention of paying to see the movie, I can't waste time panning it. But can I humbly propose the original comic series as a nice palette cleanser for those who have? The original 40's and 50's series is currently in 26 hardcover archive editions at $50-60 retail. There's a new ongoing series that is, perhaps unfortunately, running an arc involving the origins of the femmes fatales from the movies, but my get better from there: the first 12 issues were written by Darwyn Cooke (JLA: New Frontier), then the next 12 by Sergio Aragones (Groo the Wanderer) and Mark Evanier (wouldja believe, the creator of Scrappy-Doo? Wait! He's done other stuff, too!).
Well, it's as Alan Moore once said about his Hollywood's treatment of his graphic novels "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," "From Hell," etc.; paraphrasing Raymond Chandler: "People said: 'Raymond, don't you feel devastated by how Hollywood has destroyed your books?' And he would take them into his study, point to the bookshelf and say, 'There they are. Look, they're fine.' The film has got nothing to do with my work, it has a coincidental title to a book I've done and they've given me a huge wedge of money. No problem with that."
Ebert was barely relevant 20 years ago.
From time to time I cull "ebertisms" from your reviews and e-mail them to friends in a batch. Some of them are above, but you missed some of my favorites. You once described a movie as the sort actors discussed in long, sad lunches with their agents, and said another should be cut into ukelele picks for the poor. I have come to call such movies "subpoena flicks" because that's what it would take to get me to see them.
Be well.
Terry Anastassiou
San Francisco
Terrific as usual to read these, and glad you remember your most scathing moments for the holidays Roger! Just as you can beautifully praise a great movie, you can satisfyingly destroy a terrible one. Have a great holiday.
Marshall
“I laughed, I cried, It was better than CATS,” Seriously this was precisely the anecdote (or is that antidote?), for the day after Christmas. I teach a high school film appreciation class where reading your reviews is a requirement. When I assign their first reviews my kids always ask, “How do I choose a movie?” My response is, “choose a great film or a horrible one. The great films will write the review for you and the bad ones are just fun to eviscerate, it is the mediocre ones you have to stay away from.” You are always a delight to read but I have to admit that I have a deep and abiding appreciation for your no star and 1 star reviews – vitriol can be such fun! Thank you for years of great criticism you continue to inspire my students to watch films, to analyze them, to write about them and to love movies.
One final comment regarding your revelation that "after Gene Siskel said Lauren Bacall didn't deserve her Oscar nomination, the great lady crossed a room to tell me, 'You can tell your friend Siskel that he is a c*********.'" Can there be any greater compliment or epitaph than being called a “c**********,” by Lauren Bacall? I don’t know who was luckier, Siskel for being so singled out or you for getting to hear Bacall lob one his way. "You do remember how to whistle don’t you?” I am guessing after that one that you will never forget.
Ebert: Oddly enough, after I told Siskel the story I asked him to pucker his lips and blow. Don't read this to your students.
Dear Sir,
here is a list of my little collection of lines from your reviews that remain very memorable to me and i keep revisiting them. Reading them out to my friends to enthuse them to start watching movies and reading your views is something i have been doing for a few years now. of course, the collection keeps expanding as i read more of your reviews.
My Fair Lady
It is unnecessary to summarize the plot or list the songs; if you are not familiar with both, you are culturally illiterate, although in six months I could pass you off as a critic at Cannes, or even a clerk in a good video store, which requires better taste.(paraphrasing Henry Higgins)
Psycho
What makes "Psycho" immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.
Frozen Assets
Movies like "Frozen Assets" are small miracles. You look at them and wonder how, at any stage of the production, anyone could have thought there was a watchable movie here... Here is a movie to watch in appalled silence. To call it one of the year's worst would be a kindness.
Midnight Cowboy
The second scene went wrong when Joe jammed the telephone in the guy's mouth and the false teeth went flying. We already knew Joe well enough to know he simply wouldn't do that; why didn't Schlesinger(the director) know him as well?
Godfather
Familiar as I am with Robert Duvall, when he first appeared on the screen I found myself thinking, ``There's Tom Hagen.''
The Godfather Part III
Here, for example, is a new character, introduced as "Sonny's illegitimate son," and, yes, we nod like cousins at a family reunion, yes, he does seem a lot like Sonny.
Amadeus
Milos Forman's "Amadeus" is not about the genius of Mozart but about the envy of his rival Salieri, whose curse was to have the talent of a third-rate composer but the ear of a first-rate music lover, so that he knew how bad he was, and how good Mozart was.
This is not a vulgarization of Mozart, but a way of dramatizing that true geniuses rarely take their own work seriously, because it comes so easily for them. Great writers (Nabokov, Dickens, Wodehouse) make it look like play. Almost-great writers (Mann, Galsworthy, Wolfe) make it look like Herculean triumph. It is as true in every field; compare Shakespeare to Shaw, Jordan to Barkley, Picasso to Rothko, Kennedy to Nixon.
Buster Keaton
It's said that Chaplin wanted you to like him, but Keaton didn't care. I think he cared, but was too proud to ask... Buster survives tornadoes, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders and falls from great heights, and never pauses to take a bow.
Murder on Orient Express
Lumet overcomes his difficulties in great style, and we're never for a moment confused (except when we're supposed to be, which is most of the time).
Jackie Brown
You savor every moment of ``Jackie Brown.'' Those who say it is too long have developed cinematic attention deficit disorder. I wanted these characters to live, talk, deceive and scheme for hours and hours.
City Lights
Most of Chaplin's films are available on video. Children who see them at a certain age don't notice they're ``silent'' but notice only that every frame speaks clearly to them, without all those mysterious words that clutter other films. Then children grow up, and forget this wisdom, but the films wait patiently and are willing to teach us again.
-----
I witnessed the universality of Chaplin's art in one of my most treasured experiences as a moviegoer, in 1972, in Venice, where all of Chaplin's films were shown at the film festival.
One night the Piazza San Marco was darkened, and ``City Lights'' was shown on a vast screen. When the flower girl recognized the Tramp, I heard much snuffling and blowing of noses around me; there wasn't a dry eye in the piazza. Then complete darkness fell, and a spotlight singled out a balcony overlooking the square. Charlie Chaplin walked forward, and bowed. I have seldom heard such cheering.
Modern Times
They're classics, everyone agrees, but that word "classic" has become terribly cheap in relation to movies. It's applied so promiscuously that by now the only thing you can be sure of about a "film classic" is that it isn't actually in current release.
Screwballs
There are scenes in this movie that are intended to inspire nostalgia, and will probably not even inspire recognition.
Apocalypse Now
It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover...If we are lucky, we spend our lives in a fool's paradise, never knowing how close we skirt the abyss.
La Dolce Vita
There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself.
The Truman Show
If you think ``The Truman Show'' is an exaggeration, reflect that Princess Diana lived under similar conditions from the day she became engaged to Charles...
For Harris, the demands of the show take precedence over any other values, and if you think that's an exaggeration, tell it to the TV news people who broadcast that Los Angeles suicide.
Hotel Rwanda
Deep movie emotions for me usually come not when the characters are sad, but when they are good.
Raging Bull
It is a vicious circle. Freud called it the "madonna-whore complex." Groucho Marx put it somewhat differently: "I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member." It amounts to a man having such low self-esteem that he (a) cannot respect a woman who would sleep with him, and (b) is convinced that, given the choice, she would rather be sleeping with someone else.
...that, and the extraordinary moment where he looks at himself in a dressing room mirror and recites from ``On the Waterfront'' (``I coulda been a contender''). It's not De Niro doing Brando, as is often mistakenly said, but De Niro doing LaMotta doing Brando doing Terry Malloy. De Niro could do a ``better'' Brando imitation, but what would be the point?
The Empire Strikes Back
I have no doubt there are many improvements on the soundtrack, but I would have to be a dog to hear them.
Lawrence of Arabia
You can view it on video and get an idea of its story and a hint of its majesty, but to get the feeling of Lean's masterpiece you need to somehow, somewhere, see it in 70mm on a big screen. This experience is on the short list of things that must be done during the lifetime of every lover of film.
The word ''epic'' in recent years has become synonymous with ''big budget B picture.'' What you realize watching ''Lawrence of Arabia'' is that the word ''epic'' refers not to the cost or the elaborate production, but to the size of the ideas and vision. Werner Herzog's ''Aguirre, the Wrath of God'' didn't cost as much as the catering in ''Pearl Harbor,'' but it is an epic, and ''Pearl Harbor'' is not.
Groundhog Day
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, in his case, doesn't creep in at its petty pace from day to day, but gets stuck like a broken record. (that's Macbeth)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
That they lose their minds while all about them are keeping theirs is a tribute to their skill. (that's If by Rudyard Kipling)
"I have here a heartfelt message from a reader who urges me not to be so hard on stupid films, because they are 'plenty smart enough for the average moviegoer.' Yes, but one hopes being an average moviegoer is not the end of the road: that one starts as a below-average filmgoer, passes through average, and, guided by the labors of America's hardworking film critics, arrives in triumph at above-average."
Heat
De Niro and Pacino, veterans of so many great films in the crime genre, have by now spent more time playing cops and thieves than most cops and thieves have. At this point in their careers, if Pacino and De Niro go out to study a cop or a robber, it's likely their subject will have modeled himself on their performances in old movies.
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001 on a TV set is like the Grand Canyon on a postcard.
In his introduction to 'Great Movies'
One of the gifts one movie lover can give another is the title of a wonderful film they have not yet discovered.
Manhattan
It is amazing, for example, how many women believe they are unique because they find Woody sexy.
Vanaja
But "Vanaja" ends in a very Indian way, trusting to fate and fortune, believing there is a tide in the affairs of men, which -- but you know where it leads. (Shakespeare again)
The Village
To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes.
The Princess Bride
His voice seems to contain a measure of cynicism about fairy stories, a certain awareness that there are a lot more things on heaven and Earth than have been dreamed of by the Brothers Grimm.(Shakespeare)
Thank you for writing this enjoyable post. wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
best wishes,
Arvind
Ebert: What a labor! I enjoyed it. And I very much enjoyed your blog. There are quiete a few Indians among my visitors and I am struck by what fine English prose they write. You quote Wodehouse. In Calcutta I went into a tiny English book store, and asked the owner who was his best-selling author.. "Oh, by far and away, P.G. Wodehouse.
"On the first page of my notes, I wrote "Starts slow." On the second page, I wrote "Boring." On the third page, I wrote "Endless!" On the fourth page, I wrote: "Bite-size shredded wheat, skim milk, cantaloupe, frozen peas, toilet paper, salad stuff, pick up laundry. -- "Exit to Eden""
You said it yourself - two things that you can't fake are laughter and orgasm. This was the quote that made me laugh out loud, and laugh out loud again re-reading it. Funny though, my own introduction to "Exit to Eden" was the abridged audiobook read by the sensual-voiced and slightly breathy Gillian Anderson. As far as the second thing you can't fake - my only mistake was in deciding to listen to it at work. I highly recommend it (the audiobook, not listening to it in the company of colleagues).
I see a lot of reference to "A Christmas Story" here, a film that has made your Great Movies and is a near-perfect and dead-honest snapshot of the American Christmas experience without the Rockwellian teeth-aching stickiness. I don't know if it speaks to kids today, but it mirrored my own childhood, even though that took place more than 25 years after Mr. Shepherd's. Yet in your original review you gave it only 3 stars. By your own yardstick, I wonder what movie in the genre is that much better to have gotten four? Why was this film, that has become so beloved, so ignored in the beginning? I saw it when it first came out and thought it was destined to be a smash. The theater I saw it in was all but empty, and apparently remained so during its entire, brief run.
Ebert: What was I thinking? Its inclusion in the Great Movies speaks for itself.
This is absolutely great stuff, Roger! I'm cracking up. This is why I read your reviews so often. Even if I disagree with you, they are still so well-written and entertaining. This is why you're the most famous and well-respected movie critic out there, because you're the best. Your writing is so sharp and witty. When you don't like a movie, the reviews are hilariously merciless. I hope you keep reviewing movies for a long time to come, because you're the best there is.
Looked up the Phantasm review, and found the quote in, instead, your Phantasm II review, minus the classic "I hate it when that happens." That's a shame! I'm also fond of the standby expression "blow stuff up real good," which I think you've used a few times, there being so many movies for which it's apt.
That review mentioned you'd seen Phantasm (the first one), but I couldn't find a review for it. Another review mentions your having seen The Blind Dead (I liked those spooky mummified Knights Templars), but it doesn't appear you reviewed that one either. Another comment above mentions you reviewed Silent Night, Deadly Night on your show but not in print. I was wondering why some of the movies you've seen escaped being reviewed?
At other times, you've had to review films in series where you had not seen one or more of the previous entries. Only Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and New Nightmare out of the whole series, Friday the 13th 2 and Jason X out of that series. It doesn't seem fair to the movie to review it when you haven't seen the others. Then again, it doesn't seem like it would be fair to you to require you to see them, particularly when I suspect you wouldn't enjoy them! Well, as the F13 2 review ends (a comment added later, perhaps?) "*This review will suffice for the Friday the 13th film of your choice." Having seen them all myself, they are all mostly the same.
Another review I looked up after reading this blog was Pink Flamingos. Looks like somehow the original 1972 review got replaced with the reissue review, since it appears twice?
Anyway, I'm pleased to report I did get some of your work on Christmas; my brother and sister-in-law gave me Philip Lopate's anthology American Movie Critics, which looks fantastic. I knew of Carl Sandburg only by his Lincoln biography and didn't know he reviewed films.
Be reading you in the new year,
Chris
Ebert: My intro to the book of Sandberg's movie reviews is on this site.
Ah, this was a beautiful collection to read. As much as I enjoy reading and engaging in praise of all the wonderful things in art and in life, there will always be that hugely satisfying pleasure in the hateful bile spewed at those that deserve it. I think it goes without saying that most of the wittiest lines you and Gene ever came up with were parts of bad reviews, and it's no coincidence that of all the clips of Siskel and Ebert preserved on youtube (and the ones that still survive there), the most popular and in demand ones were the annual Worst of the Year specials. Even though I make it a point to avoid going to see a bad movie in theaters (on Christmas, I talked my best friend out of seeing The Spirit and going to see Valkyrie instead), there's nothing like a fully loaded Thumbs Down. The fact that your reviews for terrible movies are so often entertaining just goes to show that you do, in fact, have to suffer for art's sake.
P.S. On another note, I've been complaining about annoying moviegoers almost as long as I've been going to the movies, but this recent news item about a guy being shot for making noise during the movie ( http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081228/ap_on_re_us/movie_noise_shooting ) really got my attention. I have to ask you, first of all, is it wrong to have a fair hint of sympathy for the shooter, and second, is this new, or have there been reports like this before? I think a well-researched history of crazed theater shooters could be vital in fighting inconsiderate moviegoers. Fear mongering has often been an effective tool with people, which is sad but true.
Ebert: In my experience, if you tell a noisemaker, "I will shoot you unless you shut up," you will generally not have a lot more trouble. Especially if you look like the accused's mug shot.
Good Day Mr Ebert,
Your sight really lights up my day.
And this compilation really spreads the holiday cheer all around.
Thanks to you,I have also started mastering the art of insult without the use of expletives.
Secretly ,we (your fans in a land far,far away where movies are very ,very bad)hope for more catwoman and silent hill type releases so that we can read another sharp review from you.
Thanks.
Ebert: "...a land far,far away where movies are very, very bad." I'm aflame with curiosity. So "Silent Hill" made its way to you?
What was Siskel's response when you told him? I would die of delight were I called a c********* by Lauren Bacall. I would leave orders to put that on my tombstone.
To think that she had spent that much time thinking about him should have been a compliment to Siskel. (I have her autobiography on my iPod and went to re-listen hoping that she had recounted this incident, which she did not, but the audiobook is abridged.)
Ebert: Siskel said...well, never mind what he said.
Bacall's autobiography, titled By Myself because it is, ranks with those by Louise Brooks and Michael Powell as the best movie industry memoirs. Her description of her life with Bogart and his brave death are heart-rending.
I just want to add, that I had not read the prior comment about the Bacall epitaph before I submitted my last comment. I had just been thinking about the post for a few days, and came to the same conclusion as the prior commenter, that nothing better than being called a c********* by Bacall could possibly happen to a film fan.
I know this is a "best of" for Roger but I must make mention of one of my favorite comments from Gene Siskel about "Daylight":
"As a measure of my boredom, about a half hour into this picture I became fixated on the critic down the row from me eating some candy. It wasn't Roger. It was John Petrakis from the Chicago Tribune, and I tried to guess the candy he was eating by the sounds he was making. Now, those sounds were more captivating to me than anything going on on the screen in 'Daylight'"
To which Roger replied:
"I knew it wasn't me because there was still candy left after half an hour".
okay, okay, I know this post is getting "old". But I loved this quote from your review of "The One", starring Jet Li:
"The film opens with a narration informing us that there are parallel universes.... Apparently every time one of your other selves dies, his power is distributed among the survivors. If Yulaw kills 123 selves, he has the power of 124. Follow this logic far enough, and retirement homes would be filled with elderly geezers who have outlived their others and now have the strength of 124, meaning they can bend canes with their bare hands and produce mighty bowel movements with scornful ease."
Ha, nice.
I read your annual collection of reviews as if I were reading poetry. I revisit them and reread them later, several times. I tell everyone that you're genius! I go back and highlight sentences that made impressions upon me. I steal, I mean, "use" your quotes on my webpages when I want a famous quote. Sure, I use Goethe, Rilke, Dosteovsky, Bukowski, etc., but for me, "An Ebert Quote" will work in a pinch! And yes, I always give you credit. I LOVE when you hate a movie, because I know that I'm going to laugh my ass off. But my favorite lines are usually from your reviews of love stories or movies you want people to see instead of the ones most will flock to on the weekends.
Here are some of my favorites:
She reveals little about herself. As they talk into the night, they develop that kind of strange intimacy two people can have when they know nothing about each other but feel a deep connection. -Charlotte Sometimes (because of your review, I went out and rented it and it is one of my all-time favorite movies. Then I bought two copies, you know, just in case...)
But what is free will for, if not to defy our plans? "Baby, you are gonna miss that plane," she says. -Before Sunset
Violet creates an excuse to meet Corky; she uses the routine about her ring falling down the sink. In old movies this was a ploy to trap men, but for about 10 years I've noticed that the only movie characters who seem to do household tasks anymore are lesbians. There's always a scene early in the movie showing them caulking something. -Bound. This is my favorite paragraph from your review! It's hilariously true! Those darn, pesky lesbian neighbors are always fixing something.
It's the kind of picture those View n' Brew theaters were made for, as long as you don't View. - Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
Before you find it odd that the Canadian cops lack a single law enforcement person with her expertise, reflect on this: They don't even know they're not in Montreal. At almost the very moment we hear "Montreal" on the soundtrack, there is a beautiful shot of the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City. This is a little like Chicago cops not noticing they are standing beneath Mount Rushmore. -Taking Lives
We are so accustomed to "thrillers" that exist only as machines for creating diversion that it's a shock to find a movie in which the action, however violent, makes a statement and has a purpose. -Oldboy. (I am a huge fan of Korean cinema! H, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Tell Me Something, to name a few).
I also chortled a few moments later, when the villain pulled out a piece of equipment labeled FIBER OPTIC CONVERTER in letters so large they could be read across the room. Doesn't mean much, but it sure looks good. -Speed 2: Cruise Control
And my very favorite, *drum roll please*
We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds. -The Isle
Gene had a great quote about bad movies. During a Worst of the Year show he slapped his forehead and said "OH! The movies I've seen!"
I have used that quote quite a few times - with due credit of course.
Heard a great one last night in your review of "The Quick and the Dead". You said "This is like 'High Noon' and the clock has stopped!"
I haven't mentioned that picture at the top.
You guys look like Al Franken and Kevin Spacey.
I have one question about the way you ended your review of Little Indian, Big City. You say that if I see it under any circumstances, you won't let me read any of your reviews again. Well, I haven't seen it yet, and probably won't, but I want to know how you could ever do that anyway? I guess it was written in jest, right? Right.
Ebert: Oh, no. You'll be on the honor system.
I saw only about ten minutes of "Little Indian Big City", does that mean I can only read three quarters of your reviews?
Ebert: For you, we'll pass an amendment.
These ones gave me a chuckle.
-"Boat trip" arrives preceded by publicity saying many homosexuals have been outraged by the film. Now that it's in theaters, everybody else has a chance to join them.
-I wrote the words "Joe Dirt" at the top of my notepad and settled back to watch the new David Spade movie. Here is the first note I took: "Approx. 6 min. until first cow fart set afire." "Joe dirt" doesn't waste any time letting you know where it stands.
This one gave me nausea.... then a chuckle.
-Watching "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," I grew nostalgic for the lost innocence of a movie like "American Pie," in which human semen found itself in a pie. In "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," dog semen is baked in a pastry. Is it only a matter of time until the heroes of teenage gross-out comedies are injecting turtle semen directly through their stomach walls?
From 'Your Movie Sucks'.
Ebert: You know, I was on such a roll writing that one, I didn't even check to see if turtles have semen. I guess they do. Would you believe, when you Google "turtle semen" you get 252,000 links?
I'm going to go ahead and take your word for it.
I happened to be looking at this entry again, why I don't know. My 13 year old son came by and asked what I was reading. I read a few of these entries; after about the third, he said, "This guy's good." Later on, he said, "How does he write like this?"
Ebert: You're just the person to show him
I have so much work to do.
My son recently watched the first 3 Terminator movies. I didn't like this at first, but then when I considered the language content and remembered what life was like when I was in 8th grade, I realized he wasn't going to hear anything from a Terminator movie that he wasn't hearing at school.
At the end, I asked him which of the 3 was the best. His reply was the third one. I asked why, and he said "Better special effects."
And last night we sat down to start watching the first season of Get Smart, which we gave him for his grade 8 graduation. He wanted to skip the first episode. I asked why, and he said, "It's in black and white."
It's gonna be a long, hard, slog...