Roger Ebert's Journal

Outguess Ebert on the Oscars

2012-02-09T04:37:30Z

It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that this year's Academy Awards will amount to a shootout between "Hugo," with 11 nominations, and "The Artist," with 10. Fittingly, they are two movies inspired by love of movie history, the first about the inventor of the cinema, the second about the transition from silent films to talkies.

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With that in mind, I bring you this year's Outguess Ebert Contest. The first prize will be an all-expenses paid trip for two to Los Angeles to attend a Hollywood premiere. Runners-up will receive personally autographed copies of my Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2012.

Ground rules: (1) Anyone anywhere can enter, unless such contests are prohibited where you live. (2) Yes, you can enter online; go to Outguess Ebert. In fact, that is the preferred mode of entry. (3) Deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. CST on Friday, Feb. 24.

In self-defense, I will point out that the deadline for my predictions was Feb. 7, with the Oscars more than two weeks away, on Feb. 26. Predicting so far in advance is a handicap, and as a result, you have an excellent chance of outguessing me. Still, this annual contest is fun and provides me with an opportunity to show how badly I can do.

Here are my guesses, and "guesses" is the operative word:

Best picture: "The Artist" is one of those underdogs that surges into the lead late in the season, like "Chariots of Fire" or "The Hurt Locker." It's an enchanting (almost) silent comedy, shot (almost entirely) in black and white, and although I wasn't surprised that the critics loved it, my eyes were opened when it won the Golden Globe for best comedy/musical.

Best actor: I was all wound up to select George Clooney for "The Descendants," but some last-minute instinct leads me to Jean Dujardin, as "The Artist." I believe to some degree the academy voters think of themselves as casting the show -- choosing winners who can be trusted to deliver sensational acceptance speeches, as Roberto Benigni did in 1999. Dujardin is a likable man who has charmed his way through the talk-show circuit, at one point belting out "La Marseillaise." Clooney is a Hollywood favorite but his role was more solid than spectacular. His speech would be sound and respectful.

Best actress: Viola Davis for 'The Help." In a way, Meryl Streep's many nominations will work against her. She'll get another chance, the voters will figure, and "The Iron Lady" was a cold and distant role (do you know anyone who "loved" the film?). "The Help," however, was enormously popular, and Viola Davis was its moral center. Ever since her nomination for a powerful scene in "Doubt" (2009), she's been circling to land.

Best supporting actor: Christopher Plummer, for "Beginners." Voters love an actor who steps out of his image, and Plummer, as a gay man who comes out at 75, was playing a character that audiences liked very much. He looks clearly like the front runner in this category.

Best supporting actress: Octavia Spencer, once again indicating that it helps for a nominee to have played a lovable character. In "The Help," she plays a spunky woman who says what she thinks with uncanny comic timing. Melissa McCarthy has a similar role in "Bridesmaids," which may give her a chance. Jessica Chastain was in many roles during the year, but "The Help" did not provide her with the best one.

Best director: There's a rule that almost always works for Oscar predictors: The director who wins the top annual honor from the Directors Guild of America almost always wins the Oscar. My instincts cry out that Martin Scorsese will win in this category, and you might be well advised to choose him. But in the past, every time I've gone against the DGA precedent, I've been wrong. On Jan. 28, the DGA Award went to Michel Hazanavicius for "The Artist." So I'm going with him.

Best animated film: The hyperactive and entertaining "Rango" by Gore Verbinski. This one was just plain fun, maintaining the energy level of a classic Looney Tunes. Many like Spain's "Chico & Rita," but I haven't seen it yet. While Scorsese's "Hugo" was largely motion-capture animation, it found itself in the standard feature film category for no doubt excellent reasons that remain impenetrable to me.

Best foreign film: As I write, I haven't yet seen three of the nominees -- and that cost me dearly the year I hadn't seen "Departures" from Japan. All the same, I believe the winner in this category will clearly be Asghar Farhadi's "A Separation," from Iran. Showered with year-end awards, it already ranks at No. 70 in imdb.com's tally for its Top 250 Films. It is simply a great film, praised by everyone I've spoken to who has seen it.

Best adapted screenplay: "The Descendants" by Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. An admirable example of sound script construction, beginning with what could have been little more than a sitcom and building to a group of well-developed character studies. The film's issues were important, its conflicts were easy to identify with and its appeal ran deep.

Best original screenplay: "Midnight in Paris" by Woody Allen. Although Woody has only attended one Oscar ceremony, he remains an academy favorite, with an incredible 23 nominations since "Annie Hall" in 1977, and two previous wins. "Midnight in Paris" was Allen's top-grossing and most popular film since "Annie Hall," a whimsical invention of his imagination that carried back to Gertrude Stein's legendary salon in Paris.

Uniquely among prolific directors with long careers, Allen writes almost all of his own films. My suggestion for him: You're likely the winner. Attend the ceremony for a change and soak up that standing ovation. You deserve it.

Once again, here's the link to Enter Outguess Ebert.

You can enter Outguess Ebert here. For more details, read the small print at the bottom of the ballot, or in the Chicago Sun-Times or suntimes.com/win.

Happy days are here again

2012-02-02T20:26:56Z

For me the best news produced by the Florida primary was Newt Gingrich's vow to take his fight all the way to the floor of this year's Republican convention. It has been way too long since a national political convention was more than a coronation stage-managed by public relations experts.]]>

It seems likely that Mitt Romney will be this year's GOP nominee, although with the party's revolving-door Surges of the Week we can never be sure. It is unlikely to be any of the other remaining candidates, although Ron Paul may use his pledged delegates to win a speaking slot. I'll enjoy that. He has the rare quality of talking turkey, and is funnier than his rivals. He is, in fact, the only candidate in either party who is likely to say something unexpected (on purpose) every time he speaks.

Newt is a seasoned politician and surely doesn't believe he has any chance of being his party's candidate. He seems driven by something more than hope. His motivation seems to be his personal hatred of Mitt Romney, which has already taken him to the extreme of releasing the devastating anti-Romney documentary I'm embedding below. In Tampa in August 2012 he will supply the unusual sight of a party's certain nominee being attacked from the podium of its annual convention. I suspect any novelty in his speech will center on his criticisms of Mitt; we're unlikely to learn anything new about his platform, which seems to boil down to "Vote for Newt."

We've grown accustomed to national conventions scripted down to the minute by the staffs of the intended nominees. News analysis of the conventions comes down to talking heads on cable reviewing the timing and production values, and noting how well the candidates have staged the show. Newt's speech is likely to draw a larger TV audience than anything else in either convention except (perhaps) the acceptance speeches of Romney and Obama. Viewers will be wondering, What will Newt say? There is also the possibility that Sarah Palin will speak, although some months have passed since the season when she dominated Republican news.

Therefore I am grateful to Newt. By promising a fight on the convention floor, he takes me back to the days when my father and I were glued to the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the conventions. Correspondents were stationed at hotels where important delegations were housed, and the notion of political bosses meeting in smoke-filled rooms was not yet a figure of speech. I remember the 1956 Democratic convention, predestined to renominate Adlai Stevenson, where we supported John Kennedy, the young senator from Massachusetts.

He wasn't running for president, but for the vice-presidential nomination. In an unprecedented move, Stevenson threw the veep nomination to the floor, where Kennedy ran against the eventual winner, Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. It was the height of a mania for Davy Crockett, and Kefauver was famous as "the man in the coonskin hat." Kennedy was supported by such bosses as Daley of Chicago, the contest ran to three ballots, and it was the luckiest day of JFK's life that he wasn't Adlai's 1956 running mate.

By 1960, Kennedy had essentially been running for the presidential nomination since 1956. In those times campaigns didn't run for years, and only one week before the convention both Lyndon Johnson and Adlai Stevenson announced they would run. Those were the days of "favorite son" candidates, whose convention votes were controlled by the bosses of state parties, and correspondents were again scurrying between hotels and picking up gossip from smoke filled rooms. There was a measure of suspense, in part because the notion of a Catholic as president was controversial. The popular Protestant preacher Norman Vincent Peale warned that Washington would take instructions from Rome, and Adlai defended JFK with a delicious one-liner: "For those who find Paul appealing, Peale is appalling."

The 1964 GOP convention featured a showdown between the Republican right wing (led by Barry Goldwater) and its moderates (led by Nelson Rockefeller). By winning, Goldwater essentially shaped the modern GOP. That Romney is now considered a moderate is a sign of how far right the party has moved. Newt is doing a favor for us by reviving his party's ideological debate; with the rise of the Tea Party, what would John McCain's chances of a nomination be today?

Modern political conventions increasingly find most of the news taking place outside the scripted events in the official halls. Demonstrators threatened to invade both 2008 conventions. This year we can expect both parties to be Occupied. Eighteen months ago role of the Tea Party seemed likely to be an important presence, but today the movement seems to have lost much of its energy.

I was in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic convention, where the city was in a state of siege. Anti-war demonstrators bitterly opposed Sen. Hubert Humphrey; the anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy had rallied the opposition. That was the convention when a delegate from Georgia punched Dan Rather in the guts and anchorman Walter Cronkite, seated far above the fray, told him, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan."

This year the three networks will no longer dominate the coverage; their notion of "gavel to gavel" has long since been abandoned to the cable news operations. I will watch, but there's unlikely to be anything like the golden moment I saw on TV in 1964, during the GOP convention that nominated Goldwater. His supporters considered reporters to be the enemy and were inflamed by none other than good old Ike, who attacked "the sensation-seeking columnists and commentators who couldn't care less about the good of our party."

That inspired a demonstration, election historian Theodore White wrote, as delegates exploded "in applause, shouts, boos, catcalls, horns, klaxons and glory." Gary Donaldson wrote: "The delegates stood on their chairs, shouting, raving, shaking their fists and cursing the reporters in the press section." Given the inflamed mood on the floor, reporters became targets. NBC's correspondent John Chancellor was told to clear an aisle and then carried off above the heads of security men, still broadcasting: "This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody."

Modern parties are too image-conscious to allow things like that to happen. I expect no MSNBC reporters to be mauled by Republicans, or Fox News reporters to be manhandled by Democrats. I won't see anything remotely as entertaining as the 1968 anchor booth debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal. I anticipate that Obama and Romney will be the nominees, selected in an orderly and controlled manner by delegates whose votes have mostly already been signed, sealed and delivered. If there is to be spontaneity, surprise and good old-fashioned loathing, Newt, I'm afraid it's up to you.

They wuz robbed

2012-01-26T23:02:32Z

Of course, no one is really robbed of an Academy Award nomination. It's a gift; not a right. The balloting procedure is conducted honestly and reflects a collective opinion, which was demonstrated this year when the Academy voters had the curiosity to seek out Demian Bichir for best actor for his deeply convincing performance as a Mexican gardener in Los Angeles in "A Better Life." He wasn't on my mental list of possible candidates, but when I heard the name, I thought, "Of course! Good thinking!"

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Does it therefore follow that in the best actor category, Bichir "robbed" Michael Shannon of "Take Shelter," Ryan Gosling of "Drive" or Michael Fassbender of "Shame"? It does not, even though those performances were so good. There were no unworthy nominees for best actor. But let me also point out that none of the five nominees was as electrifying as the three who were "robbed." That's not a fault. Their roles weren't of that nature.

In the best actress category, those who were "robbed" included Tilda Swinton in "We Need to Talk About Kevin," Charlize Theron in "Young Adult" and Vera Farmiga in "Higher Ground." Here I will be bold and name two nominees I didn't feel were worthy: Meryl Streep and Glenn Close.

Streep, of course, is a paragon. Her impersonation of Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady" was so uncanny she could have given a speech on the BBC and fooled a lot of people. But it wasn't a very good film and didn't make adequate use of her as a resource. In my review, I used a happy turn of phrase: She was all dressed up with nowhere to go. Nominating Miss Streep seems to have become an annual ritual for the Academy, like bringing on the accountants with their briefcases.

Vera Farmiga not only starred in "Higher Ground," but also directed it. In both tasks she shows complete clarity about what she wants to accomplish. The film follows three stages in a woman's journey through religion: childhood belief, mainstream Protestant, 40ish evangelical. (She plays the third.) The film never says she is making the right or wrong decision, only that what she does seems necessary at the time she does it. In a world where believers and agnostics are polarized and hold simplified ideas about each other, it takes a step back and sees faith as a series of choices that should be freely made. She is intensely human at every stage.

Glenn Close's performance in "Albert Nobbs" was too limited, I think. Her female-to-male transition evoked a character paralyzed with dread of discovery. Except for one lovely scene of brief liberation, there was no range, simply a woman who hopes that by keeping a frozen face and blending into the wallpaper she can pass. Her Albert Nobbs seems monumentally clueless if she believes it's plausible the cute little chambermaid yearns for a sexless marriage running a tobacco shop. Nobbs seems not merely frightened and shy, but lacking a basic working knowledge of the facts of life. That isn't inappropriate for the character, perhaps, but it does little to make the film involving.

In her place I would rather have seen Tilda Swinton's devastating performance as the unwilling mother of a demonic son in "We Need to Talk About Kevin," or Charlize Theron's self-destructive, vulnerable former prom queen in "Young Adult." Yes, her character was as clueless as Albert Nobbs in thinking her high school boyfriend would drop his wife and new baby to marry her. But it's the kind of thinking an alcoholic can drift into.

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In the same film, Patton Oswalt's performance as the legendary nerd in Theron's high school class deserved a nomination. So certainly did the work of Albert Brooks in "Drive," as a gnarly old gangster a million miles distant from his previous characters. Both performers were acting. Who were they "robbed" by? I think perhaps by Nick Nolte's work as the father in "Warrior." I wrote in my review that "he embodies, as only Nick Nolte can, the shaggy, weathered heroism of a man who is trying one more time to pull himself together." Yes, but isn't that the role he's been playing routinely? To see him as the great actor he is, look again at his nominated leading performance in Paul Schrader's "Affliction" (1997). In "Warrior," he's typecast.

Here's a question I hate to ask. Why was Max von Sydow nominated for "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"? It was not a great movie, and the role of a young boy's wise old companion was not original nor did it stretch. Does it strike you as ironic that at the age of 82, with 145 IMDb credits since 1949, the iconic actor from so many of Ingmar Bergman's masterpieces should have been nominated for this film? Brooks and Oswalt were taking chances and bringing forth from within themslves characters who were original and new.

As best actor, I would have preferred seeing Ryan Gosling from "Drive" or Michael Fassbender from "Shame." I'll get back to "Drive." I think it goes without saying that Fassbender, playing a tortured, joyless, addicted masturbator, would not be nominated. To some degree, less perhaps in recent years, the Academy seems afraid the public will confuse the behavior of nominated characters with their own characters. They don't want to be seen as sympathizing with masturbators.

I have one complaint about the supporting actress category: It was not an actress but a film that was robbed. Jessica Chastain had an extraordinary year, but its highlight was the deeply believable mother in "The Tree of Life." Her performance in "The Help" not only had less weight and dimension, but it served a character, the trophy wife, who was marginal compared to the other nominated actresses.

In the same category, the nomination of Melissa McCarthy for "Bridesmaids" was deserved. Her chubby, butch gal pal was an original, a woman whose authenticity stole every scene -- and incidentally, a character we'll remember better than the leads.

Of course, this is all pure personal opinion. Most criticisms of the annual nominees can be translated as, "Here's who I would have nominated." I thought "The Tree of Life" was a masterpiece and was pleased that the Academy agreed. I know it had its puzzled detractors, some of whom reportedly demanded their money back. You know my reservations about "The Help," but it won great popularity and admiration. The best film nominee that puzzles me the most is "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." It attached a 9/11 connection to the implausible story of a young boy wandering all over New York on a wild goose chase, but never mind: Did you meet anyone who really loved it?

The film that should have been named in this category is Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive." Transcending the crime genre, it stars Ryan Gosling as a man who lives primarily to drive. Sometimes he's a movie stunt driver, sometimes he drives getaway for crooks. He seems to have no family, no history and seemingly few emotions. Whatever happened to him drove any personality deep beneath the surface. He is an existential hero, defined entirely by his behavior. Not depending on violence, not buttressed by chase scenes, this film is a personality study. How often do we find the hero of an "action picture" to be this deeply interesting?

I have saved the worst robbery for last, and of course it is the Academy's inexplicable decision to ignore Steve James' and Alex Kotlowitz's "The Interrupters," which I think by consensus was the best documentary of the year. Filmed on dangerous streets, it followed Chicago ex-cons and former gang members who formed CeaseFire, a group of "violence interrupters" who personally interposed to talk street gangs out of deadly shootings.

This is the most discussed non-nomination since 1994, when James' masterpiece "Hoop Dreams" was not nominated. It was later revealed that volunteers of the Academy's documentary branch turned off "Hoop Dreams" after watching it for only 15 minutes. What their reasons were for passing over "The Interrupters" I cannot imagine. Which of the other nominees "stole" the nomination? I have nothing to say against any of them. So, tactfully, I will suggest it was a collective theft by all five.

Oscar figure copyright AMPAS, Photoshop graphic by Marie Haws.

Think of me as the butler, Carson

2012-01-20T05:26:24Z

For an hour before bedtime every night for a week, I've watched an episode of "Downton Abbey." Last night the Earl of Grantham interrupted a garden party to announce the beginning of World War I, and I pulled up short. I was watching the first season via Netflix Instant, and inattentively failed to notice there were only seven episodes. I naturally expected ten.

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I'm not one of those people who follows every series on Masterpiece Theater, HBO or whatever. There's always a movie to be seen. The last series I watched completely was "Brideshead Revisited," and before that all the way back to "Upstairs, Downstairs." As you know, I'm an Anglophile. I seem particularly drawn to the era of English Country Houses before the First War, and to a degree between the two wars.

Someone wrote that country house life in peacetime was the apogee of human civilization. Could have been Orwell. Or probably couldn't have. The point as I recall is that the Upstairs and Downstairs people were equally happy in their own ways. There was a stable hierarchy and everyone knew their place. "Knowing your place" is a term often used in connection with someone who tries to rise above it, but there's also such a thing as possessing and valuing your place. There is pride in doing one's job well, in being the epitome of a footman, a ladies' maid, a butler, a valet, or an Earl. In Downton Abbey, I think it possible that the happiest people may be Carson the butler and Patmore the cook--and upstairs, the Earl and his wife Countess Cora. They are happy because they do their jobs well and are loyal and helpful to those who depend on them.

The most admirable man, up or down, is Bates, the Earl's valet, but he is far from being the happiest. He has too active a conscience. In early life he went to prison to protect his worthless wife. Now he would rather be fired than cost another man his job--even if that man is the vile Thomas Barrow, who has lied about him and tried to frame him. Bates adds considerably to the entertainment value of "Downton Abbey" by enlisting our deep sympathy, but there comes a time when defending your own honor ranks above protecting the job of a villain. Remember, too, that Bates has had to undergo alcoholism and being a "cripple," as everyone cheerfully describes him. Indeed, he almost got fired the first time because the loathsome Mrs. O'Brien tripped him at an embarrassing moment.

There is nothing Politically Correct about "Downton Abbey." Thomas is not only a liar and a thief, but a deceiver of young women, an aggressive homosexual, and a chain smoker. He teams up with her ladyship's maid, Mrs. O'Brien, to share smokes and plot against Bates. Meanwhile, Daisy the little scullery maid, even lies for Thomas because, poor thing, she thinks she may have a chance with him. The Cook knows better about her hopes for romance: "He ain't a ladies' man." The view of homosexuality in the series is decidedly dated, but as a character Thomas functions admirably. There is sly humor in the way the only two characters who smoke very much are the villains.

I gather there is more humor to come in Season Two, and that I will regret, because although my politics are liberal my tastes in fiction respond to the conservative stability of the Downton world. The more seriously I can take it, the better I will like it. To be sure, there is monstrous unfairness in the British class system, and one of the series themes is income inequality. What must be observed, however, is that all the players agree to play by the same rules. In modern America the rich jump through every loophole in the tax code. But look what happened in the first episode of "Downton Abbey." The Earl's presumptive heir went down with the Titanic and the title passed to a distant cousin, Mr. Matthew Crawley of Manchester, who now stood to inherit the title, the house, the land and the money--including the personal fortune of Cora, the Earl's wife. So deeply are the principles of inheritance embedded in the Crawley family that the earl seems staunchly prepared to give up his earthly possessions and be courteous in the process.

Of course the injustices of the class system work better in fiction than in life, because in fiction we all identify with the rich and powerful. Even in reports of reincarnation, people tend toward having been Henry V in an earlier life, and not a scabby footpad. In "Downton Abbey," I identify with Carson. It is the liberal Mr. Crawley whose ideas are closest to my own, but the judicious and wise Carson who I envy.

There is nothing in my own early life that explains why I'm such an Anglophile. Maybe it can be traced back to the day Mr. Willis, my mother's boss at the Allied Finance Company, went to England and brought me back the Coronation Number of Punch, with its photos of the new Queen and Buckingham Palace and Prince Charles, who was about my age. I could have been Prince Charles, if my mother had been the Queen. Think about it. Then my Classics Illustrated comic books led to novels, until I was deep into Dickens and then Trollope and all the others. In London during the Blitz there was a sudden surge of popularity for Trollope's novels. There's nothing like Nazi buzz-bombs whistling overhead to focus your attention on the intrigues of Barsetshire.

Even my love of Indian fiction may be connected; at the Calcutta Film Festival, an Indian critic explained to me why P. G. Wodehouse is the most popular English-language novelist in India: "Both nations are class-conscious, love wearing the proper uniform at every moment, are obsessed with family, are devoted to ceremony, cultivate mustaches, and prize eccentricity." He may have had a point. Of all of Wodehouse's novels, my favorites are those about Blandings Castle, its Lord Emsworth, and the Lord's trusted Pig Man, George Cyril Wellbeloved, to whom is entrusted the care of the Lord's prized pig , the Empress of Blandings. In Blandings an enchanted world exists in which everyone is innocent, even a pig thief.

But I stray. Watching "Downton Abbey" gave me a sense of deep comfort. With the Earl and his household I valued the great Yorkshire structure and its traditions. For an hour a night, it was mine. Yes, in the embrace of these ancient yellow stones and rich woods, the footsteps of countless ancestors had fallen. It mattered not if I swept the entrance or stood in it to welcome the Queen, I was there through the generations.

I could understand why the Earl he had devoted his life to its maintenance. I could even understand why he was so determined to give up the title and his fortune on the sake of principle; if you live under laws by which can lose everything when a ship goes down, then perhaps it's not quite so unfair that you have it in the first place. You didn't rob or steal to gain your possessions (although your ancestors may have). You were born into them. And with a blow from a lucky iceberg, a poor man in Manchester might find that he, too, was rich by the accident of birth.

In the meantime, life goes on at Downton. Marriages are arranged and rearranged. Kitchen maids get crushes. Ladies' maids dream of mastering the typewriter and entering the prewar dot.com world. Grandmothers sternly defend ancient values and are willing to abandon them for benefit of family. A great machine like this country house can sail on through the centuries, its course not thrown off by the occasional discovery of a dead Turkish diplomat in the wrong bedroom. I am certain the snuff box will turn up eventually, and as confident as Carson is that Bates had nothing to do with it.

Season One is streaming free on Amazon Instant for Prime Members, or $1.99 per episode for others. It is also on Netflix Instant. Season Two is now playing on Sunday nights on PBS Masterpiece Theater.

The delightful art below is by Colleen Coover, who has the uncanny ability to look into my mind and draw exactly how I imagine everyone at Blandings, including the Empress.

The sketch of Chatsworth House is by moi, drawn on a sun-dappled afternoon.

The 2012 Oscar lalapalooza

2012-01-13T01:06:07Z

Do you expect "The Tree of Life" to be nominated as one of the best films of 2011? When I saw it last spring I certainly did. I assumed it was a done deal. If you'd told me then that "The Artist," a black and white silent film, was stirring up enthusiasm at Cannes, I would have said it sounded like something I really wanted to see.

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Since then I've seen it and I loved it, but I never would have predicted that in January 2012 "The Artist" would look like a shoo-in for a best film nomination, and the chances of "The Tree of Life" are less certain. Steve Pond of Thewrap.com added up the year-end winners of major awards groups and found "The Artist" in first place with six best-picture wins, followed by "The Tree of Life" with three, "The Descendants" with two and "Hugo" with one.

To be sure, year-end awards come mostly from critics, whose taste is decidedly different from the Academy. I suspect a lot of the support for "The Artist" was in principle: Critics love black and white, they love silent films--and you should, too. The odds of "The Artist" inspiring a flood of copycat productions, however, are slim.

But what about this year's nominees? Articles predicting the Oscars fall in newspaper shorthand somewhere between a "think piece" and a "thumb-sucker," where the writer supplies the reader with a panoramic view of the top of his head. Sometimes such articles can be commendable; I've always thought there should be a Pulitzer category for Thumb-Sucking.

To begin with, under these cockamamie new Academy rules, we don't even know how many nominees there are going to be. There can be up to ten, but will there be? Some analysts point out that under a new weighting system, no film that doesn't get at least one vote for first place can qualify. How many films were there in 2011 that were plausibly the best film of the year? Steve Pond predicts eight. I think his reasoning is flawed, because all a producer has to do is cast a first-place vote for his own film, and it qualifies. So there will be ten. Note: Not true. See David Poland's footnote,

I expect those will be "The Artist," "The Tree of life," "Hugo," "Midnight in Paris," "The Descendants," The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," "Drive," "The Help," Rise of the Planet of the Apes" and "Take Shelter."
The best eligible films not on my predictions list are "Shame" and "Melancholia" and "Margaret." The absence of a film about compulsive masturbation will deprive this year's host, Billy Crystal, of an inconceivable wealth of material.

I wonder if "The Artist's" director Michel Hazanavicius anticipated how handy the "silent" format would be. His film is technically French, with actors from all over. If it were in sound, it would be ineligible, because of the charming English xenophobia that also explains why the World Series is limited to American and Canadian teams. "The Artist" has subtitles that (for our purposes) are in English, and therefore it isn't technically a foreign language film. Like all silent films, it speaks all languages.

Which film will win, I have no idea. Well, actually I do, but I predict I will be wrong. What I doubt is that it will be "The Tree of Life." The Academy shies away from winners that might alienate or confuse audiences; in its best possible world, the winning film will be universally popular. Having been overwhelmed by the experience of "The Tree of Life," it didn't occur to me that some moviegoers would be baffled by it. Maybe Terrence Malick's mistake was to start at the Dawn of Time. Stanley Kubrick played it safe with "2001: A Space Odyssey," which merely started at the Dawn of Man, and even then at its world premiere in Hollywood Rock Hudson walked out, passing my seat as he audibly grumbled: "Will someone tell me what this piece of shit is about?"

"The Artist," on the other hand, does have universal appeal. That was a strength of silent films; the introduction of sound destroyed a global art form. A great many people think they don't like silent films--or black and white films, for that matter--but if it wins the Oscar and they're forced to go see it, they'll be surprised. It's a lot of fun. Too many people make the error of assuming that a black and white silent film lacks something. Actually, it adds something. An artist starts with the entire world, and whittles it down until he arrives at his work of art. While I have no complaints about sound or color, I quaintly believe that not using them can represent a positive artistic decision.

We will know the names of the nominees at 5:30am PST on Jan. 24. The billboard companies will immediately go into a frenzy of activity along Sunset Boulevard, and after an unusually short campaign season the awards will be announced on Feb. 26 at the Kodak Pavilion, which at least is still named the Kodak Pavilion. I think we will all realize our world has lost a little something when the Oscars are handed out in a pavilion named for a cellular phone company.

Footnote 7:53pm Jan. 12. David Poland of Movie City News writes me: "You write that No film that doesn't get at least one vote for first place can qualify. actually, no film that doesn't get 1% of votes is disqualified. So if 4000 nominate, 40 votes are needed not to be eliminated. And as far as nominee count, the threshold, after two kinds of re-purposing of votes, is still 10% or so. So a film will likely need 300 or more 1st place votes to get into the group of nominees."

"Nobody has the right to take another life"

2012-01-04T23:49:44Z

Yesterday I read this in an article in the British Guardian newspaper:

"Twelve of the last 13 people condemned to death in Harris County, Texas were black. After Texas itself, Harris County is the national leader in its number of executions.

"Over one third of Texas's 305 death row inmates - and half of the state's 121 black death row prisoners - are from Harris County.
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"One of those African Americans, Duane Buck, was sentenced based on the testimony of an expert psychologist who maintained that blacks are prone to violence. In 2008, Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal resigned after sending an email message titled 'fatal overdose,' featuring a photo of a black man lying on the ground surrounded by watermelons and a bucket of chicken."

I could pause at this point, type "case closed," and consider this a blog entry. But that would be too simple. White people are also executed at an efficient pace in Texas. The odds of being given the death penalty in that state are fearsome, and the chances of having your sentence overturned on appeal are dismaying. So far in his two terms in office, Rick Perry has declined to commute the sentences of 235 condemned prisoners. During George W. Bush's time in office, Texas executed 152 prisoners, more than any other governor in modern American history before Perry.

Bush commuted the death sentence of one prisoner, Henry Lee Lucas, who had been charged with murder in 189 cases and "was once listed as America's most prolific serial killer." (Wikipedia.) His decision was recommended by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, based on evidence that on the day of the specific murder Lucas was convicted of, he was not in Texas. Perry has commuted the death sentences of two prisoners, both also on the recommendation of the Board of Pardons and Paroles. It would appear that if the board rejected your appeal, your chance of having the sentence overturned by Bush or Perry was zero.

In 2000, Illinois Governor George Ryan, a Republican, declared a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. In one fell swoop he commuted 160 death sentences to life sentences. Ryan explained that he believed execution was appropriate in the case of "heinous crimes," but noted that during his first year in office "Thirteen people were released from jail after appealing their convictions based on new evidence." (Wikipedia) I was at a dinner party with Ryan at about that time, and he told us, "The possibility that we would be executing an innocent man made it impossible for me to sleep at night."

I think Ryan's reason for declining to enforce the death penalty is sufficient in itself. Executions are carried out in behalf of Society, which means you and me. Traditionally in human history they have been viewed as punishment: If an eye for an eye, then why not a life for a life? In recent America history the argument is used that they will act as a deterrent, although I believe few murders are prevented as a result. In some cases, more people die, because if one victim is unintentionally killed in the process of a crime, more are likely to be killed to eliminate possible witnesses. The death penalty essentially acts as a reason to kill.

Do you, do I, feel better when a killer is executed? Why should we? What good does the execution do for the killer's victim? Do family members feel vindicated? Some do, some do not, and in any event their feelings are not a justification for public policy. If the taking of life is wrong, then it is wrong in all cases.

If an execution takes place in an atmosphere of great care and caution, as it should, there is at least some reason for Society to feel confident a guilty man is dying. In a state like Texas and a county like Harris, there is little reason to be sure of that. I suggest it is impossible that the judicial system functions with 100% accuracy, and yet that is what the actions of governors Bush and Perry assume. On the basis of Death Row inmates found innocent and released in Illinois and other states, it is impossible that all 387 people executed during their terms were guilty.

Werner Herzog's recent documentary "Into the Abyss" concerns two young men who were then in prison. Michael Perry was on Death Row in Huntsville, and on the day Herzog spoke with him had eight days to live. Jason Burkett, his accomplice in the stupid murders of three people, was serving a 40-year sentence. They killed because they wanted to drive a friend's red Camaro. Why did Perry have to die but not Burkett, when both were convicted of the same crimes? In the film Herzog speaks with Burkett's father, Delbert, who is also in prison serving a life sentence. In his testimony at his son's trial, he blamed himself for the boy's worthless upbringing. His regret apparently influenced two women jurors to pity the son -- or perhaps identify with the father. It was Michael Perry's bad luck to lack an equally compelling witness. And that is how death and life were meted out in Huntsville.

The most spellbinding passage in the film involves Captain Fred Allen, now retired, who was long in charge of the guard detail on Huntsville's Death Row. Allen and his detail were responsible for guarding the convicted prisoners, enforcing Death Row rules, arranging visits with outsiders, serving their last meals, walking with them down the Last Mile, and supervising the machinery of execution. This could be a process involving several years. In a few cases the guards grew close to some prisoners.

Even though he interviewed each of his subjects on camera only once, Herzog has success in drawing them out and getting them to trust him as someone they could confide in. The director remains almost entirely off screen, with his subjects looking directly at the camera. Allen explains that after 16 years as a prison guard, he resigned and took up work as a carpenter, forfeiting all his vested interest in the state pension system. Allen's monologue is an impassioned prose passage. This transcript is not directly from the movie, but is very close:

"I was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just triggered in me and I started shaking. And then I walked back into the house and my wife asked 'What's the matter?' and I said 'I don't feel good.' And tears -- uncontrollable tears -- was coming out of my eyes. And she said 'What's the matter?' And I said 'I just thought about that execution that I did two days ago, and everybody else's that I was involved with.' And what it was something triggered within and it just - everybody -- all of these executions all of a sudden all sprung forward.

"It's just like taking slides in a film projector and having a button and just pushing a button and just watching, over and over: him, him, him. I don't know if it's mental breakdown, I don't know if . . . probably would be classified more as a traumatic stress, similar to what individuals in war had. You know, they'd come back from war, it might be three months, it might be two years, it might be five years, all of a sudden they relive it again, and all that has to come out. You see I can barely even talk because I'm thinking more and more of it. You know, there was just so many of 'em.

"My main concern is right now is these other individuals [guards]. I hope that this doesn't happen to them -- the ones that participate, the ones that go through this procedure now. And I will say honestly -- and I believe very sincerely -- somewhere down the line something is going to trigger. Everybody has a stopping point. Everybody has a certain level. That's all there is to it."

And then Captain Fred Allen, who walked into the death chamber with more than 100 prisoners, concludes by giving voice to the strongest argument against the death penalty:

"Nobody has the right to take another life."

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done

2011-12-31T22:56:20Z

Those who opened their eyes when I did are closing them now. Word reached me on New Year's Eve of two friends, one who has died, another who has returned home from hospital for palliative care. The first memories that come into my mind is of them laughing. I believe anyone who knew them would say the same thing. In my exploring years, when I was young and healthy and life was still ahead, they were stars in my sky, who had always been alive and would always be alive, because that is how we must act if we are to live at all.

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I cannot cry anymore. Why, I do not completely understand. It must have something to do with losing my voice. A few tears sometimes come, but the shuddering sobbing, as when I buried my face in a pillow when my father died, or fell on my knees at my mother's bedside, or embraced a friend at the grave of Bob Zonka--that's over with. I sat here and looked at my memories.

That began early this morning. Awake around seven, I choose to doze a little. My mind began to poke around in my undergraduate years, in a stream of thought about discoveries I'd made at University. Perhaps this was inspired by the new documentary "Paul Goodman Changes My Life." Goodman's book Growing Up Absurd was a bible for the 1960s generation. And his The Community of Scholars described an ideal university which was not walled within specialist areas but encouraged students to explore the riches of life.

In Urbana I attended events unceasingly. Movies, plays, concerts, the folk song club, poetry readings, visiting lecturers, political meetings, football and basketball games. During my doze I remembered how full my life was then. And how my shelves filled with the books I learned about in class or found on the shelves of every bookstore. So much truth, grace and inspiration to be found.

I met the friend who died at the annual Conference on World Affairs at Boulder, which I attended for about 35 years. For a week every spring I was barraged by panel discussions, surrounded by interesting people, made lifetime friends, attended concerts and plays, plundered used book stores, met people from all over the world. All of them involved in thinking, asking, discovering. Just as many opportunities were available in Chicago as in Boulder, but in Chicago I was always busy. It struck me that I could retire happily in Boulder or another place with a good university and a smaller population. The reason my Boulder friends all seemed so current and involved was that, in a sense, they were still at college. It must be the same in all good college towns. One hears of Madison, Austin, Missoula, Bloomington. Urbana.

To the degree it is possible, I've tried to live my life as an undergraduate still rummaging around in the world, and so I met others who did, too. I found a passenger to share the voyage, and married her. At the newspaper there were many others still rummaging, because what is a newspaper reporter but someone who wants a license to go places and ask questions of strangers? My friend in palliative care was in journalism all his life--writing, editing, broadcasting, teaching, publishing. Laughing. Getting together. Staying in touch. Being a friend.

That book Bowling Alone has a title which haunts me. All over America, the walls are going up. People do not mix and associate as much, join as many clubs, get in the swim. We have the right to privacy, but we no longer feel we have the right to go next door and pay an unannounced call. We get looked at strangely. Why are we there? If you say, "I just thought I'd visit my next door neighbor," you get looked at strangely, even with fear.

When we're born we find ourselves on board Planet Earth for a voyage of undetermined destination and duration. It is a very big ship. At first we see only a few passengers, then more and more. There are many decks. We never see some passengers, but we hear about them, and they enroll among the living in our minds. Some come attached with relationships ("Your Uncle Charlie in Taylorville"). Some with titles ("Sir Winston Churchill"). Some with functions ("Joe DiMaggio from the Yankees"). Some with such accomplishments their names say enough ("Ernest Hemingway." "Louis Armstrong." "President Roosevelt." "Albert Einstein"). All of those people were on board when I joined the cruise. All have died. One purpose of an education is to create an interest in the people who were former passengers. What was the ship like for them when they were on board?

With our friends, the gift of life is taken for granted. We can pick up the phone. We'll see each other next time. Every Friday night. Every Thanksgiving. Same place, next year. They will always revolve into view. Then the first important person dies. For me, that was my father. It was an enormous event. It wasn't supposed to happen. In the years to come the annual losses began to grow, until I passed a tipping point and knew more dead people than living ones. Should I be packing my bags for disembarkation?

Life on this planet has consisted in an unbroken chain of creatures striving to live and reproduce. At some level, even a very elementary one, this has involved curiosity: What must I as an organism do in order to succeed? In the evolution of species an important step comes with the development of boredom. If life consists only of eating and reproducing, one's existence is jam-packed. Boredom presents the problem of unemployed time, and how to fill it. From boredom has grown human civilization and all of its arts and sciences.

The friends I mentioned at the beginning were not bored or boring. They were curious. Choose your best friends among those who bring something to the party. It's not so easy to make new ones. As you grow older, a relentless narrowing takes place, until if you grow old long enough you're reduced to your original state when you first boarded the vessel: Those who feed and care for you.

The news about these two friends drew the noose a little closer. As their names come into my mind, they are no longer on the passenger list. It gets lonely. George Burns was told to date girls his age. "There are no girls my age." For all of us, there are fewer and fewer people our age. Who wants to be the last one on board? I am happy I knew them. They were happy they knew me. We made it a little less boring.

Some year-end thoughts from Chaz Ebert

2011-12-30T04:50:31Z

Roger and I thank you for joining us as we talked about the movies each week this past year. We have enjoyed producing Ebert Presents At The Movies and hope to continue sometime in 2012. This week we produced our last show.

It is the Best and Worst Movies of 2011 and begins airing Friday night, December 30, at 8:30 pm on WTTW, Channel 11 in Chicago, and all during the weekend and next week on public television stations across the nation. (Check local listings to find out what time it comes on in your town.)

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In January of this year we brought back the show that Thea Flaum and Roger and Gene Siskel started 35 years ago at WTTW. Roger made the decision to bring it back to public television after it had been broadcast successfully at Tribune Entertainment and Disney Buena Vista Television for years.

We were fortunate to find two smart and entertaining critics (Christy Lemire of The Associated Press and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky at Mubi.com) to sit in the main chairs previously inhabited by Roger and Gene Siskel and Richard Roeper. For the previous different version of the show we also acknowledge our friends and colleagues Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott whom Roger recommended; and prior to that Ben Mankiewicz and Ben Lyons.

The only problem is that, unlike 35 years ago, there were no funds to produce the show. We were fortunate to have American Public Television distribute it for us, but that didn't come with any dollars attached. So, except for a generous grant from the Kanbar Charitable Trust, Roger and I have been funding the show ourselves.

And you know what, it's been a gas! We had so much fun doing it, and have no regrets. We have established a foundation for charitable giving to education, the arts and organizations that help with children and families. We will one day fund the Ebert Center for Film Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana. Our way of spending our "mad money" was to fund the show in which we believed so fervently.

That was possibly a foolish thing to do, but we made a commitment for one year. Now that year is over. It finds us a little poorer, but tremendously proud and happy about what we produced. Now its time to find sponsors or another network or platform that will allow the show to continue.

So: Hello, there sponsors! And foundations, too! Do you want to see yourself advertised to one million smart moviegoers across the country, every week for 52 weeks a year, at a very reasonable price? You can contact me directly at bedfordfalls@ebertpresents.com, or telephone 773-528-7700.

When the show comes back we want to be able to make increased use of our Contributing Correspondents to do additional innovative special segments. If you go to Ebertpresents.com you will see entertaining and educational segments by the amusing Matt Singer on technology and the movies; by the talented Kartina Richardson on the passion of dissecting the movies; by the esteemed Jeff Greenfield on politics and the movies; by the focused Alison Bailes on ecology and the movies; by the astute Nell Minow on corporations in the movies; by Professor Annette Insdorf and our Paris correspondent Lisa Nesselson on the Cannes Film Festival; by the informed David Poland on Stanley Kubrick; by the lawyer Omar Moore on "The Wrong Man;" by the classic film expert Kim Morgan on "The Third Man;" by our travelling correspondent Kevin B. Lee on Chinese Cinema; by the dynamic Kid Critic Jackson Murphy on 3D; by our Associate Producer Jay Smith on Race And The Movies, by Dann Gire on Angela Bassett; byRoger and even occasionally, Yours Truly!

We wanted this new incarnation of the show to go both wide and deep; and when we return we have even more surprises in store for you.

We were prepared to take your advice and start a Kickstarter campaign, but right now we are still involved in efforts which, if successful, may result in keeping the show on the air in another way.

We thank you for letting us know you value the show, and we thank the cable, network and industry executives who reached out to us to see if we could find a workable solution. During this holiday season we will take some time off as well, but we will keep you informed in this space.

You can also join The Ebert Club to keep up with the news.

Now go to the movies and enjoy yourselves. Happy Holidays--and here's wishing you Peace and Health and Prosperity in the New Year. But above all, I wish you Joy!

¶

Go to our Ebert Presents web site to view all of our reviews this year, including the Best & Worst Show (being posted Friday night). Search reviews alphabetically under "View all movie reviews."

Snapshots from our Wrap Party in the same studio at
WTTW/Chicago where Roger and Gene began
on "Sneak Previews" in 1976:

Backstage and control room photos by Keith Pegues
from our last day's shoot.

A journey to the center of the mind

2011-12-28T20:37:12Z

Spoilers abound.

I watched Robert Zemeckis's "Contact" again a couple of weeks ago, so I could add it to the Great Movies Collection. In 1997 I had some questions, but this time it was even more clear that the movie ends in enigma and paradox. Like many movies, that has little bearing on its effect.

Questions introduced from near the beginning seem to find answers at the end, and most viewers are satisfied--even exhilarated. For me, too, there was uplift. No matter that the scientific establishment scoffs; Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) knows what she saw, and we saw the same things.

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You will recall she is a radio astronomer involved in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence(SETI). An evidently intelligent radio message is received from a planet circling Vega, the fifth brightest star in the night sky, about 25 light years away from Earth. It is flagged with prime numbers to grab attention. On decoding it, her team discovers a schematic plan for a space travel device, and the government funds construction of this machine for more than half a trillion dollars. (As you know, a mysterious tycoon funds a duplicate vehicle, as a backup.)

Nobody knows what will happen when the machine is activated. It is presumed that it will take a single human passenger on a voyage to meet the authors of the message. The first vehicle is sabotaged by a religious extremist (Jake Busey--is there something about the Busey family dentures that suggests extremism?). After several plot twists, the passenger in the backup spacecraft is Ellie Arroway. Trained as an astronaut, she enters a pod suspended above the vehicle, which looks like spinning tops within spinning tops. At its apogee the pod falls into its center, miraculously avoiding being hit by the spinning elements.

Here is what Ellie experiences, and we also see: She enters a tunnel of light, passes through something that loosely resembles the sound and light trip in "2001," emerges under a strange sky on a strange beach, and sees a figure approaching her from the distance. This is her beloved father (David Morse), who in the movie told her, "If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space." Ellie's mother died in childbirth, and as a child she asked her father if her mom was up there somewhere in the stars. As a professed atheist, Ellie has no belief in an afterlife, but this experience at least seems to indicate that her father seems to still exist in some way. Her entire trip appears to last about 18 hours.

Has Ellie visited Heaven? Or a planet circling Vega? On earth, it appeared that her pod fell directly into and through the spinning device in real time. A onboard video camera intended to show what she witnessed recorded only static. But: 18 hours of static. What objectively took seconds on Earth took 18 hours for Ellie subjectively and the camera objectively? Cameras cannot be subjective.

The planet is 25 light years away. A round trip at light speed would take 50 years (plus presumably 18 hours). Although recent news from the cutting edge of physics seems to indicate Einstein might have been mistaken in declaring light speed an absolute, when "Contact" was released in 1997 it was considered that way, not least by the author of the novel that inspired it, Carl Sagan. Presuming that Ellie seemed neither to herself or anyone else to be away for 50 years, we can assume that she did not travel to the distant planet.

Did she travel anywhere at all? Remember that the astronaut in "2001" found himself beyond Jupiter in a room that was arguably created by aliens for him from the contents of his own mind, to provide a familiar environment while they studied him. As a hypothesis I suggest that the beach and sky experienced by Ellie are likewise generated within her own mind. Her father is also produced from her wishes and memories, and what he tells her are her own hopes and thoughts, put into his mouth. The absence of her mother in this "afterlife" may possibly be explained by the fact that she has no memories of her. If the plot had the mother dying when Ellie was 6 or 12, it would have taken some explaining to account for her absence.

Another question occurs. When did the message picked up by SETI originate? Its content is a video transmission showing Hitler opening the 1936 Berlin Olympiad. (Did I say there would be spoilers?) This was the first TV transmission sent from Planet Earth, and could therefore be interpreted by an alien intelligence as a sign that our planet had reached a certain level of scientific sophistication. But there's no reason to assume the Vegan message was sent by living aliens in 1936. It could have come from a device programmed to scan the Vegan skies for such transmissions, and bounce them back automatically. There's no reason to assume the inhabitants of the Vegan planet are alive at this moment--or at any particular time in the past hundreds or thousands or millions of years. The sole function of their device appears to have been the generation of Ellie's experience.

"All that we've found that makes the emptiness bearable," her father tells her, "is each other."

"What happens now?"

"You go home."

In that case, half a trillion dollars seems to have been a lot of money for mankind to spend in order to find out what Ellie already knows. This question occurs to the panel that questions Ellie after her experience.

Panel member: Doctor Arroway, you come to us with no evidence, no record, no artifacts. Only a story that to put it mildly strains credibility. Over half a trillion dollars was spent, dozens of lives were lost. Are you really going to sit there and tell us we should just take this all... on faith?

[pause, Ellie looks at Palmer]

Michael Kitz: Please answer the question, doctor.

Ellie Arroway: Is it possible that it didn't happen? Yes. As a scientist, I must concede that, I must volunteer that.

Michael Kitz: Wait a minute, let me get this straight. You admit that you have absolutely no physical evidence to back up your story.

Ellie Arroway: Yes.

Michael Kitz: You admit that you very well may have hallucinated this whole thing.

Ellie Arroway: Yes.

Michael Kitz: You admit that if you were in our position, you would respond with exactly the same degree of incredulity and skepticism!

Ellie Arroway: Yes!

Michael Kitz: [standing, angrily] Then why don't you simply withdraw your testimony, and concede that this "journey to the center of the galaxy," in fact, never took place!

Ellie Arroway: Because I can't. I... had an experience... I can't prove it, I can't even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am, tells me that it was real! I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever... A vision... of the universe, that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how... rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not--that none of us--are alone! I wish... I... could share that... I wish, that everyone, if only for one... moment, could feel... that awe, and humility, and hope. But... That continues to be my wish.

End of quotes. What she finally discovered, I submit, is New Age woo-woo. Nothing that she (and we) experienced proves anything about how tiny and insignificant Man is in the Universe. We know that, because it is true, but what Ellie found was not fact but feeling. She might as well have been on an acid trip.

And yet, and yet--the SETI radio telescopes did indubitably intercept a signal from outer space. Nothing in the film leads us to suspect it was not from a planet circling Vega. The content of the signal was intelligently designed to attract attention with the prime numbers, and to respond with a 1936 video providing proof that our transmissions had been received. Then the Vegans sent the design of their cockamamie machine, which took Ellie on a journey to the center of her mind.

Do the 18 hours of static prove anything? Yes, I suppose they must. Please explain them to me.

"Contact" was at the time, and remains, an inspiring film, an expression of Carl Sagan's hope that life and intelligence exists elsewhere in the universe. Some viewers interpret it as proof of an afterlife. By definition, wouldn't an afterlife be as unprovable to the Vegans as it is for us? I believe the machine and Ellie's experience prove only one thing: That she had those thoughts, and that the machine apparently had something to do with her thinking them. The member of the panel was correct. Half a trillion dollars was a big price tag.

And "Contact" is a fine film. If all movies had to withstand the test of logic, where would that leave us?

Postscript, 8:30 a.m. Dec. 29, 2011: Readers posting below assure me Ellie did indeed travel somewhere, through a wormhole. They say Sagan suggests that the father she meets is in fact an alien, who has taken a comforting and reassuring form. These scenarios offer a choice: (1) the alien race is alive at this time, (2) its machine, however ancient, was programmed to generate avatars that would comfort any visitor. There is a parallel here to the monoliths in "2001," which in Arthur C. Clark's short story were named Sentinels, and were of undetermined age (very old, since one was buried under countless years of Moon dust and residue).

Wormholes are mentioned in the film as Einstein-Rosen Bridges. They are consistent with the Theory of Relativity, but as a means of starting here, going to your destination and returning, they would seem to lack exactitude. Their greatest proven usefulness is as a deus ex machina in science fiction. Without them, the starship Enterprise couldn't travel from one adventure to another but would be constantly en route.

The father-figure in "Contact" tells Ellie: "All that we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other." What does that mean? It's close to Sagan's cherished hope that We Are Not Alone. Ellie has more questions, but her father assures her: "We will meet again." Left in abeyance is why an actual wormhole journey was necessary. The original signal received by Ellie's SETI project conveyed the same message: You Are Not Alone.

Yes, but what do we do then? I think it likely the universe contains countless intelligent beings--past, present and future. Given the distances involved, they will never meet. We'd better get cracking on those wormholes.

This video contains most of the material discussed above:

The best documentaries of 2011

2011-12-25T17:28:39Z

Why not fold documentaries into my list of the "Best Films of 2011?" After all, a movie is a movie, right? Yes, and some years I've thrown them all into the same mixture. But all of these year-end Best lists serve one useful purpose: They tell you about good movies you may not have seen or heard about. The more films on my list that aren't on yours, the better job I've done.

That's particularly true were you to depend on the "short list" released by the Academy's Documentary Branch of 15 films they deem eligible for nomination. The branch has been through turmoil in the past and its procedures were "reformed" at one point. But this year it has made a particularly scandalous sin of

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omission. It doesn't include "The Interrupters" (currently scoring 99% on the Tomatometer), which has received better reviews and been on more critic's Best lists than any other.

For Steve James of Kartemquin Films, who made "The Interrupters" with author Alex Kotlowitz, this is an old story. The Documentary Branch also failed to shortlist James's "Hoop Dreams" (1994), which is generally considered one of the greatest documentaries of all time. In a scandal at that time, it was revealed that the branch's volunteer screening committee turned off "Hoop Dreams" after watching only 15 minutes.

The year's best documentaries:

1. The Interrupters

Steve James (in center above), who made the masterpiece "Hoop Dreams," now makes his most important film, telling the story of ex-convicts who go daily into the streets of Chicago to try to talk gang members out of shooting at each other. All have done prison time. Some have murdered. They were young when were seduced by the lure of street gangs. Today they see young people throwing their lives away and often killing bystanders by accident.

James' film follows members of CeaseFire, tough negotiators who monitor gang activity in their neighborhoods and try to anticipate developing warfare. They make it their business to know the gang leaders and members. They build trust. In some shots in this film they are physically in the possible line of fire--and so are Steve James and his small crew. This film has true impact.

2. Bill Cunningham New York

A movie about a happy and nice man. Bill Cunningham was lucky to find what he loves to do, to win universal affection from all who know him, and to make a contribution to our lives and times. Doing what he loves is very nearly all he does, except to sleep and eat.

Bill celebrates his 80th birthday in the movie. Every day of his life he still pedals around Manhattan on his bicycle, taking photographs of what people are wearing. You can find his work featured in big spreads in The New York Times. He's not a fashion photographer" of a paparazzi. He's genuinely fascinated by what people wear, and will stop in the middle of the street if he spots an interesting hat.

3. Into the Abyss

Perhaps the saddest film Werner Herzog has ever made, centering on two young men in prison. Michael Perry is on Death Row in Huntsville, America's most productive assembly line for executions, and on the day Herzog spoke with him had eight days to live. Jason Burkett, his accomplice in the stupid murders of three people, is serving a 40-year sentence. They killed because they wanted to drive a friend's red Camaro.

Herzog became curious about the case, took a small crew to Huntsville and Conroy, Texas, where the murders took place, and spoke to the killers, and members of their families and those of their victims. He obtains interviews of startling honesty and impact. We also meet Captain Fred Allen, who was for many years in charge of the guard detail on Huntsville's Death Row. He starts talking with Herzog and is swept up by memory and emotion, explaining why one day, after overseeing more than 100 executions, he simply walked away and decided he was opposed to the death penalty.

4. Tabloid

By Errol Morris, who says his subject, Joyce McKinney, is his favorite protagonist. In 1977 McKinney was involved in the infamous "Case of the Manacled Mormon," made to order for the British tabloids we've been reading about during the News of the World. A former Miss Wyoming, she was alleged to have kidnapped an American Mormon missionary in the UK, handcuffed him to a bed, and made him a sex slave. All lies, she says.

"Rashomon" will inevitably be evoked in discussions of this film. Many scenarios fit the facts. Morris presents officials with boundless reasons to think McKinney guilty of stalking, abduction and possible rape, He also allows McKinney to offer a perky alternative perspective on the same events. Which version does Morris believe? With him, you never quite know for sure.

5. Resurrect Dead

It's possible you've stepped on a Toynbee Tile (above) yourself. These are hundreds of crudely-lettered tiles stuck with tar to pavements and sidewalks in cites up and down the Eastern seaboard, as far west as Kansas City, and in three South American cities. They may have started appearing in 1983. What do they possibly mean? Who devises and places them?

Writer director Jon Foy follows three Tile sleuths: Justin Duerr, Steve Weinik, Colin Smith. Starting with a small handful of meager clues, their detective work leads them to strange places: A paragraph in an old Philadelphia Inquirer, a play by David Mamet, addresses in South Philadelphia, a convention of ham radio operators. They find web sites filled with Tile photos and rumors. The film is confoundingly watchable.

6. Cave of Forgotten Dreams

The second film on my list by Werner Herzog, a master of both features and documentaries. He gains access to Chauvet Cave, above the Ardèche River in Southern France. There humans created the oldest cave paintings known to exist. They spring from the walls with boldness and confidence, as if the artists were already sure what they wanted to paint and how to paint it. Perhaps 25,000 years ago, a child visited the cave and left a footprint, the oldest human footprint that can be accurately dated.

The modern archeologist who discovered the cave had to descend a narrow opening to its floor, far below on the original entrance level. It is their entry route that Werner Herzog follows in his spellbinding new film, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams." Herzog filmed in 3D, to better convey how the paintings follow and exploit the natural contours of the ancient walls. The process also helps him suggest how the humans of the Upper Paleolithic era might have seen the paintings themselves, in the flickering light of their torches. To the degree that it's possible for us to walk behind Herzog into that cave, we do so.

7. Pina

Wim Wenders' mesmerizing documentary presents the choreography of Pina Bausch, a German dancer and director. Watching the film, I didn't know she died in 2009, on the eve of principal photography. But I wasn't surprised when I learned that. It accounts for the elegiac tone of many of her colleagues and troupe members. They are reserved, introspective, solemn. Joining her troupe seems to have been more a life decision than a career move. They loved her.

Bausch's troupe shares a common understanding of time and space. There is a remarkable piece here called "Cafe Mueller" which I'd earlier seen in Pedro Almodovar's "Talk to Her," in which some dancers seem to wander blindly in a room where other dancers rearrange chairs and tables. The parallel with life itself is there to be seen. Wenders' use of 3D is effective, helping him enter more fully into the performance space. There is usually no convention of a proscenium arch in the film. One piece uses water, and another sand, which the dancers cover the stage with and then crawl or roll through to leave marks of their movements. The entire film was, for me, meditative.

8. Garbo the Spy

He was called "Garbo" because an Allied spymaster thought he was the best actor in the world. Juan Pujol García, a Spaniard based in Lisbon, fed the Nazis a stream of misleading information from a spy network that existed entirely in his imagination. Using invented facts and a spy network that didn't exist, he convinced the Nazis that the Allied landing at Normandy was a decoy operation to draw their troops away from the "real" landing site, at Calais. One man's imagination changed the course of the way.

Lacking period footage of Garcia (naturally), director Edmon Roch ingeniously cobbles together newsreel footage, scenes from old war movies, and modern talking heads to piece together his story of a startling deception.

9. The Last Mountain

Is there another state more cruelly defaced than West Virginia? Its mountains have been blown up, its forests ripped out, and the green land which the settlers discovered now includes a wasteland of a million toxic acres. Nationally, one in 100,000 people get brain tumors. In a small West Virginia town surrounded by strip mining, six neighbors have developed brain tumors. What are the odds of that?

This is a blunt and enraged documentary about Coal River Mountain, the site of a last stand against Massey Energy, a company it says disregarded environmental concerns, compromised the political process and poisoned great stretches of the state in the name of corporate profits. Now lakes of sludge loom above towns, rivers are dead and dying, and heavy metals invade the bloodstreams and brains of the inhabitants. Recent court findings against Massey provide a footnote to Bill Haney's film.

10. Louder than a Bomb

Poetry slams began in Chicago in 1984 and have become an international phenomenon. They're poetry readings as a spectator sport. Individuals and teams are scored by judges on the Olympic 10-point scale. "Louder Than a Bomb" is about the 2008 Chicago-area slam of that name, the nation's largest. Teams and soloists from 60 high schools compete, and the finalists face off in a city-wide slam that fills a theater usually used for rock concerts. The suspense that year initially centered on Steinmetz, a troubled inner city school that had never entered before it won the 2007 Bomb in a thrilling upset. Can Steinmetz and its coach, James Sloan, repeat?

The film was directed by Greg Jacobs and Jon Siskel (Gene's nephew), who followed several competitors for months and guessed well in choosing those they focused on. Like earlier docs about spelling bees and Scrabble tournaments, but with more showmanship and energy, it focuses on individuals and builds great suspense. Shown at Ebertfest 2011.

11. Page One: Inside the New York Times

One newspaper remains, as it has long been, the most essential source of news in this country. "Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times" sets out to examine its stature in these hard times for print journalism, but ends up with more of the hand-wringing that dominates all such discussions. People who are serious about the news venerate the past, hope for the future, and don't have a clue about the present.

Much attention is given to the paper's role in digital media, but happens is that a charismatic hero comes along and distracts from the big picture. That man here is David Carr, the paper's raspy-voiced star media reporter. He reminds me of the reporters I held in awe when I first went to work for newspapers. Like Mike Royko, he combines cynicism, idealism and a canny understanding of how things really work. As we watch him meticulously report the story that exposed the lamentable "frat house" management of Sam Zell's Chicago Tribune, we see the reporter as a prosecutor, nailing down an air-tight case.

12. One Lucky Elephant

Tells the stories of Flora, an African elephant, and David Balding, who runs a St. Louis circus. Flora witnessed her mother killed, and was shipped in a crate to the United States at a tender age, where after training and bonding with Balding, she became the star performer and namesake of Circus Flora. This is a one-ring circus that was created as a commissioned work for the 1986 Spoleto Festival in Charleston and has performed annually in St. Louis since 1987.

Balding and his wife, Laura, decided Flora was reaching the end of her show business career and deserved a pleasant retirement. "One Lucky Elephant" follows their search for a home for Flora, which began in 2000 and became a great challenge. A larger question coils beneath the surface of the film. What happens to an elephant that is "trained?" Knowing humans all of its life, can it find happiness in an elephant sanctuary?

13. Buck

One of the big documentary hits of the year. Buck Brannaman was the original "horse whisperer," the character who Nicholas Evans based his novel on and Robert Redford used as the on-set consultant for his film. He has a way with horses, and Cindy Meehl's documentary is moving as he shows them engaged in dances of understanding.

Buck was abused as a child, and that experience influenced his gentle approach to horse training. It involves empathy for the feelings of the horse. Buck understands how horses read humans, how they interpret gestures, and how they're "so sensitive they can feel a fly land." I was reminded of Temple Grandin, the autistic designer of cattle-handling chutes, whose secret was identifying the feelings of cattle with her own.

14. Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

The title has piercing accuracy. After NBC and Jay Leno pulled the rug out from under him, O'Brien went overnight from hosting the Tonight Show to being banned from television for six months. He became like Wile E. Coyote, chasing the Road Runner of his dreams off the edge of a cliff and afraid to look down. Enraged at Leno and NBC, he quickly undertook "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour," which covered 32 cities, from Radio City Music Hall to the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Tennessee--where inside a tent in 100-degree heat he was expected to introduce every act, and did.

Here is a man driven to assert himself. He waited five years for the Tonight Show, lost it in months, and needed to say to the universe, "Sir! I exist!" The film, directed by Rodman Flender, watches him before and after shows and en route between cities, seeing a man incapable of giving himself a break. Overworked, exhausted, assaulted by demands, he cannot say no to an autograph, patiently hosts waves of visitors in his dressing room, drums up work on his days off, and at times seems on the edge of madness. The man behind the image.

15. Strongman

A tantalizing example of the kind of documentary I find engrossing: A film about an unusual person that invites us into the mystery of a human life. Stanley Pleskun bills himself as "Stanless Steel, the Strongest Man Alive." Whether this is true is beside the point. Stanless, as I will call him, believes it absolutely. His girlfriend Barbara and his brother Michael agree, I gather, although they never actually say so.

How does the Strongest Man in the World support himself? He works as a freelance in the scrap metal industry, collecting scrap and hauling it to a yard. We see him heaving heavy loads into the bed of his truck. Does this help him train? No, I learn from the film's notes, it tires him out and makes it harder to train. Although Zackary Levy, the filmmaker, followed him over a course of years and shot hundreds of hours of films, we only see him actually training twice: Once squeezing a hand grip, and again staggering for several yards while carrying heavy concrete blocks.

His girlfriend Barbara She introduces his act: "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Presenting Staaaaaanless Steeeel! The Strongest Man in the Woooorld!" He makes appearances at events in New Jersey and New York, bending steel bars, lifting trucks, and so on. He is paid $1,000 and expenses to appear on a British TV show. Is he really that strong? I have no idea.

16. Project Nim

Can a chimpanzee learn to speak by using sign language? Yes. But in what sense does it know what it is saying? "Project Nim," a fascinating documentary, follows the life of a chimp named Nim Chimpsky as it's raised like a human baby and then shuttled from one set of "parents" and "homes" to another. The chimp emerges from this experience as a more admirable creature than many of its humans.

This is a new film by James Marsh, who made the Oscar-winning "Man on Wire." Like Errol Morris on occasion, Marsh weaves dramatic recreations into his film, so that sometimes we see actual documentary footage and at other times we see actors or even (although you won't notice it) animatronics. How this substitution fits with a traditional documentary ethics I will set aside. It produces a very absorbing film.

17. Waste Land

Across the world's largest garbage dump, near Rio de Janeiro, the Pickers crawl with their bags and buckets, seeking treasures that can be recycled: Plastics and metals, mostly, but anything of value. From the air they look like ants. You would assume they are the wretched of the earth, but those we meet in "Waste Land" seem surprisingly cheerful. They lead hard lives but understandable ones. They make $20 or $25 a day. They live nearby. They feel pride in their labor, and talk of their service to the environment.

Directed by Lucy Walker, it takes as its entry point into the lives of the Pickers the work of the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz. As a youth he had the good fortune to be shot in the leg by a rich kid, who paid him off; he used the money to buy a ticket to America, and now he is famous for art that turns garbage into giant constructions which he exhibit and photographs. Documentaries like these three help us, perhaps, to more fully appreciate our roles as full-time creators of garbage.

18. Phunny Business

What Second City was for Saturday Night Live, a comedy club in Chicago was for virtually every black comedian who emerged in the 1990s. All Jokes Aside was a black-owned enterprise that seemed to have infallible taste in talent, perhaps because it was the only club in the country that didn't relegate blacks to "special nights" or "Chocolate Sundays." Its opening night act was Jamie Foxx, then unknown. It introduced or showcases such as Bernie Mac, Cedric the Entertainer, Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Carlos Mencia, A.J. Jamal, Sheryl Underwood, George Wallace, Bill Bellamy, Dave Chapelle, Adele Givens, and on and on, including the personnel of the touring Kings of Comedy and Queens of Comedy.

This is a film not so much about black comedians, although we see and hear a lot of them, but about black entrepreneurs. Raymond C. Lambert, who co-founded the club, began as a stock trader for the firm of the black Chicago millionaire Chris Gardner (who himself inspired the character played by Will Smith in "The Pursuit of Happyness"). After a visit to Bud Friedman's Improv in Los Angeles, he wondered why a club like that wouldn't work with black comics in Chicago. Turned out, it would.

19. Make Believe

A charming doc about the finalists in the Teenage Magician Contest at the annual World Magic Seminar in Las Vegas. From Malibu, Chicago, Colorado, Japan and South Africa they come, dreaming of being presented with first place by the great Lance Burton. The documentary visits their homes, gets their stories, talks to their friends and parents, and follows them backstage in Vegas.

Not a single rabbit is pulled from a hat. Most of the trucks are small scale--locking rings, disappearing scarves, card production. A deck of cards in their hands seems to have a life of its own. One kid turns cards into iPhones while they're fanned between his fingers. We see him in his basement, building the props.

One thing we don't find out is how any of the tricks are done. The secrets in some cases are pretty widely known. Most of the people in the audience know in theory exactly how they're done, but are connoisseurs judging how well they are performed. Magicians have a saying: "The trick is told when the trick is sold." These kids are sold on tricks.

20. Being Elmo

All Kevin Clash ever wanted to do was make puppets. That came even before he fixated on Muppets. One day he had an inspiration so urgent that it required cutting up his father's coat. The result was a nice enough puppet, but when Kevin emerged from his creative frenzy he realized his father might have stern words for him. Called in trembling to the old man, all he heard was: "Next time, ask."

"Being Elmo" is a documentary that follows him from his childhood through a series of good breaks that lead him into the universe of Jim Henson and Sesame Street, and we even hear an eyewitness to the day he "discovered" the Elmo character.

After another puppeteer grew frustrated and threw Elmo at Kevin saying "Here, you try it," Kevin fooled around with a series of voices until Elmo, one of the most beloved of all Muppets, emerged. He also defined Elmo's central characteristic: All he wanted was to love and be loved, and hug you. What kid couldn't identify? The original Elmo craze led to buyer panics for the Tickle Me Elmo dolls, and Clash's life has been a happy one.

Based in part on my original reviews. Here is the Academy's complete short list of documenataries eligible for Oscar nomination: "Battle for Brooklyn," "Bill Cunningham New York," "Buck" "Hell and Back Again," "If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front," "Jane's Journey," The Loving Story," "Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory," "Pina" "Project Nim," "Semper Fi: Always Faithful," "Sing Your Song," "Undefeated," "Under Fire: Journalists in Combat" and "We Were Here."

My list of the Best Features of 2011.

In the meadow, we can pan a snowman

2011-12-23T02:01:15Z

You better watch out
You better not cry
You better have clout
We're telling you why
Two Thumbs Down
are comin' to town
We're making a list,
Checking it twice;
Gonna find out whose
movie was scheiss.
Sandy Claws is comin' to town.
We see you when you're (bleeping),
We know when you're a fake
We know if you've been bad or good
So be good for cinema's sake!

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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 zingers dance. Today I thought I'd share those lines 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"
"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys." -- "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"
-- This book will be published by Andrews & McMeel in late spring of 2012.

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.

"Boat Trip arrives preceded by publicity saying many homosexuals have been outraged by the film. Not that the film is outrageous. That would be asking too much." -- "Boat Trip"

"I know aliens from other worlds are required to arrive in New Mexico, but why stay there?" -- "Thor"

"Dirty Love" wasn't written and directed, it was committed." -- "Dirty Love"

"I would rather eat a golf ball than see this movie again." -- "Seven Days in Utopia"

"The movie didn't have nearly enough scenes of Sheena standing under waterfalls and Sheena going sunbathing. I have a feeling there was a way that Tanya Roberts could have saved this movie." -- "Sheena"

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 Christmas Story" isn't on Netflix Instant, but for 99 cents you can stream it on Amazon. This blog originally appeared in slightly different form in 2009.

The Best Films of 2011

2011-12-15T22:06:34Z

Making lists is not my favorite occupation. They inevitably inspire only reader complaints. Not once have I ever heard from a reader that my list was just fine, and they liked it. Yet an annual Best Ten list is apparently a statutory obligation for movie critics.

My best guess is that between six and ten of these movies won't be familiar. Those are the most useful titles for you, instead of an ordering of movies you already know all about.

One recent year I committed the outrage of listing 20 movies in alphabetical order. What an uproar! Here are my top 20 films, in order of approximate preference.
]]> 1. "A Separation"

This Iranian film won't open in Chicago until Jan. 27. It won the Golden Bear at Berlin and was just named the year's best foreign film by the New York Film Critics Circle. It is specifically Iranian, but I believe the more specific a film is about human experience, the more universal it is. On the other hand, movies "for everybody" seem to be for nobody in particular. This film combines a plot worthy of a great novel with the emotional impact of a great melodrama. It involves a struggle for child custody, the challenge of a parent with Alzheimer's, the intricacies of the law, and the enigma of discovering the truth. In its reconstruction of several versions of a significant event, it is as baffling as "Rashomon."

A modern Iranian couple considers emigrating to Europe to find better opportunities for their daughter. The mother wants to leave quickly. The father delays because his father has Alzheimer's and needs care. "Your father no longer knows you!" his wife says during a hearing in divorce court. "But I know him!" says her husband. We can identify with both statements.

A caregiver is hired but cannot come, and his wife secretly substitutes for him. It's against her religious principles for her to touch any man not her husband, but her family needs the money. This leads to events which create a deep moral tangle. Asghar Farhadi's real subject is Truth, when it is disagreed about by people we respect even though we know most of the facts. "A Separation" will become one of those enduring masterpieces watched decades from now.

2. "Shame"

Michael Fassbender's brave, uncompromising performance is at the center of Steve McQueen's merciless film about sex addiction. He's a loner with a good job, who avoids relationships because of his obsession with sex. He is driven to experience multiple orgasms every day. His shame is masked in privacy. He wants no witnesses to his hookers, his pornography, his masturbation. Does he fear he is incapable of ordinary human contact?

There isn't the slightest suggestion he experiences pleasure. Sex is his cross to bear. The film opens with a close-up of Fassbender's face showing pain, grief and anger. His character is having an orgasm. He is enduring a sexual function that has long since stopped giving him any pleasure and is self-abuse in the most profound way.

Carey Mulligan co-stars as his sister. She is as passionate and uninhibited as he is the opposite. She needs him desperately. He fears need. He flies at her in a rage, telling her to get out. She has nowhere to go. He doesn't care. Childhood has damaged them. "Shame" is a great act of filmmaking and acting. I don't believe I would be able to see it twice.

3. "The Tree of Life"

A film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. Terrence Malick's film begins with the Big Bang that created our universe, and ends after the characters have left the realm of time. In between, it zooms in on a moment, surrounded by infinity.

Scenes portray a childhood in a town in the American midlands, where life flows in and out through open windows. There is a father who maintains discipline and a mother who exudes forgiveness, and long summer days of play and idleness and urgent unsaid questions about the meaning of things. Three boys in the 1950s American Midwest are browned by the sun, scuffed by play, disturbed by glimpses of adult secrets, filled with a great urgency to grow up and discover who they are.

Listen to an acute exchange of dialogue between the son Jack (Hunter McCracken) and his father (Brad Pitt). "I was a little hard on you sometimes," Mr. Brien says, and Jack replies: "It's your house. You can do what you want to." Jack is defending his father against himself. That's how you grow up. And it all happens in this blink of a lifetime, surrounded by the realms of unimaginable time and space.

4. "Hugo"

In the guise of a delightful 3D family film, Martin Scorsese makes a love letter to the cinema. His hero Hugo (Asa Butterfield) had an uncle who was in charge of the clocks at a Parisian train station. His father's dream was to complete an automated man he found in a museum. He died with it left unperfected. Rather than be treated as an orphan, the boy hides himself in the maze of ladders, catwalks, passages and gears of the clockworks themselves, feeding himself with croissants snatched from station shops, and begins to sneak off to the movies.

His life in the station is complicated by a toy shop owner named Georges Méliès. Yes, this grumpy old man, played by Ben Kingsley, is none other than the immortal French film pioneer, who was also the original inventor of the automaton. Hugo has no idea of this. The real Méliès was a magician who made his first movies to play tricks on his audiences.

Without our quite realizing it, Hugo's changing relationship with the old man becomes the story of the invention of the movies, and the preservation of our film heritage. Could anyone but Scorsese have made this subject so magical and enchanting? Although I believe that 3D is usually an unnecessary annoyance, the way Scorsese employs it here is quite successful; in calling attention to itself, 3D subtly calls attention to film itself.

5. "Take Shelter"

Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) appears to be a stable husband and father with a good job in construction, but he also can evoke by his eyes and manner a deep unease. Curtis has what he needs to be happy. He fears he will lose it. His dreams are visited by unusually vivid nightmares: The family dog attacks him, or storms destroy his home. They live on the outskirts of town, in an area which is swept from time to time with tornadoes.

Director Jeff Nichols builds his suspense carefully. Curtis is tormented but intelligent; fearing the family's history of mental illness, he visits his schizophrenic mother (Kathy Baker) to ask if she was ever troubled by bad dreams. He turns to the area's obviously inadequate public health facilities.

And he also acts as if his warnings should be taken seriously. He borrows money from the bank and equipment from work to greatly expand an old storm shelter in his backyard. His wife (Jessica Chastain) is frightened by his behavior. His job and health insurance are threatened. People begin to talk. And then a storm comes. It leads to a searing scene in which the man and his wife must confront their fears about the weather--and about each other.

6. "Kinyarwanda"

I was moved by "Hotel Rwanda" (2004), but not really shaken this deeply. After seeing "Kinyarwanda," I have a different kind of feeling about the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. The film approaches it not as a story line but as a series of intense personal moments.

In an independent film of great emotional impact, the film's director, a Jamaican named Alrick Brown, establishes a vivid group of characters. A young couple from different tribes who are in love. The female head of a military unit trained in Uganda, hoping to bring peace. A Catholic priest. The Mufti of Rwanda. Most memorable, a small boy named Ishmael. Their personal stories are entangled in the ancient conflict between tribes, while the UN regards the genocide from afar. The title may put some people off. It is the name of the language both tribes speak, although the film is largely in English. I'm inviting "Kinyarwanda" to Ebertfest 2012.

7. "Drive"

The Driver drives for hire. He has no other name and no other life. When we meet him, he's the wheelman for a getaway car, who runs from police pursuit not by speed, but by coolly exploiting the street terrain and outsmarting his pursuers. By day, he's a stunt driver for action movies. The two jobs represent no conflict for him: He drives. He has no family, no history and seemingly few emotions. Whatever happened to him drove any personality deep beneath the surface. Played by Ryan Gosling, he is an existential hero, defined entirely by his behavior.

The director, Nicolas Winding Refn, peoples his story with characters who bring lifetimes onto the screen--in contrast to the Driver, who brings as little as possible. Ron Perlman is a big-time operator working out of a pizzeria in a strip mall. Albert Brooks plays a producer of the kinds of B movies the Driver does stunt driving for; he also has a sideline in crime. These people are ruthless. "Drive" looks like one kind of thriller in the ads, and it is that kind of thriller, but also another and a rebuke to most of the movies it looks like.

8. "Midnight in Paris"

A fabulous daydream for American lit majors, Woody Allen's charming comedy opens with a couple on holiday in Paris. Gil (Owen Wilson) and Inez (Rachel McAdams) are officially in love, but what Gil really loves is Paris in the springtime. He's a hack screenwriter from Hollywood who still harbors the dream of someday writing a good novel and joining the pantheon of American writers whose ghosts seem to linger in the very air he breathes: Fitzgerald, Hemingway and the other legends of Paris in the 1920s.

By (wisely) unexplained means, each midnight he finds himself magically transported back in time to the legendary salon presided over by Gertrude Stein. He meets Scott and Zelda, Ernest, Picasso, Dali, Cole Porter, Luis Bunuel and, yes, "Tom Eliot." He even gives Bunuel the idea for his film "The Exterminating Angel." Kathy Bates makes an authoritative Miss Stein, and Marion Cotillard plays Adriana, who has already been the mistress of Braque and Modigliani, is now Picasso's lover, and may soon -- be still, my heart! -- fall in love with Gil.

9. "Le Havre"

Aki Kaurismaki is a Finnish director who makes dour, deadpan comedies about people who shrug their way through misfortune. They have a hypnotic fascination for me. "Le Havre" is the sunniest film of his I've seen. Set in the French port city, it involves young Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), an illegal immigrant from Gabon, solemn, shy, appealing. The hero, Marcel Marx (Andre Wilms), fishing near a pier, sees the boy hiding waist-deep in the water. He leaves out some food and finds it gone the next day. And so, with no plan in mind, Marcel becomes in charge of protecting the boy from arrest.

The whole neighborhood gets involved in hiding the boy from the port inspector. This involves low-key comedy that occasionally shifts into high, as with a local rock singer named Little Bob (Roberto Piazza), whose act is unlike any you have ever seen. Young Idrissa finds himself in the center of a miraculous episode between Marcel and his wife, which may not be believable but is certainly satisfying.

10. "The Artist."

What audacity to make a silent film in black and white in 2011, and what a film Michel Hazanavicius has made! Jean Dujardin won the Best Actor award at Cannes for his work as a silent star who is cast aside with the advent of the talkies. His career is rescued by a young dancer (Bérénice Bejo) he was kind to when he was at the top. This wonderful film is many things: Comedy, pathos, melodrama. For many people, this will be their introduction to silent movies, and cause them to reconsider if they really dislike black and white. It's an audience pleaser, and many in the audience won't be expecting that. It also seems to be leading the year-end lists of award nominees, and could even become the first silent film to win an Oscar as Best Picture since "Wings" (1927).

11. Melancholia

This film about the end of the world is, Lars von Trier assured us, his first with a happy ending. I think I see what he means. At least his poor characters need suffer no longer. If I were choosing a director to make a film about the subject, von Trier the gloomy Dane might be my first choice. The only other name that comes to mind is Werner Herzog's. Both understand that at such a time silly little romantic subplots take on a vast irrelevance.

That's even the case in "Melancholia," which actually takes place at a wedding party for newlyweds. In the sky, another planet looms ever larger, but life carries on all the same here below. Kirsten Dunst is the new bride, and Charlotte Gainsbourg plays her sister. The two seem to exchange personalities. The details matter less than the grand overarching mood.

12. "Terri"

Tells the story the story of a fat kid who is mocked in high school. Terri (Jacob Wysocki) is smart, gentle and instinctively wise. His decision to wear pajamas to school "because they fit" may be an indication that later in life he will amount to a great deal. He has character. He's been missing a lot of school and is called in by the assistant principal (John C. Reilly), a school administrator unlike those we usually see, offering kindness, anger and hard-won lessons learned in his own difficult life. He and Terri slowly begin to communicate person to person.

Chad (Bridger Zadina) is another of the administrator's problem children, a morose, slouching outsider driven to pluck hairs from his head. Heather (Olivia Crocicchia) is a pretty young student who is threatened with expulsion, Terri steps up and defends her, in a way that shows he respects her and empathizes. He may be a kid who is fat and weird, but he's much more than fat and weird. This film has also been invited to Ebertfest 2012.

13. "The Descendants"

George Clooney in one of his best performances as a descendant of one of Hawaii's first white land-owning families, who must decide whether to open up a vast tract of virgin forest on Kauai to tourist and condo development. This decision comes at the same time his wife has had a boating accident and is in a coma. Having devoted most of his attention to business, he now must learn to be a single parent of two daughters while also dealing with the King family's urgent desire to close the multi-million-dollar land deal.

Leading the push for the King family is Cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges). As affable as Bridges can be, he doesn't want to listen to any woo-woo Green nonsense about not selling. The film follows Clooney's character's legal, family and emotional troubles in careful detail, until director Alexander Payne shows us, without forcing it, that they are all coiled together. We get vested in the lives of the characters. We come to understand how they think, and care about what they decide about the substantial moral problems underlying the plot.

14. "Margaret"

Kenneth Lonergan's film begins with a young woman (Anna Paquin) thinking she may have contributed to a fatal bus accident through her own foolishness. She decides the bus driver (Mark Ruffalo) should also be held accountable, and makes it her business to see that he is. This story cross-cuts with others, including Jean Reno and J. Smith-Cameron in a sweet mid-life romance. The film inspired an online conspiracy theory when Fox Searchlight was accused of being shy about its 9/11 material. Actually, 9/11 figures only marginally; what's important is the conflict between the young woman's perfectionism and things as they are.

15. "Martha Marcy May Marlene"

Those are four names that apply at various times in the life of a young woman played by Elizabeth Olsen. "Martha" is her name. "Marcy May" is the name given to her by the leader of a cult group she falls into. "Marlene" is the name all the women in the group use to answer the telephone. The cult leader is an evil and mesmeric figure played with great effect by John Hawkes. Her experience in the cult causes her confusion about her identity after she escapes into the relative safety of the home of her sister (Sarah Paulson). Sean Durkin's film builds on the strong Elizabeth Olsen to show how easily groups can control their members.

16. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2"

The second installment in the last chapter of the legendary saga comes to a solid and satisfying conclusion, conjuring up enough awe and solemnity to serve as an appropriate finale and a dramatic contrast to the lighthearted (relative) innocence of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" all those magical years ago.

17. Trust

The bravest thing about David Schwimmer's "Trust" is that it doesn't try to simplify. It tells its story of a 14-year-old girl and a predatory pedophile as a series of repercussions in which rape is only the first, and possibly not the worst, tragedy to strike its naive and vulnerable victim. Liana Liberato stars as a "good girl" who isn't advanced, who feels uncomfortable at a party where "popular girls" fake sophistication. She's never had a boyfriend when she meets Charlie (Chris Henry Coffey) in an online chat room. Charlie is in high school. Like her, he plays volleyball. He's a nice kid, too. He understands her. She grows closer to Charlie than any boy she's ever known. They talk for hours on the phone. But Charlie is not what he seems.

18. "Life, Above All"

This South African feature centers on a 12-year-old named Chanda (Khomotso Manyaka), who takes on the responsibility of holding her family together after her baby sister dies. Family members are suspected of having AIDS; the community ostracizes them, until a courageous neighbor finally steps in. An opening scene shows Chanda choosing a coffin for her baby sister. The seriousness and solemnity with which she performs this task is heart-rending and heart-warming. Both director Oliver Schmitz and the gifted Miss Manyaka attended Ebertfest 2011.

19. "The Mill and the Cross"

Any description would be an injustice. It opens on a carefully-composed landscape based on a famous painting, "The Way to Calvary" (1564), by the Flemish master Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Within the painting, a few figures move and walk. We might easily miss the figure of Christ among the 500 in the vast landscape. Others are going about their everyday lives. The film is an extraordinary mixture of live action, special effects, green screen work and even an actual copy of the painting itself (by Lech Majewski, the film's Polish director). Set not in the Biblical lands but in Flanders, it uses Belgians as Jews and the Spanish as Romans, in an allegorical parallel which also breaks down into fragments of lives. It is a film before which words fall silent.

20. "Another Earth"

Joins "Melancholia" as a second 2011 film about a new planet hanging in our sky. This one doesn't presage the end of the world, but represents perhaps our very same Earth, in another universe that has now become visible. Stars Brit Marling a young woman who has been accepted into the astrophysics program at MIT. She hears the news about Earth 2. Peering out her car window to search the sky, she crashes into another car, killing a mother and child and sending the father into a coma.

A few years pass. She's released from prison and learns that the father, a composer named John Burroughs (William Mapother), has emerged from his coma. Rhoda is devastated by the deaths she caused and wants to apologize or make amends or ... what? She doesn't know. She presents herself at the shabby rural house where Burroughs lives as a depressed recluse. They grow closer. Did the accident not occur on Earth 2?

Those are my top 20, leaving out documentaries, which I will list later. To include them on the same list would be ranking oranges and apples. There were many other excellent films in 2011, some fully the equal of some of these. Alphabetically:

"13 Assassins," "The Adventures of Tintin," "Beginners," "Blue Valentine," "Boy Wonder," "Certified Copy," "The Future," "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," "The Guard," "The Help," "Higher Ground," "I Will Follow," "J Edgar," "The Last Rites of Joe May," "Le Quattro Volte," "Margin Call" "Meek's Cutoff," "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol," "Moneyball," "Mysteries of Lisbon," "My Week with Marilyn," "Poetry," "The Princess of Montpensier," "Rango," "A Screaming Man," "Silent Souls," "Tyrannosaur," "Queen to Play," "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," "War Horse" and "The Whistleblower."

Note: Many of you asked if I forgot about "We Need to Talk About Kevin." Not at all. It doesn't even have an opening date in Chicago, and so will be on my list of the best films of 2012. But if it helps, just say I called it "one of the best films of the year," which it certainly is. Watch Tilda Swinton here as she talks with me about the film at the Toronto Film Festival: http://bit.ly/qYwRJf

My list of the Best Documentaries of 2011.

Getting out of the way

2011-12-15T01:49:35Z

A 2009 story about a 12-year-old musical prodigy caught my eye today. His name is Jay Greenberg. He composes in his mind. It comes to him naturally. When we think of musical prodigies we imagine a child on a piano bench, or playing a violin. Not many compose. Greenburg has written five symphonies.

Sam Zyman, a composer who is Jay's teacher at Julliard, told Rebecca Leung of CBS News: "We are talking about a prodigy of the level of the greatest prodigies in history when it comes to composition. I am talking about the likes of Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Saint-Sans.

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"This is an absolute fact. This is objective. This is not a subjective opinion. Jay could be sitting here, and he could be composing right now. He could finish a piano sonata before our eyes in probably 25 minutes. And it would be a great piece."

One sentence in Leung's story particularly struck me: "It's as if the unconscious mind is giving orders at the speed of light," says Jay. "You know, I mean, so I just hear it as if it were a smooth performance of a work that is already written, when it isn't."

I began to think in terms other than music. I began to think of the human mind. His mother Orna is quoted: "I think, around 2, when he started writing, and actually drawing instruments, we knew that he was fascinated with it. He managed to draw a cello and ask for a cello, and wrote the world cello. And I was surprised, because neither of us has anything to so with string instruments. And I didn't expect him to know what it was." When he was shown a miniature cello, his mom says, "He ... started playing on it. And I was like, How do you know how to do this?"

Well, it was all in there, of course. Already there even at birth, perhaps. Already there in many of our minds. He was simply downloading it.

It is said that child prodigies are most often found in three areas: Music, mathematics and chess. What these areas have in common is that they all involve abstract relationships. You need no life experience to master them. No emotions, indeed, except those generated in the act of exercising your abilities. No maturity. You don't have to have been anywhere, or to have done anything.

It is true that some music seems to contain great emotional content. I'm not talking about musical forms with lyrics, because the moment words are involved, abstraction falls away and literal meaning enters. But the "Ode to Joy" sounds to most people, I imagine, as if it evokes--joyous feelings. Other music sounds sad, inspiring, chaotic, soothing. I've never been convinced, however, that music tells a story. Without its title, would the "Grand Canyon Suite" be about the Grand Canyon?

People who know chess well enough to understand it say that some of the best games of grandmasters move them almost to tears. Very well, but they are moved not by emotion but by witnessing an exercise of implacable logic, ideally without a single move that could have been improved upon. Similarly, in the field of mathematics, great was the satisfaction in 1995 when Fermat's Last Theorem was proved after 358 years. But to solve it you need never have kissed anyone, loved a dog, read Hamlet or eaten a slice of apple pie.

Nor need Beethoven have done any of those things to write a Beethoven symphony. It is a Beethoven symphony all the same, and attains a kind of perfection in the abstract, regardless of how it is performed, or for whom, or where.

Following this line of reasoning, it occurred to me that this perfection preexists in the human mind. Just as Noam Chomsky once speculated that the rules of linguistics were hard-wired into the mind and not learned, so perhaps music, math and chess live there--and countless other forms that have yet to find an avatar in the practical world. A piano sonata doesn't require a piano. The piano is simply the means through which its idea is expressed. I can imagine a world in which none of our present instruments existed, and in which an entirely different orchestra could be assembled. In my undergraduate years at the University of Illinois the avant garde musician Harry Partch staged concerts with instruments of his own invention. I was too callow to understand what I was listening to, but I recall it sounded like...music.

It may be that among the countless cells in our brains a process of arrangement and simplification goes on, by which these cells find more and more satisfactory ways to--Communicate? Align? Organize? If they were a random arrangement, could they even "think?" Perhaps our human brain cells have been continuously improving their lines of communication for thousands of years, and that by Darwinian evolution more efficient lines have been tested, and prevailed. It may be that Jay Greenberg is unique, but I think it just as likely that he is simply drawing on access to abilities many of us were born with but have lost track of. Are we born with a vast command of abstract logic, and lose it in the distraction of incoming noise? How possible is it to concentrate on the variations of the Ruy Lopez when our little ears are being hammered with coos and sweetness?

Chess, of course, would not exist without 64 squares and 16 pieces and a set of rules. The game is a way to negotiate infinity by the application of logic. Well, not infinity of course, but beginning with the "Shannon number" of possible positions, which is 10 to the power of 43, a Dutch computer scientist named Victor estimated (says Wikipedia) "the game-tree complexity to be at least 10 to the 123rd, based on an average branching factor of 35 and an average game length of 80. As a comparison, the number of atoms in the observable universe, to which it is often compared, is estimated to be between 4×10 to the 79th, and 10 to the 81st."

So chess has considerably more possibilities than the number of atoms in the universe, which is as close to infinity as we can hope to approach in our lifetimes. The rules of chess create a means to negotiate those possibilities more efficiently than your opponent.

I thank those of you who are still with me. I have heard of small children who instantly grasp the rules of chess. I know many adults who remain resistant to them. They are not "necessary," in the sense that chess itself is not necessary, but they involve access to those places in the brain that master such things.

In many arts and other fields, we hear of Being in the Zone. Gifted practitioners in those fields speak of Going with the Flow, and I think they're referring to access to greater powers of their minds. They get out of their own way. They don't "think too much." Their minds are way ahead of them, and have it all figured out.

When I try to describe the way I write, I say it is "taking dictation from that place in my mind that tells me what to say." This doesn't make me a genius. It has nothing to do with that. It simply means that having been given language and grammar, my mind supplies the words. The moment I began reading about Jay Greenberg, this piece began writing itself, and all I had to do was type it out. Your field may not be writing, but in whatever you do, I suspect there may be an area in which your mind is composing and performs for you if you only listen.

Where I stand on the Occupy movement

2011-12-07T06:07:45Z

I commissioned this chart to make my position clear. I've avoided the subject until now because, while I instinctively felt I must be in favor of the Occupiers, I wasn't sure what the movement stood for. I support most populist uprisings on matter of principle, and would perhaps even support the Tea Party were it not demonstrating in favor of the very things that are wrong.

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I believe the Occupiers are opposed to the lawless and destructive greed in the financial industry, and the unhealthy spread in this country between the rich and the rest. It is sickening to see how the rich and their pawns oppose desperately-needed Universal Health Care, and sad to see the Tea Party fall in line with their shadow masters to oppose something most of them will someday need.

I have also felt despair at the way financial instruments were created and manipulated to deliberately defraud the ordinary people in this country. At how home buyers were peddled mortgages they couldn't afford, and civilian investors were sold worthless "securities" based on those bad mortgages. Wall Street felt no shame in backing paper that was intended to fail, and selling it to customers who trusted them. This is clear and documented. It is theft and fraud on a staggering scale.

As we head into another election year, the Republicans actually oppose efforts at financial regulation and reform. They are against government measures that would introduce transparency and accountability into the markets. The GOP is owned by Wall Street. My litany could go on forever. Democrats try to punish the wrongdoers, Republicans shelter them, and the House GOP majority stonewalls. But you know that. And if the Occupy Movement stirs up awareness about it, I'm in favor of it.

My hesitation all along has come with uneasiness about the Occupy tactics. The idea of physically occupying public spaces--parks, plazas, malls and so on--is a questionable strategy. The notion of pitching tents, running kitchens and maintaining libraries on a quasi-permanent basis would have Saul Alinsky tearing his hair out. If you set out to do something that will obviously not work, you're setting yourself up for inevitable failure. Very few people are mentally or constitutionally able to live in a tent for long, especially with the approach of winter. Young and strong people can. Soldiers do. But the Occupy movement is intended to be populist, and a great many ordinary people have children, families and income requirements that make it inconvenient to camp out.

It was a different matter during the Great Depression, when tent cities named Hoovervilles sprang up on the National Mall and elsewhere. Their inhabitants were actually unemployed and homeless men and women who were forced to such extremes. A few of the Occupiers fit that description. I believe most do not.

The beauty of the Tea Party is that it's a moveable feast. It doesn't require a lasting presence in Manhattan, Portland or Denver. It can gather, demonstrate, and disperse. Reports from Tea Party rallies last year indicated in some cases the very same people were moving themselves or being bused from one demonstration to another. The rallies were a recruiting device. They were fun. Occupying looks more like work that requires a radical change in lifestyle.

The fact is that Occupiers should belong to no political wing. Republicans as well as Democrats should be fed up with the rot in our financial system. It should be apparent to them that the Republican Party is the legislative wing of Wall Street theft. Populists are called socialists, but then "socialism" is always the term aimed at financial reformers. It would be more accurate to call them Law Enforcers, or Fair Shakers. Successful as it has been, the Occupy Movement should be much larger and encompass more different kinds of people. By its radical tactics, it has seemed exclusionary. Everyone should feel invited to join.

Let me give an example of its potential . A few weeks ago I read this in an op-ed column:

"How do politicians who arrive in Washington, D.C. as men and women of modest means leave as millionaires? How do they miraculously accumulate wealth at a rate faster than the rest of us? How do politicians' stock portfolios outperform even the best hedge-fund managers? I answered the question in that speech: Politicians derive power from the authority of their office and their access to our tax dollars, and they use that power to enrich and shield themselves.

"The money-making opportunities for politicians are myriad...accepting sweetheart gifts of IPO stock from companies seeking to influence legislation, practicing insider trading with nonpublic government information, earmarking projects that benefit personal real estate holdings, and even subtly extorting campaign donations through the threat of legislation unfavorable to an industry. The list goes on and on, and it's sickening.

"Astonishingly, none of this is technically illegal, at least not for Congress. Members of Congress exempt themselves from the laws they apply to the rest of us. That includes laws that protect whistleblowers (nothing prevents members of Congress from retaliating against staffers who shine light on corruption) and Freedom of Information Act requests (it's easier to get classified documents from the CIA than from a congressional office).

"The corruption isn't confined to one political party or just a few bad apples. It's an endemic problem encompassing leadership on both sides of the aisle. It's an entire system of public servants feathering their own nests."

End of quote. I agree with every word. The full column appeared on the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 18, 2011, and it was signed by Sarah Palin. In a way that doesn't surprise me. I think Palin may instinctively be a populist when she's free of handlers, and although she toed the Republican line in 2008, she's not following it here. Those words would not inspire a standing ovation at a Republican National Convention.

A clear majority of Americans should be in sympathy with the Occupy Movement. That they are not is a tribute to an effective right wing propaganda machine given voice by Fox News and radio talkers like Rush Limbaugh, and financed by the Koch brothers among many others. The machine's audience is told to oppose its own self-interest and support the interests of the rich.

"We are the 99 percent," say the Occupiers. Yes, but the ring wing propagandists say the rich are the engine driving the creation of wealth. While it is true that they create a great deal of wealth for themselves, in the current American financial universe they seem to be sucking that wealth from the pockets of the middle class, the working class and the poor.

There was a time in the not very distant American past when it was easier to support a family and buy a home. Now many college graduates find themselves moving back in with their parents. They're living off prosperity that was built up when the economy wasn't stacked against them.

President Obama went to Kansas on Tuesday to make the kind of speech I've been waiting and hoping for. It was billed as sort of keynote for his campaign. He said, "This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share and when everyone plays by the same rules." Isn't that true? Does everyone get a fair shot? When the Republicans try to exempt the financial industry from regulation, is that playing by the same rules?

Line graph by Marie Haws.

So long for awhile

2011-12-01T01:52:53Z

At the end of December, our public television program "Ebert Presents At The Movies" will go on hiatus while we find necessary funding. This move is necessary to allow the public television stations that carry our show to plan their programs for the beginning of the new year. We held off as long as possible but we had to give notice today.

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It was a sad but necessary moment of realism. The show is nationally distributed by American Public Television (APT), and they have been very helpful. They send us to more than 95% of the U.S. public television audience and all 50 top markets. The show is also distributed overseas by the American Forces Network to over 175 countries and even to Navy ships. But in mapping out their 2012 program schedules, APT's member stations need to know what they can count on.

In my Nov. 6 blog entry about the show, I explained that Chaz and I were essentially financing the show ourselves, except for a kind donation from the Kanbar Charitable Trust. In the comments, we received many helpful suggestions from readers and viewers, including possible outlets on cable and commercial TV, internet distribution, and so on.

People have been very supportive. We've spoken to the top executives of several channels and film distributors, charitable foundations, web delivery services, potential corporate sponsors, and crowd-funding sources. And we are still talking with them, but the time crunch has intervened. It is a complicated process, and so we are going on hiatus while we sort it out.

During this period I've been moved by the determination of Chaz and our team to push ahead. We really believe in this show and its mission to provide an intelligent place for the discussion of movies in a forum accessible to the public, and in a manner that is easily understood yet that feeds the thirst for both entertainment and knowledge.

The show has been a success. We will have produced 50 episodes. In Christy Lemire and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky we have co-hosts whose chemistry has ignited, and who provide two definitely different viewpoints, which is the idea. We have developed a cadre of Contributors who have created video essays and festival reports.

We hope our hiatus will be brief. You have told us you like the show. And we now have options. A touching number of viewers offered to send us money directly. One of the avenues we may take is a Kickstarter campaign, as you suggested. We will let you know as soon as that is worked out.

Please have faith in us as we sort through the possibilities. Thank you and Happy Holidays.