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#423 January 4, 2022

Matt writes: Happy New Year, Ebert Club subscribers! We are kicking off 2022 with a letter from RogerEbert.com publisher Chaz Ebert that provides an essential overview of the work published on our site in 2021.

Features

Thumbnails 10/9/15

R.I.P. Chantal Akerman; Colin Healey on "Homemakers"; Rick Moranis isn't retired; Taking a stand against sexism in Hollywood; Eli Roth on "Knock Knock."

Features

Thumbnails 8/24/15

Deborah Kampmeier on "Hounddog"; Today's reductive emotional landscape; Not a reboot, a repackaging; Riding tall on a rebellion frontier; When brown actors play white characters.

Features

Thumbnails 2/19/15

Brutally honest Oscar ballot; Murphy refused to play Cosby; Is accuracy important?; "54" resurrected as cult gay classic; How America paved the way for ISIS.

Features

Thumbnails 12/29/14

Bill Cosby: fame, narcissism and sexual violence; Chris Kyle's unverifiable legacy; Godard's rarest film; The last true hermit; Why "Unbroken" tells the wrong tale of triumph.

Roger Ebert

Hugh Hefner has been good for us

From the moment that Hal Holmes and I slipped quietly into his basement and he showed me his father's hidden collection of Playboy magazines, the map of my emotional geography shifted toward Chicago. In that magical city lived a man named Hugh Hefner who had Playmates possessing wondrous bits and pieces I had never seen before. I wanted to be invited to his house.

I was trembling on the brim of puberty, and aroused not so much by the rather sedate color "centerfold" of an undressed woman, as by the black and white photos that accompanied them. These showed an ordinary woman (I believe it was Janet Pilgrim) entering an office building in Chicago, and being made up for her "pictorial." Made up! Two makeup artists were shown applying powders and creams to her flesh. This electrified me. It made Pilgrim a real person. In an interview she spoke of her life and ambitions.

Far Flungers

The cinema of scarred hearts

I have a friend who walked out of THERE WILL BE BLOOD during that baptism scene, when Daniel Day-Lewis exclaimed, "I've abandoned my child!" My friend was just divorced, lost custody of his children, and was tormented with the remorse that follows these things. As Daniel Day-Lewis shouted, my friend almost needed to cover his ears. He returned to his seat shortly afterwards, but needed that moment to collect himself.

I have another friend who was molested by a family friend. She refuses therapy, but she attributes multiple aspects of her personality, that she herself identifies as disorders - social ineptitude, sexual dysfunction and confusion, chronic despair - to that period of molestation. When she watched MYSTIC RIVER, a movie speaking of the physical and psychological abuse of children and the long term consequences on their hearts and minds, she found herself painfully revisiting those experiences, but not where we might expect.

May contain spoilers

Far Flungers

"Don't mess Malcolm up"

From its incendiary opening to its somber but exultant conclusion, Spike Lee's grand and important film "Malcolm X" captures the life of a complex, charismatic and gravely misunderstood man who fought for human rights and justice for Africans and African-Americans. The film, based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, is arguably Mr. Lee's best and most universal film, and one of the great American film biographies.

For context, "Malcolm X" had extraordinary publicity leading up to its 1991 production. Numerous black activists in New York City and elsewhere had forecasted that Mr. Lee's film would not accurately depict the essence of Malcolm. "Don't mess Malcolm up," was a refrain the director heard over and over again.

May contain spoilers