Features
Why We Need to Talk About Cosby
A personal reflection on the Showtime docuseries We Need to Talk About Cosby by W. Kamau Bell.
A personal reflection on the Showtime docuseries We Need to Talk About Cosby by W. Kamau Bell.
A preview of what we're covering at this year's Sundance Film Festival, including new films by Ramin Bahrani, James Ponsoldt, Lena Dunham, Riley Stearns, and Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead.
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.
A tribute to another legend gone too soon.
Difficult is a gendered term fueled by the Hollywood machine and maintained by the belief that actresses aren’t responsible for the achievement of their films.
Chaz Ebert reflects on her experiences as a member of the U.S. documentary jury at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
A special edition of Thumbnails detailing the recent sexual harassment cases in the entertainment and tech industries and the brave women who broke their silence.
Separating the artist from the art isn't as easy as it sounds.
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."
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.
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.
Donald Liebenson chats with actor/comedian/writer Patton Oswalt about his new book "Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life From an Addiction to Film."
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.
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.
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.
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.