Roger Ebert Home

Bill Paxton

Reviews

The Circle (2017)
Mean Dreams (2017)
Term Life (2016)
Nightcrawler (2014)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Million Dollar Arm (2014)
The Colony (2013)
2 Guns (2013)
Titanic [3D] (2012)
Haywire (2012)
Thunderbirds (2004)
Frailty (2002)
Vertical Limit (2000)
U-571 (2000)
A Simple Plan (1998)
Titanic (1997)
Twister (1996)
Apollo 13 (1995)
True Lies (1994)
Indian Summer (1993)
Trespass (1992)
One False Move (1992)
Weird Science (1985)

Blog Posts

Features

Thumbnails 8/22/17

Theodore Collatos on "Tormenting the Hen"; Essay that changed film criticism; Who really directed "Tombstone"; True star of "Frasier"; Post-horror movies taking over cinema.

Ebert Club

#297 March 7, 2017

Matt writes: Just yesterday, the winners in RogerEbert.com's recent giveaway were announced. Each of them received a copy of The Great Movies IV, the final installment in Roger Ebert's collection of essays analyzing some of the greatest achievements in cinema. Chaz Ebert's article revealing the winners also included the book's foreword written by Matt Zoller Seitz.

Features

Thumbnails 5/18/16

Jeff Nichols brings "Loving" to Cannes; Cherchez la femme; Best of Cannes so far; STX pays $50 million for unmade Scorsese movie; "Mean Dreams" thrills at Cannes.

Features

Thumbnails 10/27/14

Boone and Henderson on "Dear White People"; Brody on "Birdman"; Serpico on the NYPD; Sragow on film criticism; Uhlich on "Citizenfour" and "Nightcrawler."

Ebert Club

#161 March 27, 2013

"As film exhibition in North America crowds itself ever more narrowly into predictable commercial fodder for an undemanding audience, we applaud those brave, free spirits who still hold faith with the unlimited potential of the cinema." - Roger

Ebert Club

#162 April 3, 2013

Marie writes: The Ebert Club Newsletter is now three years old! And the occasion calls for some cake - but not just any old cake, as it's also now officially Spring! And that means flowers, butterflies and ladybugs too. Smile.

Ebert Club

#157 February 27, 2013

Marie writes: It's a long story and it starts with a now famous video of a meteor exploding over Chelyabinsk, Russia. Followed by alien conspiracies fueled by the internet and which led me to investigate further. Where did it come from? Does anyone know..? Yes! According to The NewScientist, the rock came from the Apollo family of near-Earth asteroids, which follow an elongated orbit that occasionally crosses Earth's path.That in turn led me to yet another site and where I learned a team of scientists had discovered two moons around Pluto, and asked the public to vote on potential names. They also accepted write-in votes as long as they were taken from Greek and Roman mythology and related to Hades and the underworld - keeping to the theme used to name Pluto's three other moons. And how I eventually learned "Vulcan" has won Pluto's moon-naming poll! and thanks to actor William Shatner who suggested it. Behold Vulcan: a little dot inside a green circle and formally known as P5.

Scanners

Prometheus: Alien origins:The skeleton beneath the exoskeleton

The visceral impact that Ridley Scott's "Alien" had in 1979 can never quite be recaptured, partly because so many movies have adapted elements of its premise, design and effects over the last three decades -- from John Carpenter's remake of "The Thing" (1982) to David Cronenberg's remake of "The Fly" (1986) to "Species" (1998) and "Splice" (2009). No movie had ever looked like this. And it still works tremendously -- but let me tell you, in 1979 a major studio science-fiction/horror film that hinted darkly of interspecies rape and impregnation was unspeakably disturbing. (It got under my skin and has stayed there. We have a symbiotic relationship, this burrowing movie parasite and I. We nourish each other. I don't think Ridley Scott has even come close to birthing as subversive and compelling a creation since.)

The thing is, the filmmakers actually took out the grisly details involving just what that H.R. Giger " xenomorph" did to and with human bodies (the sequels got more graphic), but in some ways that made the horror all the more unsettling. You knew, but you didn't know. It wasn't explicitly articulated. Dallas (Tom Skerrit) just disappears from the movie. The deleted "cocoon" scene (with the haunting moan, "Kill me...") appeared later on a LaserDisc version of the film, and then was incorporated into the 2003 theatrical re-release for the first time. The deleted footage:

Ebert Club

#98 January 18, 2012

Marie writes: Okay, this is just plain cool. This is clearly someone using their brain, in combination with "what the hell, let's just go ahead and try it..."

Dr Julius Neubronner's Miniature Pigeon CameraIn 1903, Dr Julius Neubronner patented a miniature pigeon camera activated by a timing mechanism. The invention brought him international notability after he presented it at international expositions in Dresden, Frankfurt and Paris in 1909-1911. Spectators in Dresden could watch the arrival of the camera-equipped carrier pigeons, whereupon the photos were immediately developed and turned into postcards which could be purchased. (click images to enlarge.) - from The Public Domain Review. Visit the site to see even more photos.