Roger Ebert Home

Tom Jones

Reviews

Mars Attacks! (1996)

Blog Posts

Features

Remembering Bukowski

Charles Bukowski died on his day in 1994. His voice is open and fearless, romantic, honest. He probably has a whole generation of writers getting drunk and wondering why they can't write like that.

In Big Ed's during the filming of "Barfly." Left to right, Bukowski, Ebert, Faye Dunaway, visiting fireman Andre Konchalovsky.

My story about a day on location with "Barfly."

Tom O'Bedlam reads Bukowski's incomparable "Who in the Hell is Tom Jones?"

Bukowski sits in the back set of a convertible and gives a running commentary along Hollywood Boulevard.

Bukowski photos and a song by Johnny Cash

Bono reads "Roll the Dice" by Bukowski

Charles Bukowski Reads "The Fire Station"

Tom Waits reads Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart," Hanks version of Ecclesiates 7, 3 -12:

Features

Susannah York, 1939-2011

By Roger Ebert

Susannah York, the British actress who could plunge deep into drama and then skip playfully in comedies, died Saturday of bone marrow cancer. She was 72.

Raised in Scotland, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, she was 20 when she made her first important film, the classic "Tunes of Glory" with Alec Guinness.

She was to become an icon of 1960s British films in such titles as "Kaleidoscope," "A Man for All Seasons," "The Killing of Sister George," "Oh! What a Lovely War" and "The Battle of Britain." She memorably played a patient in John Huston's "Freud" (1962), starring Montgomery Clift. But it was as a newlywed struggling to win a marathon dance prize in the American film "They Shoot Horses, Don't They" (1969) that she won an Academy Award nomination.

In 1972 she won the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival as a schizophrenic housewife in Robert Altman's "Images." Altman fulminated for the rest of his life that York and the film never received the respect they deserved.

York starred in films as recently as 2009, and did a great deal of London stage work and television. One success was Piers Haggard's "A Summer Story" (1988), adapted from the John Galsworthy story. Petite and lively all her life, her hair often in a pixie cut, she was a popular guest on British chat and game shows.

Married in 1960 to the actor Michael Wells, she had two children, Sasha and the actor Orlando Woods, before their divorce in 1973. She and her children had close-by homes near Clapham Common in South London, and Orlando told the Guardian: "She loved nothing more than cooking a good Sunday roast and sitting around a fire of a winter's evening. In some senses, she was quite a home girl. Both Sasha and I feel incredibly lucky to have her as a mother."

In private life she was a political activist, active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She is survived by her children and two grandchildren.

Tom Jones (1964) Directed by Tony Richardson.

Movie Answer Man

'Basic' rules of criticism

Q. In your review of "Basic Instinct 2," you struggle with whether to give it a favorable rating; you know it's not a good movie, but it's very watchable and you enjoyed viewing it. Doesn't that contradict a rule you usually apply: You have to be true to the moviegoing experience? If you got into the film, shouldn't you give it a positive review, even though you know it's flawed? Michael Hart, Staten Island, N.Y.

May contain spoilers

Interviews

Susannah York, "Gold"

"Gold" isn't exactly the best movie Susannah York has ever appeared in. But it brought her to Chicago on a promotional tour, and that was one considerable item in its favor. She sat cross-legged in a suite at the Whitehall, worked through a bunch of grapes and said "Gold" had been a good place to start again after two years away from the movies.

Interviews

Ann-Margret: Still cracking that whip

LAKE GENEVA, WI -- There is just no keeping up with all the new Ann-Margrets. Last year's new Ann-Margret abandoned her image, as the press releases say, to play a committed graduate student in "R.P.M." Her quandary: Should she still shack up with Anthony Quinn after he stops being a radical professor and becomes a moderate administrator? That's a dicey quandary, believe me, because Ann-Margret was playing a liberated woman even if she didn't have her own motorcycle and had to ride on the back of Anthony Quinn's.