Star Trek Into Darkness
Less a classic "Star Trek" adventure than a Star Trek-flavored action flick, shot in the frenzied, handheld, cut-cut-cut style that’s become Hollywood’s norm, director J.J.…
Less a classic "Star Trek" adventure than a Star Trek-flavored action flick, shot in the frenzied, handheld, cut-cut-cut style that’s become Hollywood’s norm, director J.J.…
Families create their own narratives. Stories are passed on from generation to generation, and in this way the past continues to live, but it can…
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…
Patrice Leconte's "Monsieur Hire" is a tragedy about loneliness and erotomania, told about two solitary people who have nothing else in common. It involves a…
Michał Oleszczyk
After duds "Jimmy P." and "Grand Central," the Coen brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis" saves the day for Barbara Scharres.
Mother’s Day I awakened to spirited calls from my children and grandchildren. As Roger wrote in his memoir, “Life Itself,” I came from a large family of nine, and I had four brothers and four…
Los Angeles, CA: Sundance Institute will remember and celebrate journalist and film critic Roger Ebert by honoring him with the Vanguard Leadership Award in Memoriam,…
Ray Harryhausen told us, time and again, the story of how he saw the original "King Kong" (1933) on the big screen when he was…
Dedicated to memories of Roger Ebert, for the simple reason that talking about movies is so thrilling. He did not like lists, but I love…
Dear Roger,You emailed me the questions to this interview on March 15, 2013. In your March 16th reply to my email, you said: The piece…
Tilda Swinton leads 1,500 people in a dance-along to Barry White's "You're the First, the Last, My Everything" during Roger Ebert's Film Festival in the…

Via beautiful cinematography, the film wanders the city, contrasting a new automaker's towers with abandoned hotels, derelict theaters, ruined houses and people walking through the snow down the middle of streets because there's no traffic. Such shots are intercut with performances by the Michigan Opera Theatre, which clings to life with the support of the Big Three car companies.
The most striking figure is not the hapless Mayor Dave Bing, but a retired teacher named Tommy Stevens, who owns a blues bar named the Raven Lounge. He can no longer afford a cook, so he does the cooking himself ("I enjoy it. It's a hobby."). Stevens visits the auto show and notes that the electric car on display from China is $20,000 — half the price of the Chevy Volt (which, we learn, GM has since moved the make's manufacture to China).
We follow the last days of the local union at American Axle, as the members turn down a contract that would not allow a living wage, and the company closes. The film's co-directors, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, observe that the inner city has seen a modest population growth because of young people taking advantage of bargain rents. We meet one such couple, who assemble a long table in an urban wasteland and sit at it while wearing golden steampunk gas masks. Their goofiness makes a contrast to the bleak cityscape behind them.
Throughout the film, there are glimpses of the golden days, of sleek new models and glamorous car ads. Stevens takes the camera on a long drive past where the main Cadillac plant once thrived. "We built everything," he said. "In the war, they switched over to bombers. Everything." He is driving past a barren landscape.
Michał Oleszczyk
After duds "Jimmy P." and "Grand Central," the Coen brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis" saves the day for Barbara Scharre...
At Directors' Fortnight, Alejandro Jodorowsky has one new feature and appears as the subject of another.
Asghar Farhadi ("A Separation") returns with another look at unsolvable dilemmas, an erotic thriller goes all the way...