Man of Steel
The title "Man of Steel" tells you what you're in for when you buy a ticket to this immense summer blockbuster: a radical break from…
The title "Man of Steel" tells you what you're in for when you buy a ticket to this immense summer blockbuster: a radical break from…
Claustrophobia isn't often considered a cinematic asset beyond tales of suspense and horror. But "Fill the Void," an award-winning Israeli drama about a naive 18-year-old…
"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…
Here are some ways to celebrate Roger's birthday (a birthday shared by Sir Paul McCartney).
A remembrance by Roger Ebert's book editor Donna Martin: "I had never even seen "Siskel & Ebert" on television when I knew I wanted to…
Suicide glamour and magazine-shaming; how American textbooks dumb down Vietnam; remembering the late investigative journalist Michael Hastings; why sex on the first date is not…
Here are some ways to celebrate Roger's birthday (a birthday shared by Sir Paul McCartney).
Kevin B. Lee reports on the film series at MoMA that he co-curated.
Katherine Tulich talks to Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater about returning once again to the characters from "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" for…
Craig D. Lindsey is on the warpath against jerk cinema, in which arrogant heroes trample all over everybody and the film celebrates them as righteously…
Andy Ihnatko recalls the passion for pulp literature that he and Roger shared.

"Viva Riva!" is the first feature I've seen from the Congo, and the last one I would have expected: A slick, exciting, well-made crime thriller, dripping with atmosphere. The plot would be at home in many countries, but the African locations are a gripping bonus here. You might learn more about Congo from this film than in a documentary, and you'd probably have more fun.
The hero is a good-bad guy named Riva (Patsha Bay Mukana), a charming, fast-thinking con man who has stolen a truckload of gasoline from some crooks in Angola and plans to resell it for a small fortune in Kinshasa. This detail is itself revealing. Some thrillers involve fortunes in gold or diamonds; the poverty and shortages in Congo make a truckload of fuel drums worth a fortune.
Riva is not a cautious thief. He's a partying ladies' man, whose objective in getting money is to spend it. He plans to hold the petrol off the market as gas prices grow higher, and in the meantime, plunges head-first into a shadow world of bars, brothels, conspirators and gangsters. It is his fate to fall head over heels with Nora (Manie Malone), the mistress of a local crime lord, who only perhaps can be trusted. Oh, she likes him well enough. She also likes staying alive.
Soon Riva is being pursued by the gangster's men and also by some very angry Angolans who want their gasoline back. The film's writer-director, Djo Tunda Wa Munga, ingeniously entwines this generic plot with a riot of local atmosphere: street life, homes, dance clubs, whorehouses, warehouses, cops and robbers, connivers and stoolies, torture and mayhem. It is a true achievement, I suppose, to make a Congolese feature that is the rival or superior of any hard-boiled Western film.
I suppose this is a film noir. By centering itself on the mean streets, a noir often records more about a time and place than a studio-centered mainstream drama. Consider that our images of postwar Vienna and London may largely be inspired by "The Third Man" and "Night and the City." This film moves effortlessly through its locations. It knows its way around. It makes no particular point of poverty, corruption and the seller's markets created by shortages. It doesn't even bother to point out the irony that the Democratic Republic of the Congo needs fuel that exists in abundance in nearby Nigeria.
The actors all feel like seasoned professionals, assured and persuasive. This is in no sense a bargain-basement production; it's as if a Congolese cinema springs full-blown before our eyes; this is apparently Djo Tunda Wa Munga's first film, but he knows what he's doing.
Apart from its other qualities, "Viva Riva!" has an unconscious authenticity. When big Hollywood stars are surrounded by CGI effects, we're always thinking, "action movie." When new faces are filmed in real places, there is a persuasiveness that's impossible to contrive. The movie offers the rare pleasure of a film that creates its own world, unfamiliar to us but feeling real. It's like a shot in the arm for the action genre.
As we mourn Abrams’ macho Star Trek obliteration, it’s a good time to revisit that most Star Trek-ian of accomplishme...
I cried yesterday at a retreat while listening to Michael Buble's rendition of "Smile." The tears came from out of no...
Lateral tracking shots can get to the heart of a film more quickly and succinctly than any other technique. What are ...
Please help me welcome the new Editor-in-chief for Rogerebert.com, Matt Zoller Seitz. What Roger and I found refresh...