Great Movies
Festivals & Awards
Cannes 2023: The Zone of Interest, About Dry Grasses
Jonathan Glazer's loose adaptation of Martin Amis's 2014 Holocaust novel takes a fundamentally flawed approach.
Jonathan Glazer's loose adaptation of Martin Amis's 2014 Holocaust novel takes a fundamentally flawed approach.
Matt writes: From March 8th through the 12th, RogerEbert.com celebrated Women Writers Week 2021 by showcasing the work of our marvelous female writers, from our Assistant Editor Nell Minow and regular critics Christy Lemire, Sheila O’Malley, Tomris Laffly and Monica Castillo to our cherished contributors Farren Smith Nehme, Roxana Hadadi, Carla Renata, Olivia Collette, Jennifer Merin, Joyce Kulhawik, Marya E. Gates, Arielle Bernstein, Justine Smith, Laura Emerick, Susan Wloszczyna, Sarah Knight Adamson, Mary Beth McAndrews, Hannah Benson, Kayleigh Donaldson, Cristina Escobar and Allison Shoemaker, in addition to republished work by Angelica Jade Bastién, Whitney Spencer, Abby Olcese and Katherine Tulich.
Chaz Ebert reports on "Okja," "The Square," "Jupiter's Moon" and "120 Beats Per Minute" in her third video dispatch from Cannes 2017.
Reviews from the Cannes Film Festival of Bong Joon Ho's "Okja," Ruben Ostlund's "The Square" and Mohammad Rasoulof's "A Man of Integrity."
A preview of the 2015 EU Film Festival at the Siskel Film Center in Chicago.
A final dispatch with a foreign focus on "Two Days, One Night," "Leviathan," "Haemoo," "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence" and "The Connection."
Sheila writes: Who doesn't love a good title sequence? I have my favorites. What are yours? The Art of the Title is a wonderful site that focuses on title sequences and in a recent post Ben Radatz and Bill Perkins write, "There are certain narrative, technical, and graphic techniques for which title design is an ideal venue. Because of its short format and creative license — and sometimes because of their budgets — title sequence real estate is often used to explore elaborate, abstract worlds previously unknown or unseen. For this reason — combined with an enduring human fascination with how things tick — Inner Workings is a theme that is frequented by a broad spectrum of genres (though, to be fair, most often by sci-fi and fantasy)." They break down some of their favorite title sequences, and how the sequences work visually and thematically. Lots of food for thought! Here's the whole post. Enjoy!
It's hard to come up with many directors willing to take the leaps of faith that Quentin Tarantino does in every scene of his every movie. It's even harder to come up with any who have the talent to back-up even trying. The biggest reason Tarantino has such a huge following may be how he goes all-out with seemingly little or no concern for crashing -- which, amazingly, he never seems to do.
Charlie Kaufman, the writer and director of "Synecdoche, New York" (2008), my choice for the best film of the decade, will appear after the screening of his masterpiece at Ebertfest 2010. The 12th annual festival will be held April 21-25 at the landmark 1,600-seat Virginia Theater in Champaign-Urbana, and for the first time ever, all festival Q&A sessions and panel discussions will be streamed live on the Internet.
I AM SO PROUD that eight of the Far-Flung Correspondents will be attending Ebertfest 2010, and so sincerely moved that they're providing their own tickets! A shout-out to Ali Arikan, Seoungyong Cho, Weal Khairy, Michael Mirasol, Omar Moore, Omer Mozzafar, Gerardo Valero, and Grace Wang. Only Robert Tan, who has been under the weather, will be missing. They're all bloggers, and will be on a panel Friday morning about the Global Web of Filmlovers.
Since Moses brought the tablets down from the mountain, lists have come in tens, not that we couldn't have done with several more commandments. Who says a year has Ten Best Films, anyway? Nobody but readers, editors, and most other movie critics. There was hell to pay last year when I published my list of Twenty Best. You'd have thought I belched at a funeral. So this year I have devoutly limited myself to exactly ten films.
UPDATED 10/16: Here are brief reviews of all the Chicago Film Festival movies we have seen, in alphabetical order, written by Bill Stamets and Roger Ebert. More will be added as we view them. For a full CIFF schedule, go to www.chicagofilmfestival.com or call (312) 332-FILM.
CANNES, France -- Why did they save the best for last? "Songs From The Second Floor" and "In The Mood For Love," two brilliant final entries in this year's Cannes Film Festival, played over the weekend, as the hotels were emptying and the traffic jams clearing.
CANNES, France -- A Danish film set in America but filmed in Sweden with stars from Iceland, France and the United States won the coveted Palme d'Or here Sunday night, at the 53rd Cannes Film Festival. Lars Von Trier's "Dancer In The Dark" picked up the top prize even though it got the most negative review in the recent history of Variety, the show biz bible. And its star, the Icelandic pop singer Bjork, won as best actress even though von Trier insists she is not an actress at all.
