Great Movies
From Jeffrey Parsons:
I read your temper tantrum about "Battle: Los Angeles," and just thought I'd send you a note.
First, I'm a former national merit scholar with a degree in engineering. And I've worked as an engineer and as a leader of engineers for well over a decade. So I feel very comfortable not only asserting my intelligence, but also in claiming to be smarter than you. My wife is a concert violinist and teacher who speaks three languages. I feel safe saying she's also smarter than you.
We both enjoyed "Battle: Los Angeles." It was exactly the movie it promised to be. And it was fun from beginning to end.
I could engage in a very detailed rebuttal of your 'review', pointing out things like your two-and-one-half star review of" Independence Day" (which seems to indicate that 'stick figure' enemies faced by American heroes didn't always drive you into a blind rage). More to the point, I could laugh at your idiotic four-star review of "Green Zone," as that seems more relevant (I imagine if there had been a scene of a US soldier raping a stick figure alien, or perhaps it were revealed that George Bush set the whole thing up, you'd have loved "B:LA").
But that's all really beside the point. Because while I could point out your flaws as a movie reviewer -- and they are numerous -- and how you let your poorly-thought-out ideology infest everything you do now, like a child who has learned a new swear word, the real problem is that you're just a joyless asshole. You clearly don't enjoy movies anymore, if you ever did (there are many who think that even failed screenwriters such as yourself don't become critics primarily because they can't write, but because they're narcissistic and believe their failure to be the fault of a 'system' that does not respect their greater talent, so they channel that anger into nitpicking the work of more capable people ... but I digress).
I'd wish bad things on you, Roger, but frankly I can't imagine anything worse than what you are.
But just a few words of advice: when you find yourself in a position where your only argument is that everyone but you is an 'idiot' (by the way, are all your readers idiots? Because they've voted the movie much higher than you), it's time to retire. Then you can spend all day retweeting HuffPo headlines! Think how happy you'll be.
Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.
