The room was so small, it was like everyone was in the front row. You walked into the throbbing, smoky space and edged past the bruisers in the black T-shirts, and suddenly, between two big speaker stands, not more than…
It was the autumn of 1956, and I was a freshman at Urbana High School. Estes Kefauver, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate, was coming to town. My father Walter, an electrician at the University of Illinois and a devout Democrat, thought…
All week people have been asking me who I liked better--Jimmy Stewart or Robert Mitchum? I wouldn't play the game. They were both one of a kind. Each had a style, a grace, a bearing, a voice, a face, a…
What was it about that specific shot in "Blue Velvet" that forced me to take it so personally? When David Lynch's film was released in 1986, it was hailed as a masterpiece. But I gave it one star, and my…
In the 1970s Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a familiar presence at film festivals, invariably clad in black leather, a cigarette always in his hand, a scraggly mustache drooping over lips that seemed curled in constant ironic amusement. He traveled with…
The coming age of high-definition television will affect the world of movies in four ways: It will make movies look subtly different on television.
PASADENA, Calif.--The existentialist hero wonders if life is worth living. The ironic hero is greatly amused by people who wonder about things like that. And there you have the difference between the work of Paul Schrader and Quentin Tarantino, who…
LOS ANGELES--Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" is one of those grand gestures that restores your faith in the flexibility and imagination of the movies. When so many films seem to march lockstep through versions of the same proven formulas, here's one that…
Ebert's Best Film Lists1967 - present
Q. What are angels?
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