Roger Ebert Reviews

For Kevin Smith, making “Dogma” was the ultimate expression of his own waning religiosity, filtered through the verbose, irreverent, and crude humor that made him one of the most revered filmmakers of the ’90s indie boom. The kernel of the script predates his microbudget hit debut “Clerks,” having begun as a script called “God” that […]

Nina Conti is a real-life ventriloquist and comedian. In her first narrative feature, she plays a woman who spends almost all of the film inside the kind of monkey costume a team mascot might wear. It also closely resembles the puppet Conti uses in her live performances. Conti’s co-screenwriter, Shenoah Allen, plays Roy, a man

Mike Flanagan is no stranger to telling stories about death. However, his latest film is something quite different in how it dances with existential questions about the boundless beauty of life, the terrible agony of loss, and, ultimately, what it all means as our lives inevitably come to a close.  In “The Life of Chuck”

As I was enjoying the breezy delights of the unabashedly sentimental and consistently funny Apple TV+ golf comedy/drama series “Stick,” I couldn’t help but think of Ron Shelton’s 1996 “Tin Cup,” the best movie ever set on the links. In broad strokes (pun unavoidable), the parallels are clear: In the film, Kevin Costner’s Roy “Tin

Recently restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Marva Nabili’s austere drama “The Sealed Soil,” the earliest extant film directed by a woman from Iran, is a marvel. Shot on location in the remote village of Ghalleh Noo-Asgar, the film explores the life of a young woman, Rooy-Bekheir (Flora Shabavis), who, like her country,

Todd Purdom’s new book is a biography of Desi Arnaz, described in the subtitle as “The Man Who Invented Television.” Most people today associate him with the straight man for his then-wife, Lucille Ball, in the classic “I Love Lucy” sitcom, and the character he played, nightclub singer Ricky Ricardo. But Arnaz’s most enduring legacy

Bringing together serial killers and sharks—two of the horror genre’s apex predators—in a savage, deliciously executed spectacle, Sean Byrne’s “Dangerous Animals” (in theaters June 6, via IFC Films) boasts one of those high concepts so diabolically simple he couldn’t believe it hadn’t been done before.  But what Byrne—the Australian filmmaker behind “The Loved Ones” and

One of the oldest film festivals in the world, and the most prestigious such festival in Eastern and Central Europe, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) has announced the official selection for its upcoming 59th edition, to be held July 4-12 in the Czech Republic.  34 titles have been announced within this year’s official