Roger Ebert Reviews

With “Air,” “Tetris,” and “BlackBerry,” the last few months have borne both spring flowers and corporate biographies that mythologize well-known products and brands. Their narrative arcs follow a relatively familiar pattern: under-appreciated visionaries and everyday workers unite to face setbacks and product deadlines to go on to revolutionize their respective industries. The stories may not […]

Jean (Rosy McEwen) is dying her hair blonde on a quiet night in. The only noise is the sound of a dating show on her television. Her eyes are blue, but soon we notice that so much of the world around her is also blue. Her bathroom is a pretty pale blue, and so is

Ted Geoghegan‘s chamber horror drama “Brooklyn 45” takes place one fateful night in 1945, and focuses on a small gathering of gruff veteran friends months in the parlor of one Lt. Col. Clive Hockstatter (Larry Fessenden). Also known as Hawk, Fessenden’s grieving character needs their help holding a seance, so he can reach his departed wife, who

Although Vadim Perelman’s “Persian Lessons” is credited as an adaptation of the short story “Erfindung Einer Sprache” by Wolfgang Kohlhaase, the film begins with titles that read “Inspired by true events,” a nod to the film’s Holocaust setting. Though millions of Jewish people were imprisoned and killed in concentration camps during this time, this misguided

Ocean waves crashing in slow motion. Solar panels sprawling as far as the eye can see. A port worker stacking multicolored shipping containers. A little boy staring blankly at a screen. These striking images and so many more comprise the poetic documentary “Users.” The latest from Natalia Almada, which earned her the documentary directing award

“There’s more great literature written about fly fishing than any other sport.” This line comes early on in “Mending the Line,” and it really is so true! Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It is probably the most famous example, but there are libraries more. Why this might be is an interesting question, and why

The small-town period piece set between World War I and the mid-1930s, “Scarlet” is a French fable by an Italian director. Although its style couldn’t be more different, its conception evokes Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” which was less a portrait of any era’s “real France” than a international cinephiles love letter to French movies, French archetypes, and romanticized notions of

It takes a moment for the Japanese superhero adventure “Shin Kamen Rider” to find a rhythm and stick to it. Writer/director Hideaki Anno (“Neon Genesis Evangelion”) throws a lot at viewers during the movie’s preliminary half hour or so, but it all reflects the optimistic character of motorcyclist hero Takeshi Hongo (Sosuke Ikematsu), who transforms

“What Dali has done and what he has imagined is debatable, but in his outlook, his character, the bedrock decency of a human being does not exist. He is as anti-social as a flea. Clearly, such people are undesirable, and a society in which they can flourish has something wrong with it.” So George Orwell

To be Black is to acknowledge the intrinsic impact that violence has, and continues to have, on our culture and history. To be Black is to see your identity relentlessly caricatured for propaganda but to claim your power in the face of deniers. Yet the cycles of mourning forced upon Black communities yield anger, exhaustion,