Roger Ebert Reviews

I am inviting you to join me (only a few tickets are left) and help support FACETS at the 2022 Screen Gems Benefit on Wednesday, September 28th, at 6 pm at the Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario Street. FACETS is Chicago’s historic film screening cinematheque and educational non-profit started by the late Milos Stehlik. I am proud […]

The Whole Earth Catalog, a broad-scope multi-disciplinarian magazine published between 1968 and 1972, opened with words from founder Stewart Brand: “We are as gods so we might as well get good at it.” This hubristic statement, so common in “visionary” types, particularly those who emerged from the “counterculture,” could sum up Stewart Brand (if he

Francois Ozon’s “Peter von Kant” is an odd, chilly film, even by this director’s standards. A psychological drama about a filmmaker in mid’-’70s Cologne, it gender-flips Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1978 “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” about the relationship between the eponymous fashion designer (Margit Carstensen), her nonspeaking assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann), and a young woman

With school back in session and many students enrolled in after school sports or other competitive programs, Peter and Ian Edlund’s “the Ref” feels like the right short film for this month, particularly for anyone involved in education. All teachers are referees on many levels and with the political storms that have been brewing over

The Clinton legend looms large. They’re perhaps the most well-known American family, having been in the public eye for decades now. As a viewing public, we know so much about them and the type of political junky who will be drawn to “Gutsy” with a curiosity to know more about the Clinton women will probably

Early in “The Whale,” the new film directed by Darren Aronofsky from a script by Samuel D. Hunter (adapting his stage play), Liz (Hong Chau), a nurse who voluntarily looks after her friend Charlie (Brendan Frasier) notes that Charlie, who’s having an episode that convulses the entirety of his 600-pound body, is showing a blood

It’s that time of year again! We’ve already run pieces from Venice and Telluride, and our crew heads to Toronto this week for the Festival of Festivals, the world-famous Toronto International Film Festival. Almost back to its pre-pandemic form, this year’s fest boasts some of the most impressive world premieres the annual event has ever

Two political documentaries that recently premiered at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival were inadvertent thematic companions of sorts, charting the US’s involvement in two different wars from varying viewpoints. First, there’s the soul-piercing “Retrograde” by the fearless documentarian Matthew Heineman, who knows a thing or two about being on the front lines, following an unfolding

Once more I am delighted and honored to be attending the Venice Film Festival, to participate in a panel discussing the always innovative (in a sense by definition) films backed by the Biennale College, which I’ll be writing about in my final installment. My viewing schedule is a little shorter than it’s been in previous

Trinitie Childs (Regina Hall) is the “First Lady” of Wander to Greater Paths, an Atlanta Southern Baptist megachurch run by her husband, Lee-Curtis (Sterling K. Brown). They are 25,000 parishioners strong—or rather, they were 25,000 parishioners strong. When writer/director Adamma Ebo’s film “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” opens, they are down to five of their former