Roger Ebert Reviews

“Hurt people hurt people,” often used in the context of empathy or forgiveness, is a valid statement about how patterns repeat unless people take steps to understand and change them. But it is also true that in some cases, only hurt people can help other hurting people. Their lived experience gives them credibility in sharing […]

Welcome back, Mr. Wick. Four years after “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum,” director Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves have returned to theaters with “John Wick: Chapter 4,” a film that was supposed to hit theaters almost two full years ago. Trust me. It was worth the wait. Stahelski and writers Shay Hatten and Michael

Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins) sits in a coffee shop reading a book. A pamphlet falls out. She reads: “What can YOU do? Join us as we work towards changing the way history views this much-maligned monarch!” The “much-maligned monarch” is Richard III. Sparked by curiosity, Philippa—not an academic or historian—follows the pamphlet’s call and attends

“The Worst Ones” revolves around the production of a film-within-a-film, whose director, Gabriel (Johan Heldenbergh), insists on casting nonprofessional actors for vague reasons concerning authenticity. The four kids he chose were all plucked from the cité Picasso housing project in a poor suburb of the small French town of Boulogne-Sur-Mer. Locals wonder aloud why the

Director Chad Stahelski has a John Wick-esque hunger for beating a challenge, starting with his days as a stuntman (later doubling for his star, Keanu Reeves) before moving on to martial arts choreography and second-unit directing. That background offered a special intuition for his impressive directorial debut (with co-director David Leitch), “John Wick.” The premise of that

Tori and Lokita call each other brother and sister. Biologically, it’s not true. Emotionally it’s more true than anyone around them could know. Their relationship is the core of “Tori and Lokita,” a tight, heartrending social realist drama from Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who’ve worked in the genre for decades and do it better than almost

Sometimes you can see common themes in the films that unfold at the Sundance Film Festival, but my experience at the Eccles Theatre here on the first full day of the first in-person event in three years was the opposite of that, capturing the range of this year’s program. These three movies have almost nothing

Two of the most divisive films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival center complex and ultimately unsettling gender dynamics, propelled by intrinsically weak men. One deconstructs sex and power in the world of high finance, while the other details the dangers of presuming we can get to know anyone via text messaging alone. They’re both

A pattern is perceptible in this year’s Sundance’s US Documentary Competition. Though the common thesis—between a film about a Japanese cult, a movie concerning a Korean video artist, and a narrative by a transgender sex worker turned director—isn’t readily perceptible, it exists. Beyond these films comprising part of Sundance’s US Documentary competition, they also concern

It’s not uncommon for a laughing break to win the Sundance Audience Award, or at least make for one of the most popular titles in a sea of exciting but far more serious movies. That’s likely to happen for US Dramatic Competition title “Theater Camp,” a thoroughly funny and easygoing comedy that applies the “let’s put