Roger Ebert Reviews

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 […]

“At least I’m consistent!”, tennis champion John McEnroe once claimed during a quarrel with his son Kevin, to which the boy replied, “Consistently an asshole.” The pain that registered on his father’s face as these words left Kevin’s mouth continues to haunt him decades later, yet there’s no denying that his angry remark carries the

Few feelings match the exhilaration of watching four underdogs, hailing from difficult circumstances, coming together to achieve a goal once thought unimaginable. In the best of these stories, the viewer is acutely aware of the weighty sacrifices these pathfinders must make. Such stories humanize these intrepid travelers with a lens that reaches beyond their hard journey, and focuses

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

“Revenge is like a river,” a woman says in voiceover at the beginning of the movie. Her next words give more detail to the simile, but it’s not until the very end of this unsettling, absorbing thriller that her thought is completed, so to speak—over a very convincing visual depiction. Written and directed by Congolese filmmaker

In Henry James’ 1897 novel What Maisie Knew, the child Maisie is an innocent bystander and victim of the dissolution of her narcissistic parents’ marriage. What makes What Maisie Knew a “modernist” novel (before Modernism as a literary concept came along), is its point of view. Told only from Maisie’s perspective, we experience her six-year-old

The British post-war thriller “Burial” has all of the right elements to be a great time-waster. Set in West Poland just after World War II, writer/director Ben Parker’s period piece follows a troop of Russian soldiers as they try, despite their personal reservations, to follow orders and deliver Hitler’s corpse to Stalin in Moscow. Along

For much of its overlong running time, “Waiting for Bojangles” depicts mental illness as an adorable personality quirk, a source of good-time party vibes, even a glamorous quality. Then, once this frothy French romance evolves into a more serious drama, it turns turgid, causing a jarring tonal shift. And yet, in the midst of all

When it comes to satire, two basic approaches can be used—one can go big and broad, ensuring that everyone gets the joke, or one can do it with such subtlety that some not paying attention might mistakenly assume the work is endorsing the very things it’s making fun of. Either one is perfectly valid and

A Hollywood Hills housewarming party eventually turns deadly in “Who Invited Them,” a staid home invasion thriller about a timid married couple who are bullied by two flirtatious strangers. More experienced—or funnier, or more exploitation-adept—filmmakers might have at least hit the mark for shock value in this ostensibly psycho-satirical button-pusher.  Writer/director Duncan Birmingham does not