Roger Ebert Reviews

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

“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

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

A moment of silence for the American erotic thriller.  For years now the faithful have prayed for its return and when a good faith effort finally reared its head, it was laughed off screens, and we may not get another shot. And it’s not like it was some weirdly uncomfortable pretender to the throne, some

It’s rare to accuse a Netflix thriller of being too ambitious but that’s kind of the case with Babak Anvari’s “I Came By,” a mostly effective potboiler that has the opposite problem of so many mini-series on the streaming service in that it has a TV season worth of ideas crammed into its runtime. Thrillers

The era of next-gen consoles has led to a market of remastered games, titles that initially released on the PS3 or PS4, for example, given a visual polish for the PS5. Some fans see this as a cheap cash grab, a way to milk a fan base to basically buy a game they already have