January 23, 2025 8:28 pm

Roger Ebert Reviews

A Communication With Light: Azazel Jacobs on “His Three Daughters”

Simultaneously showing how death alienates us from ourselves and brings us closer to community, Azazel Jacobs’ tender and trenchant “His Three Daughters” explores the limits of what we can control while grieving. It’s a testament to the imperfect, rating, yet healing power of family amid tragedy.  The film wastes no time throwing viewers into the

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Saying Goodbye to Michael Loewenstein, Set Designer for Siskel & Ebert at the Movies

If Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were the two stars of “Siskel & Ebert at the Movies,” the intimate movie theater set on which they shared their takes on film releases new and old was the third. You can thank set designer Mickey Loewenstein for that, a legendary scenic designer at Chicago’s WTTW-Channel 11 for

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In the Ring: James Madio and Steve Loff on “The Featherweight”

Set in 1964 and 1965, “The Featherweight” is a stylistically daring movie about an aging real-life boxer, Willie Pep (James Madio), who held the World Featherweight championship twice between 1942 and 1950 and invites a couple of documentary filmmakers modeled on the Maysles brothers to record his daily life as he attempts a comeback in

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Zack Snyder’s Animated Netflix Epic “Twilight of the Gods” Aims for Valhalla, Lands at Mediocre

The name “Zack Snyder” evokes a range of emotions, depending on the person: boredom, excitement, dashed hopes, bewilderment. Many of those emotions apply to his latest project, an animated adaptation of Norse mythology that, for reasons I still can’t determine, ends in part with a sequence in which Jesus Christ himself flies off the cross

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TIFF 2024: A Canadian Perspective on This Year’s Festival of Festivals

A year ago, I wrote about the real challenges the Toronto International Film Festival has faced in trying to reclaim its spot at the top of the fall festival events. With the ascendance of both Venice and Telluride over the last decade, as well as the one-two punch of the COVID lockdown and the WGA/SAG strikes that

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Pull the String: Larry Karaszewski Remembers “Ed Wood” at 30

Larry Karaszewski remembers it like it was yesterday. He and his writing partner, Scott Alexander, were having lunch in the commissary at Universal Studios, which had produced their scripts from “Problem Child” and its sequel. “We were being really typecast as people who write these junky kids’ movies,” Karaszewski recalls. “We actually took a meeting

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“Agatha All Along” Wastes Supernatural Powers of an Excellent Cast

The revelation that purple-suited witch Agatha Harkness was the secret antagonist of “WandaVision” was a pleasantly surprising twist for the flawed yet entertaining Disney+ miniseries. Her long-awaited spin-off series, “Agatha All Along,” is a testament to Kathryn Hahn’s skills. Still, ultimately, it’s another Marvel TV show that fails to cast a bewitching spell, let alone

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