Roger Ebert Reviews

If you were to look at a photograph of Roger Corman without knowing who it was, you might suspect that he was a straight-laced Midwestern businessman—the kind of guy who thrived back in the days of three-martini lunches and Elks Club memberships. You almost certainly would never have pegged him as the kind of guy […]

In case you’re wondering, “Nothing Can’t Be Undone By a HotPot” is not only the best movie title of the year so far, but also a no-frills Chinese whodunit about a pile of stolen cash, a human body, and a long line of dirty laundry. The cash and the body present themselves early on in

Every year, the Cannes Film Festival is an embarrassment of riches, offering moviegoers a smorgasbord of exciting, challenging cinema. In recent times, the likes of “Parasite,” “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” “The Worst Person in the World,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Drive My Car,” “The Zone of Interest” and “Anatomy of a Fall” debuted on

Chris Pine‘s first film as a director, “Poolman,” is a character comedy about oddball Los Angelenos that doubles as a spoof of 1940s detective movies. Pine also cowrote (with Ian Gotler), co-produced, and plays the title character, Darren Barrenman. Darren is a big-bearded, long-haired, talkative, thoroughly goofy pool cleaner who lives in a tiny trailer right next to the

Letitia Wright gives a quietly powerful performance in “Aisha” as a young Nigerian woman seeking asylum in Ireland and struggling to overcome one bureaucratic obstacle after another.  Writer-director Frank Berry’s film never devolves into melodrama – if anything, it may be understated to a fault – but he grounds her plight in an authentic mixture

One of the pleasures of being a critic is getting assigned to review a film you might not otherwise have seen. 2021’s “The Dry” was one of those, a taut moody drama/thriller based on Jane Harper’s best-selling novel (the first in a series). It starred Eric Bana as Melbourne cop Aaron Falk who returned to

Three people sit down to dinner at a remote cabin in the woods. Before they eat, they fold their hands and say grace. But they are not thanking God; they are thanking the cabin itself, which they have given the Biblical name of Lazareth, and which Lee (Ashley Judd) describes as their source of protection,

There’s a moment in Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s 2018 film “Asako I & II” that radiates tenderness: Married couple Asako (Erika Karata) and Ryohei (Masahiro Higashide) have just returned home after helping at a fish market. Ryohei, exhausted, lays flat against the wood of the floors. Asako has spent the day watching him as he helped out,

Brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross straddle the lines of documentary v. fictional storytelling with their newest “Gasoline Rainbow.” Gathering five non-acting teens to embody the story’s central friend group, we are consistently unsure how much direction has been given to the group as we follow them on the road. The precarious nature of

Police brutality is a subject that never seems to leave the news. There’s too many instances, too many stories from around the country pointing to a larger abuse of state-sanctioned power. Some headlines bubble up to national attention, even those that don’t will leave marks on the community where it happened. In “Power,” documentarian Yance