May 12, 2025 7:49 am

Roger Ebert Reviews

Phil Lord and Chris Miller Made the Multiplex Safe for ‘The Fall Guy’

In “The Fall Guy,” Ryan Gosling plays Colt, a veteran stunt performer whose real life becomes an action movie once he’s tasked with finding an egotistical movie star (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who’s gone missing. Colt jumps over a wall of fire in a boat. He fights some bad guys on the back of a moving truck. […]

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Retrospective: Oscar Micheaux and the Birth of Black Independent Cinema

To watch an Oscar Micheaux film is to see the miracle of a tragedy.  Though Micheaux produced over forty pictures — spanning the silent era and through the advent of sound — only eighteen such works survive (nearly all of his silent pictures are considered lost). The films that remain are often incomplete because of

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Initially Promising Dark Matter Sinks Under Weight of Prestige TV Bloat

There’s a decent movie buried in the bloated “Dark Matter,” the latest expensive venture from the good folks at Apple TV+, a streamer that’s developed something of an identity as a platform for adult sci-fi with shows like “Silo,” “Constellation,” “Invasion,” and more. The problem is that, once again, a good idea has been stretched far

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The Idea of You

Tell me if this sounds familiar: A romantic couple, one American, one British, one the proprietor of a small, very narrow business, happy with family and friends but lonely and a little lost, one a global superstar, but lonely and a little lost. Both are spectacularly beautiful. And there’s a reason the star has to

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The Contestant

Sometimes, the revolution is televised. In 1998, an aspiring comedian auditioned for a Japanese TV show that put young people in difficult situations and filmed them for entertainment. By the luck of the draw, he won the chance to pursue fame in the burgeoning realm of reality television. Forced into a studio apartment with no

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Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather: A Preview of NYC’s Upcoming Hiroshi Shimizu Retrospective

There’s such a rich pleasure in diving deep into the work of one filmmaker: you watch them perfect their craft while seeing which themes and motifs anchor their body of work through time. Such was the case as previewed the 27 films included in the upcoming Hiroshi Shimizu retrospective — the largest ever in North

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Turtles All the Way Down

In middle school, John Green novels were the quintessential YA diaries in which my friends and I indulged. Ferociously consuming his books and feeding our angst and inflated otherness through Margo Roth Spiegelman and Alaska Young, or pining for the love of Hazel and Augustus, the announcement of an adaptation sent us straight to theaters

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A Man in Full

One of my very favorite television genres is Jeff Daniels conducting business while chewing scenery. Whether playing a news anchor in “The Newsroom” or a detective in “American Rust,” he always carries himself with such studious charisma. David E. Kelley’s “A Man in Full” presents Daniels with a new challenge, tapping into his inner Colonel Sanders meets Logan

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AMC’s Interview with the Vampire Has a Different Flavor in Season Two

Less than two years after it premiered, “Interview with the Vampire,” AMC’s bold, delightfully garish Anne Rice adaptation returns for another bloody installment. With a new Parisian locale and a recast Claudia, “Interview with the Vampire” continues to deliver vibrant characters and addictively volatile storytelling, even if Lestat’s absence is sorely felt.  Starring Jacob Anderson,

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Female Filmmakers in Focus: Marija Kavtaradzė on Slow

Shot in dreamy, textured 16mm, the intimate and desire-filled Lithuanian film “Slow” is not your typical romance. Sparks fly when passionate contemporary dancer Elena (Greta Grinevičiūtė) meets ruminative sign language interpreter Dovyda (Kęstutis Cicėnas). Their chemistry is so immediate and so intense, Elena tells her friends she feels like they’ve known each other forever. Despite

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