Roger Ebert – Movie Reviews
October 22, 2011 by admin
Filed under Recent News, Reviews
Read the latest movie reviews from Roger Ebert, the best-known and most widely read film critic in the world.
J. Edgar (R) – Three and a half stars
As a period biopic, “J. Edgar” is masterful. Few films span seven decades this comfortably. The sets, the props, the clothes, and details, look effortlessly right, and note how Eastwood handles the many supporting roles. Eastwood’s film is firm in its refusal to cheapen and tarnish by inventing salacious scenes. I don’t get the impression from “J. Edgar” that Eastwood particularly respected Hoover, but I do believe he respected his unyielding public facade.
Immortals (R) – One and a half stars
Without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see. Involves the attempt by King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) to conquer Greece, and the battle to stop him, led by a plucky peasant named Theseus (Henry Cavill). Spectacular visuals, beautiful compositions, and an incomprehensible plot involving characters who open feel like strangers to us.
Paranormal Activity 3 (R) – One star
A prequel, revealing that the characters in “PA1″ and “PA2″ had already been through the all-night video surveillance ordeal. At least in this film they are undergoing it for the first time, which is less than can be said for us. The formula for the films involves pallid characters, perfunctory dialogue and very long waits for something to happen.
Footloose (PG-13) – One and half stars
There’s one thing to be said for a remake of a 1984 movie that uses the original’s screenplay. This 2011 version is so similar — sometimes song for song and line for line — that I was wickedly tempted to reprint my 1984 review, word for word. But That Would be Wrong. I think I could have gotten away with it, though. The movies differ in such tiny details (the hero now moves to Tennessee from Massachusetts, not Chicago) that few would have noticed.
The Thing (R) – Two and half stars
Imagine a creature that can exactly imitate the body and behavior of another life form — so well it could fool you into thinking it was your best friend. This Thing journeys the cosmos and mimics the aliens it encounters. Then it reveals its true appearance, which is a hideous and leaky smorgasbord of palpitating organs, claws, teeth, crab legs, lobster tails, beaks, snaky appendages and gooey dripping eyeballs. It doesn’t say much for life in the universe that with whole galaxies to choose from, that’s the best body it could come up with.
Moneyball (PG-13) – Four stars
An uncommonly intelligent movie about a showdown in major league baseball between human instinct and abstract statistics. Based on the true story of the 2002 Oakland Athletics, it stars Brad Pitt as the team’s general manager, Jonah Hill as a nerdy Yale statistician, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the hostile manager. Not a traditional sorts movie, but one about big business and courage in management. The dialogue is smart and witty.
Killer Elite (R) – Three stars
Two teams of ex-SAS men find themselves on opposite sides of an ingenious plot. An oil sheik from Oman wants revenge for the murders of his sons. He kidnaps Hunter (Robert De Niro), to force Danny (Jason Statham) to come out of retirement and undertake the vengeance. Spike (Clive Owen) leads a team whose job is to protect former SAS men. The two teams find themselves in a diabolical cat and mouse game where we’re hard-pressed to divide the characters into good and bad guys.
Drive (R) – Three and a half stars
Ryan Gosling in an extraordinary performance as a man who drives for a living–as a stunt man in movies, and as a getaway driver for hire. He seems to have no personal life, betrays no emotions, lives simply to function. When he begins to feel fondness for the little boy of his neighbor (Carey Mulligan), he grows involved in a $1 million heist that’s a test of his conscience and loyalties. It looks like a routine action picture, but believe me, it isn’t. Even the car chases look like the real thing. We care about them. We’re not just looking at technology.
The Help (PG-13) – Three stars
A safe film about a volatile subject. Presenting itself as the story of how African-American maids in the South viewed their employers during Jim Crow days, it is equally the story of how they empowered a young white woman to write a best-seller about them. At the end, the story has punished the racist and redeemed those who have changed, but it’s still Jackson, Mississippi. Still, this is a good film, involving and wonderfully acted. I was drawn to the characters and moved.
Straw Dogs (R) – Three stars
A reasonably close retelling of the 1971 film by Sam Peckinpah. Change the location from England to Mississippi, change a mathematician into a screenwriter, keep the bear trap and the cat found strangled, and it is every bit as violent. Visceral, disturbing and very well made. James Marsden moves with his wife Kate Bosworth to her home town, and Alexander Skarsgård and James Woods are the scariest of the hostile locals. Rod Lurie’s version is better than the Peckinpah, I think. Or have I grown hardened by extreme mayhem?
Warrior (PG-13) – Three stars
An unusually dramatic fight picture, in which two long-estranged brothers meet in a Mixed Martial Arts title fight. Joel Edgerton is a high school teacher, Tom Hardy is a returning Marine, and Nick Nolte is their father, a recovering alcoholic. This is a rare fight movie in which we don’t want to see either fighter lose.
Contagion (PG-13) – Three stars
A realistic, unsensational film about a global epidemic. It’s being marketed as a thriller, but it’s more of a chiller: A frightening speculation about how a new airborne virus could enter the human species and spread relentlessly in very little time.
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