Roger Ebert thread

[XYZpdq Jr.]

In his essay on My Neighbor Totoro, Ebert makes the point that there are on mustache twirling villains that make the plot happen. He would latter state that most if not all children's media should be this way. I swear, Ebert did not understand kids nor want to be on the same planet as them.

Yeah I like Totoro, but I don't know of many people who liked it as a kid other than like, super young baby kids who like fuzzy monster
It's more a wistful dream of a life in the country as a kid for people who aren't kids anymore.

Really there's not much for Ghibli Miyazaki that's actually got a moustache twirling villain, just Muska in Laputa

 

[BrunoMattei]

Yeah, wtf was up with that chick. She wasn't attractive or quirky or anything really. Just so bland. Still one of my favorites otherwise though. He did a great choice later with Uma Thurmon as Venus in Munchausen. Mysterious and quiet.

Imagine if in Brazil he managed to get Sean Young or someone actually good in that timeframe.

ETA: Ian Holm and Pryce mostly make up for it though. (My fav Holm performance, then Time Bandits, then LOTR then 5th Element)

Gilliam has said that he wished he had cast this actress instead as the love interest:

 

[Product Placement]

Die Hard review by him, he gave it a thumb down

Zoolander review was bat shit

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/zoolander-2001

There have been articles lately asking why the United States is so hated in some parts of the world. As this week's Exhibit A from Hollywood, I offer "Zoolander," a comedy about a plot to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia because of his opposition to child labor. You might want to read that sentence twice. The logic: Child labor is necessary to the economic health of the fashion industry, and so its opponents must be eliminated. Ben Stiller stars as Derek Zoolander, a moronic male model who is brainwashed to perform the murder.

Malaysia is a mostly Muslim country with a flag that looks a lot like ours: It has the red and white stripes of the American flag, and a blue field in the upper left corner, which instead of stars displays Islamic symbols, the star and crescent. Malaysia is home to the Petronas Towers of Kuala Lumpur, the world's tallest buildings. But you get the point. If the Malaysians made a comedy about the assassination of the president of the United States because of his opposition to slavery, it would seem approximately as funny to us as "Zoolander" would seem to them. I realize I am getting all serious on you. Obviously, in times like these, we need a little escapism. "Hagrid," the usually sane critic at Ain't It Cool News, went to see "Zoolander" feeling "a comedy is just what I needed, and, what I feel, everybody needs at this time." His verdict? "It's a perfect film to help people forget everything for a few hours, and it's gonna be huge." Well, you know, I wanted to forget, but the movie kept making me remember. I felt particularly uncomfortable during the scenes involving the prime minister, shown as an elderly Asian man who is brought to New York to attend a fashion show where he is targeted for assassination. I would give you his name, since he has a lot of screen time, but the movie's Website ignores him, and the entry on the Internet Movie database, which has room to list 26 actors, neglects to provide it. Those old Asian actors are just place-holders, I guess, and anyone could play the prime minister.

For that matter, any country could play Malaysia. In years past, movies invented fictional countries to make fun of. Groucho Marx once played Rufus T. Firefly, the dictator of Fredonia, and "The Mouse That Roared" was about the Duchy of Grand Fenwick. Didn't it strike anybody connected with this movie that it was in bad taste to name a real country with a real prime minister? A serious political drama would be one thing, but why take such an offensive shot in a silly comedy? To some degree, "Zoolander" is a victim of bad timing, although I suspect I would have found the assassination angle equally tasteless before Sept. 11. The movie is a satirical jab at the fashion industry, and there are points scored, and some good stuff involving Stiller and Owen Wilson, who play the world's two top male models--funny in itself. The best moments involve the extreme stupidity of the Stiller character. Shown a model of a literary center to be built in his honor, he sweeps it to the floor, exclaiming: "This is a center for ants! How can we teach children to read if they can't even fit inside the building?" Funny, yes, and I like the hand model whose hand is sealed inside a hyperbarbic chamber to protect it. I also admire the ruthlessness with which "Zoolander" points out that the fashion industry does indeed depend on child labor. The back-to-school clothes of American kids are largely made by Third World kids who don't go to school. In fact, the more you put yourself into the shoes (if he had any) of a Muslim 12-year-old in a sport-shirt factory, the more you might understand why he resents rich Americans, and might be offended by a movie about the assasination of his prime minister (if he had the money to go to a movie). Kids like that don't grow up to think of America as fondly as the people who designed his flag.
Responding quickly to the tragedy of Sept. 11, the makers of "Zoolander" did some last-minute editing. No, they didn't dub over the word "Malaysia" or edit around the assassination of the prime minister. What they did was digitally erase the World Trade Center from the New York skyline, so that audiences would not be reminded of the tragedy, as if we have forgotten. It's a good thing no scenes were shot in Kuala Lumpur, or they probably would have erased the Petronas Towers, to keep us from getting depressed or jealous or anything.

The review was so awful, years later he apologized to Ben Stiller and blame 9/11 making him crazy.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/ben-stiller-roger-ebert-apologized-443913/

 

[mlanguishi]

I can understand a leftist coming in hard to defend islam after 9/11. I can not understand someone of his alleged stature bringing up Hagrid at Ain't it Cool News. That would be like Scorsese quoting Doug Walker as an inspiration.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

I can understand a leftist coming in hard to defend islam after 9/11. I can not understand someone of his alleged stature bringing up Hagrid at Ain't it Cool News. That would be like Scorsese quoting Doug Walker as an inspiration.

I'll be fair, iirc around turn of the century Ain't He Fat News had a crazy amount of stock placed in them beyond all logic and reason

 

[Safir]

Yeah I like Totoro, but I don't know of many people who liked it as a kid other than like, super young baby kids who like fuzzy monster

As a bughive kid, I watched parts of it on stolen cable and loved it because of how well it portrays the mysteriousness of living in the country. Waiting for a bus (that might never come) at a rural bus stop in the evening rain is awesome.

 

[Power Appreciator]

For some reason, the only review by Roger Ebert that I've ever read was of Antonioni's L'Avventura.

Rogert Ebert says he saw that film three times.

He then mentions the character of Gloria, a writer who's a friend of the protagonists.

The only problem is the fact that in the actual movie, not in the deranged hallucination created in nigger Ebert's subsaharan IQ brain, Gloria is not a writer but a prostitute, and he's not even a friend of the protagonists.

This retarded monkey brained faggot nigger says he saw this movie 3 times and he still has zero idea what's going on.

I spit on this dumb nigger Rogert Ebert

Oh he also opened the review with an attempt of quoting a dialogue from the movie, only he quoted it wrong

What a fucking retarded nigger

 

[变性黑鬼]

Brazil: to this day he's the only critic on RT that gave it a negative review. He cites that the film is way too confusing and thinks other films have done what it attempted to do better.

Hmm... he also didn't like The Usual Suspects because he'd "seen too many movies that day" and his brain hurty. Could it be, perhaps, that he maybe possibly lacked the brainpower to follow said movies?

Kind of reminds me of MovieBob. Can't admit it went over your head.

I watched Brazil twice, and I still think it went a little over my head, but at the same time, I think I was enjoying myself too much to really pay attention. By the time I'm done giggling at the scene where the SWAT team leaves a family with a bill for arresting the husband, it's already moved on.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

and I still think it went a little over my head,

It's just 1984 with lol Terry Gilliam
I mean, that's a great proposition and mostly delivered, but that's really all it is

 

[变性黑鬼]

It's just 1984 with lol Terry Gilliam
I mean, that's a great proposition and mostly delivered, but that's really all it is

No way! 1984 is a completely unrecoverable Commie dystopia. Brazil is way more capitalist. There is nothing in 1984 that resembles this:

 

[Shamefur Dispray]

Ebert on The Thing:

These days I don't think it's too much hyperbole to say it's seen as one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Ebert was a hack.

Funnily enough he ended up looking far more horrific than anything that Carpenter could dream up.

That review still pisses me off to this day, mother fucker acts like there was no point to the body horror.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

That review still pisses me off to this day, mother fucker acts like there was no point to the body horror.

body horror _was_ the point
that's like watching a Jackie Chan movie and wondering what's the point of the acrobatic kung fu

 

[Waifu Days]

Hmm... he also didn't like The Usual Suspects because he'd "seen too many movies that day" and his brain hurty.

This is the main flaw of most critics, they watch too many movies and all at once. Ebert was big into meta criticism, when it was useful to him. A good example is his complaint that cars often ran into fruit carts/stands during chase scenes. He would pan entire movies after seeing it a few times, usually on the same day. Is fruit flying in the air that great of a sin. Are warehouses filled with empty boxes during fight scene enough to discredit a film. If Roger saw it in the last film he watched, apparently yes . . .

 

[Fluoxetine Man]

Someone should have showed him Violence Jack.

Don't forget Angel Cop!

 

[Kulee Baba]

I love Ebert's review of Straw Dogs, he gave it 2 Stars. Oh and I love when critics spoil movies in their review, fucking cunt hence I'll put it in a spoiler tag.

Peckinpah was asking us not to kid ourselves, I thought. But now he comes along with "Straw Dogs," a major disappointment in which Peckinpah's theories about violence seem to have regressed to a sort of 19th-Century mixture of Kipling and machismo.

What conclusions are we supposed to draw? That Hoffman achieved defeat in victory? That Peckinpah believes in the concept of a Just War? That drink drives men to the grave?

The most offensive thing about the movie is its hypocrisy; it is totally committed to the pornography of violence, but lays on the moral outrage with a shovel. The perfect criticism of "Straw Dogs" already has been made. It is "The Wild Bunch."

Yeah that hypocrisy is the appeal and why we've heavily gravitated toward violent films for decades! Straw Dogs is one of the important films ever made. What Cormac McCarthy ignited in the realm of literature Peckinpah did decades before with The Wild Bunch. Roger Ebert was a basic bitch critic in the 70s as OP noted when discussing his scathing review of Clockwork Orange. But seriously fuck Roger Ebert, for whatever reason you can watch Straw Dogs in what appears to be its full entirety so if you haven't watch this damn movie. It will disgust you, it is a dark film. But it's a film you'll never forget and Peckinpah direction is lauded for a damn good reason.

EDIT: I was wondering about the forgettable remake of Straw Dogs in 2011 and I laughed at this.

Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times had reviewed the original version back in 1971.[16] He gave the 2011 film 3 out of a possible 4 stars, and states "This new version of Straw Dogs is a reasonably close adaptation 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 tells the same story. It is every bit as violent. I found it visceral, disturbing and well-made", and said he preferred it to the original.[17]

What a fucking idiot Ebert really was. And him saying this cheap version is GOOD while the original movie is OFFENSIVE really proved that Roger was hypocrite ALL ALONG.

 

[Lone Outsider]

Looking at Roger Ebert and his reviews I find him to be a mediocre critic that allowed his own biases to affect his judgement. Critics are meant to be as objective as possible and that idiot clearly can't keep his woke opinions out of his reviews which is why he's such a faggot, not do mention he got faggot lips as well. Any critic that can't give an objective and sincere review as well as trying to learn and understand the movie (or any kind of media) doesn't deserve to be one.

 

[Abowaffen]

Ebert chimped out whenever a black actor was cast as a villain. He called Conan the Barbarian nazi propaganda for example.

 

[Fag Albert]

Ebert chimped out whenever a black actor was cast as a villain. He called Conan the Barbarian nazi propaganda for example.

Its true though didnt you see how much arnold smiled when he got to scream '1488' and killed thulsa dooms with his own nosebone?

 

[pururun]

I think it's been well shown in this thread that ol' Roger was a classic lib who got squirrely when anything hinted at being slightly right-wing. He called Dirty Harry fascist along with getting some of the most iconic scenes wrong (saying he threw his badge into a gravel pit instead of a river is a big one). I think one of the biggest cases of Ebert whining though was when he reviewed Dice Rules, which is just him being mad that the Dice Man made fun of minorities and calling the crowd neo-nazis.

In Illinois Ebert is regarded as a hometown hero, and I'd be lying if I said he didn't influence a lot of my movie viewing, but as time goes on and I've matured in my own thoughts I've seen just how flawed his thinking was. Another big part is his writings on people like Ozu and Miyazaki are filled with Exoticism regarding Japan (admittedly Miyazaki has fueled this on his own quite a bit too). If you listened to Roger you'd think there was some secret Japanese magic incomprehensible to Westerners, and the whole affair belittles Japanese creators, crediting their efforts to some cultural force rather than pure filmmaking skill.

 

[ZMOT]

If you listened to Roger you'd think there was some secret Japanese magic incomprehensible to Westerners, and the whole affair belittles Japanese creators, crediting their efforts to some cultural force rather than pure filmmaking skill.

there is, but it's not secret. they just do things different because they're japanese (or eastern). so on the rare occasion some of those works make it across the pond they are perceived as something special. or in a food analogy asians eat a fuckload of rice, it's nothing special, but give some african bushmen some rice and it will be super exotic.

the problem is you'd expect a "critic" to know enough how this shit works on a fundamental level to understand that and know the difference, basically all the "tradecraft" involved. otherwise he's a shit critic who doesn't know what he's talking about...