Roger Ebert

Part of the Solution: Matthew Modine on Acting, Empathy, and Hard Miles
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Matthew Modine has been acting in movies for over 40 years. He started out in the '80s and '90s in a string of memorable films, including "Vision Quest," Alan Parker's "Birdy" (opposite another talented unknown named Nicolas Cage), Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket," and...
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The Imperiled Women of Alex Garland’s Films
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It’s hard to think of a contemporary mainstream male filmmaker who consistently writes better female characters than Alex Garland. Before his directorial career began, he primarily focused on stories about men: his novel The Beach (which was adapted for the...
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The Jinx – Part Two Continues One of the Most Fascinating True Crime Sagas of All Time
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“What made you talk to them?” “Still kinda putting that together in my own mind.” That really is the impossible question at the center of HBO’s wildly influential “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst,” isn’t it? Why...
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Introducing Ebertfest 25’s Film Critics and Scholars
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For the past twenty-five years, Chaz Ebert and the College of Media at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have hosted the Ebertfest Film Festival at the Virginia Theatre in Champaign, Illinois. Roger Ebert was the first Film Critic to win a...
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Hard Miles
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The fact-based “Hard Miles” begins with a failure. Social worker Greg Townsend (Matthew Modine) urges a judge to allow the resident of a facility for teenage boys who have been in trouble to allow him to stay there, even though...
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It’s OK For Movies to Just End
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At the end of "The Beekeeper," an amazing thing happens: they fade to black and roll the credits. I saw the film earlier this year (it's on home video now and worth $5) and was slightly flummoxed. Written and directed by David...
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The Overlook Film Festival Highlights, Part 2: The Hands of Orlac, Kill Your Lover, Dead Mail, Red Rooms
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“The Hands of Orlac,” a twisty and lurid 1924 Austrian psychodrama, was the last movie I saw in New Orleans at the Overlook Film Festival. The four day-long festival’s revival of the century-old silent movie, about a celebrated pianist who...
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Why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Remains Unforgettable
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Despite its gently bummed-out vibe, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is a sneakily powerful film. It’s so affecting, in fact, that I get a little sad just thinking about the story and characters. Even though I saw "Eternal Sunshine"...
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A New Skin: Losing Control of Your Body in the 2020s
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If the 2020s were going to be any film subgenre, they would be body horror. It’s a genre preoccupied with testing the limits, pleasures, and possibilities of the flesh. It also has a streak of fear under the radical physical...
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The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
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Just when you think they’ve run out of real-life World War II stories to turn into blockbuster movies than some documents get declassified, inspiring or at least suggesting new sagas of heroism. This new movie about a small mission of...
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