Roger Ebert

Cannes 2024: Marcello Mio, Parthenope, Elementary
||
Chiara Mastroianni really does resemble her dad. Near the beginning of Christophe Honoré's "Marcello Mio," she has a dream in which she looks in the mirror and sees her famous father, Marcello Mastroianni, staring back. Telling her equally famous mother,...
continue reading
Fantastic Start to Fourth Season of Evil Maintains Creepy Quality
||
“Doesn’t it seem like these assignments are getting weirder?” There’s no program on television more wonderfully weird than “Evil.” Even the journey of this show’s broadcast has been incredibly weird: It started on CBS, moved to Paramount+, recently dropped two...
continue reading
West Side Oratory: Judas and the Black Messiah
||
As I type this essay, students across the country are encamped in university quads. Protesting American Imperialism, by way of protesting their universities’ investments in war profiteers. They are most vocal about the final obliterations of Gaza. As a longtime...
continue reading
Cannes 2024 Video #4: Jason Gorber on Canada’s Films
||
The Cannes Film Festival is underway, and Chaz Ebert is on the ground to report on every development. In this video, Canadian correspondent Jason Gorber briefly mentions the Canadian films highlighting the festival this year before discussing "Universal Language" and "Black Dog"...
continue reading
Cannes 2024: Anora, Limonov, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
||
The films of Sean Baker ("The Florida Project," "Red Rocket") invariably focus on people who live on the margins. If there's a difference in "Anora," his latest feature, it's that the protagonist is almost immediately put on a fast track...
continue reading
The Legacy of David Bordwell; or, The Memorial Service as Network Narrative
||
The memorial for film scholar David Bordwell was as funny, erudite, and thorough as the master’s own writing on cinema. Organized by his widow and regular writing partner Kristin Thompson, it was also an example of a type of storytelling...
continue reading
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 Wastes Its Potential
||
It’s okay for stories to end, and when I rolled credits on 2017's “Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice,” I thought Ninja Theory, its developer, understood that as well. Senua, a woman who hears voices and was thought cursed by those around her,...
continue reading
Living Through Words: Ethan Hawke on His Career, Poetry, and Wildcat
||
By-the-books biopics are a dime a dozen and often result in a shallow portrait of their subject. But every once in a while you'll get a filmmaker whose film's unconventional form perfectly aligns with the singular talent at its heart....
continue reading
STAX: Soulsville, USA
||
"STAX: Soulsville USA" is a four-part, four-hour series about the legendary Memphis soul music label's rise and fall, as well as its impact on American culture and history.  The company was founded in 1957 by two white Memphis music fans, Jim Stewart (a country fiddle...
continue reading
Cannes 2024: The Apprentice, The Shrouds
||
Ali Abbasi's "The Apprentice," a portrait of the friendship between Donald Trump and Roy Cohn, leaves little doubt about who is top dog. The film is so thoroughly owned by Jeremy Strong, who plays Cohn, that the ostensibly headline-grabbing notion...
continue reading