Roger Ebert

Elijah Wood and Ant Timpson on the Childlike Charms of Bookworm
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Looking back at their last collaboration, 2019's bloody cult horror hit "Come to Daddy," you'd be surprised to see New Zealand writer-director Ant Timpson and actor-producer Elijah Wood turn their attention to a charming family-adventure flick. But "Bookworm," which just premiered as...
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Find Me Falling
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When many of us think of vacationing on the Mediterranean, the first things that come to mind might be the gorgeous blue-green crystalline waters, the picturesque villages anchored on the shoreline, and the many variations of seafood fare available within...
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Scala!!!
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Jane Giles and Ali Catterall's documentary "Scala!!!" is about a legendary, notorious, hugely influential and long-gone London theater. But it'll appeal to anyone whose formative moviegoing years were defined by eccentric, usually urban or college-town cinemas that programmed whatever the folks who ran...
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Seven Samurai Continues Its Ride Through Cinema’s Past and Future
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Mounted horses bifurcate the hazy horizon, armed silhouettes in furious charge dash towards a village beneath them; in seconds, we see above and below, the predators and their prey, a telephoto lens collapsing space to signal their invasion. Take this...
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Crossing
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“Istanbul is a place…where people come to disappear.” This is the sad conclusion arrived at by late in this moving film by one of its principal characters, Lia, a stern-faced older woman who has crossed over into the Turkish capital...
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Lady in the Lake
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Within the first two minutes of Apple TV+’s “Lady in the Lake,” we learn that one of the series protagonists is dead. We watch as Cleopatra “Cleo” Johnson (Moses Ingram) is flung from the shoulders of an unnamed man into...
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Oddity
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"Caveat," Damian Mc Carthy’s directorial debut, was unnerving in the extreme. So, too, is his follow-up, "Oddity". "Oddity" is, if anything, even more unsettling. In "Caveat," Mc Carthy created a creeping sense of dread and outright terror, sometimes from merely...
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Great Absence
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Kei Chika-ura’s “Great Absence” is obviously a personal piece, the kind of drama in which one can sense a connection to the subject matter in the subtlety with which it’s handled. Anyone who has dealt with the deterioration of a...
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Skywalkers: A Love Story
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In the mode (but not the spirit) of documentaries like “Man on Wire,” “Free Solo,” and “Fire of Love,” “Skywalkers: A Love Story” is less about persistence, curiosity, and daring than it is about two careless adrenaline junkies taking ridiculous...
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Hollywoodgate
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When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, you couldn’t avoid the international coverage of the chaos around that major event, one that ceded control of the country back to the Taliban. When the final plane had left...
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