Movie Reviews
Old friends: Third in Hawke/Delpy series satisfies
Published on Jun 13th, 2013
0 comments By Richard Roeper Early on in Richard Linklater's Before Midnight, we see an extended sequence more daring and in some ways just as thrilling as anything we're likely to experience in any 2013 movie...
Superficial flash: Heist flick offers only illusion of greatness
Published on Jun 6th, 2013
0 comments By Richard Roeper The first few scenes of Now You See Me deliver the promise of the best film about magic since the release of two meticulously crafted and thoroughly entertaining 2006 films: The...
Genre crossing: Third 'Hangover' more action, less laughs
Published on May 30th, 2013
0 comments By Richard Roeper SPOILER ALERT!     I have to tell you about some of the things that happen in The Hangover Part III to tell you what I think about The Hangover Part III, so...
Unspectacular: Latest Star Trek not the best
Published on May 23rd, 2013
0 comments By Richard Roeper Note to hardcore Trekkers and non-Trekkers alike: multiple but mild spoiler alerts just ahead! Trust me, I'm holding back on the big surprises.   At times Star Trek Into...
Commanding laughter: Cohen surprises audiences with a tight regime
Published on May 23rd, 2013
0 comments THE Dictator is funny, in addition to being obscene, disgusting, scatological, vulgar, crude and so on. Having seen Sacha Baron Cohen promoting it on countless talk shows, I feared the movie...
Prose flows: Gatsby's over the top, but book shines through
Published on May 16th, 2013
0 comments By RICHARD ROEPER Given the wretched and sometimes wonderful excesses of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet and Moulin Rouge, not to mention a trailer that gave the impression Luhrmann's interpretation...
Elusive wonder: Director's bold vision gets last Ebert thumbs up
Published on May 9th, 2013
0 comments This was the last movie review Roger Ebert filed. Released less than two years after his The Tree of Life, an epic that began with the dinosaurs and peered into an uncertain future, Terrence Malick's...
Still got it? Redford stars, not quite like old times
Published on May 2nd, 2013
1 comments By Richard Roeper For nearly 50 years, Robert Redford has been on quest to prove he is more than a golden boy matinee idol. Of course, Redford has succeeded in spectacular fashion, starring in such...
The Other Fanning: Elle acts beyond her years
Published on Apr 25th, 2013
0 comments by Richard Roeper Born in 1945 in the shadow of Hiroshima, Ginger and Rosa grow up in a London of weary shortages of food, living space and cheer. Who could have guessed Swinging London and the...
Going beyond: Gosling excels as daredevil
Published on Apr 18th, 2013
0 comments by Richard Roeper We begin the movie by following a tattoo-spangled man as he makes his way through a carnival crowd, arriving in a tent containing a few hundred cheering fans and a globe-shaped...
Hosting aliens: Meyer flick invades
Published on Apr 11th, 2013
0 comments Stephenie Meyer, whose books inspired the Twilight movies, now presents a new way for true love to struggle against itself. In the Twilight world, characters were invited to become vampires to share...
Beautiful 'Road': Kerouac adaptation has charms but does it have soul?
Published on Apr 4th, 2013
0 comments Although Jack Kerouac's On the Road has been praised as a milestone in American literature, this film version brings into question how much of a story it really offers. Kerouac's hero, Sal...
Rejection: Tina Fey's Admission fizzles
Published on Mar 28th, 2013
1 comments by Richard Roeper Has Tiny Fey ever played a character we weren't rooting for? In smart features such as Mean Girls, Baby Mama and Date Night, on the just-completed NBC series 30 Rock, on Saturday...
Incredible Carell: If Michael Scott were a magician
Published on Mar 21st, 2013
0 comments by Richard RoeperWelcome back, Hilarious Jim Carrey. We've missed you.In The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, a predictable but often terrific absurdist comedy, Carrey plays Steve Gray, a long-haired,...
Witch backstory: New 'Oz' offers twist on an old classic
Published on Mar 14th, 2013
0 comments By Richard Roeper You can be a good witch or a bad witch or even a little of both, but a bland witch? Then we'll have to talk. Some of the surprises in Oz the Great and Powerful, the much-...
Between a Rock and a Snitch: Dad saves the day
Published on Mar 4th, 2013
1 comments by Richard Roeper Who would have guessed Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson would deliver the best work of his career playing a guy who squares off against a pack of small-time street thugs — and winds up...
Understated Ultima: Iconic book gets worthy film treatment
Published on Feb 28th, 2013
0 comments Although it was published only in 1972, Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima has achieved the iconic stature as such novels as The Grapes of Wrath and To Kill a Mockingbird. Now comes a...
'Identity' crisis: Bateman, McCarthy can't save this comedy
Published on Feb 20th, 2013
1 comments By Richard Roeper It's really tough to have it both ways.     Let's say you want to do a broad, shtick-filled comedy filled with "Three Stooges humor, e.g., a character is hit head-on...
Deadly medicine: Side Effects exposes darker side of prescription drugs
Published on Feb 13th, 2013
0 comments The music tells us what kind of movie Side Effects is going to be. It coils beneath what seems like a realistic plot and whispers that something haunted and possessed is going on. Imagine music for...
The worst: Big names can't save 'Movie 43'
Published on Jan 31st, 2013
0 comments By Richard Roeper Since 1999 I've been carrying a blue pill in my pocket, holding onto it for the moment when I'd truly need it. The pill, I was told, would instantly erase the memory of any movie...
Wild girls: Chastain goes motherly
Published on Jan 24th, 2013
0 comments by Richard Roeper Very few horror movies would last past the second act if the characters in these films were actually fans of horror movies. Sometime after the first occurrence of Scary Old-Timey...
Beauty in age: 'Amour' charms its audience
Published on Jan 18th, 2013
0 comments "Old age ain't no place for sissies," Bette Davis is said to have said, and the longer age lasts, the less of a sissy you can be. The opening shot of Amour, Michael Haneke's new film, shows...
'Impossible' impact: Tsunami film an Oscar contender
Published on Jan 2nd, 2013
0 comments The tsunami that devastated the Pacific Basin in the winter of 2004 remains one of the worst natural disasters in history, and although I assumed its climax as shown in Clint Eastwood's film ...
Ebert's picks: Tigers, beasts, heroes, and therapists compete early for Hollywood's biggest prizes
Published on Dec 18th, 2012
0 comments With the 2013 Oscarcast moved up to February 24, movie fans are already in a lather over the possible nominees, especially since again this year there can be "up to" 10 finalists in the best picture...
Unlikely duo: Story of two women nominated for 7 indie awards
Published on Dec 17th, 2012
0 comments In another time and another place, Starlet could have inspired a short story by Chekhov or O. Henry — a story about two women, one 22, the other 85, who are linked by one of those accidental plot...
Campus crushing: Radnor's film is delightful escapism
Published on Dec 10th, 2012
0 comments Josh Radnor's Liberal Arts is an almost unreasonable pleasure about a jaded New Yorker who returns to his alma mater in Ohio and finds that his heart would like to stay there. It's the kind of film...
Too much Karenina: New adaptation upstages the tale
Published on Dec 4th, 2012
2 comments Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are two of the most notorious fallen women in literature. Karenina is prepared to lose all the advantages of high society in favor of the man she loves. Bovary...
Life of Pi: Ang Lee films the unfilmable; poetic idealism triumphs
Published on Nov 27th, 2012
1 comments Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" is a miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery. Inspired by a worldwide best-seller that many readers must have assumed was unfilmable, it is a...
Spielberg's Lincoln does not disappoint
Published on Nov 20th, 2012
3 comments I've rarely been more aware than during Steven Spielberg's Lincoln that Abraham Lincoln was a plain-spoken, practical, down-to-earth man from the farmlands of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. He had...
Farewell, stereotypes: Queen movie reveals same-sex desires and class issues
Published on Nov 13th, 2012
0 comments "Farewell, My Queen" begins early in the day of July 14, 1789, at the royal palace of Versailles. It was not yet a date fraught with destiny. In the rat-swarming servants' quarters, a young woman...