Do you still trust Ebert?

Cafe Society
41

He isn’t bad at all, he’s quite knowledgeable and a more than competent writer. His positive reviews give a good indication of what works in the movies he recommends.

It’s the negative reviews that rub me the wrong way. There’s no middle ground, he either likes a movie or he hates it, and when he hates a movie, which is quite often, he goes to great lengths to criticize every element of the movie and doesn’t hesitate to take nasty personal shots at the people involved in making it. Imagine the lambasting Gigli has taken from the critics being directed at every movie a critic dislikes and you’ll understand what I mean.

But that’s just his style, which I could forgive, though it would be enough for me not to read him. He does however regularly commit a cardinal sin for movie critics. He regularly includes major spoilers for movies he dislikes, reasoning that since the movie isn’t worth seeing, there’s no need to preserve its surprises–he’s doing you a favor by spoiling it for you.

I hadn’t read him in years, so I checked some recent reviews to see if this applies. He gives away spoilers in Identity (and calls people for whom it works “fools”), 28 Days Later, and Owning Mahowny, and is still regularly taking personal shots; he manages to take a shot at Ben Affleck in a review for a movie Affleck doesn’t even appear in.

Unless, of course, you happen to like most of the movies on that list, in which case he’d be a very reliable barometer for which mainstream movies are worth seeing. I’ve seen the bolded movies and liked all of them. Your and his tastes obviously don’t connect, which makes him a poor source of reccomendations for you, but for people whose tastes coincide enough and who like his style, he is a critic worth considering.

42

I trust him less and less. I have noticed the tendancy to go easy on movies with babes Thumbs up for Tomb Raider 2 as well as the mild pan for “noble failure” of Gigli, and saying it was an original take on male/female relationships? So he totally forgot Affleck was in Chasing Amy?

He has tipped me off to some good offbeat or obscure movies over the years like City of Lost Children. But he has praised crap like Heist, and going along with his factual errors, even misremembered a scene and dialogue from the film when using it as an example for his Movie Answer Man segment when talking about why you can’t explain why something is funny. He said Danny DeVito’s line, “Everybody likes money, that’s why they call it money,” was said during a scene with an exchange between DeVito and Gene Hackman. It really happened while DeVito was on the phone with a whole other character (unseen) and they were talking about Hackman.

43

OMG. I refreshed my memory with some Ebert “wit” and read his review of the horrible (IMHO) Hollywood Homicide (http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-hollywood13f.html)

Now, I dislike him even more. I’m sorry if this reply of mine really is suited better in the Pit, but WHAT’S WRONG WITH HIM? His writing is below that of a highschool-kid, his comments are stupid, he gives away too much of the plot, remembers names and facts incorrectly; e.g.

WTF? Doesn’t he see his error? A hooker named “Ferre Salesclerk”? Her name is Cleo ffs. It’s only mentioned a couple of hundred times in the movie. “Ferre Salesclerk” is a small role played by some unknown male actor, when they are seen in a GF store towards the end of the movie.

Oh, and some more EEG scans are needed for activity in Ebert’s brain, because of comments like this:

Aaaaah. Enough said. Sorry if I upset someone.

44

What I trust Ebert to be is thoughtful and thorough in his examination of a movie, and so I do indeed trust him. I don’t expect his tastes to equal mine, just as I don’t expect that of anyone else.

He has an obvious love of movies coupled with a deep knowledge of movie history, and it really shows in his work.

When I see a movie that has a high rating from him, I’m comfortable that there is something worthy about the movie, and that while it may not be the best flick I’ve ever seen, it’s quite likely that it won’t be amongst the worst.

45

Ebert’s the naughty little boy in the schoolhouse sitting in the corner with the dunce cap on. But he explains his actions so well that teacher gives him another chance.

He gives ECKS VS. SEVER half a star for being stupid and mindless and then turns around and gives Vin Diesel’s XXX three and a half stars. Clearly, the man is disturbed.

My rule of thumb is, remove one star for every movie he rates. And remove two stars for every movie with a hot chick in the lead. Case in point: FEMME FATALE he gives four stars? Please. Well, he IS a Russ Meyer protege, after all.

46

Whaaa? I mentioned Return To Oz but the poster you quoted didn’t.

Did you mean, you don’t like O Brother, so you could see Ebert not liking it, and you liked RTO, so you can’t understand Ebert not liking it? Or, did you mean that you could understand OBWAT being one of MY favorite films, but can’t understand why RTO would be?

If it’s the first option, O Brother is an excellent film, a brilliant film, an instant classic, though not recognized as such. Yet.

If it’s the second option, Return To Oz is an excellent film, a brilliant film, an instant classic, though not recognized as such. Yet. It has some very minor flaws, but every movie, even the very best, does. What it does right could fill up several pages.

Ebert’s hatred of RTO is all the more dismaying because he didn’t review the actual film. He reviewed it as a sequel to The Wizard of Oz, and it is not. It is a faithful adaptation of the Baum books, which The Wizard of Oz was NOT. The Wizard of Oz may be a beloved classic, loved more for nostalgia’s sake than anything else, I suspect, but Baum readers know which is the better representation of his tone and stories, and appreciate that. RTO got trashed mainly because it’s “dark” and “depressing” and didn’t have cutesy characters and hummable songs. Hey! Welcome to the haunting, disturbing world of L. Frank Baum’s Oz! Thank you for filming it the way he wrote it, Mr. Murch!

I should say that I do love The Wizard of Oz, and Judy Garland in it. Like most people, I grew up with the movie, watched it on TV every year. It was An Event.

It’s still not very Baum-like, so when Walter Murch came out with Return To Oz, it was magical to me (and yes, I was an adult at the time) and I fell deeply, deeply in love with it on first viewing. YES! This is the way it’s SUPPOSED to be. Fairuza Balk (9 years old at the time) IS Dorothy Gale, to me, because she’s the Dorothy of the books, not the too-old and slicked-up Hollywood version.

Anyway, I keep hoping that one day Ebert will give RTO another chance, and judge it without all the baggage that HE (and all the other reviewers) unfairly heaped on it.

47

Has anyone been on one of Ebert’s movie-themed cruises? Just wondering what they’re like?

48

I agree with those who call Ebert a good writer, and I generally enjoy his reviews.

I don’t exactly “trust” him, but his reviews usually indicate why he likes or dislikes a movie well enough that I can tell if I would like or dislike it. My tastes are not the same as his.

He seems to like certain kinds of films more than they deserve. He liked Tomb Raider 2: The Cradle of Life basically because it had Angelina Jolie in it. The movie actually sucked badly. Ebert likes babe movies and, especially, movies with lesbian scenes in them. He loves depressing movies.

I don’t know if he is right or wrong, just that we often agree but sometimes don’t.

Regards,
Shodan

49

I loved Femme Fatale. Without question, it was De Palma’s best movie in years. The key is, it’s a movie about itself and its genre; it operates by different rules. Anyway, I thought Ebert was spot on.

But he isn’t always, as others have pointed out; he’s a notorious boob man, and can be blinded by a little jiggle. Also, lissener has mentioned in previous threads that, when he lived in Chicago, he would see Ebert leaving the auditorium to refill his snacks (sometimes more than once), and would occasionally miss critical plot points as a result; supposedly there was at least one review in which Ebert panned the movie because he found it confusing due to something he hadn’t been there to see.

Speaking for myself, I never miss a second of the movies I see. I pee beforehand, I get my food, I get settled, and then I don’t move. It’s such a rare event for me to leave the theater for any reason that I actually remember the only time it’s happened in the last ten years: the Touch of Evil re-release a couple of years back, Broadway Market, far left screen; I had a sudden onset of horrible intestinal cramps, suffered it as long as I could, then fled to the bathroom when I just couldn’t stand it any more. Anyway, the point is, when I watch a movie, with vanishingly few exceptions, I watch all of it. Ebert doesn’t, which I definitely consider a failing.

Oh, and thanks, Equipoise, for the praise about my own reviews. I feel bad that the site has languished, but I’ve got a bunch of other stuff in the hopper at the moment.

50

I completely agree with Justin_Bailey re Ebert’s ability to rate horror movies (and to a slightly lesser extent, sci-fi). He shouldn’t even bother, he doesn’t get them at all.

He is, however, fun to read. He has a very easygoing style and his reviews of truly bad movies are very entertaining.

But I’ve long ago accepted that his taste in movies has absolutely nothing to do with mine, and I don’t plan my movie watching schedule around what he says at all.

51

He gave ANACONDA three and a half stars. ANACONDA. Yes, that ANACONDA.

You know, I’m as forgiving as the next guy, but he needs to be sent to the gulag for that one.

52

Among big name critics, I think Ebert is one of the best (certainly better than Newsweek’s David Denby or The Los Angeles Times’ Kenneth Turran), but he tends to give positive reviews to lots of mindless Hollywood crap and often misses the point on avant garde cinema (he brutalized David Lynch’s work for years until Mulholland Drive). The reason why I like him is he’s one of the few critics who appreciates horror movies and reviews them within the context of the genre, sort of what someone else mentioned earlier about him not treating XXX like it was The Hours, plus he gave Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre four stars and named it the 6th best movie of 1990.

Maybe I haven’t read as many Ebert reviews as Justin_Bailey, but I always felt he gave horror a fairer shot than most other mainstream critics. He was one of the first to appreciate and give good reviews to the early films of George Romero, Wes Craven, John McNaughton and Sam Raimi.

I do want to make it clear that I’m talking about Ebert as compared to his stiff blowhard collegues at the New York Times, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, etc. The best movie critics today are at free weekly alternative papers.

53

He must’ve been distracted by JLo’s boobs again.

54

I am surprised that so many people think Ebert can’t review science-fiction movies. I think Ebert does a fine job of reviewing good SF movies, for example, the excellent (and generally underrated) Dark City.

Unfortunately most Hollywood Science Fiction films are mindless action movies about seventy years behind SF in books…

55

I always love how Ebert gives more stars to movies set in Chicago.

Any and all John Hughes movies.

Movies with ‘Borrowed Porsches’ (Risky Business and Ferris Bueller).

The Wachowski Brothers (Matrix et al) are from Chicago and sometimes use Chicago street names.

Ebert may (probably not) consider ‘Stan Makita’ the un-tapped sub-plot of the ‘Waynes World Saga’

Certainly Matthew Broderick’s performance of ‘Danke Shoen’ and ‘Twist and Shout’ on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue (?) triumphe anything he could do on, say NYC’s Broadway?

56

Funny, since he gave a thumbs down to THE UNTOUCHABLES.

It’s official. He needs to be institutionalized.

57

Yeah, he blew the ‘untouchables’ review.

He just gave rave reviews to “Kill Bill” and “The School of Rock”. I haven’t seen Kill Bill yet, but “The School of Rock”, well, rocked.