I have always taken Ebert’s reviews with a grain of salt simply because he likes movies so much more than I do. In fact, I really can’t say I like movies at all. I see a few movies per year, and generally feel like it was time wasted.
His reviews, however, are so well done that I read them just for the pleasure of enjoying the writing. I would rather read a hundred Ebert reviews than sit through one movie. In my opinion, he’s a national treasure. When he dies - and I don’t know how much time he’s got left - we will have lost a great modern essayist and critic.
Yup. Word for word, this is exactly the way I feel.
My old thread about how weird I found Ebert’s reviews to be. I like the way that lots of his fans excuse his crappy reviews because he is moribund yet he crappily reviews on.
Exactly this. I’d much rather read an intelligent, well-reasoned opinion that I happen to disagree with than get a simple “thumbs-up!” that I can rely upon without fail. Ebert’s reviews are interesting, even educational, and often put me on to other films, books, or music that I’ll find interesting. I wish the man a long life, good health and a lengthy career.
Yeah, in the last couple years he’s gone downhill a bit but still better than most. Case in point is indeed Synecdoche, New York. But he wasn’t alone. I have no idea why anyone could enjoy that movie, let alone praise it.
One of my big problems with him is that he “curves” his reviews by genre. A 2nd rate movie gets a bump if it’s better than others in it’s genre and delivers what it’s supposed to. So a lot of action/kids movies are better rated than they should be. This might explain his review of Zookeeper.
Which is why I am amazed by his poor review of the newest Transformers film. Yes, it has no plot, bad acting and nonsensical protracted fight scenes. But that is what the series is supposed to deliver and it does. So in that way it is “good”.
If you’re going to grade on a curve, be consistent.
I routinely ignore the star rating, and a lot of the beginning of his reviews. I get to the “meat” and he usually provides enough info that I can tell whether I might like it or not.
Oftentimes I’ve read reviews of his that are basically entirely negative but he gives ~3 stars to the films.
As for his review of Larry Crowne and audience approval. It’s a very predictable, generic, bland film. Some people like that kind of stuff. Witness Everybody Loves Raymond. If that is what you like, don’t expect someone who sees a hundred films a year to have the same tastes. Given the Rotten Tomatoes score and the box office performance, the number of people who can be expected to like it is relatively small. So complaints about his, or other people’s, reviews won’t stand up.
Most movies are predictable. Most movies are generic. One person’s bland is another person’s exciting so that aspect is relative.
621 Yahoo Users gave Larry Crowne a B (average) Ebert gave it a C.
I still read him regularly, and in spite of everything he’s still one of my favorite syndicated writers. Even when I disagree with him I can see where he’s coming from. But he’s been turning into a bit of a crank the last couple of years. Case in point, his review for “The Lovely Bones.”
Now, he was hardly alone in bashing the movie, and even though I liked it I can understand why some people wouldn’t. But I thought he was way off base in his review and seemed to miss the point of the film entirely.
FWIW, I took exactly the same message from the film as him, and he’s over twice my age.
I still like Ebert. Sometimes his reviews have interesting insights, sometimes not; sometimes they’re nuts. They are, however, almost always well-written, entertaining little essays. Bernardinelli is probably a better guide to whether a movie is worth seeing, but he’s a bit bland. There are a raft of reviewers who aren’t really worth paying attention to at all.
To me, Ebert’s reviews have value as minor literature, in the same way as Lester Bangs’s reviews had for rock music. They are only secondarily useful as guides to what movies I should go see.
The general tenor of reviews for a given movie can be quickly gotten from RottenTomatoes. I find that site fairly reliable if I make allowances for biases that seem to be pandemic. For example, extra points seem to be given if a movie is unintelligible but with pretensions to art (as in “Synecdoche, New York,” mentioned above), or if it is a documentary, or if it is in a foreign language. The latter might have some validity, given that an American distributor has to overcome the language barrier and still draw an audience.
I never read Ebert’s reviews with the intention of using his opinion to help me decide which movies to see and which ones to avoid. The vast majority of movies are so cookie cutter and predictable that critics aren’t necessary at all.
Of course Transformers 3 is stupid. I already know that Transformers 4 will be stupid, too…probably significantly worse than part 3. I don’t need a critic to tell me this.
I find it interesting to look up movies from the past and read his reviews of them. Whether I agree with him or not, the man knows film inside and out.
Hmmm. My impression of Yahoo! Movies ratings is a bit different. It seems to me that almost all movies get a rating of B+ or better, and that the only way a movie could get worse than a B is if during the movie, the ushers come out and throw shit at the audience.
Maybe it’s just me.
Make that “worse than a B-”.
Here are some generally panned, recent movies and their Yahoo! user ratings:
Zookeeper: B-
Bad Teacher: B-
Larry Crowne: B
Green Lantern: B+
Hangover 2: B-
Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer: B+
Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs. Evil: B
Priest: B-
Sounds like a bunch of yahoos who liked those that much.
Every speech class, I have a question of the day and last week I asked, “Name your favorite film.”
One of my student’s favorite film of all time is “The A-Team.”
I think my jaw put a dent in the desk when I read that.
I like Ebert - I don’t always agree with him, but I respect where he is coming from. Certain films I know he won’t like, even before it is released, and others I can pretty much guarantee he will like, sight unseen. Still - he can be funny or give some good insight even in reviews I don’t necessarily agree with.
This has been true for a long time. His review of Ronin doesn’t even sound like the same movie that I saw. His insights are sometimes interesting, but his attention to the details is more fleeting than a butterfly in a snowstorm.
I take exception to this; Kaufman doesn’t write movies that pander to the audience (or when they do, as in Adaptation, it does so in a mocking, “Is this what you wanted, Mr. Beeblebrox?” tone), and shouldn’t be judged in terms of purely entertainment value any more than you would grade War and Peace or Catch-22 on the same standard as you would a Harry Potter novel. This doesn’t mean that you have to like his film, and I would be the first to agree that Synechoche, New York is decidedly an unlikable and depressing film, but that doesn’t detract from the skill, talent, and unvarnished self-reflection it takes to make such a movie.
Stranger
This. Exactly this. Ebert’s reviews are generally much more fun than the movies he covers.
I have never read a movie review for the purpose of deciding whether to see a movie. I read movie reviews for the insight that the reviewer offers in interpreting the movie from his or her point of view.
Yeah, same here. Ebert is one of those guys I like reading because he is a good writer. I don’t really need to get my opinion of a film from someone else - I’ll just see it myself. A reviewer might make the difference between a cinema visit and a DVD purchase/rental though, but they are a select bunch - Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian and Mark Kermode at the BBC
Ebert has repeatedly made clear that his goal in a review is not simply to tell people whether it’s good or bad, but to explain WHY. That way, people know enough to say, “Well Ebert may not have liked it, but it sounds like exactly the kind of movie I’d enjoy.” So a successful Ebert review is not one that matches your perception of a movie; it’s one that gives you enough information to make a decision.
That said, I have seen him get confused about key plot points (his review of “Unknown” with Liam Neeson was a disaster) and wander off on tangents. As a reviewer, he’s no longer at the top of his game. He’s still a fascinating writer and thinker.
That ship has sailed. A typical Ebert review nowadays is just him going off on some ridiculous diatribe about god knows what. Case in point, his Battle Los Angeles review:
A previous scene established that the aliens are an alien/machine with the gun surgically welded to their hands. There’s no “seem to be”, it’s shown on screen in a lengthy scene.
Again, Aaron Eckhart’s past is fleshed out in an extended scene towards the end of the movie. The fact that Ebert missed it means he zoned out during a good 10-15 minutes of the movie. At least.
It astounds me that a critic of Ebert’s former renown missed that Battle LA is just an Iraq War movie with aliens. And that the editing style deliberately aped The Hurt Locker and other, similar movies.
That’s just crass, even for Ebert.
Holy fuck! I just read that Unknown review. The only way Ebert missed that many plot points is if he fell asleep after the first half hour.