Not movies and not a traditional critic format, but I think Alan Sepinwall’s blog posts are a great companion piece to the TV shows he writes about.
BTW, for trivia buffs - Roger’s last film review was…
My new sig.
Not quite. While “The Host” was the last review published while Roger was alive, his editor says he had already filed three more. The last review he *wrote *was for the upcoming Terence Malick film “To The Wonder”.
Moving over to CS.
Why is “accent” in quotes? Matthew Buck has that accent.
As pointed out already, it isn’t his final review. That will be printed tomorrow.
So “Crazy Morning DJ” is a valid accent now? Seriously, I started watching one of those reviews and turned it off thinking he was doing a fake voice to mock an annoying character something in the movie. Fired up the next one, and there is was again, the annoying, exaggerated sing-song voice. Could not make it past the minute mark before turning it off.
And here is that review. It’s nice that his last review was of a film he liked, but nothing beat his zero-star reviews.
I guess I’ll wait. The website makes me register to see it.
I’m not his advocate, but he is a pretty good reviewer actually. And his voice is normal.
My days of not taking him seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
Out of curiosity, where are you finding movie reviewers who don’t publish until after opening day? Hell, in this day and age, most of the major critics are itching to publish their reviews as soon as they’ve seen the movie (usually 3-10 days before it opens, except for the trade and long-lead critics) but have to deal with studio embargoes asking that they not publish until opening day.
While I think the days of every newspaper/magazine/web site having their own staff critics is waning, more people are probably getting paid (though not necessarily as a sole/primary source of income) to have opinions on movies than ever.
When it comes to finding a “next Roger Ebert” the difficulty is not in just finding one who writes as well as Ebert usually did or with whom you agree often enough (or disagree often enough) that he is a reliable guide to what you’ll like.
The big difficulty is finding a critic/reviewer who covers as much territory as he did. Most critics will do a couple reviews a week, Ebert would do a half dozen. They’ll take a leave of absence to write a book for three months. Ebert would just get books out while still reviewing.
I’ll admit that as much as I admired Ebert, his habit of getting plot points wrong always bothered me. Then when I had a gig doing movie reviews (very niche area) I often wondered if he did it just to ensure feedback. Nothing got me more email and comments than when I made a mistake, and often, since they were writing to me anyway the person would also say something actually interesting.
In that video his voice is more or less normal with just barely a hint of the randomly drawn-out vowels and alternating high-low pitched syllables that appear to be his trademark in the newer ones. I would be willing to believe that he is a good reviewer, but his schtick gets in the way. My initial reaction is to lump him into the group of reviewers such as “super-fast-talking British guy” and “super-slow-talking serial killer guy”* who believe that people watch their reviews for the method as much as the message.
- I cannot recall their names, but if you have seen their reviews, you would know immediately who I am referencing.
Well, as has been said, I’m not sure there is a “next Ebert”. But I do find the Red Letter Media guys compelling as film reviewers in a similar way that I did when I discovered Roger Ebert years ago.
I’ve had heard many people form many parts of the UK speak. None sound like him. If that is the was people from Swindon speak, I will never go there.
That’s the problem in a nutshell. For the great majority of movies I’m likely to see that came out over the past 40+ years, when I go to IMDB there’s going to be a link to Ebert’s review. Heck, he reviewed so many classics as well that a sizable number of movies I’ll see from any period will have been reviewed by Ebert.
The point was not whether I agreed or disagreed with him. If you read him long enough over a variety of films, you’d learn his style and could tell which movies he was lukewarm on that you might still really like. That was invaluable.
I don’t know anyone who has that kind of presence. I’d like A.O. Scott at The New York Times to fill that gap (he’s a great writer, and I’m actually probably more in synch with his tastes than with Ebert’s), but he just doesn’t review enough films. Every time there’s a new movie out and I want to see what the NYT critic thought I cross my fingers and hope that he wrote the review; too often I’m disappointed.
Yeah, sad to say but Rotten Tomatoes will probably do the best job of filling the void.
I realize he’s not for everyone, but for those with a primary taste for B and C grade foreign action movies and horror films, the reviewer vern is funny and insightful as hell. In addition to writing a really hilarious book about Steven Seagal, he also manages to review big-budget blockbusters and a surprising number of classics. He just posted a nice Ebert shout-out too.
Just back in town after a couple weeks away. But thanks. AO Scott sounds familiar. He may be the one Ebert mentioned.
One other note is that in addition to Roger Ebert, the great American Japanese-film expert Donald Ritchie died this year too. In Tokyo. I have a thread on him somewhere here. The film world has really lost a couple of giants.
I was going to say the same thing, good call. I also like the way James Berardinelli writes, his reviews are pretty accurate IMHO and he seems to know how a good film should be put together.
They’re still managing to cobble together new Ebert reviews, as in this former blog post for At Any Price made at the time of last year’s Toronto Film Festival.
Well, I think we can write off Roger Ebert’s website. The new editor is some clown named Matt Zoller Seitz, who has given After Earth 3-1/2 out of four stars.