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A Good Day to Die Hard (R)
by Richard Roeper
According to the "Die Hard" wiki, John McClane has killed a total of 58 people in the first four "Die Hard" films.
That number seems low, but let's go with it.
Beautiful Creatures (PG-13)
by Richard RoeperWith "Beautiful Creatures," we continue the seemingly inevitable march toward a cinematic America with a population 50 percent human, 50 percent "other," including but not limited to superheroes, mutants, vampires, zombies, werewolves, mummies, fairies, angels, witches, ghosts, demons and the undefined undead.
Safe Haven (PG-13)
by Richard RoeperIf it can be said movies have personalities, I give you three words to sum up the basic core identity of "Safe Haven": Bat. Bleep. Crazy. This film is nuts. Not in a "wacky comedy" or "outrageous adventure" or "insanely effective romance" kind of way.
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (R)
by Roger EbertA film is a terrible thing to waste. For Roman Coppola to waste one on "A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III" is a sad sight to behold. I'll go further. For Charlie Sheen to waste a role in it is also a great pity. I stop not: For Bill Murray to occupy his time in this dreck sandwich is a calamity. Of Charlie Sheen, we've seen more than enough, at least until he gets his act together. But there's a sad shortage of Bill Murray performances, and his work here is telephoned in as if Thomas Alva Edison had never been born.
Identity Thief (R)
by Richard RoeperIt'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 by a speeding car, tumbles over the roof, lands with a cringe-inducing thud on the highway — and suffers nary a scratch or even a hairline fracture. The stuff of cartoons.
Monsieur Hire (PG-13) (1989)
Patrice Leconte's "Monsieur Hire" is a tragedy about loneliness and erotomania, told about two solitary people who have nothing else in common. It involves a murder, and the opening shot is of a corpse. Monsieur Hire is a scrawny, balding middle-aged tailor who lives by himself. Alice is a beautiful, tender-hearted 22-year-old blonde who lives alone across the courtyard from Hire in the same apartment building.
ebert's dvd commentaries
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Back in ancient days of rampant ignorance and sexist effrontery, a TV commercial for a product now forgotten depicted a happy married couple whose cheer seemed guaranteed by the woman's subservience to the man. At the end of the ad he uttered a phrase that entered, to the dismay of millions, the iconography of the time: "My wife -- I think I'll keep her."
The first Chicago bar I drank in was the Old Town Ale House. That bar was destroyed by fire in the 1960s, the customers hosed off, and the Ale House moved directly across the street to its present location, where it has been named Chicago's Best Dive Bar by the Chicago Tribune.
This year's Outguess Ebert contest seems a little like shooting fish in a barrel. For the first time in many a year, maybe ever, I think I've guessed every one correctly. A few years ago, I came across an article about the newly identified psychological concept of Elevation. Scientists claim it is as real as love or fear. It describes a state in which we feel unreasonable joy; you know, like when you sit quiet and still and tingles run up and down your back, and you think things can never get any better.
I believe it was the writer W. G. Sebald who said: "Men and animals regard one another across a gulf of mutual incomprehension." No animal seems to comprehend us better than the dog. For that matter, I comprehend them more than any other. Like the Nicolas Cage character in Herzog's "Bad Lieutenant," I have no idea what an iguana is thinking. Does an iguana?
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Another brawl in the square
Another stink in the air!
Was there a witness to this?
Well, let him speak to Javert!-- Javert, a character in the musical "Les Misérables" I was an eyewitness to "Les Misérables." After repeated exposure to that dreadful theatrical trailer-cum-featurette about how the singing is all done live on camera! -- It's live! It's Live! IT'S LIVE! -- I had no intention of seeing Tom "The King's Speech" Hooper's film version of the 1980s stage musical. But when it finally came out, some of the reviews were so bad that part of me wanted to see what the stink was all about. Still, I'm not a masochist; I don't enjoy going to movies I know I'm probably predisposed to dislike just so I can dump on them. On the other hand, there's nothing better than having your low expectations upended. I did enjoy that Susan Boyle YouTube video back in 2009, but that was all I knew about the musical. I remained curious but skeptical. And then ...
Near the end of her remarkable Golden Globes speech, a monologue overflowing with teasing language and sly pop-culture references, actor-director Jodie Foster mentioned a dog whistle. Although she sometimes seemed to be speaking extemporaneously, while also incorporating pre-crafted phrases designed to say exactly what she intended to say (and, equally important, what she had no intention of saying), I thought the message, addressed primarily to those who have pressured her to publicly acknowledge her lesbianism for so many years, was clear and unambiguous -- except for the parts she deliberately wanted to leave ambiguous. And it's pretty much the same message she's been repeating since she was in college:
Opening Shot Project Index
• Seongyong Cho in South KoreaCall it a "torture film" if you want, but the South Korean film "National Security" (2012) darkly resonates with raw disturbing power. The movie itself is a fiction, but the terrible historical fact revealed through that fiction gave me a memorably uncomfortable experience at the screening room last November. We all knew what was depicted in the movie actually happened many times during that dark era in South Korean history, and the movie deeply disturbed us with its unflinching observation of authorized force brutally and mercilessly stomping on basic human rights.
• Gerardo Valero in Mexico CityJan de Bont's "Speed 2: Cruise Control" is one of the most maligned movies of all time, earning the wrath of critics and audiences alike. It has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of two percent and an average IMDB grade of 3.5--levels usually reserved for such monstrosities as The Village People's "Can't Stop the Music" (8/ 3.7) and the insult to all things good and decent that is Adam Sandler's "That's my Boy" (21/ 5.5). Judging from its box office performance, more people hated "Speed 2" than actually saw it. Yet I have to admit that after watching it on its opening weekend in 1997, I left the theater more than happy and was not surprised by the thumbs-ups it received from Siskel & Ebert. Then all hell broke loose. When I dis a movie a friend likes, all he has to do is bring up "Speed 2."
• Grace Wang in TorontoLust. Caution. Lust, Caution. Lust...Caution. The English name of Ang Lee's 2007 film consists of two words. Taken separately, they stand alone as individual concepts: Lust, a primal, human urge; Caution, an evolved, societal tool. Put them side-by-side, and contrast emerges: primal versus evolved, individual versus society, incongruent. Poke a little hole in the membrane that separates the two, and dynamics shift. Lust surges in the face of Caution. Caution stares right back, coolly, unflinching.
• Seongyong Cho in South KoreaYou'll probably despise the main characters of the coldly lavish new South Korean film "The Taste of Money" (2012). I was about to describe them as 1% people, but I found a better expression for these shallow and hateful people in the local movie ads: "the 0.01% people." They're a plutocratic family at the very top of South Korean society. They're running a big conglomerate which seems to be one of the most influential ones in South Korea, like Samsung and LG (which are also family business at their core). They can buy anything and do anything; their wealth and the power which comes with the territory. In their view, they deserve to be called VVIPs, or very, very important people.
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