A Moving Tribute to a Father Through Movies

Posted on February 5, 2016 at 8:00 am

Jessica Ritchey wrote a touching essay for Rogerebert.com about the movies she watched in the year after her father died, and how watching them helped her to keep him close.

I’ve been published several times by the time I see “Crimson Peak.” I’m starting to feel like real writer at last. It haunts me, though, that so much good news can come with the bad. I can’t share my upturn in fortune with the person I want to most.
But that’s starting to feel like something that can be carried. There’s lots of space to think about this in the watery shadows that flicker over the film’s walls.

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Critics

Movies in 2015 — Best, Worst, and Final Thoughts

Posted on December 30, 2015 at 3:02 pm

A final round-up on the movies of 2015

The best:

Tied For First: “The Big Short” and “Chi-raq,” both all the more ferocious for being as funny and purely entertaining as they are angry
Tied For Second:
“Brooklyn”
“Carol”
“Ex Machina”
“Inside Out”
“Mad Max: Fury Road”
“The Martian”
“Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens”
“Bridge of Spies”

Runners-up: “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Creed,” “Trumbo,’ “Spotlight,” “Son of Saul,” “Mustang,” “The Shaun the Sheep Movie,” “Mustang,” “Girlhood,” “Straight Outta Compton”

A good year for: movies by and about women: “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Miss You Already,” “Chi-Raq,” “Carol,” “Brooklyn,” “Inside Out,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Infinitely Polar Bear,” “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Pitch Perfect 2,” “Suffragette,” “Sisters”

Not such a good year for: romance, comedies, or romantic comedies

Popcorn pleasures: “Furious 7,” “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation,” “Magic Mike: XXL,” “What We Do in the Shadows”

Rogerebert.com Round-Up of 2015’s Best Performances

Posted on December 30, 2015 at 8:00 am

A living legend. A lonely shopgirl. A scientist. A spy. Several assassins. The best performances of 2015 came from various corners of the world, from actors who we expect to see in features like this to ones we had never heard of before 2015. Watching a new crop of young actors rise in some of the year’s best films (and click here for our top ten) can be invigorating, and seeing performers who we thought may have given their last great performance deliver the best work of their career can be breathtaking.

I loved reading through the comments of the rogerebert.com critics on their favorite performances of the year, and I was especially glad to get a chance to write about mine: Teyonah Parris in “Chi-Raq.”

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Chaz Ebert on the Need for Diverse Voices in Film Criticism

Posted on December 29, 2015 at 8:00 am

Chaz Ebert of rogerebert.com writes in The Daily Beast about the importance of more diverse voices in movie criticism — and in those who make movies, too.

Meryl Streep’s use of the word “infuriating” to describe the disproportionate ratio of male to female reviewers on the Rotten Tomatoes is apt.

But the need for diverse voices in film criticism does not suffice with gender. A wide spectrum of voices is critical in challenging the mainstream white male-dominated narrative that drives much of Hollywood and the popular media. Being introduced to diverse critical voices and opinions in the arts not only affects how we see the world but also has a profound influence on how we begin to heal it.

Chaz has been a leader in this effort, and has made particular progress in bringing great women writers to rogerebert.com, including my friends Sheila O’Malley, ReBecca Theodore-Vachon, Jana Monji, Susan Wloszczyna, Olivia Collette, Christy Lemire, and Anath White.

The Atlantic Monthly has an article on the falling percentage of women film critics. The discussion of how women were originally advantaged and then materially disadvantaged in this field is fascinating. Thelma Adams also writes about the problem of too few female movie critics for Variety.

According to the Gender at the Movies study of top critics on Rotten Tomatoes, men account for 91% of those writing for movie/entertainment magazines and websites such as Entertainment Weekly; 90% of those writing for trade publications and websites; 80% of critics writing for general interest magazines and sites such as Time and Salon; 72% of those writing for newspaper sites; and 70% of critics writing for radio outlets and sites such as NPR.

Ann Hornaday on Watching Ultra-Violence

Posted on December 28, 2015 at 3:58 pm

Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday has a thoughtful piece about the violence in two end-of-the-year western-style frontier stories, “The Revenant,” from the director of last year’s Best Picture “Birdman,” Alejandro González Iñárritu and Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.”

Both “The Hateful Eight” and “The Revenant,” which arrive in theaters over the next two weeks, make promiscuous use of bodies in pain. Directed by Quentin Tarantino and Alejandro González Iñárritu, respectively, both films are set against the pitiless, snowy backdrop of the 19th-century American West. And both traffic in lingering wide-screen images of savage brutality and mortification, as their protagonists claw, fight, shoot and stab their way to preserving their lives… oth films are set against the pitiless, snowy backdrop of the 19th-century American West. And both traffic in lingering wide-screen images of savage brutality and mortification, as their protagonists claw, fight, shoot and stab their way to preserving their lives.

These are both films with some artistic aspirations. But Hornaday questions whether the ultra-violence in both is in aid of or a distraction from their stories and their messages.

It’s possible to appreciate both films, even admire them, for their sheer ambition and near-flawless execution. But the virtuosity on display also produces its share of deep misgivings. Whether by way of Tarantino’s ironic distance or Iñárritu’s artily masochistic extremes, it’s genuine empathy and self-reflection that get short-circuited, swamped by surface values of aesthetics, technical achievement and shocking, vicarious jolts.

She compares the films to others released this year that engaged with serious, real-life atrocities like “Son of Saul,” “Room,” and “Spotlight” without making them as confrontational, explicit, even cartoonish. These films, she says, “call on each viewer’s memory, conscience and moral imagination to complete the picture and create its deepest meaning.” Individual responses to violence on film vary widely. For me, the question is: does it make you feel more or feel less?