Roger Ebert: Likeness (page 2)

“Parents: If you encounter teenagers who say they liked this movie, do not let them date your children.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/resident-evil-apocalypse-2004 of Resident Evil: Apocalypse (10 September 2004)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Children , Parent

“What did I think about this movie? As a film critic, I liked it. I liked the in-jokes and the self-aware characters. At the same time, I was aware of the incredible level of gore in this film. It is *really* violent. Is the violence defused by the ironic way the film uses it and comments on it? For me, it was. For some viewers, it will not be, and they will be horrified. Which category do you fall in? Here's an easy test: When I mentioned Fangoria, did you know what I was talking about?”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/scream-1996 of Scream (20 December 1996)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Way , Thinking , Time

“So OK. Let’s say you know the novel, you agree with Ayn Rand, you’re an objectivist or a libertarian, and you’ve been waiting eagerly for this movie. Man, are you going to get a letdown. It’s not enough that a movie agree with you, in however an incoherent and murky fashion. It would help if it were like, you know, entertaining?”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/atlas-shrugged-2011 of Atlas Shrugged: Part I (14 April 2011)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Fashion , Waiting , Help

“Films like Fargo are why I love the movies.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fargo-1996 of Fargo (8 March 1996)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Love

“This is a movie that comes in two parts: It knows exactly what to do with special effects, but doesn't have a clue as to how two people in love might act and talk and think.
Movies like Top Gun are hard to review because the good parts are so good and the bad parts are so relentless. The dogfights are absolutely the best since Clint Eastwood's electrifying aerial scenes in Firefox. But look out for the scenes where the people talk to one another.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/top-gun-1986 of Top Gun (16 May 1986)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

Love , People , Thinking , Parting

“Anna’s reaction is more complex than you might imagine, and it’s at such a moment you appreciate the woman in the writer-director’s chair. Women, I suspect, are more likely than men to view sex from the over-all perspective of what we may call their lives. In a country like Saudi Arabia, whose citizens express discomfort about men and women even attending movies together, I have little doubt which gender is more concerned.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/humpday-2009 of Humpday (22 July 2009)
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Women , Men , Sex , Imagination

“Films like Speed belong to the genre I call Bruised Forearm Movies, because you're always grabbing the arm of the person sitting next to you. Done wrong, they seem like tired replays of old chase cliches. Done well, they're fun. Done as well as Speed, they generate a kind of manic exhilaration.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/speed-1994 of Speed (10 June 1994)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Personality , Speed

“Since the scenes where they're together are so much less convincing than the ones where they fall apart, watching the movie is like being on a double-date from hell.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-break-up-2006 of The Break-Up (2 June 2006)
Reviews, Two star reviews

Hell

“I arrive at the end of this review having done my duty as a critic. I have described the movie accurately and you have a good idea what you are in for if you go to see it. Most of you will not. I cannot argue with you. Some of you will — the brave and the curious. You embody the spirit of the man who first wondered what it would taste like to eat an oyster.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/gerry-2003 of Gerry (28 February 2003)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Idea

“Wild Wild West is a comedy dead zone. You stare in disbelief as scenes flop and die. The movie is all concept and no content; the elaborate special effects are like watching money burn on the screen. You know something has gone wrong when a story is about two heroes in the Old West, and the last shot is of a mechanical spider riding off into the sunset.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/wild-wild-west-1999 of Wild Wild West (30 June 1999)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Money , Dead

“It is an interesting law of romance that a truly strong woman will choose a strong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along. Strength demands intelligence, intelligence demands stimulation, and weakness is boring. It is better to find a partner you can contend with for a lifetime than one who accommodates you because he doesn't really care. … Sixty seconds of wondering if someone is about to kiss you is more entertaining than 60 minutes of kissing. … Spill the beans, and the conversation is history. Speak in code, with wit and challenge, and the process of decryption is like foreplay.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-winslow-boy-1999 of The Winslow Boy (28 May 1999)
Reviews, Three-and-a-half star reviews

Law , History , Intelligence , Kiss

“This movie is not merely bad, but incompetent. I get tapes in the mail from 10th graders that are better made than this… I have often asked myself, "What would it look like if the characters in a movie were animatronic puppets created by aliens with an imperfect mastery of human behavior?"”

Roger Ebert

Now I know.
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/friends-and-lovers-1999 of Friends & Lovers (30 April 1999)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Behavior

“The Bucket List is a movie about two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible. I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-bucket-list-2008 of The Bucket List (10 January 2008)
Reviews, One-star reviews

People , Suffering

“Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line…Mad Dog Time should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-dog-time-1996 of Mad Dog Time (29 November 1996)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

Dogs , Time , Waiting , Madness

“The Man in the Moon is like a great short story, one of those masterpieces of language and mood where not one word is wrong, or unnecessary. It flows so smoothly from start to finish that it hardly even seems like an ordinary film. Usually I am aware of the screenwriter putting in obligatory scenes. I can hear the machinery grinding. Not this time. Although, in retrospect, I can see how carefully the plot was put together, how meticulously each event was prepared for, as I watched the film I was only aware of life passing by.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-man-in-the-moon-1991 of The Man in the Moon (4 October 1991)
Reviews, Four star reviews

Life , Mood , Time

“I read all the movie reviews, especially those of Ebert, a graceful and witty prose stylist with profound erudition, whose reviews are worth reading just for themselves, whether or not I have any intention of viewing the movie … Ebert, the smart and handsome one, gave thumbs up to my first movie Garfield: The Movie], but [Richard] Roeper, the other one, gave thumbs down and was particularly unkind. He went on forever attacking Ebert for liking Garfield. This from a man with enough taste to praise Duma. How very disappointing. One of Roeper's complaints was that I was animated and all of the other characters in the movie were "real." Do you have any idea how a statement like that hurts an actor who has worked all of his life as a media cat? Yes, Richard Roeper, I was animated. Read my lips: I am a character in a comic strip.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/garfield-a-tail-of-two-kitties-2006 of Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, written in the first person as Garfield. (16 June 2006)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Life , Disappointment , Cats , Idea

“I was noodling around Rotten Tomatoes, trying to determine who played the bank's security chief, and noticed the movie had not yet been reviewed by anybody. Hold on! In the "Forum" section for this movie, "islandhome" wrote at 7:58 a. m. Jan. 8: "review of this movie … tonight i'll post." At 11:19 a. m. Jan. 10, "islandhome" was finally back with the promised review. It is written without capital letters, flush left like a poem, and I quote it verbatim, spelling and all:
:hello sorry i slept when i got back
:well it was kinda fun
:it could never happen in the way it was portraid
:but what ever its a movie
:for the girls most will like it
:and the men will not mind it much
:i thought it was going to be kinda like how to beat the high cost of living
:kinda the same them but not as much fun
:ill give it a 4 0ut of 10
I read this twice, three times. I had been testing out various first sentences for my own review, but somehow the purity and directness of islandhome's review undercut me. It is so final. "for the girls most will like it/and the men will not mind it much."”

Roger Ebert

How can you improve on that? It's worthy of Charles Bukowski. ...The bottom line is some girls will like it, the men not so much, and I give it 1½ stars out of 4.
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/mad-money-2008 of Mad Money (17 January 2008)
Reviews, One-and-a-half star reviews

Men , Way , Quotes , Girl

“Terri (Hilary Duff)'s new roommate is Denise (Dana Davis), who plans to work hard for a scholarship, and resents Terri as a distraction. Sizing up Terri's wardrobe and her smile, she tells her: "You're like some kind of retro Brady Buncher."”

Roger Ebert

I hate it when a movie contains its own review.
Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/raise-your-voice-2004 of Raise Your Voice (8 October 2004)
Reviews, One-star reviews

Hate , Smile

“It's the kind of movie where you ask people how they liked it, and they say, "Well, it was well made," and then they wince.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dead-ringers-1988 of Dead Ringers (23 September 1988)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

People

“Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. The visuals are grubby and drab. The characters are unkempt and have rotten teeth. Breathing tubes hang from their noses like ropes of snot. The soundtrack sounds like the boom mike is being slammed against the inside of a 55-gallon drum. The plot. … Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies.”

Roger Ebert

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/battlefield-earth-2000 of Battlefield Earth (12 May 2000)
Reviews, Half-star reviews

Hostility , Way , Time , Training