Author Topic: Roger Ebert's Great Movies  (Read 6441 times)

1SO

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Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« on: April 12, 2013, 07:53:45 PM »
This was inspired by dheaton's wonderful tribute to Roger Ebert.
Quote
A big challenge for any film lover is catching up with the hordes of classics from around the world. How do we pare them down to the most essential choices? Ebert's Great Movies series provides a guide for cinephiles trying to expand their horizons. Beyond this valuable service, he also gives an extended review of each selection. Back in 2006, I embarked on the daring venture of checking out all the movies from Ebert’s first Great Movies book that I hadn’t yet seen.

Of the 407 films on Ebert's List I still have never seen 37 of them.

Seven Up!
7 Plus Seven
21 Up
28 Up
35 Up
42 Up
49 Up
An Autumn Afternoon
Ballad of Narayama (1958)
La Belle Noiseuse
La Cérémonie
La Collectionneuse
Departures
Diary of a Lost Girl
Diary of Oharu
The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)
French Cancan
Heart of Glass
The Match Factory Girl
Mephisto
Mooladé
The Only Son
Pale Flower
Shoah
The Silence
Souls for Sale
A Sunday in the Country
A Tale of Winter
Tender Mercies
The Terrorist
Through a Glass Darkly
Veronika Voss
Victim
A Woman's Tale
WR: Mysteries of the Organism
The Year of the Quiet Sun
Yellow Submarine
« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 02:36:17 PM by 1SO »

1SO

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Re: Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« Reply #1 on: April 12, 2013, 09:32:02 PM »


Seven Up!
"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."

Quote from: Roger Ebert
No other art form can capture so well the look in an eye, the feeling in an expression, the thoughts that go unspoken between the words. To look at these films, as I have every seven years, is to meditate on the astonishing fact that man is the only animal that knows it lives in time.

I remember Ebert's excitement when 28 Up was released. In my mind, that's where the documentary comes together and the groundwork of these earlier chapters begin to pay off in contrasting tales of success and failure. It's difficult sitting through even 30 minutes of a bunch of kids who are asked to talk as if they already know their future. Lots of speculation on their jobs and marital situations. It's as interesting as asking them to tell a bedtime story. Of course they can invent one, but how badly do you really want to hear it?

Most interesting was hearing prejudices and snobbery already instilled into their DNA. There's a trio of upper crust twits who I already hope find a difficult life. The relationship stuff is kind of funny, but I have to believe we're here to get something more than a cutesy "girls are icky." Then there's the little girl who proclaims "I don't know anybody who's colored... and I don't want to know anybody who's colored." I could spend 30 minutes just watching the surrounding factors that made her so easily toss that out.
RATING: Incomplete, though I have to say I'm disappointed so far.

Sandy

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Re: Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« Reply #2 on: April 12, 2013, 10:27:28 PM »
"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."

That quote sent a chill up my spine.



"I begin with the young. We older ones are used up... But my magnificent youngsters! Look at these men and boys! What material! With them, I can create a new world.  --Adolf Hitler

1SO

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Re: Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« Reply #3 on: April 13, 2013, 08:40:59 PM »


The Fall of the House of Usher (1928)

Quote from: Roger Ebert
I was struck, watching the film recently on a new DVD, by how completely it engaged me. Some silent films hold you outside: You admire them, but are aware of them as a phenomenon. With "The Fall of the House of Usher," I barely stirred during the film's 66-minute running time. A tone, an atmosphere, was created that actually worked. As with "Nosferatu," the film seemed less a fiction than the realization of some phantasmagoric alternative reality. Epstein's openness to the grand gesture is helpful, as when Madeline is in her coffin, and her white bridal veil spills outside and blows in the wind.

I watched the same transfer of Jean Epstein's surrealist take on the Poe story as Ebert. It also had the French title cards read and a most unusual music score that blends Renaissance-style strings with early industrial sounds. I almost had the same reaction to the film too. It's heavily atmospheric, and there are quite a few very impressive touches, such as the painting that looks life-like because it's really a mirror reflection.

My usual problem with surrealism is that it's almost impossible to make it work within the frame of a narrative. You can't come with a cool surreal/symbolic take on everything that happens, so you must either slip into a more non-narrative form or present things in an oddly straightforward manner until the next bit of inspiration happens along. (Say what you want about films like Moulin Rouge, Brazil or JFK, but those directors are able to maintain their go for broke attitude for every minute of the running time.) I liked this more than most surrealist features, and for once the problem wasn't the artsy fartsyness, but that there wasn't the right amount of it to transport the story completely.
RATING: * * 1/2

1SO

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Re: Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« Reply #4 on: April 13, 2013, 10:53:48 PM »


W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism

Quote from: Roger Ebert
The director of the first Serbian talkie has a line in Makavejev's "Innocence Unprotected" (1967) that could apply to Makavejev himself: "Gentlemen, I assure you the entire Yugoslavian cinema came out of my navel."

The critic Jonathan Rosenbaum speaks of Makavejev's method as materials in collision; he combines documentary, fiction, found footage, direct narration and patriotic music in ways startling and puzzling. The movie is about whatever impression you leave it with.

To list "WR" as a great movie will stir outrage from some.

So, I went into this one fully aware of what I was getting into, and it's a more watchable experience than Sweet Movie, which aggressively tries to make you run from the DVD player. Strip away the cheap associations between sex and violence and sex and politics and there are interesting moments here and there. There's the transgender who get rejected by his boyfriend after a sex change because while he's still the same person, his lover is only into males. Some scenes suggest a better documentary to be made of the attempts at the time to treat sex and orgasm from the standpoint of psychology and science.

My problem with the satire and politics is that it lacks insight. It simply presents these connections as fact without even a basic underlying logic to their connections. We get the story of a  Yugoslav woman who seduces a Soviet ice skater. Even though she disagrees with his political views, that's part of the attraction. The allegory couldn't be more simplified. Well, there is the scene where the idiot dressed as a soldier jerks off his toy gun, so I take back my previous statement.
RATING: * *


It should be obvious now that there's a reason why I've avoided these "Great Movies" from the late Mr. Ebert. My hope is that I'm getting these uphill battles out of the way early so the marathon will ultimately end on a bunch of positive notes.

MartinTeller

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Re: Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« Reply #5 on: April 13, 2013, 11:48:12 PM »
I'm surprised you gave it as many as 2 stars.  I agree it's more palatable than Sweet Movie, though.

1SO

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Re: Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« Reply #6 on: April 18, 2013, 12:17:54 AM »


7 Plus Seven

Now that we have a baseline of interviews to compare the documentary series can start contrasting answers then with now. Of course there's the expected amount of regret over things said at the age of 7. Sometimes it's just a slip of the tongue, like misnaming the school one kid hoped to get into. Sometimes they're asked to answer for their callous and hurtful declarations. What's interesting is that the kids, now 14, don't take their answers completely back with great apologies but modify their remarks. The underlying differences remain. In one detestable case the jerky kid is growing into a vile human being.

Beyond that, I'm not as interested in these kids as Roger Ebert was. I'd be so much happier if we only followed 5 or 6 of them, spending more time with them and ditching the rest. There still isn't enough differences between all the kids. I wish we followed them around a little more, observing their daily activities instead of cutting from one talking head to the next. Not only does this approach lack excitement, the responses get to be filtered, slightly thought-out. Actions speak louder than words, and this film forgets that.

Then came the comments. A series of quotes right in the middle of the film that summarized my problem with the movie completely. Spoken by a half-dozen of the kids. For clarity I'll print them as one long quote.

"I think it's just ridiculous and I don't see any point in doing it. What's the point of people sort of going into people's lives and saying 'why'd you do this and why not...'. I don't see any point in it. What's the point of the program? It's to reach a comparison I don't think it is. Cause we're not necessary typical examples. And I think that's what people seeing the program might think. Falsely. To typecast us. So everything we say, they'll think 'that's a typical result of the public school system.'"

PeacefulAnarchy

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Re: Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« Reply #7 on: April 18, 2013, 01:46:33 AM »
In one detestable case the jerky kid is growing into a vile human being.
Which one?

1SO

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Re: Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« Reply #8 on: April 18, 2013, 01:58:42 AM »
In one detestable case the jerky kid is growing into a vile human being.
Which one?

John. Not knowing his future, being asked this question makes me think he grows up to be the nicest of the lot.

MartinTeller

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Re: Roger Ebert's Great Movies
« Reply #9 on: April 18, 2013, 02:01:51 AM »
Not really, but he does change.