roger ebert

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touchy feely
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roger ebert

Post by touchy feely »

discuss


i will say this
as much as i admire him as a writer
out of the last 80 movies he's reviewed
he's given three stars or higher to 59 of them
as seen here: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/
:doubt:
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Post by ReverseEngineer »

The way I've always seen that,
it's like a letter grade
and three stars = 75% = C = average.

so that sounds about right.

Ebert himself has said many times that he hates the star ratings, anyway.

I'll read his writing any day of the week. He's brilliant.

The open letter he wrote when Jay Mariotti left the paper was great. Classy and profane all at once.
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Post by touchy feely »

ReverseEngineer";p="987911 wrote:The way I've always seen that,
it's like a letter grade
and three stars = 75% = C = average.
i never even thought of the star system adhering to percentages
that just seems wrong to me
especially when you read a review of a movie he gave two stars, and he calls it 'average' in so many words
and calls a movie 'very good' or 'entertaining' in a three star review

anyway, his bad reviews are the best:
"Charlie's Angels" is eye candy for the blind. It's a movie without a brain in its three pretty little heads, which belong to Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu. This movie is a dead zone in their lives, and mine.

What is it? A satire? Of what? Of satires, I guess. It makes fun of movies that want to make fun of movies like this. It's an all-girl series of mindless action scenes. Its basic shot consists of Natalie, Dylan and Alex, the Angels, running desperately toward the camera before a huge explosion lifts them off their feet and hurls them through the air and smashes them against windshields and things--but they survive with injuries only to their makeup.

Why, I am asking, is this funny? I am thinking hard. So much money and effort was spent on these explosions that somebody must have been convinced they had a purpose, but I, try as I might, cannot see them as anything other than action without mind, purpose, humor, excitement or entertainment.

The movie's premise will be familiar to anyone who ever watched the original TV show. I never watched the show, and the plot was familiar even to me. A disembodied voice (John Forsythe) issues commands to the three babes who work for his detective agency, and they perform his missions while wearing clothes possibly found at the thrift shop across the street from Coyote Ugly.

Barrymore, Diaz and Liu represent redhead, blond and brunet respectively (or, as my colleague David Poland has pointed out, T, A and Hair). Sad, isn't it, that three such intelligent, charming and talented actresses could be reduced to their most prominent component parts? And voluntarily, too. At the tops of their careers, they chose to make this movie (Barrymore even produced it). They volunteered for what lesser talents are reduced to doing.

The cast also contains Bill Murray, who likes to appear unbilled in a lot of his movies and picked the wrong one to shelve that policy. He is winsome, cherubic and loopy, as usual, but the movie gives him nothing to push against. There's the curious feeling he's playing to himself. Sam Rockwell plays a kidnapped millionaire, Tim Curry plays a villain, and . . . why go on? In the months to come there will be several movies based on popular video games, including one about "Tomb Raiders" and its digital babe, Lara Croft.

"Charlie's Angels" is like the trailer for a video game movie, lacking only the video game, and the movie.
:doubt:
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Post by ReverseEngineer »

again, giving a number rating, especially one on a scale so simple, is inane.

I read his words, not his numbers.
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Post by Nam Tsao »

The numbering is fine as long as you accept that a 2 start film will always be shite.
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Post by ReverseEngineer »

aaaaaaaaaaand this week he reviews a film he only watched 8 minutes of. :lol:
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Post by Nam Tsao »

Sounds like he watched too much of it.
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Post by Hank »

i hate hate hate reviewers. all i want to read are describers.
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Post by ReverseEngineer »

His review of Synecdoche, New York says nothing about the movie's plot or any of the supporting characters.

And it's a perfect review of the film.

Of course, the definition of "synecdoche" is also a perfect review of the film.
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