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movie Glossary
Illuminated Hello Rule
Whenever a character in a movie gets a telephone call in the middle of the night, he or she inevitably always turns on the light next to the bed before answering the phone. In real life, most people pick up the phone in the dark, but in the movies that would mean the camera couldn't photograph them. GEORGE M. IACONO, Chicago
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Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies The Ebert Club

Journey 2: Mysterious Island (PG)
"Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" looks like nothing so much as one of those live-action adventures that Disney used to grind out in the 1950s — and hey, here's Captain Nemo's Nautilus to prove it. Also, a tree house to humble "Swiss Family Robinson," which contains a short-wave radio that has been assembled from old spoons, I think I heard.

The Vow (PG-13)
"The Vow" is a well-behaved, tenderhearted love story about impossibly nice people. It's not even about whether they'll get married. They've been happily married for four years. The problem is, she can't remember them. She can't even remember her husband.

House of Pleasures (Unrated)
Bertrand Bonello's "House of Pleasures" is a morose elegy to the decline of a luxurious Parisian bordello, circa 1900, a closed world in which prostitutes and their clients glide like sleepwalkers through the motions of sex. Elegant and detailed production design creates L'Apollonide, a high-priced whorehouse on a respectable boulevard, where a madam and her women of commerce lead a life as cloistered as in a convent, or a prison.

W.E. (R)
There's dialogue in "W.E." that probably holds some truth about the strange attraction the then-King Edward VIII felt for Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American he valued more than the British throne. Quoting from memory: "She absolutely possesses him. Not dominates. Possesses." There were tales that theirs was a sadomasochistic union, but as it's seen in "W.E.," Madonna's new film, it seems based more on their mutual fascination with the awfulness of the thing they have done.

Addiction Incorporated (PG)
The PG rating of "Addiction Incorporated" is explained in part because it "contains thematic material involving smoking and addiction." When the MPAA first adapted its code, everyone in the movies smoked except Snow White. Smoking was identified with romance and heroism, Bette Davis was applauded for lighting up on "The Tonight Show," and you could often see the smoke from Johnny's own cigarette curling up from the ashtray under his desk.

These days, a character who smokes is self-destructive, a villain or a troubled high school student. "Addiction Incorporated" follows tobacco's journey downhill from respectability. After his long night's work, Santa used to relax with a Lucky on a back-cover ad in Life magazine, and Ronald Reagan liked to puff on Chesterfields. Now we learn of proposed new government health warnings that are more likely to make you spew than smoke your first cigarette.

Oscar nominated short docs (Unrated)
I've seen bits and pieces of this footage before, but shown as one continuous shot, it's overwhelming. A wave of unimaginable size pushes houses, trucks and cars ahead of it, as tiny desperate figures struggle to run up a hillside. It is the extended opening of Lucy Walker's "The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom," one of this year's five nominees for the best documentary short subject Oscar.

Chronicle (PG-13)
Man, you couldn't get me down into that hole in the ground for all the beans in Boston. It's perfectly circular, in the middle of a gloomy, grassy field, and Matt and Steve talk Andrew into bringing his new video camera and filming as they disappear into its dark maw. They use the camera's light and of course the screens of their iPhones. They can't see the bottom.

The Woman in Black (PG-13)
Not since young Hutter arrived at Orlok's castle in "Nosferatu" has a journey to a dreaded house been more fearsome than the one in "The Woman in Black." Both films (and all versions of "Dracula") begin with the local townspeople terrified of a residence and the legends surrounding it. In this case, a green, Victorian-era attorney named Arthur Kipps (Daniel Radcliffe) is visiting a haunted house in the north of England, which can be reached only by a single-track road on a long, narrow causeway that lies so low in a brackish sea that the waters lap its edges.

The Innkeepers (R)
Truffaut once said it's not possible to enjoy a film shot in the house where you were raised, because you're always thinking about how they replaced the wallpaper. I had a little of that feeling during the ghost movie "The Innkeepers," which reminded me of the much-loved Boulderado in Boulder, Colo. The movie is shot almost entirely within the (real) Yankee Pedlar Inn in Torrington, Conn. Both hotels are said to be haunted. I know someone who knew nothing about the Boulderado and saw a ghost standing in the closet of Room 506 — and when we told the desk clerk, she said the ghost my friend saw matched the descriptions of earlier guests.

Coriolanus (R)
The point with Shakespeare is the language. Modern-dress productions of his plays are common and can inspire intriguing viewpoints. Who is to say that "Coriolanus" might not as well be set in the Middle East as in Rome — neither a place Shakespeare had ever seen? In the 1995 film version of "Richard III," for instance, Ian McKellen was cast as a fascist dictator of the 1930s.

Windfall (Unrated)
Driving from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, you pass through a desert terrain in which a new species has taken hold. Wind turbines grow row upon row, their blades turning busily as they generate electricity and pump it into the veins of the national grid. This wind farm is a good thing, yes? I've always assumed so, and driven on without much thought.

My Piece of the Pie (Unrated)
You can forgive someone for wanting their piece of the pie. But what if they want your piece, too? The heroine of “My Piece of the Pie” has just lost her factory job of 20 years because a stock trader has manipulated the company's share price to force a failure. When these two people meet each other the stage is set for — what? Drama? Satire? Comedy? Farce? Romance?

A Separation (PG-13) (1/25) »

The Grey (R) (1/25) »

We Need to Talk about Kevin (R) (1/25) »

Albert Nobbs (R) (1/25) »

Tomboy (Unrated) (1/25) »

Man on a Ledge (PG-13) (1/25) »

Smiles of a Summer Night (Unrated) (1955)
Adultery was the great subject of many of Ingmar Bergman's films and much of his life. He was married five times, and not very faithfully, because he also had fairly public relationships with the actresses Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, and was married during all of those affairs. He was far from a libertine, experienced a great deal of guilt during his liaisons, and returned to the subject repeatedly in his films. He wrote "Sunday's Children" (1994), directed by his son Daniel, about how Bergman's clergyman father created a household where public piety was joined with private anguish. "Private Confessions" (1996), his screenplay directed by Liv Ullmann, was about his mother's moral struggles.
Forty-one years and perpetually young at heart, the Rotterdam International Film Festival is a distinguished venue for cinematic discovery. It debuts more first and second films by emerging filmmakers than just about any festival in the world, with its prestigious Tiger Award bestowed upon three up-and-coming talents. With a special emphasis on films from Latin America, Africa and Asia, there's a clear mission to foster a truly global film culture. This year, new ground was broken along gender lines: for the first time all three Tiger Awards went to women directors. More noteworthy is how different the winning films are, each with their own way of telling their respective young heroine's story on screen.

Pretty Baby (R)
Louis Malle's "Pretty Baby" is a pleasant surprise: After all the controversy and scandal surrounding its production, it turns out to be a good-hearted, good-looking, quietly elegiac movie. That's a coup for Malle, who sometimes seems to dare himself to find acceptable ways of filming unacceptable subjects.

There, that wasn't so painful, was it? After all the hype coming out of Cannes (and especially since Harvey Weinstein got his mitts on it for U.S. distribution/Oscar promotion), I'd been kind of dreading "The Artist." Like "Hugo," it just sounded too "charming and delightful" -- and, to paraphrase Lou Grant, I hate "charming and delightful." (Usually because, for me, that ends up translating into "strained and unctuous.") But "The Artist" turns out to be a fairly benign, occasionally clever little musical/romantic comedy/melodrama. (I would not consider it, strictly speaking, a "silent," since it relies on synchronized Foley effects in some scenes -- to pointedly dramatize the Invasion of the Talkies -- and even a few words of recorded dialog.)

Missing Bingham: Alchemy and the movies

Come ona Tree House (of Life)

Tinker Tailor, Moneyball: Between the lines (Part 1)

Watching (and listening to) Fincher's Girl

Desert Island DVDs (Matt's & mine & yours)

Moments Out of Time 2012

When I fall in love...

Shame, Tree of Life: Ambiguity or bust?

My first 2011 "Ten Best" list

Idiocracy and the ten-best trolls

Hey girl,

The Artist, Shame and hype-season backlash

A piece of David Cronenberg's mind



> > > >

you should visit jim emerson on twitter

The Opening Shots Project Index


It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that this year's Academy Awards will amount to a shootout between "Hugo," with 11 nominations, and "The Artist," with 10. Fittingly, they are two movies inspired by love of movie history, the first about the inventor of the cinema, the second about the transition from silent films to talkies.
For me the best news produced by the Florida primary was Newt Gingrich's vow to take his fight all the way to the floor of this year's Republican convention. It has been way too long since a national political convention was more than a coronation stage-managed by public relations experts.
watch the oscar films

by Jeff Shannon

The United States could sure use a guy like Jon Gnarr right about now. Just take a look at the sorry state of our presidential campaigns and then consider what Gnarr achieved in his native Iceland: In January 2010 Gnarr, Iceland's most popular and controversial comedian, began to campaign for the office of Mayor of Reykjavik, Iceland's capital and largest city. What began as a joke snowballed into a seriously funny, but still very serious, protest vote that turned the tide of history.
by Odie Henderson

Let's be frank: People watch nature documentaries because they want to see wild animals doing the Wild Thing. This can be shown on regular TV because, as Bea Arthur's Maude famously said, "animals making love is rated G. People making love like animals--that's R " An animal documentary serves to showcase how its subjects survive, hunt, eat, play, and yes, get their freak on. There's a reason the sexiest piece of music Elmer Bernstein ever wrote used to play over footage of animals gettin' bizzy on "National Geographic." A Barry White soundtrack would have been way too hot for TV.
by Odie Henderson

After viewing "The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975," I stumbled out of the theater and into a blinding, mid-afternoon New York City sun, every nerve in my body ablaze. All my neurons seemed to be firing at once, and my brain was so full of thought I sought some way to collect myself. I started to walk, focusing more on reconciling my thoughts than a navigational direction. With no destination in mind, I walked for what seemed an eternity, trying to put my emotional responses together. I was jolted from my mental process by an old woman standing next to me on a Manhattan street corner. I must have looked shell-shocked, because she touched my arm as we waited for a Lower East Side traffic light to change. "Honey, are you alright?" she asked, genuine concern on her face.
• Krishna Bala Shenoi in India

Of late, I've been thinking about how I got here. Here, in love with movie watching and movie making. Here, in a design school in India, and not an engineering college or a medical school like predetermined for most Indian students. Here, in correspondence with a huge role model of mine. Here, doing what I love.
• Michał Oleszczyk in Kraków

To call it overwrought would be an understatement. Andrzej Żuławski's 1981 masterpiece, butchered upon its original American release and relegated to spurious video-nasty circulation, is now returning in all its hysterical glory, as a part of Brooklyn's BAMcinématek complete Żuławski retro, which will then move to Cinefamily in Los Angeles. Featuring what is arguably the bravest female performance ever put on film - namely, Isabelle Adjani's Cannes-winning turn of shamanistic intensity - the film dares its viewer to enter a trance-like state, in which genres blur and mate to yield a new level of cinematic expression.
thumbs
Linked here are reviews in recent months for which I wrote either 4 star or 3.5 star reviews. What does Two Thumbs Up mean in this context? It signifies that I believe these films are worth going out of your way to see, or that you might rent them, add them to your Netflix, Blockbuster or TiVo queues, or if they are telecast record them.
Gathered here in one convenient place are my recent reviews that awarded films Zero Stars, One-half Star, One Star, and One-and-a-half Stars. These are, generally speaking to be avoided. Sometimes I hear from readers who confess they are in the mood to watch a really bad movie on some form of video. If you are sincere, be sure to know what you're getting: A really bad movie.
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From Dante's Inferno to key lime pie, to speeding through Costa Rica on a zip line, you'll find something to enjoy inside the Ebert Club; a place where art house meets b-rated and curiosity knows no bounds!
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