rogerebert.com :: great movies

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

The space between who we
are and who we think we are

Visiting an old people's home, I walked down a corridor on the floor given over to advanced Alzheimer's parents. Some seemed anxious. Some were angry. Some simply sat there. Knowing nothing of what was happening in their minds, I wondered if the anxious and angry ones had some notion of who they were and that something was wrong. I was reminded of the passive ones while watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Wiped free of memory, they exist always in the moment, which they accept because it is everything.

25th Hour (2002)

A heightened state of mind
in the last hours of freedom

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. -- Dr. Johnson

Tomorrow morning, Monty Brogan is turning himself in to begin a prison term. His two best friends lean on a railing , look out over the river, and agree "it's over." They will never see Monty again. He may be alive in eight years, but he won't be the Monty they've known since they were kids. Monty Broken also knows this. So do his girlfriend and his fat her. It will all end after tonight.

The Red Shoes (1948)

Dance, ballerina, dance! Pirouette
in rhythm with your aching heart

Beautiful 35mm print opens Friday at the Music Box.

There is tension between two kinds of stories in "The Red Shoes," and that tension helps make it the most popular movie ever made about the ballet and one of the most enigmatic movies about anything. One story could be a Hollywood musical: A young ballerina falls in love with the composer of the ballet that makes her an overnight star. The other story is darker and more guarded. It involves the impresario who runs the ballet company, who demands loyalty and obedience, who is enraged when the young people get married. The motives of the ballerina and her lover are transparent. But the impresario defies analysis. In his dark eyes we read a fierce resentment. No, it is not jealousy, at least not romantic jealousy. Nothing as simple as that.

Nosferatu (1922)

The Original Vampire

To watch F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922) is to see the vampire movie before it had really seen itself. Here is the story of Dracula before it was buried alive in cliches, jokes, TV skits, cartoons and more than 30 other films. The film is in awe of its material. It seems to really believe in vampires.

Mon oncle d'Amerique (1980)

One thing's for sure: we have
as much free will as lab rats

Three children are born in France. One, Rene, is the son of struggling farmers. One, Janine, a daughter of proletarians. The third son, Jean, is born in a manor house to wealthy bourgeois. These children grow up, are educated, find occupations often against the will of their parents, and enter relationships. They don't much think of themselves as laboratory rats, but they might be surprised how consistently their behavior is consistent with the involuntary responses of a rat. This observation is not intend as an insult to them, or to the rat.

Leon Morin, Priest (1961)

Private instruction in the faith
with a seductive subtext

by Roger Ebert

At the Siskel Center 10/23-29.

In 1961, one year after he appeared in "Breathless" and two years after she appeared in "Hiroshima, Mon Amour," Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva made "Leon Morin, Priest." They were both in the white heat of their early careers; Belmondo would make five other films that year. The director was Jean-Pierre Melville, known for his films about gangsters and the Resistance. A crime film might have been ideal for them, but instead they filmed this story at the intersection of desire, religion and politics.

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