movie Glossary
Exit Poll Syndrome
When TV ads consist of the "spontaneous" comments of viewers exiting the movie theater, the film is invariably a stinker. David Hoffman, Hanover, Pa.
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Great Movies
Nosferatu (1922)
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)
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)
by Roger EbertAt 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.
Richard III (1996)
by Roger EbertPlays through Nov. 22 at the Chicago Shakespeare theater. Was ever there a villain such as Richard the Third? Murderer of his brother Henry VI; of Prince Edward; later of Edward's wife Anne; of his own brother Clarence; of Anne's brother Rivers; of his henchmen Grey and Vaughn; of Lord Hastings; his own two young nephews; of Lady Anne; and finally his long-loyal retainer Buckingham. All had to make way for Richard's overwhelming ambition to rise to the throne. All died in vain, as Richard was unmounted in battle and uttered the famous cry: "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!"
The Grey Zone (2001)
by Roger EbertRare among films about the Holocaust, Tim Blake Nelson's "The Grey Zone" (2001) lacks an upbeat ending. Even a great film like Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" works largely because in a universe of horror, the director found a narrative of courage and hope. One Holocaust film after another does the same thing: finds a story that doesn't end with everyone dead, so that we can somehow be reassured that life carries on. But such stories deny the central fact that the overwhelming mass of Holocaust victims disappeared into the maw of evil.
Barry Lyndon (1975)
by Roger EbertStanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon," received indifferently in 1975, has grown in stature in the years since and is now widely regarded as one of the master's best. It is certainly in every frame a Kubrick film: technically awesome, emotionally distant, remorseless in its doubt of human goodness. Based on a novel published in 1844, it takes a form common in the 19th century novel, following the life of the hero from birth to death. The novel by Thackeray, called the first novel without a hero, observes a man without morals, character or judgment, unrepentant, unredeemed. Born in Ireland in modest circumstances, he rises through two armies and the British aristocracy with cold calculation.
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