Roger Ebert, YOU...?!?!

[ClarkGriswald]

You know, a lotta people don't like this fat shite (JoBlo, I wanna say I ain't harassin' anyone. Besides, many of us should agree on this topic! /ubb/biggrin.gif). He gives our favorite films low ratings. Swordfish? Hated it. Evolution? Hated it. Pearl Harbor? Of COURSE he hated it. He hates our favorite action and comedy films. So, I know I'm not the only one who wants to hire a hitman and get him killed. I mean, anyone able to stay awake through Godzilla? Dean Devlin hates him. Why? Look at the mayor of NY. He's fat, he's a sumbitch, and he eats a lot! /ubb/biggrin.gif What do you all think of Ebert? Thumbs up or down? He gets two thumbs down and a kick to the head!

[kici]

Two thumbs up.

The man has excellent taste in films. I'll defend to the death your right to your opinion but Pearl Harbor was more than a little lacking.

[This message has been edited by kici (edited 06-10-2001).]

[STARKE]

Ebert seems to underrate most of my favorite movies, imo (fight club, etc.), but in general, this guy has good opinions. I tend to argee with most of his picks.


Clark, there is a good reason he hated those movies. THEY ARE CRAP

[Thrush]

He was one of the few reviewers who had the balls to say the Gladiator sucked. For that alone he has my respect. By the way all of those movies you listed are lame.

[Cyclonus]

Roger is a fine critic whose reviews I read on a regular basis. However, he was way off on Fight Club. /ubb/frown.gif

[Raena]

Love Ebert. He's a great writer. We all have the right to our own opinions, and who cares if Dean Devlin hates him? Dean Devlin should thank his lucky stars that he has any type of a film career in Hollywood. His films suck!

[Brandon]

I have to say something in defense of Ebert here. As JoBlo has said before, everyone must find a critic that they agree with MOST of the time. For me, that critic is Ebert. However, on certain types of films(Fight Club) I disagree him, and my taste seems to mirror that of JOBlo's. Regardless, no one can argue that Ebert is not the most widely recogniaed critic in the country(probably the most widely read). As Thrush has already stated, he was the ONLY critic I read that actually saw "Gladiator" for the mindless blockbuster that it was.

[Scorchlord]

I have about an 84% agreement level with Ebert. He didn't like Fight Club, which I disagree with (he did admit that it was well made, though), but he liked the Patriot. That movie sucked goat nads!

[Josh69Mn@aol.com]

I agree 85% with Ebert.I think he does have good opinions,most of the time.

The thing I can't stand is every single film no one will ever see(mostly Independent Films)he gives TWO THUMBS UP!!

[Ender]

Ebert is kind of hard to call. For every huge blundering mistake, he does something insightful to make up for it. He hated Fight Club, one of my favorite movies, but he loved Dark City so much, another of my favorite movies which most people I know have never heard of, that he did a commentary track for it on the DVD! This guy is an enigma. A mystery, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in pound after pound of over-buttered movie-theatre popcorn residue.

[Dr. Movielove]

well he did give Little Big League more stars than Fight Club and The Matrix(although I didn't think The Matrix was that great anyways), but I still respect him as a critic. His given films I hated like Gladiator thumbs down when most critics loved the horrible movie. So thumbs up for the man who does thumbs up!

[Ebert]

I agree with Roger 99%.I hated his standing on FIGHT CLUB.I loved that movie.

[DaN]

I'll give him thumbs up. Find a better movie critic and I'll show you a...something (i'm tired so I wont finish that joke)

Even though he pisses me off sometimes and his reviews are crappy as hell (coughtombraidercough) he is the best critic out there.

Just to get things straight, I HATED tomb raider. it was a pathetic boring piece of shit. the only good part was when you saw the outer rim of her tit.

[Dr. Movielove]

what does everyone think of leonard maltin?

[Bloodybitch13]

Our veiws are going to be differnt than Ebert's because we're MUCH younger than he is. Different generations have different views.

[Scorchlord]

Leonard Maltin sucks. The guy is an absolute idiot.

[A Canadian ThereWolf]

You hit the nail right on the head there, Scorchlord! The guy (Maltin) is total moron, dead from the neck up!

Roger Ebert, although I don't always agree with his opinions, he's a much better critic than Leonard Maltin!
I agree with Roger Ebert about 63% of the time!

[ilovemovies]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by ClarkGriswald:
You know, a lotta people don't like this fat shite (JoBlo, I wanna say I ain't harassin' anyone. Besides, many of us should agree on this topic! /ubb/biggrin.gif). He gives our favorite films low ratings. Swordfish? Hated it. Evolution? Hated it. Pearl Harbor? Of COURSE he hated it. He hates our favorite action and comedy films. So, I know I'm not the only one who wants to hire a hitman and get him killed. I mean, anyone able to stay awake through Godzilla? Dean Devlin hates him. Why? Look at the mayor of NY. He's fat, he's a sumbitch, and he eats a lot! /ubb/biggrin.gif What do you all think of Ebert? Thumbs up or down? He gets two thumbs down and a kick to the head!</font>
For the record, he did not hate Swordfish or Evolution, giving them both **1/2. Which a lot kinder than some other critics.

[someguy]

If you wanna know, Ebert's ratings go like this:0-3=thumbs down, 3-4=thumbs up. I do tend to agree that his reviews are good and I agree with them.

[RicochetShaw]

I respect Ebert alot, even though this year has probably been his worst year for reviews. I agree with him about 70% of the time.

[The Heart Collector]

I generally agree with the man, but I still don't get why he seems to think Fight Club was simply cartoonish when it was a freaking satire.

[7_Words]

Films I loved that he hated:

Batman
Batman Returns
The Usual Suspects
Lost Souls
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
Planet of the Apes (2001)
Dead Man
Heathers
Full Metal Jacket
The Fisher King
Girl, Interrupted
Fight Club
Nick of Time
Edward Scissorhands
Brazil
The Crucible
What Lies Beneath
A Few Good Men
The Ninth Gate
Beetlejuice
etc, etc, etc....

...and then he gives a movie like Dick Tracy 4 fucking stars out of 4. WTF?!?!

[rascle1]

when it comes to roger ebert i get angry sometimes it's true he pratically hates every movie that the youth or majority of america likes. he seems to cream in his pants for some czech republic piece of shit movie that we everyday people don't give to shits about. i don't know he needs to open his ears to the viewers opinions and get to thinking will the public enjoy this film and that the world doesn't revolve around me. OH YEAH WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT FIGHT CLUB.

[Cyclonus]

Well, here's his review for "Fight Club," but you won't like it. /ubb/frown.gif


[Rating: ** (out of ****)]


"Fight Club" is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since "Death Wish," a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw and beat one another up.


Sometimes, for variety, they beat up themselves. It's macho porn--the sex movie Hollywood has been moving toward for years, in which eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy locker-room fights. Women, who have had a lifetime of practice at dealing with little-boy posturing, will instinctively see through it; men may get off on the testosterone rush. The fact that it is very well made and has a great first act certainly clouds the issue.


Edward Norton stars as a depressed urban loner filled up to here with angst. He describes his world in dialogue of sardonic social satire. His life and job are driving him crazy. As a means of dealing with his pain, he seeks out 12-step meetings, where he can hug those less fortunate than himself and find catharsis in their suffering. It is not without irony that the first meeting he attends is for post-surgical victims of testicular cancer, since the whole movie is about guys afraid of losing their cojones.


These early scenes have a nice sly tone; they're narrated by the Norton character in the kind of voice Nathanael West used in "Miss Lonelyhearts". He's known only as the Narrator, for reasons later made clear. The meetings are working as a sedative, and his life is marginally manageable when tragedy strikes: He begins to notice Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) at meetings. She's a "tourist" like himself--someone not addicted to anything but meetings. She spoils it for him. He knows he's a faker, but wants to believe everyone else's pain is real.


On an airplane, he has another key encounter, with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a man whose manner cuts through the fog. He seems able to see right into the Narrator's soul, and shortly after, when the Narrator's high-rise apartment turns into a fireball, he turns to Tyler for shelter. He gets more than that. He gets in on the ground floor of Fight Club, a secret society of men who meet in order to find freedom and self-realization through beating one another into pulp.


It's at about this point that the movie stops being smart and savage and witty, and turns to some of the most brutal, unremitting, nonstop violence ever filmed. Although sensible people know that if you hit someone with an ungloved hand hard enough, you're going to end up with broken bones, the guys in "Fight Club" have fists of steel, and hammer one another while the sound effects guys beat the hell out of Naugahyde sofas with Ping-Pong paddles. Later, the movie takes still another turn. A lot of recent films seem unsatisfied unless they can add final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before; call it the Keyser Soze syndrome.


What is all this about? According to Durden, it is about freeing yourself from the shackles of modern life, which imprisons and emasculates men. By being willing to give and receive pain and risk death, Fight Club members find freedom. Movies like "Crash" must play like cartoons for Durden. He's a shadowy, charismatic figure, able to inspire a legion of men in big cities to descend into the secret cellars of a Fight Club and beat one another up.


Only gradually are the final outlines of his master plan revealed. Is Tyler Durden in fact a leader of men with a useful philosophy? "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything," he says, sounding like a man who tripped over the Nietzsche display on his way to the coffee bar in Borders. In my opinion, he has no useful truths. He's a bully--Werner Erhard plus S & M, a leather club operator without the decor. None of the Fight Club members grows stronger or freer because of their membership; they're reduced to pathetic cultists. Issue them black shirts and sign them up as skinheads. Whether Durden represents hidden aspects of the male psyche is a question the movie uses as a loophole--but is not able to escape through, because "Fight Club" is not about its ending but about its action.


Of course, "Fight Club" itself does not advocate Durden's philosophy. It is a warning against it, I guess; one critic I like says it makes "a telling point about the bestial nature of man and what can happen when the numbing effects of day-to-day drudgery cause people to go a little crazy." I think it's the numbing effects of movies like this that cause people go to a little crazy. Although sophisticates will be able to rationalize the movie as an argument against the behavior it shows, my guess is that audience will like the behavior but not the argument. Certainly they'll buy tickets because they can see Pitt and Norton pounding on each other; a lot more people will leave this movie and get in fights than will leave it discussing Tyler Durden's moral philosophy. The images in movies like this argue for themselves, and it takes a lot of narration (or Narration) to argue against them.


Lord knows the actors work hard enough. Norton and Pitt go through almost as much physical suffering in this movie as Demi Moore endured in "G.I. Jane," and Helena Bonham Carter creates a feisty chain-smoking hellcat who is probably so angry because none of the guys thinks having sex with her is as much fun as a broken nose. When you see good actors in a project like this, you wonder if they signed up as an alternative to canyoneering.


The movie was directed by David Fincher and written by Jim Uhls, who adapted the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. In many ways, it's like Fincher's movie "The Game" (1997), with the violence cranked up for teenage boys of all ages. That film was also about a testing process in which a man drowning in capitalism (Michael Douglas) has the rug of his life pulled out from under him and has to learn to fight for survival. I admired "The Game" much more than "Fight Club" because it was really about its theme, while the message in "Fight Club" is like bleeding scraps of Socially Redeeming Content thrown to the howling mob.


Fincher is a good director (his work includes "Alien 3," one of the best-looking bad movies I have ever seen, and "Seven," the grisly and intelligent thriller). With "Fight Club" he seems to be setting himself some kind of a test--how far over the top can he go? The movie is visceral and hard-edged, with levels of irony and commentary above and below the action. If it had all continued in the vein explored in the first act, it might have become a great film. But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery, and whatever Fincher thinks the message is, that's not what most audience members will get. "Fight Club" is a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy--the kind of ride where some people puke and others can't wait to get on again.



[This message has been edited by Cyclonus (edited 08-14-2001).]

[7_Words]

May I ask if anyone honestly liked Anaconda? Coz I just can't get my head over his 3 star rating.

[Cyclonus]

Actually, it was 3 1/2.

[EL_PHANTAZMO]

Thank you Cyclo, I haven't heard or read that pile of dribble yet. My God, I thought his review of Armageddon was bad (worst movie of the year), but his is riduculous. Has he not seen the ending?!? I think he needs to be strapped down a la Clockwork Orange and be forced to watch this movie till he finally "gets" it. I used to agree with him about 90% of the time, but that percentage is dropping more and more, now about 65% on a good day.

[jackson13]

Im 50/50 on Ebert. Most of the time I agree, most of the time I dont. I just wish that fat bastard would show Jim Carrey some respect sometimes. The guy can act very well, and most of the time he bashes his films. The same with Adam Sandler (yeah, im a sandler fan, bite me). Fight Club is one of only 3 films I've seen that gets "A Whole Hand" from me. I rate movies on my "Hand Scale" If it gets "A Whole Hand" then that means all 5 fingers, like 5 stars. Fight Club, Pulp Fiction and American Beauty are the only films to ever win the "Whole Hand Award" from me. And also, I liked Godzilla enough to buy it. And I still enjoy it.

[Horror whore]

Im about 3/97 on Ebert...I just never agree with him much!