Although I didn’t get the chance to visit EbertFest 2015, I have been an avid reader of Roger Ebert’s film reviews for quite a long time. I particularly prefer his reviews to other top film critics because Ebert typically tried to see the positive things in movies, good or bad, and usually when he disliked a film, he was typically kind and constructive in his criticism whereas some other top critics are often just mean.

That being said I decided to go back and explore his reviews of two of my favorite movies of all time that happen to both star the incredibly multi-dimensional ‘funny-man’ Jim Carrey in movies that aren’t necessarily comedies.

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet in my favorite still from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In the first film I investigated, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, directed by Michael Gondry and written by Charlie Kaufman, I was not surprised to discover that Ebert gave it three and a half stars out of four. The film is about two emotionally isolated individuals who fell in love, fell out of love and hired a fictional service called “Lacuna Inc,” to erase the painful memories of their time together to help get over their relationship. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t say much more because it might spoil it for you, but I will say that it is a deep dive into the mystery of memory and the inevitability of history repeating itself. Ebert says of the film–

“Despite jumping through the deliberately disorienting hoops of its story, “Eternal Sunshine” has an emotional center, and that’s what makes it work. Although Joel and Clementine ping-pong through various stages of romance and reality, what remains constant is the human need for love and companionship, and the human compulsion to keep seeking it, despite all odds.”

The second film I chose to research was The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol and starring again Jim Carrey. Truman (Carrey) is the subject of a multi-decade reality show, of which he is unaware of, in a giant, highly controlled environment filled with hidden cameras and actors who he has believed to be his family, friends and even spouse for his entire life.

Probably my favorite still of any movie

Ebert gave this film a perfect score and if you watch it, I think you will understand why. The very beginning of his review of this film goes like this —

“The Truman Show is founded on an enormous secret that all of the studio’s advertising has been determined to reveal. I didn’t know the secret when I saw the film, and was able to enjoy the little doubts and wonderings that the filmmakers so carefully planted. If by some good chance you do not know the secret, read no further.”

While I may have already exposed a little bit of the plot, my favorite thing that Ebert said about this film is that “it brings into focus the new values that technology is forcing on humanity.” We were talking today in class about how we have the ability to have high-definition cameras essentially anywhere and everywhere and it is a little scary to consider for me at least because of the powers that can and may very well already exploit that ability.

           Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966) is the first non-traditional film that makes me feel so confused when I watched it for the first time. I had to watch three times in order to finish my paper for Blow Up. And it turns out that I like the film more and more after I watched more times. So I choose to compare my review with Roger Ebert’s review.

       The successful London photographer Thomas who has sexual life causally feels boring and depressing. He meet a mysterious beauty in the park and takes series of photos. After he goes back and blows up the photo, he finds out some detail and speculates that there is a murder.

While reading the Roger Ebert’s reviews, I find out what we think about “whether there is a murder or not” differently. Ebert believes that whether there was a murder isn’t the point. According to Ebert, Thomas is lost in his craft as he continually blows up his photograph. He is happy to do that. As Thomas moves between his darkroom and the blowups, Ebert analyzed that this bliss of an artist lost in what behaviorists call the Process. In this way, Thomas is driven by his own mind. By contrast, I think that the narration is restricted. We only know what the characters see.

I recognize the character of Thomas through the talk between him and the owner of store. But there is another character—the owner of the antique shop. She has a similar character as Thomas. While he asked that girl why she is selling the antiques store, she answered that she is fed up with antiques and considers moving out to another city. Later, as Thomas shared his photos with his collaborator Ron, he says that he is fed up with blonde skinny and wants a trip. The answers of them are mostly the same. They both get bored of their lives and seek something different. That’s also the reason that Thomas called and asked his boss to buy the junk store. But Ebert states the character of Thomas as a artist more.

I have lived around Champaign my entire life. Why haven’t I ever gone to Eberfest? I have no idea, but going for my first time convinced me that maybe I should have been there in previous years. The experience was awesome. I went to Eberfest on Thursday night to see The End of the Tour. I chose this movie specifically because I am obsessed with the show How I Met Your Mother and absolutely love Jason Segel. Since this was my first time going to Eberfest, I really didn’t know what to expect. The line was enormous to get into this film and I didn’t know if that was normal or not. I was lucky enough to be one of the last few people let into the theater.

Because I was one of the last ones in, I had to rush to find an empty seat (I found one in the balcony) and I ended up missing around the first 10 minutes of the film. I guess I’ll have to see it again (no complaints here!). This movie is about a Rolling Stone reporter writing a story about David Foster Wallace. Wallace spent his childhood in Champaign, so I thought that was a cool thing to have a guy who grew up locally have a movie made about him, which we were all watching in Champaign.

Part of the movie takes place in Bloomington-Normal (the home of Illinois State) and funnily enough, almost every time Bloomington was mentioned, the audience laughed. They story was compelling and had me interested throughout the duration of the film. A lot of comedic relief was thrown in and made the movie a fun experience. Both Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg are tremendous actors. I don’t want to give too much away for those who wish to see this film but to summarize it a bit: David Lipsky (the Rolling Stones journalist) comes out of the time he spent with David Foster Wallace with a much different perspective on him than he did first going in to visit with him.

Enjoying this film with everyone else was quite the experience, I always loved that aspect of movie going, seeing and hearing the reactions of others to the film. The director of the film, James Ponsoldt told the audience that Bloomington had never been received with laughter from the audience before, so I’d say seeing the movie in central Illinois was a unique experience. It was an excellent film that I’m sure will be nominated for many awards and I recommended everyone see it. It was an even better experience.

Batman has always been my favorite superhero of all time, so of course I was excited back in 2005 when I heard that there was going to be a new Batman movie. I really did not know what to expect, as the last Batman movie I had saw was the one with George Clooney. That one, in my opinion, was a bit of a dud. It didn’t focus much on the backstory of Batman and the whole movie seemed like a cheesy, unrealistic portrayal of Batman.

Then along came Christopher Nolan to make a new trilogy about Batman, starting with Batman Begins. I had no idea who Christian Bale was but was willing to give Batman Begins a shot because I had always wanted to see the origins of Batman take place on the big screen.

Roger Ebert gave this film 4 stars, so I think that it is safe to say he enjoyed it quite a bit. Ebert says that Batman Begins tracks Bruce Waynes path to becoming Batman from his childhood into his adulthood. He states that he likes the film so much better than earlier Batman films because it didn’t have the “gloss” of the other films, such as, the bat cave being under Wayne manner and the bat suit not being over the top. Ebert claims that after an eight year hiatius, with the help of Nolan, that the Batman franchices is finally on its way.

I guess Ebert knew what he was talking about because the trilogy went on to become one of the highest grossing trilogies in history. I really enjoyed this film because of the backstory, which led Bruce Wayne to becoming Batman, which most previous films tend to gloss over showing his parents dying then him wearing the bat suit in the next scene. This film laid the foundation for the rest of the trilogy, and all three films were great.

This was my first experience ever going to Ebertfest, and it was odd seeing a movie that so many viewers had such close personal ties to, given that David Foster Wallace is from Champaign, and that it was mainly set in Bloomington.  The crowd seemed to cheer during moments that to them had meaning given their setting, but I actually found that distracting given that it usually stood in contrast to the tone of whatever was actually going on in the film at the time.  The guy I wrote about this movie with said, “When they play Lebron’s biopic in Akron 30 years from now, I expect the audience will have a similar reaction.” I actually transferred here from the University of Minnesota originally, so to me it was cool seeing a movie set in mostly a place that I am now compared to a place that I left.  Overall Ebertfest was a cool experience for me, it reminded me of going to a local show back in high school when all the bands knew each other and everyone knew everyone else’s name.  The Virgina was beautiful, the crowd, as previously mentioned, was quite engaged with the films, and it’s something that I could see myself coming back to Champaign after graduation to experience again.  I wrote about the film for buzz magazine, we had two writers cover it to kind of play off of the fact that the film itself was about two writers, my thoughts on it are below.

An aspect of The End of the Tour that not many people are going to talk about, but should be recognized, is the quiet beauty of Ponsoldt’s visual choices. He strives to put his viewers within the scene, accomplishing this with hand-held camera work and natural lighting. Even on the enormous screen of the Virginia, watching this movie I was struck by how grounded I felt, how easy it was to lose myself in the conversations between Lipsky and Wallace, as if I were in the room with them and everything was happening right in front of me.

Jason Segel is essential to this film, without him it would lack any personality or momentum. The thing about artists, be they actors or writers, is that there is an aspect of alienation that comes with the territory of what they do. This story at its core is about the fears of a man who just wanted to be perceived as a normal guy, when the entire world wanted him to be something more than that. After Segel’s run on How I Met Your Mother, I came away thinking that he probably didn’t have to dig very deep to be able to understand Wallace. Maybe that’s why Eisenberg is so unconvincing as Lipsky – it’s difficult to summon any bitterness towards Wallace or his intelligence, and much easier to appreciate the sadness of his solitude.

Having never read Wallace, it was difficult to know whether to credit the biopic or the man himself with the casual but brilliant insights that Segel delivers from underneath his bandana. I’m inclined towards the later, which creates a conundrum when I try to put into words how I felt about this film. On one hand, I could sense how bowled over a younger, more impressionable version of myself would’ve been by this introduction to Wallace and his genius. But I also felt the conflict between the writers was forced; in part due to the film being too short and poorly paced, and also because of the portrayal of Lipsky as a one-dimensional narcissist. Despite these flaws, this will be a lot of people’s favorite film of the year and I understand why. The portrayal of Wallace manages to capture what so many other films fail to – that depression isn’t always best represented by dark clouds and sad songs, but rather as a scratching insecurity on a life that is otherwise beautiful.

I’m always nervous and excited to look at Roger Ebert’s reviews for films that I like, because more often than not, he doesn’t like them, but I still end up learning his reasoning behind his dislikes. So when I decided to look at his review for Tarsem Singh’s The Fall, I was expecting his to say that it was nothing more than a series of pretty pictures, and that he hated it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he gave the film a four-star rating. While the gist of his article was that it was a bunch of beautiful shots tied together by a less than stellar plot, he had an appreciation for the amount of work that went into the film.

In his review, Ebert mentions a Variety article that calls The Fall a vanity project. I remember reading that article and thinking something similar to what Ebert articulates: “you can only admire the man vain enough to make it.” I was awed by the film’s lack of CGI, and yet it is so visually stunning that you think that the director must be lying to you.

The film is a about a young girl, Alexandria, and an injured stuntman Roy (Lee Pace). Roy tells Alexandria stories, and the film generates the images based on Alexandria’s imagination of said stories. There isn’t much more to the plot, but I don’t think there needs to be.

I don’t think that I have ever agreed so whole-heartedly with one of Ebert’s reviews, and while I do still love reading the reviews that do not share my opinion, it’s nice when there is common ground between us every once in a while.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-fall-2008

Photo courtesy of http://i.ytimg.com

In high school I read The Life of Pi and shortly after, the movie was released. Not only was the movie a magical visual transition from paper to picture, but it also stayed true to the book; which for some movies is a hard task.

Roger Ebert reviewed this 2012 movie and gave it 4 stars saying that, “I have decided it is one of the best films of the year”. Although I do not remember most of the movies I watched in 2012, I must agree that it was one of the more memorable movies I have seen. The cinematography is amazing and enchants the viewer as it tells the miraculous story of Pi Patel being stranded at see with a Bengal tiger for 227 days.

In part of his review, Ebert talks about the point of view in one scene of the movie in which the camera is looking up at the lifeboat from under the sea. He says, “The surface of the sea is like the enchanted membrane upon which it floats. There is nothing in particular to define it; it is just… there…. It is a shot of ocean, boat and sky as one glorious place”. This is one of the interesting techniques the movie used. It turned ordinary shots into entertaining and visually pleasing shots.

Another thing I love about this movie is that most of the scenes take place in and around the lifeboat. Although it is the same setting, it never gets old or boring. The camera is constantly changing angles, the colors are always vibrant, and the lapse of time is shown beautifully through the ocean around the characters. The viewer also watches the characters themselves as they develop both physically and emotionally. So although the setting hasn’t changed, so much is changing that it keeps viewers intrigued.

Roger Ebert says that the movie is a, “miraculous achievement of storytelling and a landmark of visual mastery” and I think he is right on point. This movie is not only a great story, but a wonderfully made movie as well. I’m sure Roger would agree with me when I say this is a movie that everyone should see.

Here is a link to his review: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/life-of-pi-2012

At Ebertfest 2015, I was a stagehand for Wild Tales, Ida, and 99 Homes, which all played on Saturday. Basically, the club I am in is responsible for running the live feed and getting the footage needed to edit together the introductions and Q&As later. Since we’re not allowed to record the films themselves, we end up having to watch the films for free. There are definitely worse things in this world than watching free movies in the middle of volunteering for a film festival. We’re also in charge of operating Skype for the festival, and, I just want to say, for Wild Tales, the Skype fiasco was totally not our fault; the director wasn’t answering our calls and the internet on both ends was bad.

In terms of jobs, among the team we have a director, Skype monitor, cameras 1&2 operator, camera 3 operator, stream monitor, audio monitor, and PA. The next and last job is titled “The Master”, which is what Andrew Stengele does. He’s the guy who orchestrates everything the team does and has to run around to make sure everything is running smoothly. As an Illini Film and Video (IFV) alum, he brings this wonderful opportunity back to the club every year for members that participate regularly in IFV.

I first want to get the bad energy out of the air and talk about Ida. I’m actually Catholic, so I was excited (and scared) to watch how the film industry would handle a film with a seemingly interesting plot about a nun. The content itself was good and not as critical of religion as I had feared. It was actually the artsy flare that turned me off a little bit. It reminded me of the way that some indie films fail (some, not all). What I mean by that is that I feel like when indie movies fall short of expectations, it’s not because of the script, cinematography, actors, etc. It’s usually because the timing is completely off. Cuts tend to be too long or too short which creates pacing problems that completely overshadow the things that the film does well. I think that Ida had this problem. I would say probably 30-45 minutes of the film could have been cut without losing any content and the pacing would have been significantly improved. Besides this major problem, there were a few additional small things that bothered me. I don’t like how often they framed people in the lower third of shots. There was a panel afterwards that discussed this and one of the critics suggested that, since this is a religious movie, maybe the top of the frame is for God. That makes a lot of sense to me, but at the same time I feel like even if they were trying to move the film forward by making God a very present character, they instead succeeded in detracting from the dialogue and plot by confusing the audience and making audience members uncomfortable. Also, while the lack of non-diegetic music was an interesting choice, in this particular movie I felt like the pacing would have been drastically improved if there had been a soundtrack.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/a/ab/20150113170452!Ida_(2013_film).jpg

Wild Tales, on the other hand, I felt had excellent pacing and use of good filmmaking technique. Still, it lost the best foreign film academy award to Ida. I guess the main thing I learned from Ebertfest this year was that the academy awards are arbitrary and really don’t matter. Out of the six short films within Wild Tales, I would say I really liked three and a half of them, one and a half were okay, and one I did not care for at all. The stories were all disjoint, but could all be considered dark comedies. Overall, I would say that it was an enjoyable experience, although I do have a fairly dark sense of humor, which was definitely needed to appreciate this film.

https://photo.tinhte.vn/store/2015/04/3017885_wild-tales_5.jpg

99 Homes was a very sad, but well done film. As someone who likes movies that evoke strong emotion or thought, I liked it a lot. It deals mostly with homelessness, single parenting, and ethics. The director, Ramin Bahrani, was especially interesting to listen to afterwards. In order to make the movie, he travelled to the setting he created and researched homelessness firsthand. He made the story seem more real by mixing true stories in with the main story and using the actors’ objects and experiences to make their performances seem more real. For the first two movies’ Q&A, I had jobs that required me to wear a headset and be occupied the entire time, but for 99 Homes, I was a little less busy. Because of this, one of my favorite parts of Ebertfest was sitting in the basement control room with some of my friends and getting to discuss what Ramin Bahrani was saying as he was speaking over us without disturbing any audience members.

http://powergrid.thewrap.com/sites/default/files/99_homes.jpg

I had a break from 4:45pm-8:30pm, but otherwise I was at the festival from 10:30am to midnight. As the festival ended for the night and my fiancé and I were walking out, Chaz Ebert and Ramin Bahrani (director of 99 Homes), held the doors open for us, so that was kind of cool. It was a long day, but totally worth it.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/van-helsing-2004

It’s really difficult to choose an all-time favorite movie, but I’d say that Van Helsing (Sommers, 2004, USA) makes my list of top ten. Unfortunately, I haven’t met many people who actually like the film, so that’s why I was really interested to read what Roger Ebert had to say about it. Surprisingly, it managed to get three out of four stars from his review. For reference, on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie got an average rating of 4.2/10 for being “a hollow creature feature that suffers from CGI overload”.

http://www.clubdesmonstres.com/vanhelsing01.jpg

After offering a brief summary, the first thing Roger reviews is the movie’s special effects. While there are right and wrong ways to implement special effects, Roger explains that Van Helsing uses them the right way, with the effects enhancing the cinematography and production design, instead of being used as a means to make the ridiculously impossible happen, which Roger thinks is boring. Aesthetically, the film does a good job of bringing Sommers’ imagination to life to produce “spectacular sights” and a “visual feast”. He specifically cites the masquerade ball and the coach chase as stunning scenes that were strengthened by use of special effects. Although this clip of the masquerade ball scene I found is in French and weirdly compressed, you can still kind of get a feel for the visuals Roger is talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GopEzcxYcR8

Set design seems to be something Roger was especially thinking about while watching this movie. He writes an entire paragraph on Van Helsing’s recreation of Victor Frankenstein’s laboratory, which is agreeable to him as well as many filmmakers in artistic roles. I found this a little surprising as Frankenstein’s laboratory is only featured a few minutes at the beginning, while Dracula’s winter palace is featured from around thirty to sixty minutes near the end and seems to have more thought and money put into it. In execution, the structure of the winter palace is more central to the plot in that the characters use their surroundings creatively whereas most of the set at Frankenstein’s laboratory is only there for visual satisfaction. It’s not that the laboratory isn’t cool, it’s just surprising that Roger would touch on it without also touching on the winter palace.

Roger then goes on to critique the screenplay itself, which is, for many people, the main point of criticism. Many people feel that the movie tries to be too big. It includes too many monsters, too many special effects, and it is too predictable. I appreciate that Roger notices the script’s subtle humor, its quiet touches, and how the hodgepodge of monster stories are all brilliantly woven together so that each one is important to another. Roger closes by saying, “Van Helsing is silly and spectacular, and fun.” While I admit that it is fairly predictable, I still found myself caring about characters, marveling at the visuals, and having fun. I agree with Roger’s review. It may not be a technically innovative work of art, but it deserves more credit than a lot of people give it.

This year, I was fortunate enough to volunteer at Ebertfest 2015. What’s great about volunteering is that whatever film you’re working you get to sit in on the screening for free! Basically, you arrive 90 minutes before the film starts and afterwards, clean up after everyone leaves the theater. It’s easy, it’s fun and you work with some great people!

I got to watch “Goodbye to Language” which was a film I was really looking forward too. But… I didn’t like it. I was unable to enjoy the film because I really didn’t like the 3D. Most of the images I saw were blurry including the text! Perhaps, my glasses may were broken or maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was sitting on the side and the angle was off. I was so distracted with whether or not I was seeing what I was meant to be seeing that I couldn’t focus on the film. Actually, when I took my glasses off I was able to concentrate better. Who knows? Maybe I’m too simplistic! Maybe I’m not deep enough for it!

I had a great time working the screening though. I remember one funny incident where a drunk guest (who, now that I think about it,actually helped plan the event) approached me and told me he “liked Nazi films.” Not only was it inappropriate for him to approach me in his drunken stupor but the question he asked was random and offensive! I grilled him on his comment. But, I must say that his answer did kind of make sense. He told me, “Because you always know who the bad guy is.You don’t even need to think about it. It’s as plain as day.” Then he hobbled off to harass another innocent bystander without so much as a “goodbye, thanks for listening to me talk nonsense.”

Now that I had time to think about his babbling I realize that he is actually right. Nazis are the go to bad guys. You don’t need to waste time explaining who the villain is when you’ve got a Nazi, it’s always the Nazi! I’m sure there must be some film essays on this topic. The idea that there are people who are and always will be inherently evil, villains at heart, and how their portrayal effects the rest of the film. I’m actually really glad I was approached by Mr. Hammered–he gave me something to think about!

Can’t wait for next year’s fest!

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/07/nazis-as-movie-villains-the-evolution-of-a-cliche/242519/#slide1

^Interesting article on Nazi portrayals throughout history!