Roger Ebert, 1942 - 2013

Everything started with Roger Ebert. The only reason I knew to start watching the films of a director named Martin Scorsese is because Roger Ebert wrote so lovingly of his work. When I was eleven years old, I began reading Ebert's reviews. I quickly became a compulsive viewer of Ebert & Roeper, setting my VCR to record the program every Saturday night. And his work became an indelible part of my life. I would wait by my computer on Thursday nights, counting down the minutes until Ebert’s reviews of the new releases would trickle in.

In April of 2002, I remember breathlessly reading his four-star review of Changing Lanes, a film I was eagerly anticipating, and I rejoiced in the fact that Ebert thought it was a four-star film. I rushed to see Changing Lanes opening weekend, and it is one of the first instances where I can recall going to see the movie with Ebert’s words in my mind as I watched it. Leaving the cinema, I was alive with excitement, to know that I felt the same way Ebert did. It was in that way that I first came to feel like a member of a film society.

I started seeing certain types of films that hitherto I had only examined with curiosity at video stores or seen in giant advertisements in newspapers. I felt almost too young and too unsophisticated to approach many of the great works of cinema, but Ebert’s reviews brought these giant films down to earth for me. In 2002 and 2003, I made ventures to see films such as City of God, Owning Mahoney, Raising Victor Vargas, Nowhere in Africa and The Quiet American in Austin cinemas. This was back when many of the larger multiplex cinemas in Austin – the Gateway and the Westgate, specifically – would screen art-house films for a few weeks alongside the other major releases. It’s telling that the world Ebert introduced me to – a world where American Splendor played alongside American Wedding at the Gateway in 2003 – would eventually morph into a world where The Descendants was banished to mostly “art-house” screens only years later.

A few months before I turned twelve, I began writing weekly film reviews for The West Austin News in April of 2002. Only weeks later, my father passed away. I don’t think I knew how to deal with that kind of pain at such a young age, and I believe I ran away from it by immersing myself in movies more than ever. Through his criticism, Ebert acted as a kind of guide into this new, frightening world that I was entering.

I religiously watched my way through Ebert’s Great Movies list, and I can proudly tell you his favorite film from every year he worked as a critic (for many of the years, I can even recite his entire top ten list by memory). On my computer, I bookmarked every list I could find from both Siskel and Ebert (their end-of-the-decade top ten lists are especially worth obsessing over).

I bought Ebert’s annual Movie Yearbooks and read them compulsively. Whenever I was in the car with my mom, I would bring my copy of his original Great Movies book with me. As she drove, I read his reviews and articles aloud – sometimes on a film we had just watched at home the night before, other times on a film that I was trying to convince her to let me see. She might argue that a particular film sounded a little too mature for an eleven year-old, but by reading Ebert’s reviews to her, I was trying to demonstrate that I was ready to watch these works. I wanted to feel and experience for myself what Ebert so articulately presented in his prose. Just before my twelfth birthday, I finally got permission to watch Raging Bull and Goodfellas for the first time. I can tell you just about everything Ebert has to say about both films, as I viewed them for the first time almost entirely with his review in my mind – what to watch for, what certain sections might mean.

On his website, I constantly entered the Movie Answer Man forum, hoping that Ebert would answer one of my film-related questions (all of the questions that he answered in his Movie Answer Man column were later printed and published in his annual Movie Yearbook – and it was my dream to be included in one).

As a 'film critic' in the Austin circuit, I was invited to advance press screenings days or sometimes weeks before new films were officially released in theaters, which meant I would have to form an opinion on my own without first consulting Ebert, which was a large step for me as a critical thinker. Days after finishing my own review, I would read Ebert’s piece when it was published, and I was always giddy when he felt the same way I did about a film. My first official press screening as a film critic for the West Austin News was for Adaptation in December of 2002. I thought it was one of the best films of the year, and I hoped Ebert would agree with me. Just days later, he posted his four-star review, and placed the film at #3 on his end-of-the-year top ten list.

I was also thrilled to discover that Ebert had relationships with many of the filmmakers he adored, including Scorsese, Werner Herzog and Errol Morris. I’ve read his masterful book “Scorsese by Ebert” more times than I’d care to mention (you only need to read the inside cover of “Scorsese by Ebert” to see a thank-you letter written by Scorsese – on New York University stationary in 1970 – to Ebert, thanking him for championing his work, to get a sense of the personal bond between the two). Even when Ebert occasionally hasn’t been crazy about one of Scorsese’s works, he still understands where the piece is coming from and what it means in the context of Scorsese’s obsessions and concerns as a filmmaker.

I remember being very disappointed that Ebert only gave Gangs of New York three-and-a-half stars when it was released in December of 2002, as I thought it was the best film of the year. Richard Roeper agreed with me – but then, in their annual Oscars segment “If We Picked the Winners” on Ebert and Roeper in early 2003, Ebert said that he felt he had been too harsh on Gangs of New York in his initial review – and of the five films nominated for Best Picture that year, he believed it deserved the Oscar. Ebert was always willing to look back on a film and reconsider it. He only gave 25^th Hour three-and-a-half stars upon its original release in 2002, but he then placed it in his end-of-the-decade top ten list years later.

By the way, 2002 was a great year for film, in addition to being a seminal year for me as a growing film fanatic. Ebert’s #1 film of the year was Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, which was my choice as the year’s second best film. Maybe because it was the first full year where I made a point to see pretty much every noteworthy release in cinemas while keeping Ebert’s books by my bedside table, but I will always remember 2002 as a beautiful year of cinema (About Schmidt, Far From Heaven, Road to Perdition, About A Boy, Punch Drunk Love, The Pianist and Catch Me If You Can were among the other major releases that deeply affected me).

Scorsese and Ebert's Top Ten Films of the 1990s

In 2002 and 2003, I tried to seek out every one of Ebert’s picks for the year’s best film from the past decades (in 2002 and 2003 alone, I recall watching, among many other films, Do the Right Thing, Platoon, House of Games, The Right Stuff, Amadeus, Nashville, The Color Purple, Mississippi Burning, JFK, Malcolm X, Hoop Dreams, Being John Malkovich, Dark City, Almost Famous and 2001: A Space Odyssey).

After doing a quick search in my computer, it looks I’ve quoted Ebert or at least mentioned him in at least every other review I’ve written. And there’s no competition – rogerebert.com is the most visited website on my computer by a mile.

“A movie is not about what it’s about, it’s about how it’s about it.”

When you revisit a film after several years, you also revisit Ebert’s review. Most recently, I returned to his Great Movies article on Nashville, one of my favorite films, and it’s impossible for me now to talk about Nashville without mentioning Ebert’s beautiful words on the film. The meaning of the movie itself is tied to his prose – in a sense, without his words, the picture is not really complete.

I came to understand so much about Ebert through his blog the past few years – including the fact that he was a recovering alcoholic, and that he intimately understood the teachings of Alcoholics Anonymous (which came across so understandingly and well in his review and appreciation of last year’s Flight). 

“My Name is Roger, and I’m an Alcoholic" 

I looked to Ebert for his opinion on everything - his writing, both as a film critic and as a blogger, was the most consistently engaging and brilliant work you'd find online. One of the only reasons I’m on Twitter is so I can follow Ebert and Re-Tweet his opinions, reviews and the articles he comes across.

I have to confess that I oftentimes like to pretend I have a successful movie career, and I invent Roger Ebert reviews in my head – of what he might say about a film I directed, or in which I acted. This game is immensely satisfying, mostly because I like to think I've read enough of Ebert's work to formulate realistic-souding make-believe reviews in my head. Not that it would likely have ever happened (receiving an Ebert review means you've probably 'made it' as a director, and I'm pretty far from that), but I am now faced with the fact that there's not going to be an opportunity to read an actual Ebert review of one of my films.

Siskel and Ebert's Top Ten Films of the 1980s

Reading his last blog post just two days before his death – “A Leave of Presence” – I was deeply troubled to read of the return of his cancer, but I didn’t imagine for a moment that we would lose Ebert. It’s never registered with me that Ebert would ever cease being.

As I learned of Ebert’s passing at my internship last Thursday, a small part of me died inside. When I open my mouth from now on to inform someone of the master’s opinion – “Well, Ebert has consistently written that Nicolas Cage is one of our finest actors…” – my excitement about the conversation will give way to immense sadness. I’m prone to depressive bouts with nostalgia, and Ebert, who occupies the role of narrator when I think about anything related to film, will now be another person tucked into the past. The voice of reason is gone.

The Time Roger Ebert Told Off Congress

As one of my roommates said, as Ebert dies, so do hundreds of future films that will be forgotten without his efforts to spotlight and appreciate them. He championed the films that were forgotten, both large and small, and was responsible for the careers of many great filmmakers who, without someone like Ebert behind them, likely would not have achieved a great deal of their success. 

A world without Roger Ebert is something with which I’m not very comfortable. Gone is the generosity, the warmth and the understanding. I keep checking his website to see what Roger Ebert has to say about the death of such a great human being, and it’s only then that I remember. As a 'film critic,' I am at a loss for words. There are other critics I admire, but none in whom I can take comfort like Roger Ebert. As an aspiring filmmaker, I wonder, for whom will we make movies anymore?

A sample of some of my favorite Ebert reviews:

Almost Famous - Original 2000 Review

Minority Report - Original 2002 Review

Nashville - Original 1975 Review and Great Movies Review

Raging Bull - Great Movies Review

Wonder Boys - Original 2000 Review

The Best Films of the 2000s

Siskel and Ebert's Top 10 Lists 1969-1998

Roger Ebert Homily

A Boy And His Dreams of the Cinema: Scorsese, Hugo and Me

When watching Martin Scorsese’s new film Hugo, it’s as if my love for Scorsese has come full circle. I first fell in love with him – in obsession with him, really – when I was eleven years old, when I watched VHS copies of Raging Bull (1980), Goodfellas (1990) and Taxi Driver (1976) almost back-to-back. On a visceral and emotional level, I had never seen anything like these pictures. These first encounters with Scorsese occurred only a few months after the death of my father, and in a way, the events are forever linked in my mind. My eyes were opened to a different kind of world – a place where pain, obsession and guilt were always present, and the only way to express this pain was through cinema.

And it is in this way that I looked to Scorsese, really, as a sort of father figure – as a filmmaker who spoke to the fears and obsessions I harbored at a very young age, but also as a filmmaker who understood the excitement and thrilling rush of living. His films are experiential in a way that other movies are not, and I think I recognized early on that no other filmmaker was capable of communicating “an intensity onscreen that matches what [one] perceives/suffers in real life,” as eloquently stated by Chris Hodenfield in his article “You’ve Got to Love Something Enough to Kill It: The Art of Noncompromise.”

On December 20th, 2002, I was a twelve year-old boy sitting bright-eyed, entranced, exhilarated and moved by Gangs of New York on its opening day at the AMC Barton Creek Cinema in Austin, Texas – my first Scorsese film in theaters and a life-changing – yes, an absolutely life-changing – experience. And so with Hugo has Scorsese finally made a film about a twelve year-old boy enveloped by the cinema. And not just a twelve year-old boy, mind you, but a boy with a recently deceased father who seeks emotional satisfaction through the imagination and power of cinema. If there was ever a Scorsese film made just for me, surely this is the one.

My anticipation for a new Scorsese picture is unmatched; I await a new Scorsese movie the same way some anticipate a sort of religious experience. I don’t know if it's truly possible to count the ways Scorsese has influenced every single part of my everyday life, down to the music I listen to daily (The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison) to my beliefs about people, down to the way I experience things, every blink, cut and interpretation of events – not to mention my choice to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Scorsese’s alma mater. His work is such a fundamentally important part of my life that there are times when I don’t know how much I originally found similarities between my personal demons and Scorsese’s work, and how much Scorsese’s work ultimately influenced my behavior.

“Movies are the memories of our lifetime. We need to keep them alive.” - Martin Scorsese

Although every one of Scorsese’s pictures is extremely personal – after all, that’s what’s so effective about his films – Hugo may be Scorsese’s most personal film of all. Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), a young boy living in the walls of a Parisian train station in the 1930s, discovers that an automaton left for him by his recently deceased father (Jude Law) may unlock the mystery behind George Méliès (Ben Kingsley), an unhappy elderly man who owns a toy shop in the train station. What Hugo and his newfound friend Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), Méliès’ goddaughter, gradually discover is that Méliès is one of the original pioneers of cinema, the director of over five hundred pictures and a revolutionary filmmaker. However, most of his films are believed to have been destroyed and melted at the rise of World War I, and Méliès, a broken machine without a purpose, resigns from life and fades into obscurity – until Hugo, who understands the pain of having one’s hopes and dreams disintegrate into flames – sets out to restore Méliès’ work.

Ah, film preservation – Scorsese’s most passionate cause, and the real subject of Hugo. The film is all about time, cruel time that batters away at celluloid. As the clocks tick-tock away in Hugo, the memories of our lives are slowly dying, the celluloid burning into ash and the preservation of our past decaying. But how can we let time destroy the magic and power of the cinema, of our memories?

The film gets you caught up in the magic of moviemaking, to the point where the audience gasps in astonishment at the beautiful remaining print of Méliès’ film A Trip to the Moon (1902), screened by film scholar Rene Tabard (Michael Stuhlbarg), who worships Méliès, but, like many, believes him to be dead – until Hugo and Isabelle prove otherwise. Watching Hugo with an audience, there were further gasps of awe when Méliès – in one of the most visually arresting and beautiful flashback sequences I have ever seen – splices together a cut in one of his early films. It had never occurred to me that so many people would not have known the process behind film editing, but there you go.

To say that Hugo is the finest use of 3D technology that I’ve ever seen doesn’t do justice to what Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson achieve with this picture. I don’t particularly like 3D, and yet the visual bravura of Hugo has convinced me that, when utilized by a master filmmaker and treated as an artistic device, it is a major cinematic innovation, on par with the innovations of Méliès and the Lumière Brothers.

This movie is so rich – not just visually, but emotionally – that even after two viewings I am still overwhelmed by it. The performances, from the brilliant and hilarious physical comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Station Inspector, to Kingsley’s nuanced, powerful portrayal of Méliès, are superb. The editing, by the wonderful and loyal Scorsese collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker, is as crisp and exciting as ever.

But in the end, if Scorsese is Hugo, the film preservationist – the boy who restores the magic in a broken machine – then Méliès can be seen as a stand-in for any one of Scorsese’s filmmaking influences whose work he has restored through his Film Foundation, including Michael Powell, Elia Kazan, Luchino Visconti and, of course, Méliès himself. But surely Scorsese knows that, by the end of Hugo, when Méliès takes the stage and tearfully acknowledges Hugo before a screening of his restored work, that it’s impossible for someone like me to look at Méliès, the great innovator of cinema, without thinking of Scorsese, the wise master of filmmaking who influenced me.

This is the work of a master at the height of his cinematic powers. People who truly love film have, picture after picture, said this exact same thing about Scorsese many times. We said it when The Aviator (2004) soared as the most ambitious, energetic and entertaining Hollywood biopic in years. We said it when The Departed (2006) was no less than the great American tragedy of the 2000s, a masterful return to the gangster picture that held us captivated in our seats. And we’re saying it again for Hugo, a movie that has been surrounded by so much negativity from the first announcement that Scorsese would direct a 3D picture – as if the world’s finest filmmaker, who has never made anything short of a great film, wouldn’t find a way to discover the art in 3D technology and take it to an entirely new level – and not only that, but do it with his most passionate cause as his subject material.

My loyalty to Scorsese is boundless, and I’ve suffered through the lows – throwing things at the television when he unfairly lost Best Director Academy Awards for Gangs of New York and The Aviator to inferior films, listening to pseudo-intellectual hipsters knock on the brilliance of Shutter Island (2010) – and I’ve been with him through the highs. And let me tell you, there is nothing that feels as wonderful as watching the artist you love and defend your entire life receive the praise and admiration he so richly deserves, squashing the cynicism of those who feel his time has past. This is his time. George Méliès, step aside for another master of cinema. Martin Scorsese, take a bow.

The Top 100 Movies of the Decade

I’ve seen many movies in the past decade – an almost embarrassing number, actually – and now, at the end of the decade, I have compiled what I believe are the 100 best movies, in preferential order. Of course, the rankings are fairly trivial – I can’t really argue that #36 is superior to #37 – but the list gives you an idea, anyway, of the movies that resonate with me, the ones that have made an impact on my life.

This is my list. Some people may laugh at some of the choices, but no matter – I believe in the greatness of these films and, in one way or another, each of the movies on the list has changed me. Inevitably, this list will change in the years to come, as I will certainly come to appreciate some films in a different way, and my opinions of others will fall.

But for today, at the very least, here are the 100 best movies of the decade, 2000-2009. By Jack Kyser.

1. The Departed (2006; Martin Scorsese)

2. Mystic River (2003; Clint Eastwood)

3. No Country for Old Men (2007; Joel and Ethan Coen)

4. The Aviator (2004; Martin Scorsese)

5. Lost in Translation (2003; Sofia Coppola)

6. Gangs of New York (2002; Martin Scorsese)

7. There Will Be Blood (2007; Paul Thomas Anderson)

8. Minority Report (2002; Steven Spielberg)

9. Brokeback Mountain (2005; Ang Lee)

10. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001; Wes Anderson)

11. Adaptation (2002; Spike Jonze)

12. About Schmidt (2002; Alexander Payne)

13. Zodiac (2007; David Fincher)

14. Munich (2005; Steven Spielberg)

15. Almost Famous (2000; Cameron Crowe)

16. Wonder Boys (2000; Curtis Hanson)

17. Into the Wild (2007; Sean Penn)

18. I’m Not There (2007; Todd Haynes)

19. The Wrestler (2008; Darren Aronofsky)

20. A Serious Man (2009; Joel and Ethan Coen)

21. Million Dollar Baby (2004; Clint Eastwood)

22. Sideways (2004; Alexander Payne)

23. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004; Michel Gondry)

24. Inglourious Basterds (2009; Quentin Tarantino)

25. 21 Grams (2003; Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu)

26. Milk (2008; Gus Van Sant)

27. Memento (2001; Christopher Nolan)

28. City of God (2002; Fernando Meirelles)

29. The Dark Knight (2008; Christopher Nolan)

30. Children of Men (2006; Alfonso Cuaron)

31. Up in the Air (2009; Jason Reitman)

32. Collateral (2004; Michael Mann)

33. Mulholland Drive (2001; David Lynch)

34. Slumdog Millionaire (2008; Danny Boyle)

35. 25th Hour (2002; Spike Lee)

36. Michael Clayton (2007; Tony Gilroy)

37. Capote (2005; Bennett Miller)

38. Syriana (2005; Stephen Gaghan)

39. Letters from Iwo Jima (2006; Clint Eastwood)

40. Babel (2006; Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu)

41. Synecdoche, New York (2008; Charlie Kaufman)

42. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007; Andrew Dominik)

43. The Good Shepherd (2006; Robert De Niro)

44. Black Hawk Down (2001; Ridley Scott)

45. American Splendor (2003; Robert and Sheri Springer Bergman)

46. Crazy Heart (2009; Scott Cooper)

47. Revolutionary Road (2008; Sam Mendes)

48. The Hurt Locker (2009; Kathryn Bigelow)

49. Road to Perdition (2002; Sam Mendes)

50. House of Sand and Fog (2003; Vadim Perelman)

51. Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2 (2003 and 2004; Quentin Tarantino)

52. Traffic (2000; Steven Soderbergh)

53. Shattered Glass (2003; Billy Ray)

54. Far From Heaven (2002; Todd Haynes)

55. Little Children (2006; Todd Field)

56. United 93 (2006; Paul Greengrass)

57. Before Sunset (2004; Richard Linklater)

58. Match Point (2005; Woody Allen)

59. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007; Sidney Lumet)

60. Monster (2003; Patty Jenkins)

61. The Quiet American (2002; Philip Noyce)

62. The Pianist (2002; Roman Polanski)

63. Matchstick Men (2003; Ridley Scott)

64. Little Miss Sunshine (2006; Jonathan Davis and Valerie Faris)

65. Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005; George Clooney)

66. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008; David Fincher)

67. Walk the Line (2005; James Mangold)

68. Rachel Getting Married (2008; Jonathan Demme)

69. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000; Joel and Ethan Coen)

70. Ghost World (2001; Terry Zwigoff)

71. The White Ribbon (2009; Michael Haneke)

72. Passing Strange: The Movie (2009; Spike Lee)

73. Gosford Park (2001; Robert Altman)

74. Precious (2009; Lee Daniels)

75. A Beautiful Mind (2001; Ron Howard)

76. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003; Peter Weir)

77. Punch Drunk Love (2002; Paul Thomas Anderson)

78. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2006; Tommy Lee Jones)

79. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009; Wes Anderson)

80. Finding Neverland (2004; Marc Forster)

81. The Fog of War (2003; Errol Morris)

82. Hotel Rwanda (2004; Terry George)

83. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001; Joel and Ethan Coen)

84. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007; Julian Schnabel)

85. Frost/ Nixon (2008; Ron Howard)

86. Sin City (2005; Robert Rodriguez)

87. American Gangster (2007; Ridley Scott)

88. This is England (2007; Shane Meadows)

89. The Squid and the Whale (2005; Noah Baumbach)

90. The Pledge (2001; Sean Penn)

91. (500) Days of Summer (2009; Marc Webb)

92. Shine a Light (2008; Martin Scorsese)

93. A Single Man (2009; Tom Ford)

94. About a Boy (2002; Paul Weitz)

95. Public Enemies (2009; Michael Mann)

96. Insomnia (2002; Christopher Nolan)

97. Burn After Reading (2008; Joel and Ethan Coen)

98. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005; Shane Black)

99. The Last King of Scotland (2006; Kevin MacDonald)

100. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004; Wes Anderson)