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22 movies Ebert really hated

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gamz

Member
Ebert was the perfect balance of film lover, being critical and being able to speak with a measured voice about film to an audience. He had passion that never really rolled into hyperbole. I don't know if many other critics, particularly when it comes to reviews, strike that as well as he did. There are others I enjoy reading but you could tell immediately something that Ebert wrote.

He wrote in that "speaking voice" as though he's communicating directly to you without sacrificing the points and analysis with it. His "Great Movies" essays are some of the best write-ups on film out there. I always got the sense he could write pages and pages more on one film but forced himself to limit it. There's a lot of critics and film scholars out there that can write a ton about a film but I don't think anyone conveyed it as eloquently as Ebert could.

Well said. As a kid I would buy his year end review books and before bed I would at read at least one review before I went to bed. As a film lover I loved they way he wrote, and I would always learn something about the craft of a film.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
The writer and director are just feeding us a bullshit story for a couple of hours. It's interesting that one of the things that gets people bent out of shape about the usual suspects is that they didn't get the 'true' story and that they wasted their time watching a made up one. That they'll never know what really happened.
 

The Lamp

Member
The reason I was so drawn to him years ago wasn't if I agreed with him or not (more often than not I did) but because his writing was amazing. This, augmented with his encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, make him one of the greatest critics who's ever lived.



Robert Eger?

Lol wow I messed that one up
 
Imagine a critic disliking a game the way Ebert disliked Blue Velvet. I'm sure there would be nerd rage (and I'm sure its already happened.)

The Village is a masterpiece btw.
 

SeanC

Member
Imagine a critic disliking a game the way Ebert disliked Blue Velvet. I'm sure there would be nerd rage (and I'm sure its already happened.)

Telling someone on Twitter that they're a cunt and should die is the only way to prove how much of an artform videogames are.
 

pigeon

Banned
Which is basically the premise of all movies. I'm actually surprised that he didn't like that part of it.

Reading his review, it sounds like he watched it the first time under poor circumstances and this colored his opinion. Also, he actually did not understand some of the movie, Hockney states that he stole the truck that had them in the line-up, and more importantly it should be obvious that Soze orchestrated the line-up so as to put his team together for the final job.

As I mentioned in my post, if The Usual Suspects is meant to be ironic metacommentary on moviemaking it's pretty tedious at that too. You can make the same comment in fifteen minutes with the same effectiveness. Next time just cut a short and save everybody time.
 

KahooTs

Member
Been over a decade since I watched the Usual Suspects but from memory the ending didn't pull the rug the whole way out from under the movie. There was someone who could identify KS and was being sold to an enemy, and so KS had to risk sticking his head up to get the deed done. That part was straight true. But he got nabbed.

And so the 'real' movie was what was going on in the interrogation, not the retelling. Verbal was simply keeping the cop occupied, playing the shit eater the cop had pegged him as so he wouldn't catch on to what he had. And when the KS name got dropped, Verbal played to the cop's prejudice which the cop had revealed earlier, and steered the story to a place where the cop could force the KS = Keaton connection.

If Verbal had to do it or not, if he could have just shut up but got a superiority kick out of fucking with the cop I can't remember.

The weak point of the story I thought was, that while KS took out his competition (I think), the bloke who could identify him survived (or did he die? A sketch got done anyway so it doesn't matter if he did), so that was all for nothing on the suppressing the hidden identity side of things anyway.
 

C4Lukins

Junior Member
Outside of The Usual Suspects, those are all terrible films. I think out of that list, Freddy Got Fingered is the second best, and I would not go out on a limb to defend it. Maybe Charlie's Angels and Tommy Boy are defendable at some level.
 

Aiii

So not worth it
Roger Ebert was always my first stop when I needed to know about a movie, god, I miss that guy.

He wasn't always right, but he sure as hell was always entertaining.
 

Melubas

Member
Am I the only one that thinks Freddy got Fingered is pretty funny? I have it on DVD. It's exactly the kind of absurd humor me and my friends had when we were teenagers/early twenties.
 
Have to disagree on the Usual Suspects, not because of the plot or the twist, but mostly because of the 'verbal' back and forth between Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) and Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey).

There are some great bits of dialogue from the supporting cast as well, Gabriel Byrne and Benicio Del Toro especially, some funny quotes, especially the line up.

What about it, pretzel man? What's your story?

Interrogation Cop: You know what happens if you do another turn in the joint?
Hockney: Fuck your father in the shower and then have a snack? Are you going to charge me dickhead?

Fenster: Man, I had a finger up my asshole tonight.
Hockney: Is it Friday already?

Back when I was picking beans in Guatemala, we used to make fresh coffee, right off the trees I mean. That was good. This is shit but, hey, I'm in a police station.

Oh, gee, thanks, Dave. Bang-up job so far. Extortion, coercion. You'll pardon me if I ask you to kiss my pucker.

That guy is tense. Tension is a killer. I used to be in a barbershop quartet in Skokie, Illinois. The baritone was this guy named Kip Diskin, big fat guy, I mean, like, orca fat. He was so stressed in the morning...

Love John Ottman's score as well.

But it's really all about Spacey and Palminteri for me, and I can watch it again and again and not get bored.
 
Can we talk about this shit, though?

Ebertiswrong.png

Well it explains why he gave The Raid only one star.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-raid-redemption-2012
 
Am I the only one that thinks Freddy got Fingered is pretty funny? I have it on DVD. It's exactly the kind of absurd humor me and my friends had when we were teenagers/early twenties.

yeah it was funny the first time i saw it insanely high.

but it's not this absurdist masterpiece the internet pretends it is. it's just an edgy so random gross-out comedy with 2-3 "surreal" skits that are self aware LOOK HOW WEIRD WE ARE BEING
 
My ex made me watch Good Luck Chuck.

That's when I realized we came from different cultures that valued human life and empathy differently. I was just appalled by the meanness and idiocy of the humor, whereas she was laughing hysterically.
 

Karu

Member
Only got to know Eberts work the last few years, not being American and all, but man his reviews are the best. Not only the ones where he hates, all of them. Never connected with a reviewer like that before or after.
 
DerZuhälter;228253976 said:
Well it explains why he gave The Raid only one star.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-raid-redemption-2012

No one is perfect, and Ebert was off way here.

I like Ebert, and you have to remember it is subjective. It's ok for a critic you like to have a different opinion than you. If it becomes the norm, you may need to find a new critic to follow.

Also Tommy Boy is awful. Chris Farley, while great on SNL, never starred in a good movie.
 

Sorcerer

Member
I'm not sure what Ebert saw in the theatrical revision of the Brown Bunny that he later praised it.
I have the dvd. (I love Sevigny, and had to see the movie), and there is no movie until she appears in the hotel. Its just Gallo driving around, occasionally stopping to meet a few women. Pointless.
The ending at the hotel is kind of fascinating in that it could be really creepy depending oh how you look at it. It did not need the notorious scene. Its just exploitive bullshit.
Buffalo 66 with Christina Ricci is a very good movie. So Gallo is not without talent.
 

gamz

Member
I'm not sure what Ebert saw in the theatrical revision of the Brown Bunny that he later praised it.
I have the dvd. (I love Sevigny, and had to see the movie), and there is no movie until she appears in the hotel. Its just Gallo driving around, occasionally stopping to meet a few women. Pointless.
The ending at the hotel is kind of fascinating in that it could be really creepy depending oh how you look at it. It did not need the notorious scene. Its just exploitive bullshit.
Buffalo 66 with Christine Ricci was a very good movie. So Gallo is not without talent.

He and Gallo got in a huge fight about the movie. Ebert said it sucked and Gallo called him a fat-ass. Ebert came back saying I can always lose weight, but you'll still be the director of Brown Bunny. Gallo went back and edited it and replayed it. It played much better and Ebert liked it. The ver you saw is probably the edited ver of it.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-brown-bunny-2004
 

haveheart

Banned
No one is perfect. Not everyone sees Freddy Got Fingered as the cinematic masterpiece that it genuinely is.

First post wins.

The first time I saw the backwards man I had to pause the movie because I was crying so hard from laughing. It took my brain a couple of minutes to actually get a grasp on what was happening. Never had I seen anything like this before.
 

gfxtwin

Member
I remember he didn't like Blue Velvet at all, that was the one that made me stop taking his reviews as seriously. I'd expect him to see beyond the supposed misogyny of the film to know how good that one is.

He was WAY off on Fight Club too. Think he actually even wrote it off as fascist propaganda even though the movie was clearly tongue in cheek about the cultist/fascist/masculist/red pill aspects of Tyler that it was in fact lampooning.
 

gfxtwin

Member
He and Gallo got in a huge fight about the movie. Ebert said it sucked and Gallo called him a fat-ass. Ebert came back saying I can always lose weight, but you'll still be the director of Brown Bunny. Gallo went back and edited it and replayed it. It played much better and Ebert liked it. The ver you saw is probably the edited ver of it.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-brown-bunny-2004

TBH I love Gallo. His persona is amazing because it's basically a guy like Trump only you laugh with him instead of at him somehow. Egomaniacal, reactionary, childish, etc, but also hilarious. He says the craziest shit but in reality is shy and introverted, and he's a true artist. That said, TBB is awful, but Buffalo 66 is so good its all the Gallo you'll ever need. It will be your best friend. The best friend you will ever span time with.
 
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