To the Wonder

I had the misfortune of waiting on a particularly miserable couple the other night.  Being a waiter, I sometimes have to deal with tables that come in angry.  I try to put them in a good mood, but some people are just immune to my Burt Reynolds-esque charm.  I just have to swallow my pride and nod my head at their condescending demeanor and insulting comments.  At one end of the table sat the rude, Joe Don Baker look-a-like husband.  "Hey, weren't you the villain in The Living Daylights?"  He came complete with a Jimmy Buffett concert t-shirt and old man sandals.  On the other end sat his exasperated wife, seemingly embarrassed by her husband's conduct, but too meek to comment.  What a pair.

At first, I was frustrated with the couple and their unreasonable requests.  However, I was suddenly filled with a great sense of pity and sadness for them both.  How did they get to this point in their relationship?  There must have been a time when their relationship was a thing of beauty.  He probably asked her on a date and she excitedly said "yes."  She began to tell all her friends about him; about his kind words and tender touch.  He asked her if she would be his wife and she answered with tears and a loving embrace.  The future held nothing but bright days and contentment for them both.  When did things change?  How did they change?  Did they wake up one morning and find themselves looking at utter strangers?  Did it happen subtly over a long period?  How did two young, happy lovers become just a bitter old couple?

Terrence Malick's new film, To the Wonder, asks these same questions.  How is love found?  How is it lost?  As in the majority of his films, love comes with a capital "L" and is more than a feeling between two lovers; it is a cosmic force.  In The Tree of Life, a young child bends in the cosmic winds of the magnetic forces of nature and grace.  In The New World, John Smith finds himself torn between the beauty of nature and belligerent civilization.  In all Malick's films, the characters are at the mercy of nature and the universe.  Malick's protagonists exhibit free will, but they are still small figures in a large and powerful cosmos.  In To the Wonder, powerful Love comes from the divine and moves through the characters like diverted streams.  But, as Malick shows, streams can go dry.

I love Terrence Malick. Ever since I first saw Badlands, I have been enamored of his talent, heart, and poetic voice.  I really can't count the number of chills I get when watching The Thin Red Line.  They seem to multiply every time I watch the film.  While many audiences walked out of the theater during The Tree of Life, I was glued to my seat.  I have never seen the journey of an innocent soul so beautifully depicted on the screen.  The fact that Malick is so polarizing makes me love him all the more.  I'm a born contrarian and I jump at any chance to go against the grain.  Any time you want to fight about the artistic merit of Terrence Malick, give me a call.

I may not be able to defend To the Wonder too well.  This is easily his weakest film.  It is by no means a bad film, but it is often obvious, preachy, and repetitive.  In his other five films, Malick can be overly poetic and self-indulgent.  However, these other films have a narrative framework to contain the director's esoteric flourishes.  The Thin Red Line has many segments that deal with Love, but they are woven into the exciting and compelling story of Guadalcanal.  The Tree of Life goes off the deep end at some points, looking at the birth of the universe and intelligent life.  Still, the artistic abstractions are held down by the strong story of a boy and his loss of innocence.  In To the Wonder, there is not enough of a story to warrant Malick's poetic wanderings.  Like the many empty houses in the film, To the Wonder feels a little hollow, and all the musings on Love and the soul seem to echo flatly off the undecorated walls.

That being said, the film is still gorgeous.  As always, Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography is breathtaking.  His camera caresses the actors lovingly and chases them through fields of wheat.  Window light plays on bare walls.  The vistas of rural Texas are some of Malick's best and would make John Ford go back to the drawing board.  Every shot is perfectly composed and really makes me want to burn all my student films.  Malick and Lubezki are just frustratingly good.

Lubezki and Malick make the lead actors look beautiful, especially Olga Kurylenko.  Seriously, where did this girl come from?  When people ask me what my type is, I just point at a picture of her.  Wow...Sorry.  Anyway, I find it hard to believe that Ben Affleck's character, however cold and distant, could treat her so poorly.  She's innocent and beautiful and she loves him.  I haven't felt this angry at a Ben Affleck character since Gigli and, well, it's Gigli.  Marry her, dude.  Marry her and the movie's over.

While I found the love story unfulfilling, I did find Malick's view of contemporary America very fascinating.  This is Malick's most "European" film and it clearly takes an outsider's view of our lovely country.  Like Pocahontas in The New World, Kurylenko comes to a foreign land and finds herself lost.  The grandeur and beauty of France are juxtaposed wtih the flat Texas countryside. Instead of tall churches, there are tall power lines.  In America, Kurylenko and Affleck roll their shopping cart through a Wal-Mart.  The gaudy colors and garish packaging are placed in stark contrast to the vaulted majestic ceilings of a French cathedral.  Malick presents an America that has lost its majesty and is built on rotting soil.  Affleck's character works testing the ground for pollutants and makes some depressing discoveries.  The amber waves of grain have been poisoned.  While Malick does find much beauty in the American landscape, he clearly believes we are burning our own foundations.

In the end, it all comes down to Love. Our love for each other.  Our love for God and Country.  And, our love for our Environment.  As Javier Bardem's priest character says in the film, it is all connected.  It is all one Love and, though Malick looks at the dark side, he also presents the chance for redemption.  The end feeling is one of hope and resurrection.  Overall, the film is disappointing, but this sense of redemption is encouraging.  Maybe a bitter old couple can hope for their love to rekindle and, as Bardem preaches, "transform into something higher."  Here's hoping.

The Lords of Salem

When I first saw John Carpenters's Halloween, I didn't sleep for a week.  That is no exaggeration.  I actually turned my bed toward my closet because I knew Michael Myers was hiding behind my corduroy pants and clip-on ties.  I even mapped out my escape were he to enter my room: Through the bathroom, into my parents’ bedroom, through the living room, and out the front door.  Sorry Mom and Dad, you're on your own.  I was only eight when I first became acquainted with Michael Myers and his creator, John Carpenter.  Since then, my strong connection to the classic Halloween has become less fear-based and more one based on respect.  To me, Halloween is the perfect horror film.  Dean Cundey's dynamic lighting mixed with Carpenter's haunting score make for a masterpiece of primal dread.

So, when Rob Zombie announced he would be directing a remake of Halloween, I was both excited and apprehensive.  I had a lukewarm reaction to both The Devil's Rejects and House of a Thousand Corpses.  Some of their gore was stomach-turning, and I did dig their 1970s exploitation aesthetic, but I found the characters to be flat and the directing sloppy.  Zombie's Halloween solidified my opinion of the director and his talent.  He took my most beloved film and subtracted all the nuance and universal fear and replaced it with foul language and annoying characters.  I'm pretty sure the word "nuance" isn't in Zombie's vocabulary. His dictionary probably skips from "nu" to "nub."  I'm not even going to mention Zombie's Halloween 2 and all that horse imagery.  Ugh.

Well, Mr. Zombie, you have outdone yourself.  Zombie's new film The Lords of Salem is his worst yet.  It's bad. Really, really bad.  It's one of those films that is so atrocious I think I may not like movies anymore.  When I saw Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I had to go watch some Hitchcock to remind myself that film can be intelligent and enjoyable.  Right now I'm watching some early John Carpenter to wash the memories of The Lords of Salem out of my mind.  I'm feeling better by the minute.  Wait...I'm okay now.  Movies are good.  I like them.  Okay, good.

It's never a good sign when half of the audience leaves during the first thirty minutes of a movie.  This happened during my screening of The Lords of Salem, and I sorely wanted to join the exodus.  The remaining audience played Angry Birds and chatted on their phones.  I didn't even try to stop them.  In fact, that one couple had some really good opinions on the state of the economy...

The Lords of Salem is just an ugly film.  The actors are ugly.  That's probably a mean thing to say, but the whole cast looks like coupon day at a Big Lots in rural Indiana.  Believe me, I've been there.  It's scary stuff.  It doesn't help that most of the overweight and elderly actors are naked throughout the film.  Take the bathroom scene from The Shining and multiply that by forty-two.  There's a whole lot of skin and a whole lot of varicose veins.  I'm going to leave it there.

The best looking person is the film is Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, but that's not saying much.  I really question his choice to cast her yet again.  With every one of Zombie's films, she gets a bigger role.  Even Ed Wood had the good sense to give his wife a mere bit part in Bride of the Monster.  The first time we see Sheri, she is lying naked on her bed.  It's not a bad scene.  Zombie seems to be saying, "Hey look at my wife!  Isn't she hot?"  She's okay dude, but your movie sucks.

The cinematography isn't doing the actors any favors.  Every light is overexposed and lens flares flash across the screen.  In the beginning, it looks like a serious artistic choice but, by the third scene, it looks like poor film craft.  Every window is blown out, giving the characters distracting halos.  I'm not sure how you make old naked bodies even uglier, but cinematographer Brandon Trost does it.  When the light wasn't blinding me, I was squinting to make out the action.  Half the film is out of focus.  I haven't seen this many blurry images since my Senior film back in college.  I don't want to talk about it.  It's embarrassing.

When I could see clearly what was happening, I was disgusted by what I saw.  Zombie puts some truly shocking images on the screen.  Hey, there's a priest getting a blow job.  There's a little devil that looks like a badly burned Mickey Rooney.  Look over there, it's a Catholic Cardinal masturbating!  I have no problem with disturbing imagery.  I find fault with Zombie's uncontrolled and lazy depiction of the gross stuff.  There is no philosophy to his horror.  It's just grotesque stream-of-consciousness.  I believe that great horror has a beautiful side.  The films of Clive Barker and David Cronenberg show how the frightening can reflect the goodness in the world.  Rob Zombie has no such agenda.  He just wants to gross me out and ruin my day.

Still, I think I'm going to be okay.  This Carpenter movie has really done the trick.  I'm just finishing up some Kurt Russell bad-assery and feeling mighty nice.  It's good to know that for every awful Rob Zombie film there are many more great horror films. And, it’s nice to see that "nuance" is still in some dictionaries.

Oblivion

Whenever I enter my childhood bedroom, I have to tread carefully or I'll probably break something.  The room is filled from wall to wall with action figures, books, and old videotapes.  Over there is my old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles VHS.  There's my Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom storybook.  And hey, there's my friend Beary, the stuffed bear.  Pretty ingenious name, right?  I was three, okay?  Beary was the co-pilot of my sweet yellow Big Wheel and we went on some pretty crazy adventures together.  My room is a veritable Marten museum.  If explorers were to find my room in a thousand years, they could probably deduce what kind of life I had led, what my hopes were, and what images filled my imagination.  I hope they don't find those 1990's Playboys under my bed.  I swear they're not mine, Mom.

In Oblivion, Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) has a museum of his own.  In a little self-made shack by a lake, his shelves are bedecked with artifacts of our current age.  There's a baseball.  There's a little teddy bear too, but not quite as cool as Beary.  And, in the background, you can hear the sweet tones of Led Zeppelin and Procol Harum crackling on his antique record player.  Like Wall-E, Harper uses these pieces to, uh, piece together the past.  Through them, he can live in a time before Earth was overtaken by an alien race and human civilization was wiped from the planet.

All these items are tangible and personal.  In his futuristic tower, there is nothing personal.  His work shack, bedroom, and even super-duper flying machine look like they were designed by Apple.  Like an IPod, everything is stream-lined and smooth.  The design is such that form and function are indivisible.  It's very beautiful but also very cold and very sterile.  Harper and director Joseph Kosinski both seem overtaken by nostalgia.  They long for a time before smart phones held our music, movies, photos, and, ultimately, our very identities.  They long for the clutter of a bedroom, filled with personal artifacts.

The film seems to pine for the decade of my birth, the amazing 80s.  Director Kosinski seems especially enamored of the big-budget sci-fi epics of that decade.  In one scene, Julia (the ridiculously attractive Olga Kurylenko) wakes from a deep cryo-sleep.  The scene references the beginning of Aliens, when Ripley wakes from her sleep pod.  Sitting up, Julia begins to puke out a thick fluid.  Don't worry; she still looks good doing it.  We are told this is just breathing fluid, a la The Abyss.  All these homages call to mind the great sci-fi of the 1980s.  Though set in the future, the film feels like it has come from the past.

Kosinski has a clear love for the early films of James Cameron, their mind-blowing special effects and epic storytelling.  While emulating Cameron's style, the director emerges with a clear exciting voice of his own.  The vistas of a desolate Earth are beautifully composed and truly breathtaking.  The special effects are used to tell the story and, though amazing, they do not overshadow the plot.  Nearly all Hollywood films use digital effects today, from Romantic comedies to big-budget action.  Most films use CGI in a lazy way, replacing stunt men with digital performers and real pyrotechnics with computer generated explosions.  Kosinski, like Cameron, does not draw attention to his special effects but seamlessly integrates them into his film, helping to create an immersive experience for his audience.  Though the effects are digital, they feel tangible.  You could almost reach out and touch them, like a stuffed bear on the shelf.

Equally immersive, the action scenes are expertly choreographed and hard hitting. Unlike many directors today, Kosinski does not feel the need to constantly shake the camera and give his audience a vertigo attack.  I almost needed a Dramamine during J.J. Abrams'  Star Trek. Kosinski is confident to leave his camera on the tripod and uses dynamic angles and crisp editing to heighten the tension.  I judge great film action by how long I will wait to go to the bathroom.  I had about a gallon of Diet Coke sloshing around in my bladder, but I didn't leave the theater once.  So, when I say the action scenes almost made me pee my pants, I'm not lying.

Trying not to soak my pants, I sometimes closed my eyes during the film.  I was missing some great action, but I was left alone with the film's ethereal and moody score.  M83's synthetic tones add to the 1980s feel and bring to mind the many film scores of Tangerine Dream.  In one scene, Harper swims with his partner and lover Vicka (Andrea Riseborough).  As the two lovers swim through the night, the manufactured tones soar and create a truly transcendent experience.  I actually had chills.  This wonderful pairing of sound and image made me feel that I was watching a scene from Michael Mann's Manhunter.  Unlike the special effects, the music does draw attention to itself, but this is done to beautiful effect.

The final throwback in this film is the star, Tom Cruise.  Like his character, Jack Harper, he longs for a time long ago.   In one scene, he looks at his collection of artifacts.  He picks up one item and examines it.  It is a pair of sunglasses. These shades call to mind Maverick from Top Gun, his defining role of the 1980s.  Cruise seems to long for those years when he was a heartthrob and action hero, not just an L. Ron Hubbard acolyte jumping on a couch.  I long for those days too.  Cruise always picks great scripts and produces some amazing Hollywood films. It’s really too bad he let crazy out of the bag.

The nostalgia of Oblivion is infectious; it brought to mind all I love about the decade of my birth. I don't remember most of the 1980s, but the films of that decade act as a sort of moving photo album.  Like my bedroom, Oblivion feels like a mosaic of those films, a museum of cinematic memory.  While the film has some sloppy moments with some weak scripting and flat acting, it starts the summer blockbuster season off early and with a bang.  The film feels big and fills the space with bombastic sound and image.  I liked it so much that future explorers may find a copy of Oblivion in my Blu-ray collection.  They can take it, but I hope they don't touch the Playboys.  Seriously.

42

So, I'm pretty bad at sports.  Actually, I'm downright terrible.  As a child, I looked like an orange on a toothpick.  I would fall over with no warning, earning myself the nickname "Crash Carlson."  In two years of elementary school basketball, I scored one point.  It was a free throw.  In fifth grade, my dad decided to coach my basketball team.  He was a decent ball player back in high school and thought maybe some of those hoop genes had been passed on to me.  Not so much. That same year, I broke my arm playing soccer.  Someone kicked a ball at my arm.  It was on my birthday.  Yep.  Needless to say, I spent the next 7 years of fine Hoosier public education keeping my head down in gym class and avoided competitive sports at all costs.

Still, for some reason, I love sports movies.   I can't help but get caught up in films like 42, stories of underdogs overcoming insurmountable odds.  All my cynicism seems to subside when a basketball player makes an impossible shot or, in the case of 42, I see Jackie Robinson knock one out of the park.  Somehow, I can ignore the cheesy dialogue and clunky exposition and just enjoy the story.  I surely did that with 42.

The film focuses on the few years leading up to Jackie Robinson's history-making start for the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Narrowing his scope, writer/director Brian Helgeland avoids the pitfalls of many biopics.  While films like Ray and The Aviator feel like they have no center and fumble about like this girl who grabbed my junk at the bar last weekend (I'll tell you the story later), 42 is streamlined and concise in its treatment of Jackie Robinson's life.  Helgeland shows how the real struggle didn't happen on the field, but rather in the offices of team owners like Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) and on the streets of the prejudiced South.

The director has a fine grasp of the time period, having written post-war period films like LA Confindential.  The dialogue displays the cadence of a 1940s Frank Capra or Howard Hawks picture.  The production design is evocative.  The chrome fenders gleam and the tweed jackets, well...I'm not sure what tweed does, but it looks authentic.

The film is served well by the winning performance of Chadwick Boseman.  Some of the lines Helgeland threw Boseman were obvious balls but he turned them into home runs.  Sorry, that's a really bad analogy.  I couldn't help myself.  I guarantee you'll read similar lines in the Associated Press reviews.   Boseman performs all his dialogue with great sincerity and subdues the cheese.

He is assisted here by Harrison Ford, who portrays the pioneering Branch Rickey with gravelly voice and gruff personality.  I love Harrison Ford.  When I was six years old, I walked up to my parents, looking very solemn.  I confessed that I wished Harrison Ford were my real father.  Even though my dad didn't coach me to glory in the fifth grade, I'm pretty sure he made a better father than Harrison Ford could have done.   Still, Han Solo and Indiana Jones have long acted as my guardian angels.  That being said, I have never considered Harrison Ford to be an actor with a wide range.  In 42, he doesn't completely disappear into the role, and I often found myself watching my old friend Harrison playing dress up.  At other times, he and Boseman have great chemistry.  Though uneven, his acting does not hinder the story.

And what an important story it is to tell.  I was lucky enough to see the film with a full audience, largely African-American.  In a scene where Robinson deftly steals home, the audience broke into great applause.  We all cringed and gasped at the horrible obscenities spoken by conservative whites.  When the various racist rednecks in the film get their comeuppance, we all laughed.  And we cheered when those racists in the film started to change their views on Robinson.  It was an infectious experience, and I could feel a lot of hope in the theater.

Still, I worry that this hope may be lost on some viewers.  My main problem with films like 42 is that I believe they ask us to remember the past only to forget it.  The more awful the racist obscenities are, the easier it is for some to say, "Oh, that's in the past.  Look how far we've come.  Things are so different now."  Some viewers may miss such dialogue like, "This isn't the country I was born in."  This line is spoken by the racist pitcher Kirby Higbe (Brad Beyer), and it sounds very similar to posts I saw on Facebook following the re-election of President Obama. It’s hard for me to believe that we have moved past those racist times when half my country still doesn't think President Obama was born in America.  Sorry for the spoiler, but he was.  I did hear a convincing argument by this meathead who said that he thinks Obama was born in Hawaii, but he doesn't consider Hawaii part of America.  Smart stuff.

In the end, I think I left the film feeling too comfortable.  When I watch films like Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, I see how complex race relations are in America.  I see that I have a part in the racial oppression.  I feel guilty.  Looking to the 1940s in a film like 42, I feel that I fall into the trap that many viewers do.  I think about how I am so different from slack-jawed bigots in 1947 Florida.  I feel innocent.  Maybe both views of race are important, the hopeful and the cynical.

Still, I cannot ignore the faces of the children I saw exiting the theater, both black and white.  There was a look of happiness and excitement on their faces.  In 42, they saw that great obstacles can be overcome and that people can change.  Like the many trains in the film (a nice motif), we are moving forward and times will get better.  See, these films make me ignore cheesy dialogue, even in my own reviews.

Evil Dead

In Franklin, Indiana, there is an alley that runs between Hougham Street and Edwards Street.  During the day, it is a pretty little walk.  Willow trees hang over the asphalt and, in autumn, leaves crunch beneath your feet.  Yep, it's nice.  Still, woe be to the poor soul who finds himself in this alley after the sun sets over the cornfields.  The willow trees become gnarled hands reaching for you and the sound of leaves could easily mask footsteps following close behind.

As a child, I would try to avoid this path but found it difficult as it was the fastest route to my best friend's house.  Sometimes, after a long evening of playing Tecmo Bowl or pelting my friend with Nerf balls, I would have to walk this dark lane alone.  As I rushed toward my home, I would pass an old garage.  The garage had two windows that faced the alley.  In my childhood imagination, these panes of glass held a myriad of demonic and grotesque faces.  I would put my hand up to the side of my face so that these monstrous images wouldn't even enter my peripheral vision.

I suppose my lifelong obsession with horror film represents an attempt to face these monstrous faces head on, to exorcise the demons of my imagination.  Or, maybe I just like gore.  Yeah, that could be it.

Well, if it’s all about gore, then Evil Dead is right up my alley.  A loving tribute to Sam Raimi's 1981 cult-classic, the film is, for the most part, lots of fun.  Bodies are dismembered in ways I have never seen before (believe me, I thought I'd seen it all).  Buckets of blood and viscera fly across the screen and, well, there's this thing with a tongue.  And that part with the needle...Eesh.  Let's just say, Luis Bunuel would be proud and my roommate David would be sick.  I showed him Event Horizon one time and he almost chucked.

With Evil Dead, director Fede Alvarez shows that he has quite the knack for horror filmmaking.  Many scenes play out like musical numbers of carnage.  Unlike in the recent Saw films and other torture porn fare, the gore in Evil Dead is used to great effect.  Many horror filmmakers think it is enough to show a disturbing image.  Alvarez understands that the true screams come from blocking and editing.  He pieces together many shocking images to create frightening and satisfying horror sequences.  Hats off, sir.

Besides the horror, the other filmmaking techniques are also noteworthy.  The cinematography and production design are absolutely gorgeous.  The green hues and smoky backgrounds make this look like Lars Von Trier's Evil Dead.  The wood is waterlogged, the metal tools are rusty, and the forests are dense and foreboding.  It's all very beautiful.

Still, even though blood covers every character and square inch of floor, it's all too clean.  When Sam Raimi directed the original film, it was like lightning in a bottle.  The filmmaking was messy and anarchic.  The shots were all canted and right in the actors’ faces.  The special effects seemed homemade and the makeup looked amateurish.  Somehow, though, it all worked like some form of strange alchemy.

Lightning doesn't strike twice.  While the new film works, it doesn't capture the gonzo nature of Raimi's original.  The makeup is disgusting and terrifying.  The visual effects are flawless.  However, the professionalism of the filmmaking somehow seems to highlight the film's flaws.  We see how thin the characters and their backstories are.  We notice the middle-school play acting.  The flaws in Raimi's film made it a classic.  Considering the budget and professional crew, the flaws in this film just don't seem as forgivable.

One performance really saves the film.  Jane Levy shines as heroine and villain.  Her performance as the possessed Mia is nuanced and, I believe, rivals Linda Blair's turn in The Exorcist.  While her costars stumble over lines and gawk in horror, Levy terrifies with even the subtlest of expressions.  I'll admit I spent much of the film missing Bruce Campbell.  Still, Levy's performance is memorable and I think she has a nice future in horror.

The film may lack the spirit of the original, but it is enjoyable.  There really is nothing better than seeing a horror film like this with an audience.  People squirm in their chairs and cover their eyes.  Popcorn flies in the air.  And, as for me, looking at the grotesque and demonic faces, I am not so afraid anymore.  For an hour and a half, my demons are on the screen and I am in control.  That feeling may not last, but it is refreshing.  I'm thankful for horror films like Evil Dead.  Those 90 minutes may be the least scary part of my day.

Roger Ebert

When I was a young child, my parents gave me a collection of Roger Ebert's reviews.  I don't exactly remember what edition it was, but I believe it was the 1990 Roger Ebert Movie Guide.  While the book itself was probably swallowed up by the messy floor of my childhood bedroom, its impact has not been lost.  My parents may not know this, but I used this book as a way to "see" films I was not allowed to see.

At the tender age of 7, I was not permitted to see horror films.  Though I sometimes found ways of viewing a Nightmare on Elm Street here or a Halloween there, I often found myself without a source for such frightening fare.  Ebert's book was such a source.  I would dog-ear the reviews of films like Serpent and the Rainbow and Near Dark.  In the smoky light of my flashlight, I would read Ebert's synopses and the terrifying scenes would play out in my mind.

There is one review I would return to, again and again.  One late evening, I was excited to find that Ebert had written a rewiew for 1981's Friday the 13th, Part 2.  I was soon disappointed that there was no synopsis beyond the basic description of a masked killer hacking up young virgins.  My disappointment did not last, and I soon found myself wrapped up in Ebert's anaylsis.  He did not talk about the movie so much, but instead focused on the audience and their reaction to the film.  Ebert beautifully described a  Chicago theatre audience screaming and laughing at the antics of Jason Voorhees. He was not bothered by how poorly made the film was.  The audience enjoyed the film, and it helped them to escape their daily lives for 90 minutes.  

Roger Ebert believed the audience was as important as those images on the silver screen.  For him, film-viewing was a communal experience.   In all his reviews, Ebert never let his great knowledge and expertise alienate him from the average movie audience.  At the same time, he stuck to his guns when he thought a film was a big piece of crap.  No one could cut a film to its core like Ebert. I'm sure there are many filmmakers who still exhibit the scars of a Ebert review.  Like no other viewer, Ebert balanced his intellectual opinion with a knowledge of the audience.  Those with a Film Masters could appreciate his ingenious insight.  Those layman who just loved a good story could find which movie they should view at the local movieplex.

We all hope to be remembered after we are gone. There is no doubt that Ebert will go down in history as one of the masters, right alongside Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael.  When I tell people that I'd like to be a film reviewer, most say, "Oh, like Roger Ebert?"  "Yes," I answer, "just like Roger Ebert."

You will be missed.