As I grow older, I've grown even less tolerant of a certain type of film, that is a blockbuster film by sales metrics but quite abysmal as a work of art. Really, I'm talking about the type of franchise that builds on watchers already being sucked into a particular universe, regardless how bad the script and plot is for the movie (s).
Often I can make a pretty decent prediction from a trailer, perhaps the director's or screenplay writer's reputation (this often works fairly well with one notable exception, Nolan's Tenet which was unwatchable to me) or some knowledge about the plot (something a bit offbeat, smart, uplifting, charming, whimsical or mindbending, and no children being outrightly hurt or killed).
Nothing beats a recommendation from a trusted source though. I still remember my brother raving about Into the Spiderverse, and thinking wow, he is the most critical person I know-- this movie must actually be good. So off we went to the cinema to watch it, and despite fairly high expectations it was still a great movie. I got Matt to watch it too recently, and he said something similar, that he had high expectations because I and many others were raving about it and he still found it as good if not better than he expected.
That said, the ravers have to be of a particular caliber as well. Beyond my personal sphere, I've realized Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB and whathaveyou is pretty useless for me to figure out if something is worth watching. But ever since my sister mentioned that she read reviews on Ebert.com to figure out if something is worth watching, I've started doing that too. Sure enough, a lot of the stuff that gets 4 stars on Ebert.com ends up being something I enjoy, and the stuff that a lot of people say is great but gets less than 3 stars on Ebert.com I tend to find less enjoyable. So now if I am not sure whether I want to dedicate 2-3 precious hours on an unknown but intriguing film, I turn to Ebert.com and feel better guided.
But what I've found even more fun to do as of late is to look up reviews of movies I've already watched, to see whether I agreed with Roger Ebert (or any number of the writers on the website) independently.
What I realized, as I went through his list of Great Movies and picked out the ones that I loved the most (Eternal Sunshine, Lost in Translation, The Dark Knight, Departures) and ones that I liked despite the movie not being as popular, is that Roger Ebert is so great at critiquing films because he transcends critical appraisal and uses the movie instead to fully contemplate the nature of being human. In that regard, he is more of a philosopher than critic, more of a writer than a reviewer, and in full someone who seems to possess a great mind and heart. He is able to pick out the key moments in a movie and fully expound on why they are key, what they represent and how they affect him (and likely many others like yours truly). He does so in the most profound and poetic way, and it's clear when he says he's watched something not once, or twice, but often more than three times that he gives due thought to movies that have been made with due thought. In many ways he's a most generous critic, often picking out the charm and gleam even in flawed works. That said, he is unforgiving with movies that don't move beyond the superficial attempts at entertaining and for that I think he is fair.
Driven by this realization, I started reading up the wikipedia article on him and learned so much more that further cemented this overall feeling of "What a swell guy! What an ace human!"
So here are the nuggets from Wikipedia that made me further adore Roger Ebert:
1) He has a scientific mind.
Ebert was critical of intelligent design, and stated that people who believe in either creationism or New Age beliefs such as crystal healing or astrology are not qualified to be president. Ebert also expressed disbelief in pseudoscientific or supernatural claims in general, calling them "woo-woo," though he has argued that reincarnation is possible from a "scientific, rationalist point of view.
Obviously I believe in God and that God created the world, everything beyond and within, but I don't think its unscientific to believe this. On this note, I appreciated these two other nuggets:
"I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer."
and
"I refuse to call myself an atheist, however, because that indicates too great a certainty about the unknowable"
2) He's a mama's boy.
At age 50, Ebert married trial attorney Charlie "Chaz" Hammelsmith in 1992. He explained in his memoir, Life Itself, that he did not want to marry before his mother died, as he was afraid of displeasing her.
A bit of an extreme but the intention seems sweet and ultimately he was happy because..
3) He's a romantic.
In a July 2012 blog entry titled "Roger loves Chaz," Ebert wrote, "She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed to be heading."
4) He's very anti-junk mail!
During a 1996 panel at the University of Colorado Boulder's Conference on World Affairs, Ebert coined the Boulder Pledge, by which he vowed never to purchase anything offered through the result of an unsolicited email message, or to forward chain emails or mass emails to others.
I can't express how much possibly unwarranted bit of rage I feel whenever I get physical bits of junk mail in the postbox... the waste of paper, ink, mailman's effort all to get straight into the trash because I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS.
5) He gets it.
"I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out."
Thank you Roger Ebert, for all your words as a film critic, a philosopher and seemingly wonderful human. Rest in peace.
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