33 Movies to Restore Your Faith in Humanity: Ebert's Essentials PDF
Preview 33 Movies to Restore Your Faith in Humanity: Ebert's Essentials
Other Books by Roger Ebert An Illini Century: One Hundred Years of Campus Life A Kiss Is Still a Kiss Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook Behind the Phantom’s Mask Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary Roger Ebert’s Movie Home Companion (annually 1986–1993) Roger Ebert’s Video Companion (annually 1994–1998) Roger Ebert’s Movie Yearbook (annually 1999–2007, 2009–2012) Questions for the Movie Answer Man Roger Ebert’s Book of Film: From Tolstoy to Tarantino, the Finest Writing from a Century of Film Ebert’s Bigger Little Movie Glossary I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie The Great Movies The Great Movies II Your Movie Sucks Roger Ebert’s Four-Star Reviews 1967–2007 Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert Scorsese by Ebert Life Itself: A Memoir A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length With Daniel Curley The Perfect London Walk With Gene Siskel The Future of the Movies: Interviews with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas DVD Commentary Tracks Beyond the Valley of the Dolls Citizen Kane Dark City Casablanca Crumb Floating Weeds Other Ebert’s Essentials 25 Great French Films 25 Movies to Mend a Broken Heart 27 Movies from the Dark Side 33 Movies to Restore Your Faith in Humanity copyright © 2012 by Roger Ebert. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews. Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC an Andrews McMeel Universal company 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106 www.andrewsmcmeel.com ISBN: 978-1-4494-2225-7 All the reviews in this book originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times. Attention: Schools and Businesses Andrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail the Andrews McMeel Publishing Special Sales Department: [email protected] Contents Introduction Key to Symbols Apollo 13 The Band's Visit Bang the Drum Slowly Breaking Away Bridge on the River Kwai Casablanca Chariots of Fire Cinema Paradiso Departures E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial Everlasting Moments Gandhi Grand Canyon Hotel Rwanda Ikiru The King’s Speech Lawrence of Arabia Moolaadé My Uncle Antoine October Sky Philadelphia The Right Stuff Say Amen, Somebody Schindler’s List The Shawshank Redemption Silkwood The Station Agent The Straight Story The Tree of Life 12 Angry Men 2001 Up Whale Rider Introduction Sad movies rarely make me cry. I pick up all the cues, the story hits its mark, the music underlines the emotion, but most of the time my interest is only technical. For that matter, I don’t cry a whole lot at the movies anyway. But when I do, I notice that it’s almost always because of the goodness of a character. Someone in the film has been sympathetic, generous, or moved to help others because of a good heart. Do such films “restore my faith in humanity”? At the time, yes, they nudge me in that direction. Then a picture with wall-to-wall brutality comes along to nudge me back again. I suspect I would be a happier person if I only went to see movies I recommend. The selections in this e-book will, in general, warm your heart and make you happy to have seen them. Consider the animated masterpiece Up, which is about an old grouch. (Trolls on the Internet said he looked like me, but never mind.) Up opens in an unexpected and beautiful way. Carl and Ellie grow up, have a courtship, marry, buy a ramshackle house and turn it into their dream home, are happy together and grow old. This process is silent, except for music. It’s shown in a lovely sequence that deals with the life experience in a way that is almost never found in family animation. The lovebirds save their loose change in a gallon jug intended to finance their trip to the legendary Paradise Falls, but real life gets in the way: flat tires, home repairs, medical bills. The focus of the film is on Carl’s life after Ellie. But so many people told me this prelude was one of the most touching “films,” in itself, they’d seen. Carl’s later heroism in the jungles of South America are terrific entertainment, but this opening, of two ordinary people who care for one another, is the part that gets you. A film like The Band’s Visit could hardly be more different. A military band from Egypt, on an official visit to Israel, finds itself dropped by a bus at an isolated small crossroads that has nothing to do with their mission. In a long evening and a longer night, the local cafe owner and the bandleader, who are technically enemies in a political sense, begin to talk, and share, and sense their common humanity. It all happens in such a low yet realistic way, you hardly realize it’s happening at all. Departures, from Japan, won an Academy Award for the year’s best foreign film. It was possibly the most cheered film we’ve ever shown at my Ebertfest film festival at the University of Illinois. I imagine many or most of the readers of this collection will not have seen it. It is about so many things, simultaneously, that it’s impossible to summarize. Maybe beneath everything else it deals with learning to see people as they really are, and accepting them on those terms. This process, we learn, can continue even after death. The happiest film on the list must be Say Amen, Somebody. It’s an example of a film that many people assume they wouldn’t be interested in. A documentary about the pioneers of African American gospel music? Sounds like a boring educational film, right? Yet what joy and priceless human nature are on display here, as we meet Mother Willie May Ford Smith and Thomas A. Dorsey. George Nierenberg, the director, is not a particularly religious person, but he respects his subjects, introduces their loved ones, and captures them at important moments in their lives. There is also a great deal of music, and we sense the goodness and charisma in his two stars. There’s a reason for every title in this collection. They all have that one thing in common—the goodness of people. They are very different people and good in many different ways, but all of them, whatever the place in life that fate has led them to, try to do the best they can with their opportunities. Yes, that can restore your faith in humanity. We need more of these films and fewer weekend blockbusters entertaining young people with the slaughter and suffering of anonymous victims in action pictures. R E OGER BERT
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