No ending in sight for movie critic Ebert

By Wanda A. Adams
Assistant Features Editor

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What moviegoers ask Ebert most Your five favorite films? Answer: "Citizen Kane." "The General." "La Dolce Vita." "Vertigo." "Singing in the Rain." How many films do you see in a day? Answer: Seven to 10 a week, more at a film festival. Do you actually see the movies yourself? Answer: Yes. Endless queries on "puzzle films" that leave unanswered questions, such as "Memento" and "Mulholland Drive." And just for the record, there is no hanging body visible in the "Wizard of Oz."

"If that was the case, I'd quit," he said.

He's been reviewing films for 33 years, and during that time, only a handful of movies made it onto the respected Sight & Sound list of the 10 best films ever made, based on a British poll of critics and directors.

Ebert has his own concerns about trends in the movie industry. But, he told a packed room of fans at a Mauna Lani Bay Hotel & Bungalows "Master Class" talk Aug. 10, that doesn't mean no good movies are being made, or that he has tired of seeing movies for a living.

Instead, Ebert — co-host of the syndicated "Ebert and Roeper" TV show, film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, winner of a Pulitzer Prize (the first film critic ever to win) — continues to turn his wit, dry humor and encyclopedic memory to the task of writing about movies and with every evidence of boyish enthusiasm.

The critic has his own opinions about what's right and wrong about today's movies, and for his talk on the Big Island, he used film clips to outline some of them, beginning with one from the hit "Spider-Man," which illustrated several concerns.

One is Hollywood's assembly-line approach to moviemaking, wherein every release that makes any money at all can expect to spawn a sequel, and every movie subject that does well will be copied unmercifully. Following "Spider-Man," Ebert noted, Marvel Comics is rolling in dough, because pretty much every action hero they own is going to star in an upcoming movie.

Sequels are nothing new, but at one time, they were strictly "B" category — "Ma and Pa Kettle" matinee and second-show-type films.

Among the "A" releases, "every movie was a new experience, and you had to gear up to see what it was about and whether it was very good or not," he said. Now it seems that Hollywood is building franchises for the same reasons that McDonald's did — one ad campaign benefits all the products and everybody knows what they're getting.

Digital special effects, especially computer-generated images, are another concern for Ebert, who calls himself "an analog kind of guy."

He noted that in "Spider-Man," actor Toby McGuire "is not really on the screen in any way at all in the action scenes" — his body, trapezing between buildings, has been computer-generated. But in many of these scenes, the images seemed to Ebert to lack proper weight and volume, to move unrealistically, "more like Mighty Mouse than Spider-Man. It didn't convince me. It was almost like the reality was broken."

Ebert contrasts this with digital special effects in Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." In that film, Ebert was pleasantly surprised to learn, the amazing scenes in which warriors fight on the rooftops and in the branches of high trees were shot using skilled martial artists working with the aid of wires attached to cranes. The filmmakers used digital technology only to erase the wires.

He also praised Stephen Spielberg's "Minority Report" for keeping the movie's focus on character and story. The clip he chose showed Tom Cruise and Max Von Sydow in an intense scene in which they're talking via telephone (or its futuristic equivalent) as Cruise speeds along in some sort of air car. The dialogue is the centerpiece, while the scenery speeding by via special effects becomes almost another character, illustrating the urgency of Cruise's situation.

Another clip was from M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs," which Ebert says illustrates Alfred Hitchcock's theory that suspense is superior to terror. Too many movies today are "first act, second act and then a chase — they don't even bother with a third act," Ebert said. Horror movies pile body upon body. Shyamalan is smart enough to to know that it's much more interesting — and very scary — to allow the viewer to just glimpse a figure crossing a corner of the screen or to have a character use a long, sharp shiny knife to slide under a door seeking the reflection of a mysterious character locked in the room.

Another trend that concerns Ebert is the remaking (and dumbing down) of foreign films. He showed a clip from a movie "Read my Lips" in which a hearing-impaired woman must read the lips of her lover in order to help him out of deadly danger. "Hollywood will make it and trash it," he predicted — maybe having the woman recover her hearing just in time to break down the door and rescue her lover at gunpoint.

Ebert said one ironic effect of the growth of independent American-made films, such as those that debut at the Sundance Film Festival each year, is that Americans are seeing fewer foreign movies. In 1960, for example, 33 Italian films opened in New York. Last year, only one or two Italian films opened there. Another sign of the times: He has heard that younger audiences, who are accustomed to receiving printed data onscreen, may be less resistant to subtitles than previous generations.

Movie fans are always asking for his list of favorite films, and at the Mauna Lani, he was asked for his top five in the last 10 years.

"I'm a complex guy," he said. "I like different films on different days for different reasons."

The list for that day: "Fargo." "Pulp Fiction." "Schindler's List." "The Decalogue." (Director Krzysztof Kieslowski's 10 films on the 10 Commandments, now available on tape and DVD.) "Magnolia." Then he cheated and added a sixth: "Being John Malkovich."