It’s been a long time since I’ve seen “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” — probably since it came out 30 years ago. I fondly recall watching it with my dad at the now-defunct UA Warner Center in Woodland Hills, the location of so many of my Valley Girl movie memories. But...
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Christy by Request
RogerEbert.com — Show Dogs
I’m no film snob. I’m down for a good live-action, talking-animal movie, and it doesn’t even need to be something Oscar-worthy like “Babe.” But “Show Dogs” is terrible. It’s essentially “Miss Congeniality” in the dog show world, with cheesy visual effects, hackneyed gross-out gags for the kids and lame jokes...
Read moreWine the Flick?! — Breaking In
Gabrielle Union gives it her all as a mother who will stop at nothing to save her kids, but “Breaking In” is never crazy enough. It’s sort of “Panic Room” in reverse, with Union’s character finding herself stuck outside a high-tech house while her kids are trapped inside with a...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Revenge
Watching a brutal, bloody rape-revenge fantasy may not be your cup of tea. And I get that. But “Revenge” is the film we need right now from a filmmaker we need right now: French writer-director Coralie Fargeat, making her stunning feature debut. She upends your expectations of the genre and...
Read moreChristy by Request — Cradle Will Rock
All art is political in some way. This is especially true of Tim Robbins’ theatrical drama “Cradle Will Rock,” itself inspired by a play that was so provocative in the late 1930s, the U.S. government shut it down before its first performance. I’d never seen Robbins’ film, the Christy by...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Tully
In the same vein as 2007’s “Juno” and 2011’s “Young Adult,” “Tully” unearths uncomfortable truths in a wry, wise way. The latest collaboration between director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody features Cody’s hyper-verbal brand of snark, cynicism and subtle poignancy, but it’s tinged with the wistful perspective that comes...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Mrs. Hyde
A timid high school physics teacher gets zapped by lightning in a freak lab accident. When she comes to, she finds she has acquired strange new abilities and a burst of confidence that allow her to seize control of her life like never before. It’s the stuff of a 1980s high-concept,...
Read moreChristy by Request — Local Hero
Don’t let the title fool you: There’s nothing remotely heroic or even vaguely dramatic about “Local Hero.” And that’s what makes it so charming. Writer-director Bill Forsyth’s 1983 film sneaks up on you. It takes its time. It reveals its characters through snippets of conversation and casual interactions. It’s the...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — I Feel Pretty
I have mixed feelings about “I Feel Pretty,” a high-concept, modern-day fairy tale. Amy Schumer stars as an insecure woman who suffers a head injury and believes she’s been magically transformed into the gorgeous bombshell she’s always dreamed of becoming — even though she’s unchanged on the outside. It’s a lot...
Read moreChristy by Request — Suspiria
You guys told me “Suspiria” was a deliriously strange movie, but you didn’t warn me about the blind pianist who gets his throat ripped out by his own seeing-eye dog. Long before that shocking, gruesome moment, though, we’re on edge from the very start in Italian horror master Dario Argento’s...
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