How many stars roger ebert

I like science fiction. Ed Harris has a new Western coming out named " Appaloosa. You wait and see. In connection with my affinity for genres, in the early days of my career I said I rated a movie according to its "generic expectations," whatever that meant. It might translate like this: "The star ratings are relative, not absolute. If a director is clearly trying to make a particular kind of movie, and his audiences are looking for a particular kind of movie, part of my job is judging how close he came to achieving his purpose.

In my mind, four stars and, for that matter, one star, are absolute, not relative. They move outside "generic expectations" and triumph or fail on their own. I have quoted countless times a sentence by the critic Robert Warshow , who wrote: "A man goes to the movies. The critic must be honest enough to admit that he is that man. I cannot walk out of a movie that engaged me and deny that it did. I must certainly never lower it from three to 2. I cringe when people say, "How could you give that movie four stars?

One thing I try to do is provide an accurate account of what you will see, and how I feel about it. I cannot speak for you. Any worthwhile review is subjective. If we completely disagree, my words might nevertheless be useful or provocative.

If you disagree with what I write, be my guest. If you disagree with how many stars I gave it, you can mail your opinion to where the sun don't shine. The meanings of the various Little Man icons have been subject to interpretation, even here at the Chronicle. But it also, in practice, ends up going to A-minus films, because we don't have the equivalent of a three and a half star rating. With A-minus it can go either way. Basically, I try not to give this rating unless I love it.

No B-minuses here. This is telling people that they will enjoy this movie. So anything that's definitely good and definitely not great resides here. We'll skip little man 3, save him for the end, and go to And it weaves every detail—whether provided by an on-camera witness, a document, a drawing, a painting or a photograph—around that set of intertwined arguments, which are too complex to explain in this review, but come across powerfully by the time the credits roll.

This is one of the great contemporary films about the look and feel of a big city after dark, luxuriating in the vastness of almost-empty avenues lit by buzzing streetlamps. This leads to a lot of pleasant but intense conversating about e-books, blogs, Twitter, all the stuff The Kids are into.

So how do critics convey when a film truly is unexpectedly, brilliantly unpredictable in ways that feel revelatory? Just trust me on this one.

Yet like far too many recent, uncompromisingly honest adult dramas, it never received a theatrical release, arriving instead on the small screen.

In addition to its signature blend of boundary-pushing shows and mainstream blockbusters, HBO has become as vital a distributor of top-drawer indies as Netflix or Hulu. From its Sundance premiere, I heard grumblings about its main character, Julie Honor Swinton Byrne , and the frustrations some felt with her decision to stay in a clearly toxic relationship. Secondarily, the song is officially aimed at a new character, Forky Tony Hale , a plastic spork with popsicle-stick feet and pipe cleaner arms, created by Bonnie with material supplied by Woody during orientation day at kindergarten.

Typical of " Toy Story ," a series where inanimate objects don't merely have personalities but existential crises, Forky keeps breaking away from Bonnie and Woody and trying to hurl himself into the nearest trash receptacle.

This is not a comment on his own feelings of worthiness. It explores the themes that clearly fascinate him with his confidence of visual language and gift with performers. It is daring, riveting, and the first great movie of So sobs Howard, the adrenaline-junkie diamond dealer gambling addict played by Adam Sandler in "Uncut Gems. There's the hope that once he pays it all off, he'll wipe the slate clean, and repair some of the bridges he's burned.

But everyone around Howard knows this is a fantasy. His addiction is too entrenched. The dazzle of the "uncut gems" in the title is not a surface shine. It glows at the center of the earth, it burns in Howard's core. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them. The other two see evidence that the film indirectly references either the genocide of Native Americans or the Holocaust. I say "doesn't" because "The Wandering Soap Opera"—a surreal black comedy that Ruiz shot over the course of six days in —was only completed after Ruiz's death, by Valeria Sarmiento , Ruiz's editor and widow.

Trey Edward Shults has written and directed an empathetic commentary on the interconnectivity of human nature—a film filled with great, almost unimaginable pain, but also incredible beauty. And it ultimately feels like a call for kindness and forgiveness. Directed by: Paul Brickman. Premiered: August 5, Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow. Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan. Premiered: August 2, Directed by: John Singleton. Premiered: July 12, Released: Directed by: Robert Zemeckis.

Saving Private Ryan. Toy Story. Pulp Fiction. Released: Directed by: Quentin Tarantino. Apollo Young Frankenstein.

Back to the Future. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Released: Directed by: Steven Spielberg. The Sting. Schindler's List. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Cool Hand Luke. The Fugitive. Taxi Driver. Blazing Saddles. The Godfather. The Dark Knight. Released: Directed by: Christopher Nolan. Released: Directed by: Peter Jackson. Released: Directed by: John G. Apocalypse Now.

Released: Directed by: Pete Docter. No Country for Old Men. Bonnie and Clyde. The Graduate. Finding Nemo. Beauty and the Beast. Dances with Wolves. Released: Directed by: Curtis Hanson. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Departed. Released: Directed by: Martin Scorsese. Field of Dreams. Released: Directed by: Stanley Kubrick. The Little Mermaid. Released: Directed by: Franklin J. The Deer Hunter. Released: Directed by: Michael Cimino. American Graffiti.

Lethal Weapon. Batman Begins. The French Connection. Good Morning, Vietnam. Raging Bull. The Karate Kid. True Grit. Released: Directed by: Henry Hathaway.

Released: Directed by: Guy Hamilton. Iron Man. Released: Directed by: Jon Favreau. Released: Directed by: Joseph L. Black Hawk Down. Released: Directed by: Peter Weir. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Mississippi Burning. Released: Directed by: Merian C. Schoedsack Runtime: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Released: Directed by: Brian De Palma. A Fish Called Wanda. Released: Directed by: John Ford. A Beautiful Mind. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Released: Directed by: Chris Columbus. The Truman Show. The Right Stuff. Das Boot. Released: Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen. Casino Royale. Votes: 20, R min Drama. In a poor working class London home Penny's love for her partner, taxi-driver Phil, has run dry, but when an unexpected tragedy occurs, they and their local community are brought together, and they rediscover their love.

R min Drama, Romance. Small-town love story of a young man with a reputation for womanizing and his best friend's sister.

R min Adventure, Comedy, Drama. A high-school boy in the early s is given the chance to write a story for Rolling Stone magazine about an up-and-coming rock band as he accompanies them on their concert tour.

R min Biography, Drama, Music. The life, success and troubles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , as told by Antonio Salieri , the contemporaneous composer who was insanely jealous of Mozart's talent and claimed to have murdered him. Director: Milos Forman Stars: F. A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.

PG 98 min Documentary. Chronicles the six-month strike at Hormel in Austin, Minnesota, in PG min Comedy, Drama. A group of teenagers in California's central valley spend one final night after their high school graduation cruising the strip with their buddies before they pursue their varying goals.

R min Documentary, Comedy. Documentary about an aspiring filmmaker's attempts to finance his dream project by finally completing the low-budget horror film he abandoned years before. PG min Comedy, Drama, Romance.

A widowed U. President running for reelection and an environmental lobbyist fall in love. It's all above-board, but "politics is perception," and sparks fly anyway. A gritty but essential documentary charting social turbulence in late 's Chicago. American Revolution 2 includes footage of the Democratic Convention protest and riot, a critique Votes: R min Biography, Comedy, Drama.

An original mix of fiction and reality illuminates the life of comic book hero everyman Harvey Pekar. R min Biography, Drama. Janet Frame was a brilliant child who, as a teen, was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. Explore Janet's discovery of the world and her life in Europe as her books are published to acclaim.