It’s Friday, which means it’s time to review Ebert’s movie reviews. Ebert is my favorite movie reviewer and is often quite funny when trashing a film. He sometimes, to my great annoyance, inserts silly liberal political jibes into reviews for no reason.
Now, I usually rate movies out of five stars (I really think Ebert needs a fifth star because he’s given out too many four star rating), but I’m going to follow Ebert’s tradition and rate his reviews out of four stars (i.e., reviews can range from zero to four stars with increments of half a star).
Ebert’s Review of Chicken Little
While he did express quite well how this movie pales in comparison to other recent animated flicks, he just wasn’t very entertaining while doing so. I didn’t even crack a smile once. Two stars.
Eberts review of Jarhead
I found this review quite compelling, and was riveted in reading it until the end. I also feel he gave me a good idea what to expect from the movie (and, from that, I don’t plan on seeing it). I give bonus points for Ebert mentioning the current war non-gratuitously and not making a political point out of it. Still, he used a swear I don’t find appropriate for newspaper reviews, so I must deduct half a star. Two and a half stars.
The rest of the movies I never heard of and thus didn’t care about, but one was about suicide bombers so I thought I’d read that review.
Ebert’s Review of Paradise Now
While this movie is about Palestinian suicide bombers, he spent a good part of the review musing about how atheist suicide bombers might make a neat subject (Ebert is Catholic for those wondering). He spent a good part of the review talking about the background of the movie and forgot to even say whether he likes the film or not so you can only assume he liked it from his three star rating. One and a half stars.
Not a great set of reviews this week. Tune in next week for more reviews of Ebert’s movie reviews.
I’d be interested to know what Joe Foo’ thinks of Jarhead. Most Marines I’ve talked to and read have denounced it as a whiny set of complaints, one after the other. Not only that, but Swofford supposedly exagerates nearly everything written in his book, and some of what he writes is pure urban legend.
From that review, Jarhead looks really boring. If they want to make a GOOD movie about an individual Marine, they should make a movie version of The Right Kind of War. Very sweet book. “Sweet” as in “cool,” not “sweet” as in “awwwww!”
My choice for a Marine Corps film would be the incomparable classic, “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa.” The book manages to convey the horrors of war (such as a marine using a kabar to remove a live Japanese’s gold tooth), without being anti-war, or sounding whiny.
Frank J.,
Your reviews of Ebert’s reviews were overall funny– certainly worth reading– but not your funniest work. I’ll give you three out of four stars for this post.
My comment, adding another layer of absurdity to yours, is a fairly obvious comedic technique. I’ll give it one and a half stars, one for the idea, another half for the rating of my own comment.
a4g, that’s just silly. Four stars.
A4g, your review of your own review of Frank’s review of Ebert’s reviews gets three and a stars for taking things to an extra level of absurd extremity. If it had music by John Williams, Howard Shore, or Hans Zimmer, I would have given it an extra star.
I dunno, as a Marine, I can say that I was thoroughly entertained by Jarhead. The theater I was at was packed full of Marines(this was a mall near Oceana in Virginia Beach), and we were all cheering and laughing all through it, giving a big racuous “Oorah!” at the end. It was moto.
When Swafford screamed at his DI, we all gasped, cause we all knew he was gonna get it. Then POW! Head slammed into the chalkboard. Everyone laughed and cheered. Beligerent recruit.
“A4g, your review of your own review of Frank’s review of Ebert’s reviews gets three and a stars for taking things to an extra level of absurd extremity. If it had music by John Williams, Howard Shore, or Hans Zimmer, I would have given it an extra star.”
It should be filmed by Kubrick and have Radiohead as a soundtrack to let you know how deep it really is! Then you could just say that people don’t REALLY ‘get’ it because it’s just that deep