“The Hands of Orlac,” a twisty and lurid 1924 Austrian psychodrama, was the last movie I saw in New Orleans at the Overlook Film Festival. The four day-long festival’s revival of the century-old silent movie, about a celebrated pianist who believes he’s haunted by the spirit of a killer, felt like an event thanks in no small part to a live, movie-length musical performance by local faves Listen More, Hear Less. I’d never seen this version of “The Hands of Orlac,” just its 1935 remake, “Mad Love,” which swaps out a memorably stricken Conrad Veidt for the usually ferocious Peter Lorre. The fest ..read more

Despite its gently bummed-out vibe, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is a sneakily powerful film. It’s so affecting, in fact, that I get a little sad just thinking about the story and characters. Even though I saw "Eternal Sunshine" twice in a theater when it came out and put it on my 2004 Top 10 list, I only revisited it once more after that (to be interviewed for a video essay that, as far as I know, is no longer available online) and haven’t watched it since. It’s not just the story itself that’s piercing; it’s the film’s visualization of memories being destroyed, which hits harder ..read more

If the 2020s were going to be any film subgenre, they would be body horror. It’s a genre preoccupied with testing the limits, pleasures, and possibilities of the flesh. It also has a streak of fear under the radical physical transformations it showcases: the loss of bodily autonomy. The fear of losing control of your body is a deep-seated and primal one. Body horror classics like “The Fly” and “Possession” had this in their bones, understanding that losing control of the corporeal can be frightening but also freeing. In more current titles, like “Crimes of the Future,” “Infinity Pool,” “Immac ..read more

Just when you think they’ve run out of real-life World War II stories to turn into blockbuster movies than some documents get declassified, inspiring or at least suggesting new sagas of heroism. This new movie about a small mission of Allied fighters killing Nazis on a grand scale wherever they go, directed by Guy Ritchie from a script by Ritchie, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Arash Amel and Ritchie, claims as source material information that only became available after some secret history stuff was declassified in 2016. It also happens to be, according to its credits, based on a book by Damien ..read more

This week marks the 25th anniversary of Ebertfest, the film festival Roger and I co-founded in conjunction with the College of Media at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. lt is  hosted by me and Festival Director, Dr Nathaniel ("Nate") Kohn, every year at the Virginia Theatre. Nate has been the Festival Director since year one! This year we are joined by Festival Coordinator Molly Cornyn.   April 17th to April 20th, this year's fest spans thirteen features both old and new, one panel, and more than twenty-five guests and presenters, including Fi ..read more

How will you respond if you are evaluated for another life after your death? “Nine Days” is a little but poignant fantasy drama film which throws that thought-provoking question and some other interesting ones involved with life and humanity. When I watched it for the first time around the end of 2021, I was initially quite intrigued by its offbeat story premise, and then I found myself reflecting a lot on how I had lived my life—and how I should live for the rest of my life.   At first, the movie lets us get immersed in a small and isolated world inhabited by its hero Will (Winston ..read more

Murder mysteries usually present the offense at their center as a puzzle to be solved. There’s a reason the genre and its true crime sisters are often called “whodunits.” And that approach can work, building intricate illusions that are deeply satisfying when revealed a la “The Usual Suspects” or “Only Murders in the Building,” to name two popular titles with wildly different tones. But this mystery-first approach obscures something essential about their ostensible subject of murder: Its human cost. Based on Rebecca Godfrey’s book by the same name and premiering on Hulu on April 17th, “Under ..read more

When Eleanor Coppola died Friday at the age of 87, it was inevitable that most obituaries would lead with the fact that she had been the wife of Francis Ford Coppola, one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the last 50 years. An artist, a costume designer, a writer, a documentarian and a director, she met her future husband on the set of his feature debut, the 1963 Roger Corman-produced horror flick “Dementia 13.” They got married the year the movie came out and were together the rest of her days, Eleanor often living in Francis’ shadow—or, at least that’s how it seemed from the film world’s ..read more

The Overlook Film Festival is thankfully not a market festival. Only one of this year’s screenings was a world premiere: “Abigail,” which played on the closing night of the four-day festival, and will soon be released globally by Universal Pictures. A few of the other movies playing at the New Orleans-based festival have either already played at other genre-focused film festivals, like Fantasia and Fantastic Fest, or more general-audience-focused market festivals, like Sundance, SXSW, and Toronto. Other programming decisions seem to have been influenced by genre-savvy patrons, like the dilige ..read more

You might not expect the passion project of the writer who brought us “Rambo: First Blood,” “Highlander,” and the action comedy “Gotcha!” would be the story of a Polish teenager who hid a small group of Jews from the Nazis. But that is what “Irena’s Vow” is for Dan Gordon. In an interview with RogerEbert.com, Gordon described his beginnings in Hollywood, with a wild story about the legendary Lew Wasserman, how he met Irena, and how he told her story three times in three different media: as a play, a movie, and a book. How did you get started as a screenwriter? I was born in Los Angeles ..read more