Ebert - Eberts essentials. 33 movies to restore your faith in humanity

Other Books by Roger Ebert

An Illini Century: One Hundred Years of Campus Life

A Kiss Is Still a Kiss

Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook

Behind the Phantoms Mask

Roger Eberts Little Movie Glossary

Roger Eberts Movie Home Companion (annually 19861993)

Roger Eberts Video Companion (annually 19941998)

Roger Eberts Movie Yearbook (annually 19992007, 20092012)

Questions for the Movie Answer Man

Roger Eberts Book of Film: From Tolstoy to Tarantino,the Finest Writing from a Century of Film

Eberts Bigger Little Movie Glossary

I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie

The Great Movies

The Great Movies II

Your Movie Sucks

Roger Eberts Four-Star Reviews 19672007

Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert

Scorsese by Ebert

Life Itself: A Memoir

A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length

With Daniel Curley

The Perfect London Walk

With Gene Siskel

The Future of the Movies: Interviews with Martin Scorsese,Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas

DVD Commentary Tracks

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Citizen Kane

Dark City

Casablanca

Crumb

Floating Weeds

Other Eberts Essentials

25 Great French Films

25 Movies to Mend a Broken Heart

27 Movies from the Dark Side

33 Movies to Restore Your Faith in Humanity copyright 2012 by Roger Ebert. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
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Sad movies rarely make me cry. I pick up all the cues, the story hits its mark, the music underlines the emotion, but most of the time my interest is only technical. For that matter, I dont cry a whole lot at the movies anyway. But when I do, I notice that its almost always because of the goodness of a character. Someone in the film has been sympathetic, generous, or moved to help others because of a good heart.

Do such films restore my faith in humanity? At the time, yes, they nudge me in that direction. Then a picture with wall-to-wall brutality comes along to nudge me back again. I suspect I would be a happier person if I only went to see movies I recommend.

The selections in this e-book will, in general, warm your heart and make you happy to have seen them. Consider the animated masterpiece Up, which is about an old grouch. (Trolls on the Internet said he looked like me, but never mind.) Up opens in an unexpected and beautiful way. Carl and Ellie grow up, have a courtship, marry, buy a ramshackle house and turn it into their dream home, are happy together and grow old. This process is silent, except for music. Its shown in a lovely sequence that deals with the life experience in a way that is almost never found in family animation. The lovebirds save their loose change in a gallon jug intended to finance their trip to the legendary Paradise Falls, but real life gets in the way: flat tires, home repairs, medical bills.

The focus of the film is on Carls life after Ellie. But so many people told me this prelude was one of the most touching films, in itself, theyd seen. Carls later heroism in the jungles of South America are terrific entertainment, but this opening, of two ordinary people who care for one another, is the part that gets you.

A film like The Bands Visit could hardly be more different. A military band from Egypt, on an official visit to Israel, finds itself dropped by a bus at an isolated small crossroads that has nothing to do with their mission. In a long evening and a longer night, the local cafe owner and the bandleader, who are technically enemies in a political sense, begin to talk, and share, and sense their common humanity. It all happens in such a low yet realistic way, you hardly realize its happening at all.

Departures, from Japan, won an Academy Award for the years best foreign film. It was possibly the most cheered film weve ever shown at my Ebertfest film festival at the University of Illinois. I imagine many or most of the readers of this collection will not have seen it. It is about so many things, simultaneously, that its impossible to summarize. Maybe beneath everything else it deals with learning to see people as they really are, and accepting them on those terms. This process, we learn, can continue even after death.

The happiest film on the list must be Say Amen, Somebody. Its an example of a film that many people assume they wouldnt be interested in. A documentary about the pioneers of African American gospel music? Sounds like a boring educational film, right? Yet what joy and priceless human nature are on display here, as we meet Mother Willie May Ford Smith and Thomas A. Dorsey. George Nierenberg, the director, is not a particularly religious person, but he respects his subjects, introduces their loved ones, and captures them at important moments in their lives. There is also a great deal of music, and we sense the goodness and charisma in his two stars.

Theres a reason for every title in this collection. They all have that one thing in commonthe goodness of people. They are very different people and good in many different ways, but all of them, whatever the place in life that fate has led them to, try to do the best they can with their opportunities. Yes, that can restore your faith in humanity. We need more of these films and fewer weekend blockbusters entertaining young people with the slaughter and suffering of anonymous victims in action pictures.

R OGER E BERT

	A great film
G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 : Ratings of the Motion Picture Association of America
G	Indicates that the movie is suitable for general audiences
PG	Suitable for general audiences but parental guidance is suggested
PG-13	Recommended for viewers 13 years or above; may contain material inappropriate for younger children
R	Recommended for viewers 17 or older
NC-17	Intended for adults only
141 m.	Running time
2011	Year of theatrical release

Apollo 13

PG , 135 m., 1995

Tom Hanks (Jim Lovell), Bill Paxton (Fred Haise), Kevin Bacon (Jack Swigert), Gary Sinise (Ken Mattingly), Ed Harris (Gene Kranz), Kathleen Quinlan (Marilyn Lovell), Mary Kate Schellhardt (Barbara Lovell), Emily Ann Lloyd (Susan Lovell). Directed by Ron Howard and produced by Brian Grazer. Screenplay by William Broyles, Jr., and Al Reinert.