Roger Ebert's 50 Greatest Film Reviews

By James Kirk / May 16, 2013

38. Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973) - ˜… Director: Hall Bartlett

Ebert called Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a movie about a seagull based on the bestseller by Richard Bach, the €œbiggest pseudocultural, would-be metaphysical ripoff of the year.

€œI hardly ever walk out of movies, and in fact I sometimes make a point of sitting through bad ones, just to get ammunition for a juicy review. But this one was too much. I left when Jonathan had dragged himself, groggy and bleeding, onto some flotsam.€

37. The Empire Strikes Back (1982) - ˜…˜…˜…˜…

Director: Irvin Kershner

Many people consider The Empire Strikes Back as the best of the three original Star Wars movies. Roger Ebert agreed. €œAfter the space opera cheerfulness of the original film, this one plunges into darkness and even despair, and surrenders more completely to the underlying mystery of the story.€ But the most interesting aspect of his review of Empire had to do with his take on the character of Yoda. He wrote that €œ Oz and Lucas were not content to make Yoda realistic. They wanted to make him a good actor, too. And they did; in his range of wisdom and emotion, Yoda may actually give the best performance in the movie.€

36. Casablanca (1942) - ˜…˜…˜…˜…

Director: Michael Curtiz

€œSeeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows over-familiar,€ Ebert wrote in his review of the classic film pairing Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. €œIt plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like it. The black-and-white cinematography has not aged as color would. The dialogue is so spare and cynical it has not grown old-fashioned. Much of the emotional effect of Casablanca is achieved by indirection; as we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do after all amount to more than a hill of beans."

35. Godzilla (1998) - ˜… ½

Director: Roland Emmerich

€œGoing to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival,€ Ebert wrote, €œis like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. It's a rebuke to the faith that the building represents. Cannes touchingly adheres to a belief that film can be intelligent, moving and grand. Godzilla is a big, ugly, ungainly device to give teenagers the impression they are seeing a movie. It was the festival's closing film, coming at the end like the horses in a parade, perhaps for the same reason.€ A fun fact that Ebert commented on in his review of Godzilla was that the character of New York€™s mayor in the film was named Ebert and his adviser is named Gene, neither of whom were portrayed flatteringly.