14. A Clockwork Orange (1972) -
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, starring Malcolm McDowell, prompted one of Roger Eberts most scathing reviews, and it hardly seems to do it justice to merely quote from it. Its a review you need to read in its entirety, and it can be found
here. While a great admirer of director Stanley Kubrick, Roger Ebert was not kind in his review of A Clockwork Orange, which he called an ideological mess, a paranoid right-wing fantasy masquerading as an Orwellian warning. It pretends to oppose the police state and forced mind control, but all it really does is celebrate the nastiness of its hero, Alex." Ebert expresses extreme distaste for the films lead character, Alex, because he is played as a hero instead of a wretch, blaming Kubrick and not Anthony Burgess, the author of the book on which the film was based, for the mishandling of the character. I don't know quite how to explain my disgust, he concludes. What in hell is Kubrick up to here? Does he really want us to identify with the antisocial tilt of Alex's psychopathic little life? "Why he likes Beethoven is never explained, but my notion is that Alex likes Beethoven in the same way that Kubrick likes to load his sound track with familiar classical music -- to add a cute, cheap, dead-end dimension. "We'll probably be debating A Clockwork Orange for a long time -- a long, weary and pointless time. The New York critical establishment has guaranteed that for us. They missed the boat on , so maybe they were trying to catch up with Kubrick on this one. Or maybe the news weeklies just needed a good movie cover story for Christmas. "I don't know. But they've really hyped A Clockwork Orange for more than it's worth, and a lot of people will go if only out of curiosity. Too bad. In addition to the things I've mentioned above -- things I really got mad about -- A Clockwork Orange commits another, perhaps even more unforgivable, artistic sin. It is just plain talky and boring. You know there's something wrong with a movie when the last third feels like the last half."
13. Aguirre, Wrath of God (1973) -
Director: Werner Herzog
Ebert described the story of Gonzalo Pizzaros search for the Lost City of Gold in the jungles of Peru as one of the great haunting visions of cinema. He describes the effect the film had on him, its haunting score and his admiration of Herzog as a great filmmaker. Herzog was, along with Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, Federico Fellini, Martin Scorsese, Yasujiro Ozu and Alfred Hitchcock, on the short list of Eberts greatest directors. Werner Herzog is the most visionary and the most obsessed with great themes. Little wonder that he has directed many operas. He does not want to tell a plotted story or record amusing dialog; he wants to lift us up into realms of wonder. Only a handful of modern films share the audacity of his vision; I think of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Apocalypse Now.
12. Apocalypse Now (1979) -
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Based loosely on the novel Heart of Darkness, Francis Ford Coppolas Apocalypse Now is widely considered one of American cinemas finest achievements. Martin Sheen is dispatched by his Army command deep into the jungles of Vietnam in search of an AWOL colonel named Kurtz (Marlon Brando), and what he finds, in Kurtzs words, is the horror of war. In his second review of the film, Ebert writes, Seen again now at a distance of 20 years, Apocalypse Now is more clearly than ever one of the key films of the century. He praised the film for not just its technical perfection, but for its ability to push beyond story and into thematic abstracts that challenge the viewer. "Apocalypse Now is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul. It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover.
11. Citizen Kane (1941) -
Director: Orson Welles
Roger Ebert called Orson Welles thinly disguised fictional portrait of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst one of the miracles of cinema. Though not a hit upon its initial release, Citizen Kane has become one of the most important American films of the 20th century. The film itself could serve as a 500-level course in filmmaking. Its technically brilliant. Its inspired. And its history, aftermath (Hearst did not like the movie) and legacy are a story in and of itself. And Ebert dedicates more than 1,300 words to his review of this American classic. Its surface is as much fun as any movie ever made. Its depths surpass understanding. I have analyzed it a shot at a time with more than 30 groups, and together we have seen, I believe, pretty much everything that is there on the screen. The more clearly I can see its physical manifestation, the more I am stirred by its mystery.