“Spend one blue to unearth my Fatestitcher, tap it to untap Time Vault…”
“So what?”
“So I tap Time Vault to take an extra turn. You’ve seen me play it before.”
“No, what I mean is, you never gave me the answers to the puzzle.”
Roger adjusts his spectacles. “Ah, yes. I knew I was forgetting something.”
Contagion (2011, Steven Soderbergh) “Yes, we must often wash our hands. Yes, ‘hand sanitizers’ are all over the place these days. Yes, shaking hands with strangers can be annoying — although they are no more likely to carry viruses than we are. Yes, there is really not much we can do.”
Flight (2012, Robert Zemeckis) “Acting on instinct, seeming cool as ice, the veteran pilot inverts the plane to halt its descent, and it flies level upside-down until he rights it again to glide into a level crash-landing in an open field.”
Field of Dreams (1989, Phil Alden Robinson) “There is a speech in this movie about baseball that is so simple and true that it is heartbreaking. And the whole attitude toward the players reflects that attitude.”
Serenity (2005, Joss Whedon) “As the battle continued and the heroes were hurled about inside their own spaceship, which at times looked curiously like the interior of a loading dock, I made a note: ‘More banging than in your average space movie.'”
Death Wish (1974, Directed by Michael Winner) “Alone in his apartment, Bronson examines snapshots from his recent Hawaiian vacation with his wife. Then he examines the gun. He goes out into the night, is attacked by a mugger and shoots him dead. Then he goes home and throws up. But the taste for vengeance, once acquired, has a fascination of its own.”
Glory (1989, Edward Zwick) “And everything in the film leads up to the final bloody battle scene, a suicidal march up a hill that accomplishes little in concrete military terms but is of incalculable symbolic importance.”
Armageddon (1998, Michael Bay) “OK, say you do succeed in blowing up an asteroid the size of Texas. What if a piece the size of Dallas is left? Wouldn’t that be big enough to destroy life on Earth? What about a piece the size of Austin? Let’s face it: Even an object the size of that big Wal-Mart outside Abilene would pretty much clean us out, if you count the parking lot.”
Anaconda (1997, Luis Llosa) “The movie looks great, and the visuals and the convincing soundtrack and ominous music make the Amazon into a place with presence and personality: It’s not a backdrop, it’s an enveloping presence.”
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock) “A man has fallen in love with a woman who does not exist, and now he cries out harshly against the real woman who impersonated her. But there is so much more to it than that. The real woman has fallen in love with him.”
Dawn of the Dead (2004, Zack Snyder) “When the survivors devise a risky way to escape from the mall (which I will not reveal), a chainsaw plays a key role.”
Aladdin (1992, John Musker and Ron Clements) “The genie is the best thing in the movie…”
Backdraft (1991, Ron Howard) “…A batallion of stunt men and visual experts allow the camera to plunge into the center of roaring fires, so convincingly that there is never a moment’s doubt that we are surrounded by flames.”
“Okay, now where were we?”
“You were on your third turn-within-a-turn-within-a-turn.”
“Thanks. Now, about that Time Walk I have imprinted on my Isochron Scepter…”
All of the above reviews were written by American film critic Roger Ebert. These and many other reviews may be found at http://www.rogerebert.com. See a movie at your local theater today.