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Roger Ebert

Also referred to as Ebert, Raj, Rog, Robert Ebert

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Rewatchables episodes featuring Roger Ebert’s films

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Pretty Woman The Rewatchables
Pretty Woman

Roger Ebert's review

In the discussion (4)
Approx. transcript time · 00:12:01Read transcript
  • Asked whether to cover the critical reception now, the hosts say Roger Ebert gave it three and a half stars and cheer "Way to go, Raj. Finally." — Amanda Dobbins
  • Janet Maslin in the New York Times called it really great despite some problems in the script. — Amanda Dobbins
  • A high-profile Entertainment Weekly takedown, identified as Owen "Gleberman," focused on her appearance and is said to explain the Rotten Tomatoes score. — Amanda Dobbins
  • Rotten Tomatoes is said not to mean anything, a line kept up because it annoyed the absent Sean. — Amanda Dobbins
Dave The Rewatchables
Dave

Roger Ebert's review

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:14:23Read transcript
  • Roger Ebert came through with three and a half stars, writing that this movie is more proof that it isn't what you do, it's how you do it, and that Ivan Reitman's direction and Gary Ross's screenplay use intelligence and warm-hearted sentiment to make wonderful light-hearted entertainment.
  • A host jokes that the it-isn't-what-you-do axiom could apply to Ebert's entire career as discussed on this show, that the archives don't lie, and that it isn't about two stars but what's inside the two stars.
The Warriors The Rewatchables
The Warriors

Roger Ebert's review

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:12:40Read transcript
  • Gene Sisko (as transcribed) gave the film one star, called a tough beat; Roger Ebert gave two out of four, which one host likes, writing that despite Hill's cinematic scale the film is implausible and the characters lack depth and spontaneity.
  • Ebert also wrote that whatever impression the ads give, this is not remotely intended as an action film but a set piece, a ballet of stylized male violence; one host agrees with the description but thinks holding it against the film is a weird criticism.
Wedding Crashers The Rewatchables
Wedding Crashers

Roger Ebert's review

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:04:25Read transcript
  • Roger Ebert gave the film two stars out of four, writing that there are individual moments that are very funny but that the director has too much else on his mind.
  • The hosts float a new category, Are We Sure Roger Ebert Was Good, since every time they do the show it turns out Ebert disliked the movie; one read the review the night before and found it not on the money and missing the point.
  • Ebert on comedy is weak, the archetype of the critic who does not get why young people like comedies, and Sisko (as transcribed) balanced him out; another defends Ebert's greatness as making important films like Citizen Kane and Mean Streets understandable to mass audiences, and his Wedding Crashers review is not something that host sought out.
Die Hard The Rewatchables
Die Hard

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Theo’s basketball play; the alleged USC–Notre Dame game; Ebert’s judgment; Hans’s escape plan; bearer bonds; the McClanes’ marriage

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 01:04:02Read transcript
  • Which Lakers game is Theo describing in the lobby? — Chris Ryan
  • Could USC and Notre Dame have been playing football on Christmas Eve in the 1980s?
  • How could Roger Ebert give Die Hard only two stars, and does that undermine his judgment?
  • Did Hans ever intend to extract his entire crew, given the ambulance size and his willingness to detonate the roof?
  • What are bearer bonds, how could Hans convert $640 million of them, and why would Takagi keep them in one building?
  • What agreement governed John and Holly’s separation, children, geography, and surnames?
Jurassic Park The Rewatchables
Jurassic Park

What’s Aged the Worst?

The resurrection science and Wayne Knight’s comic Dennis Nedry (neither breaks the movie)

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 00:24:51Read transcript
  • The dinosaur-revival science once seemed plausible to young viewers, but is now questioned as a literal possibility.
  • Crichton reportedly visited a scientist studying preserved insects and adapted that research into the novel, acknowledging him.
  • Nedry’s slapstick behavior feels goofy, though his appearance helped establish a recognizable hacker stereotype.
  • The lawyer is defended as legitimately concerned with safety, making his profession an easy and somewhat unfair punchline.
  • Nedry’s vague rival-company scheme is accepted as a necessary plot trigger because the movie moves so effectively. — Sean Fennessey
  • The shaving-cream can is admired as a cleverly designed physical object despite the implausible larger scheme. — Sean Fennessey
  • Roger Ebert is recalled as criticizing Nedry when the movie came out; no numerical rating is supplied. — Sean Fennessey
Varsity Blues The Rewatchables
Varsity Blues

Half-Assed Internet Research

40% on Rotten Tomatoes; Ebert called it a predictable football movie that lacks intensity; Van Der Beek won Teen Choice and MTV Movie Awards breakout honors; shaving cream stood in for the whipped cream; Wendell's actor played at Stanford and briefly for the Kansas City Chiefs; Billy Bob's actor tore his patella tendon during the shoot; Mox wears number 4 for Brett Favre; Van Der Beek stopped playing football after an eighth-grade concussion

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 00:30:33Read transcript
  • The film has a 40% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so 60% of people are idiots; Roger Ebert is quoted calling it a predictable football movie that lacks intensity, which the hosts reject, since the coach does a Hitler salute.
  • True or false: Van Der Beek won breakout movie star at the Teen Choice Awards and breakout male performance at the MTV Movie Awards; true, and since it was an MTV production the hosts suspect it was semi-rigged.
  • Shaving cream was used in the whipped cream sundae scene because whipped cream would not stick to Allie Larder; whether it sticks to anyone else is unknown.
  • The actor who played Wendell played at Stanford and had a cup of coffee with the Kansas City Chiefs as a strong safety; the Billy Bob actor tore his patella tendon during the shoot, which is why he is shot from odd angles and the hook and ladder looks weird, and they still ran it with three guys on his back.
  • Mox wore number 4 because Van Der Beek's favorite player was Brett Favre, read on IMDb that day; the claim that Billy Bob was 38 when filmed is false, with the actor recalled as 47 when he died about a year ago and 28 at the time; Van Der Beek had to stop playing football in eighth grade after a concussion, so they knew.
Face/Off The Rewatchables
Face/Off

Most Rewatchable Scene

The Somewhere Over the Rainbow shootout; the prison escape

In the discussion (12)
Approx. transcript time · 00:09:36Read transcript
  • A rewatchable movie needs four or five parts you have to watch when flicking channels at the 30 or 50 minute mark, and this one has a lot: the airport shootout that leaves Nick Cage in NFL concussion protocol, the surgery face-switch scenes, the escape from a maximum security prison on Catalina Island where everybody wears magnetic boots, the Somewhere Over the Rainbow shootout with a little kid in headphones, the boat chase and the ending.
  • Asked for the most rewatchable scene, answers that it is absolutely the Somewhere Over the Rainbow shootout. — Chris Ryan
  • The shootout begins with Cage entering a trip-hop bachelor pad in an airport hangar, Tricky's Christian Sands (as transcribed) playing to date it to 1997, Castor's son present for some reason, absinthe and a hallucinatory out-of-body experience, and the child always in the line of fire with nobody thinking to put him in a bathtub under a cover; one host would rewatch the whole movie if it were only this scene.
  • Castor's henchman brings out a beautiful oak box holding Chiclets, prescription pills guessed to be an early Dutch version of molly, a dozen rolled joints and two gold-plated handguns, presented as if it were the Ark of the Covenant or a Kansas basketball signing; the two men then fake-laugh at each other unironically a year before the Austin Powers henchmen scene.
  • One host personally thought the prison escape was the most rewatchable scene, and another says they are with them on that.
  • Picks the Somewhere Over the Rainbow shootout as John Woo's victory lap, Woo announcing he is in Hollywood and spending money, with the kid in slow motion, a shootout kept being added to, and so many vases full of lilies blown up again. — Jason Concepcion
  • Two of the hosts share a love of prison movies, to the point of two-in-the-morning emails about a Vince Vaughn prison-movie trailer; the magnetic gravity boots are a good prison wrinkle every jail in America should have, and the film keeps adding: a shootout, then drugs, then a kid in the middle, then Over the Rainbow; a prison in the ocean, then super magnets, then electrocution.
  • The prison is like the Death Star, an impregnable super weapon undone by one trick, since all you have to do is get rid of the boots; Cage brings the four-billion-dollar prison down with one cigarette, fighting to keep it, getting sent to shock treatment, burning a guard and starting a full-scale riot.
  • Travolta switches faces and goes into the prison as Castor Troy, and Castor's brother Pollux is for some reason immediately suspicious; a host does the Pollux impression on request, and nobody can explain why Pollux would wonder whether they switched faces when he thought his brother was dead after the wind turbine.
  • Answers that if he had his college enemy Neil's face on his face, and his voice, his wife Laramie would never be convinced it was him; there is nothing he could say. — Shea Serrano
  • The clip of the prison fight is played, where Travolta wearing Castor's face has to convince the brother it is really him, shouting I'm Castor Troy (as transcribed Caster Joy) and crying; one host calls it their favorite scene in the whole movie, and the tears are joked about as post-concussion emotion or life without a nicotine patch, with Roger Ebert imagined comparing it to first seeing Bergman.
  • Did people take Cage at face value because of Leaving Las Vegas? The entire 90s came and went before anyone collectively asked whether Nick Cage is a bad actor; asked whether they want to change their minds on the scene, the hosts say no.
Displaying discussions 109 - 119 of 119 in total