Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland

Reviewed by John David Ebert

(thoughts by John Lobell under Comments)

Tim Burton’s films are generally uneven in quality, and lately, they have not been particularly good. When we think of Sweeney Todd or Big Fish, Sleepy Hollow or Planet of the Apes, we are presented with celluloid spectacles filled with remarkable and even memorable cinematic imagery, but which are generally mediocre products marred by humdrum screenwriting. Burton suffers from the same problem as a number of other visually-talented directors who are not very good at judging the quality of screenplays. Ridley Scott comes to mind; as does (the now long since forgotten) Alan Parker; perhaps David Fincher is a better recent example. Read the rest of this entry »

A Serious Man

Reviewed by John David Ebert

Though I’ve never reviewed any of their movies on this site, the Coen brothers are among my favorite filmmakers. Their films are remarkably free from the kinds of flaws that plague the work of other directors, especially of the Hollywood type, for cliches, sentimentality and kitsch are rare occurrences in a Coen brothers film. And they have possibly the most sophisticated and developed sense of irony that cinema has seen since the days of Stanley Kubrick. To watch a Coen brothers film is to watch an unfolding cascade of novelties, originality and good writing pour forth with a freshness and disregard of convention that is virtually unmatched in cinematic history. Read the rest of this entry »