Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)
rogerebert.com
rogerebert.com
This resonates with me and is a really concise way to explain why, to me, a 2 to 2.5 hour long Marvel or Transformers movie feels like an eternity, while a movie like Shawshank never has me checking my watch.
So, at least from my opinion, "new" will always be a good sales tactic to catch attention.
My take: Marvel movies have a loooot going on. That might just be draining after a while, since the human brain isn’t wired for constant arousal. Old school action movies are still quite fun to watch and don’t felt that long, perhaps because were given time to ‘rest and digest’ the action.
Marvel has no clue, just keeps pumping and pumping. I especially liked the animated Spider-Man movies, but am super tired of a 2.5h smorgasbord of nonstop action. Even John Wick has a cadence.
How times have changed
The particular niche of television Vince Gilligan has carved out for himself is endlessly fascinating to me.
With three shows over the course of 20 years, each more detached from the sensationalism of its predecessor, he (and it must be said, the creative team surrounding him, usually more than half women) has trained an audience to appreciate slower TV that takes its time and nevertheless works from moment to moment. On this count alone, he has my undying respect, as I think it's the biggest sort of success an artist can hope to have, to advance your point of view and come to be valued for it in itself.
I firmly believe part of the initial commercial failure was because of the title. With something more descriptive like, "Escape from Shawshank" or just "Prison Break" people would have been more interested to see it.
These people would have presumably called Planet of the Apes “Distant future in Eastern United States”…
Now you may ask, where is the actual translation? They just added Swedish words to the original title (which just means back to Cold Mountain".
Who are these people and how do I apply for a job? It seems like a perfect workplace.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Also some people might not have seen it yet, or might have been oblivious to the issue.
“Shawshank” sounds like a place name, but why a specific place would be the source of redemption is mysterious.
The name of the source text, “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” is even more mysterious and unclear.
Not really.
Of the recent movies, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a storytelling masterpiece. Since you mentioned it, I personally rate it alongside Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.
I thought it was so awful I gave up half way through. Maybe it gets better after that. But I agree on Pulp Fiction.
I genuinely didn’t really think there was a story, just spectacle.
I bounced off of it at first, but I bounced (hard) off of Lebowksi as well.
I don't think it's PTA's best film (or that I will come around to that opinion eventually), but it's pretty good.
The scene where the antagonist is walking down a hallway while the background keeps changing — is among the best fight scenes / visuals in any film, ever.
Even setting its influence aside, Pulp Fiction is the better movie.
If you've not seen Pulp Fiction by 2026 [0], how can I safely recommend you submit yourself to hours of semi-disconnected robberies, rapes, and deceit? It's a great movie, EEAaO is just better storytelling.
[0] similarly, how does one recommend the acclaimed Deliverance without blushing?
My favourites of his are probably Once upon a time, Jackie Brown and Deathproof, with an honourable mention for Basterds.
Django has low re-watchability (unlike most of Tarantino's work) but incredible acting/twists/cinematography.
Once Upon a Time is too much for me (bottom-tier Tarantino IMHO), but it does have many great actors/scenes (the overall storyline/premise is what I didn't care for).
Haven't seen Deathproof, but Basterds is wonderful storytelling.
Probably my favourite thing about cinema is how slippery the subjective experience is.
For example I can appreciate a movie I don't really enjoy in a way I can't with music. Also on a rewatch a movie can go from hated to loved, or vice versa, in a way that feels unique to the medium.
Well-said.
>...on a rewatch [it] can go from hated to loved
I typically don't rewatch movies for at least five years — this is enough time for life experiences to change media interpretations. Yet I listen to the same tracklist of catchy MP3 earworms, on repeat.
Songs are motivational background energy (for me), and skipping a track isn't nearly as hard as bailing out of two hours invested in a cozy full-length film.
How so? This is an intriguing statement and I want to hear more.
Can he also explain this above statement, please?
It's not going to a template for lots of similar films. It's more of a one-off.
But anyway, that was several years ago, it stretches the meaning of "recent".
But that movie just dragged on, and now I look back and see it as a bungled opportunity. It could've been so much tighter in the edit. They could've cut a third of the movie and made the whole thing so much better.
The first half has me thinking instant classic, my hope is sky high. But then toward the end I find myself looking at my watch and realize it's simply not going to the stick the landing.
OTOH, many acclaimed streaming series have generally done this well. My take is that as long-form storytelling has evolved, movies have transitioned into this post-modernist phase as directors/writers don't feel they have the runway to tell something truly cohesive that doesn't end up being trite. It's much more about saying 'something' or imbuing a feeling than telling a fully fleshed 3 act story.
It would become just an action movie with crazy plot then.
I feel that way with Inception. That out of nowhere 30-minute snow action part dragged on forever.
Triangle of Sadness https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7322224
Coming Home in the Dark https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6874762
* American Fiction
* The Holdovers
* Oppenheimer
* Perfect Days(!)
* Nosferatu
* Conclave
* Challengers
* The Mastermind
I can rattle off more but those seem pretty hard to argue with. All of them are better than EEAAO.
"Flow" in 2024 was also fantastic.
> Not really.
Not really meaning you can't really name one good movie a year (i.e., agreeing with OP)? Because your example of a good recent movie was 4 years ago.
Based on a Stephen King short story, I’m a fan. Never did catch “The Majestic” and no interest. Ebert was a national treasure, great share.
The most notorious of recent memory is Crash, a film you probably haven't heard of if you're just casually into film (or a sicko like me lol)
But maybe that would have killed the real market for people who wanted a deep subtle movie.
Despite its disappointing box-office returns ...
...It went on to become the top rented film of that year.
also
While finances for licensing the film for television are unknown, in 2014, current and former Warner Bros. executives confirmed that it was one of the highest-valued assets in the studio's $1.5 billion library.
That does spoil the ending a little bit though. It's like changing a certain film title to The Psychologist's Ghost.
(spoilers)
It never sat right with me that Andy is shown to be innocent, and some viciously evil irrelevant character did it instead. This, I thought, takes away the whole redemption aspect of the movie, turning Andy into an innocent Mary Sue. I'd never considered that it may be more about Red's character instead. Though I didn't catch a satisfying explanation for that idea in the review, and it's been a long time since I watched the move.
I think I'll rewatch it today.
Everything about it is depressing and somehow it’s the best movie ever.
If he was a double murderer, plotting to and successfully escaping isn't a redemption, it's just a murderer getting away with it.
A more recent prison movie which made me feel similarly to Cool Hand Luke and Shawshank Redemption while watching it is "I Love You Phillip Morris" (starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor).
The way I remember thinking about it was that he was jailed for revenge murder, then spent his life in jail doing his best to atone by being helpful (building a library, teaching, helping with taxes, etc.). When the prison system refuses to set him free despite him proving through his actions in prison that he's not a threat to society anymore (I hallucinated this part -- this happened to Red, not Andy), he escapes, and his freedom is his redemption.
I'm not a native English speaker, and I think I may have conflated redemption and atonement. Looking at some definitions, it looks like you can receive redemption without atonement -- it doesn't necessarily have to come from within.
The guy who sits drunk in his car eyeing a revolver is not a Mary Sue. And his demeanor of resignation at Shawshank suggests he doesn’t consider himself just an unlucky victim of blind fate & a golf pro.
I don't have an IMAX screen at home. I don't even have the smallest theater screen at home.
Oh, and that "home theater"? Good luck getting the advertised 4k on it from any streaming platform, and very few will have a handy BluRay/Torrents set up at home. Neither do I have Dolby surround at home. Or a way to make the room fully dark.
> I'd argue movie theaters dug their own graves with greed shovels.
I seriously doubt that. Covid maimed theaters, and then streaming dealt the killing blow.
I have noise control. I can pause it. If I am watching alone I can rewind a scene. I watch when I want and I dont have to go to the mall for it. And it is massively cheaper.
If more of us watch, we can talk to esch other or comment things. Or be silent and not disturbed by somebody else making noise.
Streaming killed theaters because movie advertisement basically stopped (the lesser problem), and movies are immediately released on streaming platforms (the bigger problem). Why go to a theater when it will be released on Netflix/Hulu/Amazon within a week or two?
Movies used to get several weeks (sometimes months) of theatrical runs, and then there was at least a 90 day window (often longer) before home releases on VHS/DVD/BluRay. Now theaters are fighting for at least a 45-day window.
[1] Well, a 2015-ish Sonos soundbar and two IKEA Sonos speakers.
Screen size is certainly not the ticket price difference for me.
> and movies are immediately released on streaming platforms (the bigger problem). Why go to a theater when it will be released on Netflix/Hulu/Amazon within a week or two?
This is admission that streaming is better experience. If the only reason to go to theater is that you cant see the movie otherwise, then it is not the superior experience.
Generally people include the former in the sleeper hit category.
For the latter I’m not sure about movies. But some shows have blown up after failing on one platform then moving to Netflix.
The difference is there was backend participation for VHS/DVD rentals... whereas Netflix is paying a one-time flat rate to acquire your flopped movie.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/08/roger-deakins-c...
King does this all the time in his stories having character connections across different novels, making them set in the same universe. Fun, adds some depth to all of it. Like Randal Flagg being the same villain in the Stand and the Dark tower and Eyes of the Dragon.
Oppenheimer and 'Don't look up' are the exceptions. Everything everywhere all at once was mentioned here but I found it pretty thin and predictable.
I am amazed by your prediction abilities, then. I don't think I predicted any of it.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-shawshank-redemption-...
On a separate note, although vastly different, Fight Club was also not very successful on the box office (domestically made losses) but became a hit on DVDs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club)
> American critic Roger Ebert has hit back at Vincent Gallo in the latest round of a public spat over whether the actor-director did or did not apologise for his derided Cannes contender The Brown Bunny. Earlier this week Gallo denied having apologised and claimed the critic was "a fat pig" for saying that he had. He added: "The only thing I'm sorry for is putting a curse of Roger Ebert's colon."
> Yesterday, in his column for the Chicago Sun Times, Ebert stuck to his guns - quoting the editor of trade magazine Screen International, who says that they have Gallo's apology on tape. On the question of his cursed colon, Ebert said: "I am not too worried. I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny."
> The critic rounded off his article (as it were) by casually conceding that he is overweight. "It is true that I am fat," Ebert wrote. "But one day I shall be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny."
Later on, Gallo went back to the editing room and cut a quarter of the film. Ebert re-watched it and actually ended up giving it a thumbs' up.
Disclaimer: I never read Stephen King's original short story, on which the movie is based, so I cannot say how this compares to Dumas' classic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo
But it is Red who suggests it should be filed under ‘education’!
The title of the play also differed from the movie, Rita Hayworth: Last Exit, which feels somewhat like a spoiler. I believe this was the title used by the Greek distributor.
I think Ebert is a brilliant reviewer; here I think something is overlooked: I agree about the emotional tone but not about the effect or the truth behind it. The prison is a fearful, traumatic place, of rape you can't stop, where life hangs by a thread, you take risks (for example with the bookkeeping) living on a razor's edge. The constant danger hangs over everything - you might not survive the day, you might be assaulted again, today might be the day they look more closely at what you're doing and you're caught.
That belies the calm narration and friendship. They provide an island of hope and love amid the trauma, in stark contrast to it, in constant tension with it.
You might say the narration is a device to make it palatable to middle-class audiences. That's something I notice a lot in Hollywood. First, the protagonist is someone they can identify with - a banker, a middle-class job - wrongly convicted, in this horrible situation. They are not, for example, a homeless person or someone semi-employed doing manual labor (someone much more likely to be wrongly convicted) - that would be a different movie and much less empathetic for many viewers, though objectively exactly as horrible. Then you have this calm, warm, reasonable voice telling the story - not a voice of terror or hate or trauma; that would be too much; the voice says 'it's ok'.
As Ebert says,
> The movie avoids lingering on Andy’s suffering; after beatings, he’s seen in medium and long shot, tactfully. The camera doesn’t focus on Andy’s wounds or bruises, but, like his fellow prisoners, gives him his space.
And I think also the following claim goes much too far:
> His film grants itself a leisure that most films are afraid to risk. The movie is as deliberate, considered and thoughtful as Freeman’s narration. There’s a feeling in Hollywood that audiences have short attention spans and must be assaulted with fresh novelties.
Sure, it's not the Avengers but it's a movie where the main plot elements are prison violence, a prison escape, and a grand con. This isn't Tokyo Story or In the Mood for Love.
You're right that the protagonist is wrongly convicted, but the narrator of the movie was guilty of murder.
Roger Ebert is way to "fake" for my taste but broken clock and all that.
I am very well aware I'm in a minority, though!
This is the great thing about art, there's no objective measurement, people are free to disagree and like what they like.
I think the deal is that the emotional beats in it work so well that the plot can be set aside. It's also not a problem that those beast aren't particularly clever or imaginative.
It's like a jump scare in a horror movie or Old Yeller. Even when you know what's going to happen you still startle or shed a tear. Honestly even when you know you're being manipulated and think it's cheesy you still get that response.
The weird thing to me about Shawshank is that it's not a monster out of the dark or a dog getting killed. It's not a cathartic thing but something else.
None of this is true.
I kind of hated movies like Manchester By The Sea, American Sniper, Banshees of Insherin.
They all feel not so sincere to me. There’s something about them - a technique where audience exposition is deliberately toned down to such an extent that it’s just scene after scene with no soul.
Most people think the best year in pop music history was the one when they were 12. There’s a similar effect about the good old movies.
You also can't really compare the 90s to now when music and the movies were the dominate art form and there was no way to get rich and famous from just the internet.
I watched an interview with Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains and he said in the late 80s Seatle, he worked at a giant 50 room rehearsal space, almost apartment complex, that was opened 24/7. Music can't be the same as a time when being in a band was so popular that the economics could support a 50 band room rehearsal space that never closes. It is night and day different to now. Same with movies.
My feeling is that there isn't and _won't be_ a new Stephen King that checks all the boxes, due to declining readership and reduced barriers to independent publishing.
or
Das Leben der Anderen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others
I can't think of many contemporary American films that exactly fit the bill (which I interpret as: enthralling, everyday dialogue, without a pop singer's voice on the soundtrack competing for attention, or production like a music video).
Maybe Gone Girl, or Marriage Story, or something.
Many of the scenes in the show were inspired by Will Guidara's book, Unreasonable Hospitality, which was mostly a reflection of his time running Eleven Madison Park. Reading that made the show even better, IMO.
Kore-eda Hirokazu: Still Walking (2008), Monster (2023), Shoplifters (2018)
Hamaguchi Ryusuke: Drive My Car (2021), Evil Does Not Exist (2023)
A Story of Yonosuke (2013) from Okita Shuichi
Memories of Matsuko (2006) from Nakashima Tetsuya
Departures (2008) from Takita Yojiro
Perfect Days (2023) from Wim Wenders. Even though he is not japanese it's a very japanese film
but there are lot more
There's a recent US "remake"/homage which I haven't dared to watch.
I’d say he is my favorite contemporary director.
The only american director I’d consider right now is Terrence Malick. I just hope his Jesus film gets released…
There's also just personal takes. I had to shut off Memories of Matsuko. Maybe the end saves it but it was way too over the top and not in a good way.
Some good older Japanese though
Kurasawa: Ikiru (1955)
Teshigahara: Woman in the Dunes (1964)
These are 2 movies you won't forget.
Conversely, even though I enjoyed Shoplifters I remember nothing about it except the guy celebrating he had sex and the girl burping. Similarly with After Life. I just watched it 2 months ago and had to go look it up to remember what it was about. It was interesting because of the premise but not because of the movie itself.
Other recent greats are maybe Poor Things, Challengers, and Conclave.
You wouldn’t mistake any for Shawshank, but that’s ok, it’s 30 years later. Shawshank is also qualitatively different from great movies in the mid 1960’s, like Dr. Strangelove or The Graduate.
You're also rattling off three movies that have almost nothing to do with each other. Banshees of Inisherin in particular isn't a crowd-pleasing movie. To stick with Martin McDonagh, check out In Bruges or Three Billboards. I didn't like American Sniper either (it's Temu Hurt Locker), but sticking with Clint Eastwood, check out Gran Torino.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Valley_of_the_Dolls
This was co-produced with Russ Meyer, who basically made a bunch films which are as close to porn as you can get without being technically porn. He also made a ton of porn films as well. I haven't seen any of them, but many are now cult films. It feels debatable that he intended these to become cultural relics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Meyer
I was surprised to see Roger Ebert was involved in that film! Gene Siskel, his long time partner, rated Valley of the Dolls 0 out of 4 stars, which is funny.