Why Roger Ebert Is So Great

Because of reviews like this one. I would never have thought to go see a documentary about surfers called “Riding Giants” – never. Not that I’m not interested, mind you. I’m pretty much interested in everything. But you gotta make me interested, if the topic isn’t already on my radar . See what I’m saying? I don’t need to be convinced to be interested in Central Asia, the American Revolution, or Humphrey Bogart. But if I don’t know nothin’ ’bout the topic already, then I need a translator. I need you to be able to tell me WHY this is interesting.

It was like when I read Into Thin Air. Mountain climbing and Everest are not one of my built-in passions. But damn – Krakauer made me give a crap about it. He was an excellent translator.

So now I must see “Riding Giants” – the story of those lone-wolf surfers who get towed by jet-skis onto the backs of monster waves, 60, 70 feet high … Who are these people? What are they like?

Roger Ebert writes:

“Riding Giants” is about altogether another reality. The overarching fact about these surfers is the degree of their obsession. They live to ride, and grow depressed when there are no waves. They haunt the edge of the sea like the mariners Melville describes on the first pages of Moby Dick. They seek the rush of those moments when they balance on top of a wave’s fury and feel themselves in precarious harmony with the ungovernable force of the ocean. They are cold and tired, battered by waves, thrown against rocks, visited by sharks, held under so long they believe they are drowning — and over and over, year after year, they go back into the sea to do it again.

Gotta see it. Any surfers out there?

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12 Responses to Why Roger Ebert Is So Great

  1. Rob says:

    Roger Ebert is a pretty good writer and an OK reviewer. I think he’s a little too generous sometimes. My main problem with him is that he quite often gets facts wrong in his reviews.

  2. red says:

    What I’m really talking about, though, is the guy’s skill as a writer. Regardless of his verdicts on films.

    I think he’s too generous, too – there are too many 3 and 4 stars.

    But still – the guy can write. I’m gonna see Riding Giants, because of his skill at describing it, and making me curious about the topic.

  3. Rob says:

    I like his writing OK. He’s a little too eccentric for my tastes. After seeing “Almost Famous”, he said in his review that he could “hug” that movie. That’s a little over the edge, Roger.

  4. red says:

    I don’t know – I appreciate stuff like that. Because he hasn’t lost his ability to just be an audience member, and to get swept away in something. I love that he can still just be a popcorn-munching fan of something.

    I wanted to hug Almost Famous, too. :) Or – basically, I wanted to hug Kate Hudson. She hasn’t really impressed me since then, but I loved her in that.

  5. MikeR says:

    I agree, red. Ebert is a very good writer. He is also too generous with his ratings, but if you take the time to read the reviews, it becomes obvious that Movie A got three stars on a far less demanding scale than the one used to assign the same three stars to a far more ambitious Movie B. Occasionally he goes woefully wrong, but not that often.

  6. red says:

    Another reviewer whose writing I love (while not always agreeing with his verdicts) is David Denby of The New Yorker.

    When ET was re-released – he wrote another review of it, and it made me cry.

  7. Jeff says:

    Ebert often comments in his biweekly Q&A column about the difficulty of the “0-4 Star” scoring system, and has made it pretty clear that not all 3-star movies are created equal. I think he’s consistent enough that anyone who’s read him over the years will know that his rating for something like “Maria Full of Grace” is based on a different scale than his rating for something like “Anchorman.”

    And few write better bad reviews than Ebert – I saved a copy of his 1987 Movie Guide Companion just so I could read his review of “Red Sonja” from time to time.

  8. Laura says:

    Though I am not a surfer, having grown up and lived in the surfing community of Santa Barbara, I have been immersed in the surfing subculture from the get-go. What most surfer movies do is romance the watcher with the adventure and poetry of the sport. Valid. However, they usually fail to demonstrate what utter boneheads surfers often tend to be. Of course, there are many exceptions to that statement, but on a whole, Peter Pan ain’t got nothing on the surfing community. They are fully grown in shape and size, but they never seem to grow up. Perhaps they are far smarter than I give them credit for…

  9. red says:

    Jeff-

    Roger Ebert’s review of I Spit On Your Grave is a classic of bad-movie-reviews.

  10. susanna says:

    sheila:
    speaking of kate hudson, have you seen 200 cigarettes? it’s been a while, but i believe she was in this movie and was fabulous. she plays a woman who recently lost her virginity (maybe with jay mohr?). also includes martha plimpton who is obsessed with elvis costello (he makes an appearance!) i think i may be the only person to have ever seen this movie. have you?
    susanna

  11. red says:

    susanna: I did see that movie and thought Kate Hudson was adorable.

  12. Allison says:

    oh my god, sheila, i’ve been dying to see this movie. let’s go next week!

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