Life is hard without Roger

Ebert, that is. I used to check his website every Friday because it would always be updated with his full reviews of all films opening that weekend. Recently he's been struck down by life and hospitalized. He's now recovering and seems to be quite on the mend as he has posted 3 reviews recently.

I miss him so much because we have uncannily similar taste in movies. I think around 95 times out of 100 I will rate a movie within a half a star of what he gave it. Sometimes we disagree, (The Aviator comes to mind!) but that happens once in a blue moon. We do tend to have wildly different "Best of the year" movie lists, but he likes the weird stuff a bit more than I do.

Anyways to not have him around has left me completely stranded in the cinematic world. Trailers help, as does knowing who is attached to a movie. For instance I love both Sofia Coppola and Christopher Nolan's films so I instantly have interest in seeing Marie Antoinette and The Prestige. But, appearances can be deceiving, so until I am given advice by an authority I truly trust it is hard to know whether these are worth seeing. Now, I generally try to see most of the films in "Oscar season" so thankfully it's not like I have to make that many decisions really.

Because darn is it hard to find agreement among reviewers about what to see. Some will say it's a masterpiece, others will vouch that it is completely not worth your time. One easy pick was The Departed which scored an 85 on Metacritic, meaning it has extremely universal praise. It also helped that a couple of friends who I respect really loved it.

So who to trust? Basically you have to find someone that you share the same taste with (even a friend) who sees a lot of movies. And luckily, I had 100% found this in Ebert. I tried desperately to find a replacement for him while he's been ill. In fact, I went to all the trouble of statistically compiling scores found on Metacritic of some highly polarizing movies and comparing cumulative reviewer scores with my own rankings (a very complicated process... there were spreadsheets involved).

But, alas, no one even came close to matching me. Many critics are too hard on the movies and I find myself thinking "wow you just really didn't get it, did you!" In terms of real life people, Luke has pretty good taste in movies but doesn't often see them before I do. The parental units generally have great taste too, especially in older movies to expose me to. Though again, they usually won't see new releases before me, and they have made some questionable choices in the past (The Ring and Million Dollar Baby come to mind for opposite reasons)... and obviously they would think I had made some poor calls too! This is why I was so lucky to have Ebert.

Alas! what is a girl to do except for watch a lot of trailers, sift through the buzz and try to determine on her own what movies are worth her $10. SIGH!