The years in review

REVIEWING a reviewer’s collected reviews brings you straight to the point: What is the reviewer’s role? To summarize the story? Cheer the storyteller’s victories? Excoriate the indulgences, the distractions? Convince the reader-viewer to spend precious hours and 10 bucks (film) or 20-plus (hardcover) -- or warn against a wasted expenditure? Uphold critical standards? Analyze the work’s place in history or contemporary culture? And who are reviewers, anyway, that we should listen to their “informed” opinions? Especially when, if we’re to honor the power of art, “opinion” must acknowledge the quirky subjectivity of our own response to what’s being reviewed?

Roger Ebert, in his new book, “Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert,” tells us: “Writing daily film criticism is a balancing act between the bottom line and the higher reaches, between the answers to the questions (1) Is this movie worth my money? and (2) Does this movie expand or devalue my information about human nature?” So this reviewer will heed his good advice and report: (1) Yes; this is a meaty and comprehensive collection of 40 years’ worth of impassioned film writing -- not merely reviews but profiles and essays as well; and (2) Yes; Ebert indeed expands our knowledge of human nature through his incisive analysis of the 20th century’s (arguably) primary form of artistic expression, of its evolution and its lure.

The book offers insight into Ebert as well, tracking his growth as both film reviewer and filmgoer. He says of his very first review (a surprise assignment for the young feature writer in his new job at the Chicago Sun-Times), “My pose in those days was one of superiority to the movies, although just when I had the exact angle of condescension calculated, a movie would open that disarmed my defenses and left me ecstatic and joyful.” Happily, the ecstasy and joy win out; the guy simply loves movies, he loves being made to feel as well as think, and his passion is infectious. “Oh, this movie is so sad!” begins his discussion of “Leaving Las Vegas.” “What an endlessly inventive movie this is!” he exclaims about “Being John Malkovich.” “Oh, what a lovely film. I was almost hugging myself as I watched it,” he confesses about “Almost Famous.”

This kind of emotional lead-in is exactly what honors the visceral power of art, but Ebert delivers the critical chops too, coolly assessing a film’s artistic and technical competence in achieving the simultaneous goals of illumination and entertainment. “Watching the film [‘Malcolm X’], I understood more clearly how we do have the power to change our own lives.... The film is inspirational and educational -- and it is also entertaining, as movies must be before they can be anything else.”

To love the movies, he tells us, “does not mean to sit mindlessly and blissfully before the screen.... [T]he task of every movie is to try to change how you feel and think during its running time,” and the task of the viewer is to participate in that process. He is moral but not moralistic, preferring stories of flawed people who struggle to do the right thing and fail over simplistic heroes facing simplified choices: “The best movies aren’t about what happens to the characters. They’re about the example that they set.” About “Nashville,” he writes, “Sure, it’s only a movie. But after I saw it I felt more alive, I felt I understood more about people, I felt somehow wiser. It’s that good a movie.”

The reviews collected here are primarily from Ebert’s “best” lists, beginning in 1967, but even he acknowledges the arbitrariness of that construct, that some of his initial opinions have changed over the years, and that “ranking films is silly and pointless, but gathering a list of good ones is useful.” Proving his point, he also gathers for us a sampling of foreign films, “overlooked and underrated” films, and documentaries (which he considers woefully unappreciated).

The evolution of Ebert is a good thing; the early reviews tend to wholly overlook such critical elements of a film as, say, the screenwriter or the source material (yes, film is a director’s medium, but how can you review “Sophie’s Choice” without acknowledging William Styron? Or “The Last Picture Show” without a mention of Larry McMurtry?), but he gets better about that as time goes on. Some of his early condescension lingers; there are a few too many assertions of his being “the first” to discover the genius of some unknown filmmaker or “absolutely right” in having proclaimed something “a masterpiece.” But then read Ebert’s outstanding polemics on such topics as the evils of colorization, the hypocrisy of the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s ratings system and the merits of celluloid versus digital technology.

Some of the best offerings are the back-and-forth essays between Ebert and Richard Corliss, film critic for Time magazine, originally published in Film Comment and collectively titled here, by Ebert, “Symposium.” Ebert and Corliss go after each other regarding the role and future of film criticism, and it’s a hoot to watch these two brilliant film geeks try to outwit and out-intellectualize each other on the playground (they actually brag about the size of their film reviews!), until chided by senior film critic Andrew Sarris in his own witheringly funny response. I may not always agree with Ebert’s thumbs-ups or thumbs-downs, and -- a belated disclosure -- he did write an unflattering review of a movie I co-wrote many years ago. But boy, let me repeat: In this book, you will be getting serious bang for your buck, and for your time.

“NOW in Theaters Everywhere: A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Blockbuster,” the latest collection of reviews by Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan, focuses on a narrower theme: Indie films are doing better than ever, schlock films will never run out of 12-year-old boys to cater to, and the most endangered film species is the big-budget, big-star Hollywood movie made with craft, care and intelligence and meant for sophisticated viewers. Turan’s engaging, celebratory reviews, dating from 1991, of films in this last category are grouped by genre and presented in alphabetical order; a chronological listing, with more commentary, would have helped track his theory over the last 15 years. But Turan is witty and insightful, stunningly clever at synopsis and impressively respectful to screenwriters, cinematographers, art directors, actors and editors in his study of their contributions.

The showpiece here is the book’s introduction, a fascinating discussion of the history of “Blade Runner,” from Philip K. Dick story through development hell, eventual production, critical confusion and fallout, and ultimate “director’s-cut” renaissance.

“More than anything else, ‘Blade Runner’s’ saga is, as the best Hollywood stories invariably are, a microcosm for the industry,” he writes, “because it starkly underlines how irredeemably deep the classic split between aesthetics and commerce is, and also how painfully inevitable.” Turan’s analysis of this split sets the bar high, and the collection ends with a piece he wrote in 1979, “Behind the Scenes: ‘Conan the Barbarian’ ” -- leading me to expect a back bookend of similar depth. It is, again, a wonderful look at the origins and development of a then-high-risk film project, but the story ends, disappointingly, in preproduction. What a pleasure it would have been to have the kind of updated, astute inquiry with which Turan so expertly begins his book.

But as with Ebert, Turan’s passion for film is intoxicating. Read both of these books and be ready to take notes for the next time you log on to Netflix. Or better yet, just go out to the movies. *