Word: review
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...this he's added what people may think is his main job: being a TV host, fronting series of weekly movie-review shows since 1976, first with Gene Siskel, then with Richard Roeper. He's also recorded commentaries for DVD releases of classic films, from Citizen Kane to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the sleazerrific Russ Meyer movie that Roger co-wrote in his 20s. As the go-to movie savant, he's been on hundreds of TV shows, sometimes alone, sometimes with his review-show partners; who can forget that night in the '80s when David Letterman persuaded...
...using them, hurrah hurrah, to produce reviews. He's covered mainstream movies like Shrek the Third and Bug, and artier fare on the order of Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain and Hal Hartley's Fay Grim. Today he has a review of A Mighty Heart. It's a phrase that certainly applies to Roger, and Chaz too, for their year-long battle against his debilitating illness. With open arms ready to embrace a trusted friend - which Roger has been to Mary C. and me for three decades, and is to any reader or viewer of his work...
...know how Roger feels about this, but it makes me uncomfortable to think that, of all the millions of words he has written and spoken, the one most associated with him is "thumb." As in his and his TV partners' shorthand for a favorable review, "two thumbs up!" This tactic is handy for branding the show, and an effective marketing tool (it's the words all movie publicists want to banner at the top of their ads), but as critical discourse the slogan has its limits. More Manichaean than the star rating system he and other newspaper critics...
...four or five films up for review on his weekly TV show, he typically would give a thumbs up to two or three of them, making me wonder who in the civilian community has time to see all these movies. But as one of the few critics with a practical familiarity with filmmaking, Roger knows that the machinery of film production is so cumbersome, the pressure for commercial success so great and the odds against making anything good near-astronomical, that the best intentions often get dashed on the rocks of compromise. So he's nearly as sympathetic...
...When he doesn't like a movie, he will often go out of his way to mention some attractive element amid the carnage, giving what amounts to a review that says, "Yes, but! Big but!" And when he decides that a movie rates a pan - a "Bah, thumbug," if you will - he tends to approach the task not with the hot rage of a jilted suitor, or the curled lip of contempt that is the occupational habit of other critics (this one included), but with the fretful brow of a knowing, caring family doctor. He diagnoses the symptoms, then calmly...