Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)
rogerebert.com> There’s a feeling in Hollywood that audiences have short attention spans and must be assaulted with fresh novelties. I think such movies are slower to sit through than a film like “Shawshank,” which absorbs us and takes away the awareness that we are watching a film.
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.
Ghibli movies are a different class of movies, but the exact thing that you describe "absorbs us and takes away the awareness that we are watching a film" is what happends to me. The story is so intriguing that I even "forget" that I'm watching a painted movie.
Spirited Away contains an accurate review of itself in the title!
This is one of my favorite movies, yet it won 0 Oscars (nominated for 7) and was a box office flop (cost $25M to make and box office proceeds were $28M). It only gained popularity after the theatres from the VHS rental market.
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.
The Finnish importer tried this. They decided to call the movie “Rita Hayworth – avain pakoon”. It means “Key to the escape”…
These people would have presumably called Planet of the Apes “Distant future in Eastern United States”…
On a tangent the movie Cold Mountain (2003) was translated to "Åter till Cold Mountain" in Swedish.
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.
Reminds me of the Luc Besson film "Leon", which also went by the names "The Professional" and also "Leon: The Professional". A great film but there was definitely something going on in regards to getting crowds interested purely by messing with the title of the film.
Confound: I think one of that film's themes made people deeply uncomfortable, and it was not hidden from the marketing as far as I know. I was a bit put off by its execution myself, even though there's really nothing untoward about it on a factual level.
For the academy awards, to its defense, it was competing against Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Four Weddings and a Funeral, or the Madness of King George. I can barely name one good movie a year these days, and certainly none that makes it to the oscars. The contrast with the 90s is brutal.
> can barely name one good movie a year these days
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.
Last year's winner Anora was also excellent.
In Greece it was released as "Τελευταία έξοδος: Ρίτα Χέιγουορθ" literally "Last Exit: Rita Hayworth". People were saying, jokingly, that the title was a spoiler.
In Brazil it was released as A Dream of Freedom. Gotta say it took me years to learn the original title.
the italian dubbing was named "le ali della libertà" (the wings of freedom), which is one of the rare cases where I agree with using a different name than the original, since nobody would have clue what "Shawshank" means.
In hungarian it's translated into "prisoners of hope" (A remény rabjai) which I think is pretty good even though I despise dubbing
> [...]and the redemption, when it comes, is Red’s.
(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.
It was my first movie about prison life in the US and the failures of the American justice and correctional system. I since learned it was realistic in every aspect apart from the escape, and that not much has changed since.
Everything about it is depressing and somehow it’s the best movie ever.
Yes, it was a bit too uncomplicated to me and smacks of "Oscar Bait."
Quite a few classics like this and "Office Space" were box office flops that were resurrected by the magic of VHS/DVD. Yet those are gone too. Is there any room left for the "sleeper hit" in 2026?
There's no space left for actual hits. Movies aren't even given proper theatrical releases. One week at the theater then straight to streaming, or even simultaneous theater and streaming releases.
K-pop demon hunters.
That's not a sleeper hit, it became the most watched animation ever on Netflix 1 month after the release and then the most watched film ever after 2 months.
"Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" is one of my favourite Stephen King short stories (From "Different Seasons"). I actually read it after watching the film (which is just amazing) and still ended up liking the short story more than the film. I would highly recommend it to just about anyone.
"Stand by Me" was based on "The Body" from that same book. Great collection.
"Apt Pupil" was also adapted as a movie tho not as good as the other two, imvho.
(1999) (The movie is from 1994, the review is from 1999.)
It's a fine movie, agreed. The movie's focus isn't on revenge, but on the interaction between the protagonists. Anyways, the story outline heavily reminds me of the classic "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas.
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
Are there any new Eberts? The review landscape feels like it still hasn't exited his shadow but needs to evolve.
In my opinion, the costs to make movies have gone down so much that you will find sincerity not only in high production value releases but also in YouTube and vlogs.
What’s an equivalent movie in contemporary times? Not pretentious, sincere and relies on dialogue and story telling?
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.
“Sincere” and “authentic” are very much taste factors calibrated by whatever was the media environment when you were growing up.
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.
I was afraid I was committing the same mistake. Am I just used to the older type of movies? It could be possible.
A good, meditative film with a long arc of time and a bit of prison is Ash is the Purest White (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7298400/)
Watch japanese films. Or just generally don't watch american films
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
You can't mention Kore-eda without mentioning After Life (1998), surely? (Confusingly called Wonderful Life in Japanese, and also I don't mean the Gervais series.)
There's a recent US "remake"/homage which I haven't dared to watch.
Yess! So good too. We could probably just recommend all his films
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…
Yes I have watched it and it’s a good match
Then maybe Boîte Noire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Box_(2021_film)
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.
Who is the new Stephen King? I suppose answering my question will automatically also give an answer to yours.
I think this opens a huge can of further questions: what is a Stephen King? Is it a best selling author who's a house name, a very successful genre author, one who spans genres and is successful in all of them, one whose' books get regularly translated to TV, a very good craftman of books that people actually read...
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.
I wouldn’t exclude TV shows: Halt and Catch Fire, Dark Matter, Ted Lasso.
Ted Lasso comes off as so smarmy that it's insincere to me, like a cynical attempt to ride a wave of New Sincerity.
Andor
About Dry Grasses by Nuri Ceylan. Probably the best film I’ve seen in the past 10 years, which isn’t saying that much because the past 10 years have been among the worst in the history of film, but it’s still a very good movie.