Siskel and Ebert: Mad City, Bean, Starship Trooper, Eve’s Bayou, The Wings of the Dove

[@attackofthecopyrightbots]

its amazing that siskel was able to get starship troopers when most critics didnt

[@jp3813]

Roger got it as well. They just have different thresholds for the repetitiveness of the bug-killing action.

[@captainharris8980]

Well, I think he read the book, and most critics didn't understnd that you couldn't take a story seriously where bugs hurl themselves into space.

[@schmeltingaccident]

I thought it was pretty obvious what it was, even as a young teen when first watching this I knew something was up. Remember thinking “it’s so much like Robocop”, not realizing it was done by same director. As a kid I loved the mindless action and the amazing effects for the time, then later as an adult appreciated it on entirely different level. Still like Robocop considerably more but this movie still holds up, and is a very good one at that. Kinda thought it a bit insulting that Ebert had this on his worst of list for that year (I think he did anyway).

[@christopherfoote4643]

It was repetitive to the point of being meniachal. I think we got the point after the first invasion. After that it became monotonous to the point of being preposterous. I'm not sure I understood what it was about to be honest. I still don't.

[@peterkrug4124]

2:42-Bean 8:51-Starship Troopers 12:02-Eve's Bayou 16:24-The Wings Of The Dove

[@jus3278]

Eve's Bayou is one of my favorite films of all time. Underrated classic

[@silentreactor97]

Starship Troopers is absolutely awesome film!

[@soundminedd]

Appreciate rhe commercials as well.ty!❤❤

[@lajeteefan]

One of the many things I loved about "Eve's Bayou" was that it was the feature length directorial debut of Kasi Lemmons, who played Ardelia, Clarice Starling's (Jodie Foster) friend and FBI Academy roommate in "The Silence of the Lambs". "Eve's Bayou" was also Ebert's #1 pick of the year for 1997.

[@kd17Burger]

Eve's Bayou is just a perfect film ..nothing can improve or take away

[@reneedennis2011]

It is a good movie.

[@sleuthentertainment5872]

Verhoeven did a terrific job in ST. Is a great action sci-fi adventure with a lot of sarcastic comments about military and TV

[@Jbaxter85]

I 👀 Eve's bayou once, was a well done made 🎥.

[@Harkness78]

Starship Troopers is an amazing film, the effects still hold up, and the entire plot is forgiven because it is designed to be a gigantic, effective lambast of what propagandist War films try to be.

[@adagiobreeze8493]

Eve’s Bayou is terribly underrated

[@jus3278]

Terribly

[@attackofthecopyrightbots]

"blow them up real good" lol ebert

[@pepperwood8811]

Ebert is a military strategist. "Why use machine guns on the bugs when a grenade blows em up real good." Yes Roger, that is why all modern armies have ditched their rifles and gone to only using grenades.

[@peterkrug4124]

The big question nagging me when I saw this film was, "Why do we never see the humans use tanks?"

[@standarsh8056]

Well he has a point, machine guns are anti Infantry weaponry, you wouldn't shoot a tank with a machine gun, and the bugs are essentially armoured targets. After the first massacre you would think they would switch armaments and rely more on heavy calibre armour piercing munitions and artillery. Although you could also argue they were still unprepared and they kept using rifles as it's all they had

[@charleswinokoor6023]

If there was any way that Siskel and Ebert could come alive and read KZbin comments, I think they’d be mighty disappointed with nearly all of them.

[@spencerhensley5495]

I get Ebert’s perspective on Bean but I still enjoyed it quite a bit and it’s a marginal thumbs up if nothing else. Siskel in a rare moment got it right over Ebert on that one. It probably would have been funnier on home video as Ebert said but there are some classic moments in that movie for sure.

[@EGOS42]

20:15 "Listen to he sounds that surround you" *Hears my cat beside me purring* "Do you hear it? It's the sound of America's needy children crying out for help" Well that escalated quickly.

[@samsquanch1996]

I'd expect Roger to love Starship Troopers and Gene to hate it. Roger usually seemed to be more open minded towards massive-budget popcorn blockbusters than Gene.

[@DannyCosmos]

mad city had so much potential..travolta is so micast in this tho... damn

[@ricardocantoral7672]

Sam Fuller was a kick ass director.

[@tfronauer]

yet another example of either Siskel or Ebert (in this case, Ebert) obliquely referencing their favorite SCTV skit

[@williamhowe1]

Starship troopers isn't for everyone. You either get it or you don't.

[@anunusualironiccircumstanc2246]

williamhowe1 I got it, I love that movie. The sequels are some of the worst movies ever made though.

[@jthrash9081]

Starship troopers is a movie for 90s kids that weren't old enough to watch R rated movies and it worked perfectly. Perfect stereotypical over the top military action and behavior with bugs and humans getting torn apart spiced with simple yet relatable feelings and conflicts among the lead characters.

[@Harkness78]

@@jthrash9081 Holy shit you don't understand anything. Anyone who loves that movie understands it inside and out, the "immature 90s kids" you are trying to pigeonhole would not understand the satire and would reject it's 90210 teen references. Smart cultured film viewers of any generation love Starship Troopers.

[@jthrash9081]

@@Harkness78 lol I feel like you didn't even read my comment

[@paulvoorhies8821]

Ebert just absolutely loves movies set in the swamps of Louisiana/New Orleans. The Big Easy is an objectively bad film, at least from the perspective of a New Orleanian, and it was Ebert’s 2nd favorite movie of 1987. Down By Law is a much better film.

[@samizayed6010]

3:15

[@dnasty312]

I liked _Mad City,_ even though it's not up there with _Network_ and _Broadcast News_

[@mrchopsticks3]

Starship Troopers is Archie in space. All the characters are there.

[@newfrontierfilms6314]

Ebert completely missed the point of Starship Troopers.

[@FantasticOtto]

Which was?

[@newfrontierfilms6314]

FantasticOtto A satire of militarism, fascism, and white supremacy. Verohoven basically skewered American 1950’s ideals.

[@newfrontierfilms6314]

@@riseagain845 That was more about capitalism the 80’s consumerist culture. It is a better film tho hands down.

[@newfrontierfilms6314]

@@riseagain845 Yeah Ebert often contradicted himself. Maybe he loved the over the top violence in Robocop but didn’t pick up on the satire. 🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️🤷🏽‍♂️

[@j.vonhogen9650]

I agree. How could he miss the satire about the glorification of war and the non-stop wartime propaganda from the media embedded in the armed troops, just like CNN in the Iraq war in the 1990s? And what about the whole concept of citizenship in this movie that one can earn by serving in the military & embracing a philosophy/ideology of war? Wouldn't that be noteworthy? I've never been impressed by Ebert's reviews, and this is just another example of his strange preferences and upredictable opinions.

[@fallenshadows555]

Ebert makes a good point about the soldiers continuing to inefficiently use machine guns. I like the movie as dumb as it is, but I too wondered when I saw them bomb bugs with a plane, "Why not just do that all the time?" Why did they keep sending soldiers on foot to fight the bugs with machine guns that took so many bullets to kill them instead of just bombing them from a plane!

[@Aspauli]

Not to mention the news report you see halfway through the movie saying that all you have to do is shoot it in the stem. I figured everybody would have been doing that at that point.

[@johangyllensten2218]

I think i remember red letter media making a good point about this. The point is to keep the fight going, to have an enemy to fight. Winning is secondary to continuation of fighting. Thats what keeps the facist society, pictured in this movie, a float.

[@standarsh8056]

Same reason the Americans couldn't just bomb the Vietnamese into submission, they were bunkered down underground, and would only come out when threatened. I think the plan of a ground invasion was to kill the big artillery bugs, and to kill or capture the queen. Neither of which would be done from ariel bombardment

Why not just nuke the entire planet with missiles and never even go to the surface? Just vaporize them all.

[@Paulbuslon]

When r u going to add the “s” in “troopers”?

[@matthewclara6825]

Bean 1997 I coundt agree more. brilliant script, the bits with the painting are genuis, but the final act at the hospital is the clunkiest and most out of nowhere element in the film, perfect example of running out of ideas with a genuis character/ premise.

[@stevecatanio8532]

I think they missed the boat on mad city. It's nuanced, well acted and poignant.

[@JoeBuck207]

Nah it's a snooze fest.

[@HugoSoup57]

Ebert didn’t like Starship Troopers? I thought it was a pretty entertaining movie and an effective satire, I think he just didn’t get it.

[@jp3813]

He got the satire, but was bored by the bug-killing.

[@Philbert-s2c]

A lot of critics didn't like it at the time.

[@Paulbuslon]

Don’t u mean “Starship Trooper(S)”?

[@gwenwachsman3739]

Who cares

[@phildirt3]

Edit the commercials for chrissakes

[@maskedmarvyl4774]

The Big Red One really really sucked. The director claimed it was based on his own experiences. Bullshit. The events in the film were cartoonish.

[@patrickc3419]

Bean was funny, but the TV show was far better.

[@christiansoldier77]

Eve's Bayou was incoherent crap

[@dudemanjack98]

2 worst movies of the year this week and 2 more the following week

[@bungmonkey2295]

Lmfao they both gave thumbs up to face off. Face off fucking sucks now I have to go find them talk about it being good

[@jamesmitchell8922]

Good 4 U. I actually hated it