[HN Gopher] Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)
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Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)
Author : monero-xmr
Score : 83 points
Date : 2026-02-08 05:25 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rogerebert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rogerebert.com)
| Thorrez wrote:
| (1999) (The movie is from 1994, the review is from 1999.)
| TonyStr wrote:
| > [...]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.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| 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.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| Yes, it was a bit too uncomplicated to me and smacks of "Oscar
| Bait."
| maxerickson wrote:
| Andy has to be innocent for his escape (and bringing down of
| the warden) to be a redemption. It's a redemption of his life
| against the injustice he was subjected to, not a redemption of
| his soul for some evil that he committed.
|
| If he was a double murderer, plotting to and successfully
| escaping isn't a redemption, it's just a murderer getting away
| with it.
| RunSet wrote:
| Cool Hand Luke, which I prefer, has its protagonist sentenced
| to a work camp for an absurd crime.
|
| A more recent prison movie which made me feel similarly to
| Cool Hand Luke and Shawshank Redemption while watching it is
| "I Love You Phillip Morris" (starring Jim Carrey and Ewan
| McGregor).
| TonyStr wrote:
| I rewatched the movie now, and I think you're right. There
| were a lot of details I'd forgotten.
|
| The way I remember thinking about it was that he was jailed
| for revenge murder, then spent his life in jail doing his
| best to atone by being helpful (building a library, teaching,
| helping with taxes, etc.). When the prison system refuses to
| set him free despite him proving through his actions in
| prison that he's not a threat to society anymore (I
| hallucinated this part -- this happened to Red, not Andy), he
| escapes, and his freedom is his redemption.
|
| I'm not a native English speaker, and I think I may have
| conflated redemption and atonement. Looking at some
| definitions, it looks like you can receive redemption without
| atonement -- it doesn't necessarily have to come from within.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Andy is by no means innocent, he's just not guilty of any crime
| he should have been imprisoned in Shawshank for.
|
| The guy who sits drunk in his car eyeing a revolver is not a
| Mary Sue. And his demeanor of resignation at Shawshank suggests
| he doesn't consider himself just an unlucky victim of blind
| fate & a golf pro.
| decimalenough wrote:
| 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?
| troupo wrote:
| 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.
| slumberlust wrote:
| Are you implying that movie theaters are a better experience
| than home theaters? I'd argue movie theaters dug their own
| graves with greed shovels.
| troupo wrote:
| > Are you implying that movie theaters are a better
| experience than home theaters?
|
| I don't have an IMAX screen at home. I don't even have the
| smallest theater screen at home.
|
| Oh, and that "home theater"? Good luck getting the
| advertised 4k on it from any streaming platform, and very
| few will have a handy BluRay/Torrents set up at home.
| Neither do I have Dolby surround at home. Or a way to make
| the room fully dark.
|
| > I'd argue movie theaters dug their own graves with greed
| shovels.
|
| I seriously doubt that. Covid maimed theaters, and then
| streaming dealt the killing blow.
| watwut wrote:
| Streaming killed theater because experience of streaming
| is just overall better then experience of going to the
| theater. There I said it.
|
| I have noise control. I can pause it. If I am watching
| alone I can rewind a scene. I watch when I want and I
| dont have to go to the mall for it. And it is massively
| cheaper.
|
| If more of us watch, we can talk to esch other or comment
| things. Or be silent and not disturbed by somebody else
| making noise.
| troupo wrote:
| Ah yes. I really enjoy watching Dune (or Openheimer, or
| even less bombastic movies) on my 65" TV with two rather
| tiny speakers [1].
|
| Streaming killed theaters because movie advertisement
| basically stopped (the lesser problem), and movies are
| immediately released on streaming platforms (the bigger
| problem). Why go to a theater when it will be released on
| Netflix/Hulu/Amazon _within a week or two_?
|
| Movies used to get several weeks (sometimes months) of
| theatrical runs, and then there was at least a 90 day
| window (often longer) before home releases on
| VHS/DVD/BluRay. Now theaters are fighting for at least a
| 45-day window.
|
| [1] Well, a 2015-ish Sonos soundbar and two IKEA Sonos
| speakers.
| forrestthewoods wrote:
| K-pop demon hunters.
| haunter wrote:
| 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.
| vanviegen wrote:
| Yeah, but it's a good example of a modern day 'indy' cult
| classic. It's a regional production that happens to do
| really well with global viewers.
| awithrow wrote:
| Its the opposite of a cult classic. Its hugely popular
| across platforms. Halloween this year was full of kids in
| costumes of the various characters. It a hit. A cult
| classic is something that finds a small but intense
| following over a course of years or decades.
| jadbox wrote:
| What about it
| robterrell wrote:
| There's a pattern of movies flopping in theaters only to become
| top 10 on Netflix. It's very similar in many ways.
|
| The difference is there was backend participation for VHS/DVD
| rentals... whereas Netflix is paying a one-time flat rate to
| acquire your flopped movie.
| tkocmathla wrote:
| > 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.
| jcynix wrote:
| 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.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| Spirited Away contains an accurate review of itself in the
| title!
| canadiantim wrote:
| I like the use of happends in this context, a good mixture of
| tenses
| tootie wrote:
| Kurosawa did this better than anyone. He could make you sit
| through 2.5 hours of grinding drama and make it feel like
| barely 5 minutes have passed. Ran (1985) was like that.
| illwrks wrote:
| I think a part of it is down to demographics with disposable
| income. Teenagers have a taste of freedom and some pocket money
| and the next gimmick films is a good way to spend it. It's the
| same as they mature into 20 somethings. In their 30's they may
| be more career focused and have less time, a good chunk of them
| will tire of novelty and move towards more interesting/arthouse
| films. When kids come into the picture there's even less time
| and money so things change again, then the cycle repeats.
|
| So, at least from my opinion, "new" will always be a good sales
| tactic to catch attention.
| port11 wrote:
| I agree with sibling that Kurosawa does this very well.
|
| My take: Marvel movies have _a loooot_ going on. That might
| just be draining after a while, since the human brain isn't
| wired for constant arousal. Old school action movies are still
| quite fun to watch and don't felt that long, perhaps because
| were given time to 'rest and digest' the action.
|
| Marvel has no clue, just keeps pumping and pumping. I
| especially liked the animated Spider-Man movies, but am super
| tired of a 2.5h smorgasbord of nonstop action. Even John Wick
| has a cadence.
| smurda wrote:
| 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.
| pavlov wrote:
| 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"...
| nntwozz wrote:
| On a tangent the movie Cold Mountain (2003) was translated to
| "Ater 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.
| georgecmu wrote:
| The translations of the title (Finnish, Greek, others?)
| referencing Rita Hayworth make more sense if you know the
| title of Stephen King's novella the movie was based on (
| _Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption_ ).
| karim79 wrote:
| 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.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| 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.
| relaxing wrote:
| You can just say it: It was weird how they made 12 year old
| Natalie Portman act sexy and come on to Jean Reno.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| I can, but do I need to? It's already "that movie."
| relaxing wrote:
| I don't know about need to, but it's weird to talk around
| it.
|
| Also some people might not have seen it yet, or might
| have been oblivious to the issue.
| HeavyStorm wrote:
| In Brazil it was released as A Dream of Freedom. Gotta say it
| took me years to learn the original title.
| riffraff wrote:
| the italian dubbing was named "le ali della liberta" (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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| No one in the US knows, either. It's a fictional prison and
| its name means nothing except to people already familiar with
| the story.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| "The Shawshank Redemption" is a nonsense phrase in English.
|
| "Shawshank" sounds like a place name, but why a specific
| place would be the source of redemption is mysterious.
|
| The name of the source text, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank
| Redemption" is even more mysterious and unclear.
| haunter wrote:
| In hungarian it's translated into "prisoners of hope" (A remeny
| rabjai) which I think is pretty good even though I despise
| dubbing
| cm2187 wrote:
| 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.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _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_.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Last year's winner Anora was also excellent.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| YMMV. I found Anora quite tiresome - all of the people
| depicted were awful and stupid, and the point that it
| made was so basic that it could have been made in 10
| minutes flat. I'd call it "preachy" but that's
| overselling it.
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Fair enough, not everyone needs to like the same things.
| In fact, I had a rather negative view on Shawshank
| Redemption, but it's been too long since I saw it that I
| barely remember why.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| This was a good movie, but what was it up against. Were
| there 4 or 5 other movies of comparable goodness that any
| of could have won the oscar? So 'can barely name one good
| movie' is apt here. There are some, but way fewer and
| farther between.
| relaxing wrote:
| That's only one movie.
| delichon wrote:
| > Everything Everywhere All at Once is a storytelling
| masterpiece
|
| I thought it was so awful I gave up half way through. Maybe
| it gets better after that. But I agree on Pulp Fiction.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Me too. And love pulp fiction. Just used Mr. Wolf to
| reference a situation at work.
| specialp wrote:
| The "OK, let's not start sucking... yet " is the one that
| comes to mind during production fires but can't use that
| one at work unfortunately
| neversupervised wrote:
| Agreed. Not as good a film as it was advertised to be.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Me too. Extremely loud, lots of flashing and fast cuts.
|
| I genuinely didn't really think there was a story, just
| spectacle.
| pan69 wrote:
| Same here. I got extremely annoyed with the constant
| ridiculous fight scenes. About halfway through I gave up.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| _Everything Everywhere_... is a much better movie than the
| incredible _Pulp Fiction_. Some of the visual effects are
| actually psychedelic (I 've "seent" them), and the
| storytelling is exceptional.
|
| The scene where the antagonist is walking down a hallway
| while the background keeps changing -- is among the best
| fight scenes / visuals _in any film_ , ever.
| wat10000 wrote:
| EEAO was four years ago now.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Funny, I thought it was absolutely terrible.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| YMMV. I found EEAAO to be engaging but shambolic. It was
| an experiment that kinda worked, kinda not. The chaos of
| it can't be cleaned up, it's intrinsic to the concept.
|
| It's not going to a template for lots of similar films.
| It's more of a one-off.
|
| But anyway, that was several years ago, it stretches the
| meaning of "recent".
| trainfromkansas wrote:
| Everything Everywhere All at Once was the last time I sat
| in a theater where, for the first half at least, I thought
| I was watching an instant classic.
|
| But that movie just dragged on, and now I look back and see
| it as a bungled opportunity. It could've been so much
| tighter in the edit. They could've cut a third of the movie
| and made the whole thing so much better.
| brandall10 wrote:
| This has generally been my experience with most highly
| acclaimed movies over the past 10 years. Most recently
| had this w/ Marty Supreme... last year had this w/ The
| Brutalist and The Substance.
|
| The first half has me thinking instant classic, my hope
| is sky high. But then toward the end I find myself
| looking at my watch and realize it's simply not going to
| the stick the landing.
|
| OTOH, many acclaimed streaming series have generally done
| this well. My take is that as long-form storytelling has
| evolved, movies have transitioned into this post-
| modernist phase as directors/writers don't feel they have
| the runway to tell something truly cohesive that doesn't
| end up being trite. It's much more about saying
| 'something' or imbuing a feeling than telling a fully
| fleshed 3 act story.
| watwut wrote:
| > They could've cut a third of the movie and made the
| whole thing so much better.
|
| It would become just an action movie with crazy plot
| then.
| realityloop wrote:
| Here are the only notables I can think of since Everything
| Everywhere
|
| Triangle of Sadness https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7322224
|
| Coming Home in the Dark
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6874762
| stinkbeetle wrote:
| > > can barely name one good movie a year these days
|
| > Not really.
|
| Not really meaning you can't really name one good movie a
| year (i.e., agreeing with OP)? Because your example of a
| good recent movie was 4 years ago.
| nopakos wrote:
| In Greece it was released as "Teleutaia exodos: Rita
| Kheigouorth" literally "Last Exit: Rita Hayworth". People were
| saying, jokingly, that the title was a spoiler.
| 6stringmerc wrote:
| In the US, my experience correlates with the rise of TNT and
| cable television - Ted Turner bought the rights to show certain
| films on his new cable channels and "Shawshank" got heavy
| rotation. It was akin to "background noise" sometimes. Others
| can probably recall the frequency.
|
| Based on a Stephen King short story, I'm a fan. Never did catch
| "The Majestic" and no interest. Ebert was a national treasure,
| great share.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| As with most self-congratulatory inter-industry awards, the
| Oscars are mostly a joke. Obviously, lots of good films get
| recognition from The Academy but you can glance at the number
| of titles in any given year winning piles of Oscars and then
| disappearing into the mists of time because they were trash
| that hit all the buttons and played the game.
|
| The most notorious of recent memory is Crash, a film you
| probably haven't heard of if you're just casually into film (or
| a sicko like me lol)
| m463 wrote:
| > With something more descriptive like, "Escape from Shawshank"
| or just "Prison Break" people would have been more interested
| to see it.
|
| But maybe that would have killed the real market for people who
| wanted a deep subtle movie.
|
| _Despite its disappointing box-office returns_ ...
|
| ... _It went on to become the top rented film of that year._
|
| also
|
| _While finances for licensing the film for television are
| unknown, in 2014, current and former Warner Bros. executives
| confirmed that it was one of the highest-valued assets in the
| studio 's $1.5 billion library._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shawshank_Redemption
| dekhn wrote:
| They could have called it "An Accounting of Justice" which
| works in several ways at the same time.
| karim79 wrote:
| "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.
| lemonberry wrote:
| "Stand by Me" was based on "The Body" from that same book.
| Great collection.
| riffraff wrote:
| "Apt Pupil" was also adapted as a movie tho not as good as
| the other two, imvho.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Fun fact Apt pupil has a reference to Shawshank where the
| main character says he lives off stocks that a banker setup
| named Dufresne who went to prison for murdering his wife.
|
| King does this all the time in his stories having character
| connections across different novels, making them set in the
| same universe. Fun, adds some depth to all of it. Like
| Randal Flagg being the same villain in the Stand and the
| Dark tower and Eyes of the Dragon.
| simianwords wrote:
| 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.
| pavlov wrote:
| "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.
| simianwords wrote:
| I was afraid I was committing the same mistake. Am I just
| used to the older type of movies? It could be possible.
| fatherwavelet wrote:
| It is an objective fact though that the lack of DVD sales on
| the backend has completely changed the economics of movies
| and what gets made.
|
| You also can't really compare the 90s to now when music and
| the movies were the dominate art form and there was no way to
| get rich and famous from just the internet.
|
| I watched an interview with Jerry Cantrell from Alice in
| Chains and he said in the late 80s Seatle, he worked at a
| giant 50 room rehearsal space, almost apartment complex, that
| was opened 24/7. Music can't be the same as a time when being
| in a band was so popular that the economics could support a
| 50 band room rehearsal space that never closes. It is night
| and day different to now. Same with movies.
| bji9jhff wrote:
| Who is the new Stephen King? I suppose answering my question
| will automatically also give an answer to yours.
| riffraff wrote:
| 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.
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Jagten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunt_(2012_film)
| simianwords wrote:
| Yes I have watched it and it's a good match
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| Then maybe _Boite 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.
| p-e-w wrote:
| _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.
| dzink wrote:
| I wouldn't exclude TV shows: Halt and Catch Fire, Dark Matter,
| Ted Lasso.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| Ted Lasso comes off as so smarmy that it's insincere to me,
| like a cynical attempt to ride a wave of New Sincerity.
| awithrow wrote:
| I think 1st season Ted Lasso works. The contrast between
| his optimism and everyone else's cynicism made i good.
| Though I agree with you about the show after the first
| season. Everyone else becoming wholesome broke the spell
| and I found it unwatchable and saccharine sweet.
| greesil wrote:
| Andor
| haunter wrote:
| 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
| rwmj wrote:
| 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.
| haunter wrote:
| 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...
| js2 wrote:
| I love Kore-eda but it took me many attempts to get through
| _After Life_. I 'm really glad it wasn't my first Kore-eda
| film. I find it terribly boring.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Japanese films are notoriously bad. You found a few gems.
| They are rare. This topic comes up often in Japanese learning
| groups.
|
| There's also just personal takes. I had to shut off Memories
| of Matsuko. Maybe the end saves it but it was way too over
| the top and not in a good way.
|
| Some good older Japanese though
|
| Kurasawa: Ikiru (1955)
|
| Teshigahara: Woman in the Dunes (1964)
|
| These are 2 movies you won't forget.
|
| Conversely, even though I enjoyed Shoplifters I remember
| nothing about it except the guy celebrating he had sex and
| the girl burping. Similarly with After Life. I just watched
| it 2 months ago and had to go look it up to remember what it
| was about. It was interesting because of the premise but not
| because of the movie itself.
| gniv wrote:
| I second the Kore-eda rec although it's an acquired taste,
| not so easy as Shawshank. Shoplifters was a revelation.
| rwmj wrote:
| 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/)
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| I rave about "The Secret Agent" (2025) to everyone. It's a
| slice of life movie about people living under a dictatorship.
| It's got a lot of heart.
| brookst wrote:
| Banshees of Insherin is one of the funniest things I've ever
| seen. The understatedness is critical to the humor and story;
| it's a juxtaposition of boring people in a boring town and the
| batshit plots that develop.
|
| Other recent greats are maybe Poor Things, Challengers, and
| Conclave.
|
| You wouldn't mistake any for Shawshank, but that's ok, it's 30
| years later. Shawshank is also qualitatively different from
| great movies in the mid 1960's, like Dr. Strangelove or The
| Graduate.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Parasite was excellent, and even has some of the same themes if
| you squint hard enough.
| simianwords wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's not the cost of movies going down as budgets keep going
| up. It is the cost of consumer video equipment that has lowered
| the bar to entry for production. Video equipment never looked
| as good a film until digital sensors and high speed storage.
| Not having a delay of getting film exposed and being able to
| see playback immediately after stopping the camera also lowers
| expenses.
| jcynix wrote:
| 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
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's a scene in the movie directly acknowledging this when
| they are sorting the books for the expanded library. Heywood
| calls it the Count of Monte Crisco by Alexandree Dumbass and
| Andy says it's about a prison break. Heywood then suggests it
| should go in the educational section.
| lotrjohn wrote:
| Excellent, memorable scene.
|
| But it is _Red_ who suggests it should be filed under
| 'education'!
| dylan604 wrote:
| You maybe right. I found a clip of it on YT, but it cuts
| off right before that line.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| Are there any new Eberts? The review landscape feels like it
| still hasn't exited his shadow but needs to evolve.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You'll never know because there aren't that many good films to
| review.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| As of when? It's not likely to be like the 70s again, but it
| wasn't for the majority of his career.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I don't know as of when. But I have no problem listing one
| movie after another for the 70's, 80's, 70's, 200x but
| since then it's been longer and longer between movies that
| stand out.
|
| Oppenheimer and 'Don't look up' are the exceptions.
| Everything everywhere all at once was mentioned here but I
| found it pretty thin and predictable.
| mcphage wrote:
| > I found it pretty thin and predictable
|
| I am amazed by your prediction abilities, then. I don't
| think I predicted any of it.
| tkocmathla wrote:
| Mark Kermode is wonderful. Incredibly intelligent takes,
| thoughtful analysis, and brutal honesty when it's warranted.
| He's a delight to watch.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@kermodeandmayostake
| plasma_beam wrote:
| This generation will never experience the joy of flipping on
| network tv on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, seeing Shawshank
| on, sitting down and just watching it, even though you've seen it
| countless times and it's the tv-edited commercial filled version.
| netsharc wrote:
| I lived in Germany, and movies are dubbed there, so the TV
| stayed mostly off. I did turn on the TV once. There was a movie
| that looked half interesting, so I focused on it. The scene was
| two guys at the airport to pick up a girl who they had a crush
| on in highschool. They're waiting for her at the arrivals.
| "There she is!", cut to... not the girl walking in looking all
| glorius, but a beer ad. I turned it off and looked for the
| movie on Torrent.
| svag wrote:
| I recently saw it as a play in a theater, and although I had my
| reservations regarding this, the result was an interesting
| experience. The minimalist staging shifted the focus to the
| performances and the emotional weight of the story, highlighting
| the quiet persistence of hope.
|
| The title of the play also differed from the movie, Rita
| Hayworth: Last Exit, which feels somewhat like a spoiler. I
| believe this was the title used by the Greek distributor.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| Very strange that the cast list on this web page doesn't include
| Morgan Freeman.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| this type of thing happens quite often. I can only guess that
| part of the page is automated or farmed out because I see it
| all the time, main actors not credited when the list is 4-6
| people.
| cainxinth wrote:
| I feel that anyone that has ever suffered an injustice (and who
| hasn't at some time or another) can relate to this film. And
| survivors of all kinds can understand what it means to "crawl
| through a river of shit" to earn their reprieve.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Coincidentally there is an interview with Roger Deakins, who did
| the cinematography on _Shawshank_ , as well as many other
| excellent films, in The Guardian today.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/08/roger-deakins-c...
| pentagrama wrote:
| A great complement to that article is the Team Deakins podcast,
| where Roger Deakins and James Deakins talk about
| cinematography, filmmaking and the business of film.
|
| https://teamdeakins.libsyn.com/
| mmooss wrote:
| > It is a strange comment to make about a film set inside a
| prison, but "The Shawshank Redemption" creates a warm hold on our
| feelings because it makes us a member of a family. Many movies
| offer us vicarious experiences and quick, superficial emotions.
| "Shawshank" slows down and looks. It uses the narrator's calm,
| observant voice to include us in the story of men who have formed
| a community behind bars. It is deeper than most films; about
| continuity in a lifetime, based on friendship and hope.
|
| I think Ebert is a brilliant reviewer; here I think something is
| overlooked: I agree about the emotional tone but not about the
| effect or the truth behind it. The prison is a fearful, traumatic
| place, of rape you can't stop, where life hangs by a thread, you
| take risks (for example with the bookkeeping) living on a razor's
| edge. The constant danger hangs over everything - you might not
| survive the day, you might be assaulted again, today might be the
| day they look more closely at what you're doing and you're
| caught.
|
| That belies the calm narration and friendship. They provide an
| island of hope and love amid the trauma, in stark contrast to it,
| in constant tension with it.
|
| You might say the narration is a device to make it palatable to
| middle-class audiences. That's something I notice a lot in
| Hollywood. First, the protagonist is someone they can identify
| with - a banker, a middle-class job - wrongly convicted, in this
| horrible situation. They are not, for example, a homeless person
| or someone semi-employed doing manual labor (someone much more
| likely to be wrongly convicted) - that would be a different movie
| and much less empathetic for many viewers, though objectively
| exactly as horrible. Then you have this calm, warm, reasonable
| voice telling the story - not a voice of terror or hate or
| trauma; that would be too much; the voice says 'it's ok'.
|
| As Ebert says,
|
| > The movie avoids lingering on Andy's suffering; after beatings,
| he's seen in medium and long shot, tactfully. The camera doesn't
| focus on Andy's wounds or bruises, but, like his fellow
| prisoners, gives him his space.
|
| And I think also the following claim goes much too far:
|
| > His film grants itself a leisure that most films are afraid to
| risk. The movie is as deliberate, considered and thoughtful as
| Freeman's narration. There's a feeling in Hollywood that
| audiences have short attention spans and must be assaulted with
| fresh novelties.
|
| Sure, it's not the Avengers but it's a movie where the main plot
| elements are prison violence, a prison escape, and a grand con.
| This isn't _Tokyo Story_ or _In the Mood for Love_.
| mcphage wrote:
| > First, the protagonist is someone they can identify with - a
| banker, a middle-class job - wrongly convicted, in this
| horrible situation.
|
| You're right that the protagonist is wrongly convicted, but the
| narrator of the movie was guilty of murder.
| malshe wrote:
| Roger Ebert writing style was so polished. I wish I could write
| like this. My writing tends to be quite dry to the extent that
| GPTzero flagged it as written by AI. The reason given was "the
| lack of a creative use of grammar."
|
| On a separate note, although vastly different, Fight Club was
| also not very successful on the box office (domestically made
| losses) but became a hit on DVDs
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club)
| austinjp wrote:
| Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who doesn't
| like this film.
| xrd wrote:
| If you go to Ebert's wikipedia, you can almost miss the link to
| the screenplay he wrote:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Valley_of_the_Dolls
|
| This was co-produced with Russ Meyer, who basically made a bunch
| films which are as close to porn as you can get without being
| technically porn. He also made a ton of porn films as well. I
| haven't seen any of them, but many are now cult films. It feels
| debatable that he intended these to become cultural relics.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Meyer
|
| I was surprised to see Roger Ebert was involved in that film!
| Gene Siskel, his long time partner, rated Valley of the Dolls 0
| out of 4 stars, which is funny.
| StoneAndSky wrote:
| In 1995, our art teacher used a full week of class time to screen
| this for us, for no other reason than she felt it was an
| incredible film that deserved a wider audience. She was right.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| Roger Ebert was a national treasure. The saga of his review of
| director Vincent Gallo's "The Brown Bunny" [1] always makes me
| laugh:
|
| > American critic Roger Ebert has hit back at Vincent Gallo in
| the latest round of a public spat over whether the actor-director
| did or did not apologise for his derided Cannes contender The
| Brown Bunny. Earlier this week Gallo denied having apologised and
| claimed the critic was "a fat pig" for saying that he had. He
| added: "The only thing I'm sorry for is putting a curse of Roger
| Ebert's colon."
|
| > Yesterday, in his column for the Chicago Sun Times, Ebert stuck
| to his guns - quoting the editor of trade magazine Screen
| International, who says that they have Gallo's apology on tape.
| On the question of his cursed colon, Ebert said: "I am not too
| worried. I had a colonoscopy once, and they let me watch it on
| TV. It was more entertaining than The Brown Bunny."
|
| > The critic rounded off his article (as it were) by casually
| conceding that he is overweight. "It is true that I am fat,"
| Ebert wrote. "But one day I shall be thin, and he will still be
| the director of The Brown Bunny."
|
| Later on, Gallo went back to the editing room and cut a quarter
| of the film. Ebert re-watched it and actually ended up giving it
| a thumbs' up.
|
| 1. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2003/jun/05/news2
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