Doorways and Cars and Vampires

Roger Ebert sometimes infuriates me with his reviews. He's lost a lot of reliability since losing Gene Siskel too early to cancer -- Gene was his full peer and forced him to keep honest. These days, Roger's a lot more indulgent.

But I swear, reading his review of Underworld, he reminds us why he's the best known critic in the world today:

Brendan Gill, the distinguished writer for the New Yorker, offered a definition of pornography that has stood the test of time. A porno movie, he said, is a movie where you become acutely aware that the characters are spending too much time getting in and out of cars and walking in and out of doors. Gill's wisdom came to mind when Todd McCarthy, writing in Variety, observed of "Underworld" that "there may be more openings and closings of doors in this picture than in the entire oeuvre of Ernst Lubitsch." That is not the sort of detail that should occur to you while you're watching a movie about a war between werewolves and vampires.

Read the whole review here.