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Credit: Alamy<\/p>\n
Fri 27 February 2026 17:15, UK <\/p>\n
Being one of the most respected voices in your chosen area of expertise doesn\u2019t obligate anyone to follow the consensus. To that end, Roger Ebert<\/a> praised a lot of shit movies, and he savaged more than a few inarguable classics, cult favourites, and undeniable masterpieces.<\/p>\n He\u2019s one of the few who never understood why everyone was falling over themselves to praise Hal Ashby\u2019s Harold & Maude, couldn\u2019t comprehend why audiences had taken Dead Poets Society to their hearts, scratched his head at The Usual Suspects, and panned David Lynch\u2019s The Elephant Man.<\/p>\n At the other end of the scale, this is the critic who also supported Will Ferrell\u2019s nauseating Land of the Lost, thought Home Alone 3 was a worthy successor to Macaulay Culkin\u2019s first two comedic capers, and mounted a passionate defence<\/a> of Speed 2: Cruise Control, a catastrophic flop that remains one of the worst sequels to ever crawl out of the Hollywood production pipeline.<\/p>\n Obviously, his job was to review films as he saw them, and it didn\u2019t matter what anyone else thought. That\u2019s the way it should be, whether it\u2019s Ebert or a first-time critic. In his defence, he was laying eyes upon one of the most controversial releases of its era, one that provoked such outrage and offence that its own director banned it from the United Kingdom, a mandate that would stay in place until their death<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, a masterpiece is a masterpiece, and Stanley Kubrick\u2019s A Clockwork Orange fits the bill. Not for Ebert, though, who raged against almost every aspect of the dystopian literary adaptation, decrying Malcolm McDowell\u2019s Alex DeLarge and wondering why such a gifted auteur had lowered himself to this level.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll probably be debating A Clockwork Orange for a long time,\u201d he acknowledged. \u201cA long, weary, and pointless time.\u201d That was true, but he still thought it was overrated. \u201cThey\u2019ve really hyped A Clockwork Orange for more than it\u2019s worth, and a lot of people will go if only out of curiosity,\u201d he added. \u201cToo bad.\u201d<\/p>\n He made a point of referring to Alex as a \u201csadistic rapist\u201d on three separate occasions, underlining his contempt, which informed the entirety of the review. \u201cDirectors sometimes get sanctimonious and talk about their creations in the third person, as if society had really created Alex,\u201d he proffered. \u201cBut this makes their direction into a sort of cinematic automatic writing. No, I think Kubrick is being too modest: Alex is all his.\u201d<\/p>\n Ebert hated the character, hated the plot, and even hated the lenses that Kubrick used to shoot the picture, while also finding the time to accuse it of \u201canother, perhaps even more unforgivable, artistic sin.\u201d What was the sin? \u201cIt is just plain talky and boring,\u201d are descriptors that aren\u2019t used about the nightmarish thriller that often, if at all.<\/p>\n