Ebert & Roper on The Passion
Two thumbs up for 'The Passion'
"It's the only religious movie I've seen, with the exception of 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew' by [Italian director Pier Paolo] Pasolini, that really seems to deal with what actually happened," said Ebert, who is the Sun-Times film critic.
"This is the most powerful, important and by far the most graphic interpretation of Christ's final hours ever put on film," said Roeper, a Sun-Times columnist. "Mel Gibson is a masterful storyteller, and this is the work of his lifetime. You have to admire not just Gibson for his vision and his directing abilities, but Jim Caviezel [as Christ] and the rest of the cast."
(via The Corner)
February 23, 2004 05:01 PMThanks for the link..I was looking forward to thier reviews. How do you think it will do at the box office? Could it possibly bomb after all this press? Perhaps it will be too graphic for a mainstream audience to really drive up ticket sales.
Pondered by Michael Hussey at February 23, 2004 11:54 PMConsidering the sheer number of advance tickets (more than any other movie except ROTK, apparently), it looks like the first week will do quite well. I don't know how it will do after that, although I doubt the gore by itself would drive away sales (cf. Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan, etc.).
Pondered by maphet at February 24, 2004 09:46 AMJeff Jacoby has an excellent column. He didn't like the movie, but didn't think it was antisemitic either. He also doesn't pretend that he understands the concept of "passion."
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/02/24/is_the_passion_anti_semitic/
