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Creator: Roger Ebert

"As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks."

— Roger Ebert on Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

Roger Joseph Ebert (June 18, 1942 - April 4, 2013) was the film reviewer-in-chief at the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In itself, that would make him important as the elder statesman of film criticism.

In 1975, Ebert teamed up with Gene Siskel, reviewer-in-chief at the Chicago Tribune, to present a film review program called Sneak Previews on the local PBS station. The program went to national syndication in 1978; in 1982 Siskel And Ebert moved to Syndication on commerical stations across America, as a new but very similar program called At The Movies with Siskel and Ebert (or vice versa). Unexpectedly, this made him one of the two most important movie critics in America. Because the show was televised, many more Americans saw it than read the reviews in the newspapers; because Ebert and Siskel had credentials in real newspapers in a major city first, and didn't review every movie favorably, they could be taken more seriously than most other movie reviewers on television. Siskel and Ebert's passive-aggressive chemistry was the stuff of legend. It was often thought that due to their occasionally hostile on-screen presence when they disagreed, that the two hated each other. However, each considered the other a close friend, even if their relationship was competitive by nature. In fact, on the tenth anniversary of Siskel's death in 2009, Ebert posted a touching remembrance

of his friend on his blog.

When Siskel died in 1999, Ebert kept on the show with guest hosts until it was settled that it would be At The Movies with Ebert and Roeper, with Richard Roeper, another Chicago Sun-Times critic. This made him the most important living movie critic in America. The show ended in 2008 partially because his throat cancer was preventing him from doing most of the episodes for over a year and a half. (To do film reviews on television, you have to be able to speak.) Sadly, due to a few surgeries that successfully eradicated his cancer, Ebert lost the ability to speak entirely and part of his lower jaw was removed. During the last few years of his life, he "spoke" through handwritten notes and a computer speech program. In 2010, a Scottish company created a voice similar to Ebert's own for him to use as his new "voice", using his DVD commentaries (and not his TV show, since there was always background movie noise and Gene Siskel/Richard Roeper interrupting him) and other similar recordings. Furthermore, his last treatments were so tough going with so much physical cost, he vowed that if the cancer reemerged, he would let it take its course unto death. This eventually happened to him in 2013.

In 2011, to replace the new At the Movies which had been canceled by its distributor, Ebert and his wife Chaz started their own movie review show on PBS called Ebert Presents At The Movies hosted by Christy Lemire of the Associated Press and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky of Mubi, which follows largely the same format as Ebert's other shows. Ebert himself appeared in a segment on the show called "Roger's Office" which features voice over narration (either with the help of either his new "voice", or a famous friend such as Werner Herzog or Bill Curtis) of one of his recent reviews or musings.

Until his death, Ebert still wrote weekly review columns as well as a daily blog and maintained a very active Twitter account, and every single one of his reviews are available on the Internet, where he was still an influential force in movie criticism's new dominant medium. He also picked up a reputation for being soft on movies, or (depending on who you ask) even more ruthless than before. However, his wrath, when deployed, was legendary. He published three compilations of his two star and under reviews during his lifetime; I Hated, Hated, HATED This Movie!, Your Movie Sucks and A Horrible Experience of Unbearable Length.

Roger Ebert printed annual compilations of his movie reviews from The Eighties onward. Also Ebert wrote three books of essays about his favorite movies entitled The Great Movies, with these essays also available on his website in a condensed form.

He also wrote Ebert's Little Movie Glossary and Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary, which are books of Film Tropes in The Devil's Dictionary form. (An even bigger movie glossary is on his web page.) They could be considered a proto-TV Tropes in a sense (and the Trope Namer for many).

He also maintained a column called "The Movie Answer-Man", where he addressed various topics given to him by reader comments. Sometimes addressing fandom aspects like...

One reader comment said that a positive review of a certain film gave him Hype Backlashinvoked while a negative review of another film made him want to see it.invoked Ebert's reply was that a critic's job is not to pass judgment on a particular movie, but to give the reader an impression as to whether or not they would want to see it themselves.
Another review addressed the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny where one comment said that Wolverine would beat Storm in a fight because he could heal, whereas Storm would die once stabbed by Wolverine. His reply was simply a question of how could someone whose power is healing be more powerful than someone who can control the elements.

He also wrote many books on great films. He was one of the great proponents of film preservation, letterboxing (back when most televisions were square and most movies in theaters weren't), and giving credit to directors and screenwriters; he probably helped make these issues important. Also a proponent of seeing films in theaters, but he accepted modern viewing habits enough to write DVD reviews. He did a few audio commentaries notably ones for two of his all-time favorite films, Citizen Kane and Dark City, which have appeared on most releases of those films on DVD.

He was one of the major opponents to Colorization. He often liked Deliberately Monochrome films, and ones that were monochrome because of when they were made, because of the light and shadow effects. He also protested censorship in the name of Avoid The Dreaded G Rating or avoiding the dreaded X/NC-17 rating. While he advocated for years for a properly copyrighted A rating to replace X since that sound more respectable, he had hoped NC-17 would become a respectable alternative, and was disappointed when it didn't. He was critical of what he saw as an overuse of 3D technology in recent movies.

He was screenwriter for a Cult Classic film, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. Since that film was released in 1970, this hasn't affected his stature as a critic much. He made fun of it himself, but said he was proud of it regardless.

He gained a bit of flak from the gamer community when he declared video games not to be an art form

, but he eventually came around

and at least decided he's not in a position to judge them. Despite that episode, he was considered as the most One of Us of major critics, as he admired Japanese animated film and had an incredible knowledge of science fiction, which was among his favorite genres. While he claimed ignorance to a lot of TV shows due to his heavy schedule of writing and watching films, he found time to become a fan of the WWE, South Park, and Avatar The Last Airbender. (During their 1979 review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Gene suggested that he might not have cared about the characters since he wasn't a fan of the show. Ebert said that he WAS a fan and he didn't care about them as presented in this film). Heck he even gave The Nostalgia Critic his due after seeing his tribute video to Siskel and him via a Twitter message (Doug was so thrilled over it, he printed and framed it). Ebert also had a fondness of other film analysis and criticism, such as Tim Dirk's Filmsite.org (which Ebert frequently quoted) and Red Letter Media; of the Revenge of the Sith review, Ebert stated, "I was pretty much sure I didn't have it with me to endure another review of [Revenge of the Sith]. Mr. Plinkett demonstrates to me that I was mistaken." (This is especially interesting considering that said review criticized critics, specifically naming Ebert, who "sucked up to Lucas" and gave Revenge of the Sith good reviews.)

Was also a master at uncovering the Freeze Frame Bonus — for years, he would spend a week at the University of Colorado's World Affairs Conference dissecting a film frame-by-frame with an audience's help to reveal small details.

Now we have his great movies list and his list of his least favorite movies.

Incidentally, described several tropes decades before TV Tropes even came into existence.

The website of his 2011 show can be found here

and there's an archive of the old Siskel & Ebert episodes here

Ebert's final public statement, in a blog post titled "A leave of presence"

, was: "I'll see you at the movies." One artist's post-mortem interpretation of Ebert's last missive sums it up

. Thumbs up.