Movie Review by Greg Goodsell
Pulitzer prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert led an expansive life. He enjoyed an early success as both a columnist and critic for the Chicago Sun Times, a newspaper he never left in spite of better paying job offers. He successfully won his private battle with alcoholism, and his marriage at age 50 to Charlie "Chaz" Hammelsmith, a fiery African-American woman who had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. was a love story for the ages. Through it all, Ebert was probably best known as “the fat one” with his cohort Gene Siskel, “the skinny one” on PBS' “Siskel & Ebert at the Movies.” The long-running series was among the very best of its kind, as it explored a relationship – oftentimes contentious, of two intellectuals saying why they did, or did not like a particular film.
The importance of “Siskel & Ebert at the Movies” cannot be downplayed, as it turned many people's heads to the possibilities of film criticism. Both Siskel and Ebert created the notion of “superstar” film critics, for good or ill. Both Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael brought intellectual heft to the form – although Kael would indulge in naughty fun by titling her books with double entendres, such as “I Lost It at the Movies.” There was also Rex Reed, also a critic, but he mostly attained notoriety for tell-all celebrity profiles. It was both Ebert and Siskel that the nation listened and adhered to. In time, they would draw criticism for their “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” rating system. Their contemporary Richard Corliss of Time magazine, who is also interviewed in the documentary, would take them to task for this all or nothing value system. Motion pictures, he argued, were complex creatures, far more worthy of being turned away out of hand for a few of the many disparate elements combined to make them.