# Ebert: Thumbs Up or Down? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 24, 2003, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068 "2003-02-24T02:42:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![japatlgt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df705f/32.png) [@japatlgt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/japatlgt)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/21 "2003-02-24T05:18:07Z")
To me his relevance dropped off the table after Gene Siskel’s death. RE is a fairly competent movie fan but then so is my Mom. ---
**Author:** ![MyFootsZZZ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/myfootszzz/32/12580_2.png) [@MyFootsZZZ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MyFootsZZZ)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/22 "2003-02-24T05:22:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fibber McGee \* > \*\*That’s just shows that there are all kinds of different reasons for liking or disliking a movie, which is why I don’t usually trust the opinions of film reviewers when it comes to deciding to go see a film or not. > > I’m more the sort of person who reads a review after he’s seen the film to see why the critic did or didn’t like it and whether or not I agree. \*\* You’re right. Most of the time when he says something that **I** think is ridiculous on he show, his partner (Roper or Siskel) often call him on it. To each his or her own. I do think he has good tastes, I’m just not sure (like all of us) he always knows WHY he likes a certain movie. ---
**Author:** ![Kaitlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/73ab20/32.png) [@Kaitlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaitlyn)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/23 "2003-02-24T05:41:04Z")
> [@](#): > > Ebert: Thumbs Up or Down? Thumbs up. > [@](#): > > So what do you think of Roger Ebert movie reviewer? I think he’s genreally knowledgeable and fair. He writes well and tends not to give away too much information in his reviews. He’s a good source for finding good, obscure movies that don’t get wide release. He reports quality when he finds it, whether it be in anime, foreign art films, or slob comedy. > [@](#): > > I found out his reviews some two or three years ago and I loved them. They’re knowledgeable without being pretentious and even when I disagree with him totally I usually can get an idea about wether or not I’ll like a movie despite Ebert’s own likes and dislikes. This is indeed the mark of a good critic. Too many people judge a critic on the basis of his taste, rather than the skill with which the critic reports his reaction and the qualities of the film that led to that reaction. The former is easy to do, anyone can tell their opinion. The latter is very difficult to do well; being able to identify exactly what in a movie moved you to tears or laughter, and why it worked takes skill, knowledge, and experience. > [@](#): > > He is very famous (or infamous) in this board. I’m not american so I would like to know why. He’s the most famous, popular, and influential critic in the United States. Until a few years ago, he shared this title with Gene Siskel, but since Siskel’s death, he’s solo at the top. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert were among the first celebrity movie critics, if not the first. He and Siskel were rival movie critics for, respectively, the Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune. They were paired by a Chicago public tv station in the early 70’s for a tv show called _Sneak Previews_. The title was later changed to _Siskel and Ebert at the Movies_ to capitalize on the surprise popularity of the two hosts. The show eventually became a big enough hit that PBS couldn’t keep up with the salary demands, and Siskel and Ebert went to direct syndication, with a title change to _Siskel and Ebert and the Movies_ because PBS owned the rights to _Sneak Previews_ and _At the Movies_. The tv show grew so popular that it spawned many imitations with only slight variations on the formula established. These follow ups didn’t have the chemistry Siskel and Ebert had on screen. Though they respected each other, they each harbored a bit of resentment that their success depended largely upon theirl association with the other. At times, it seemed the two actively disliked each other, and they would get into heated arguments when their opinons differed. As their tv show grew in popularity their newspaper reviews became more and more largely syndicated. Most news markets in the US have a paper that carried the syndicated reviews of one or the other. Today, Roger Ebert is the most syndicated movie critic in the US. > [@](#): > > People around here seem to cite him as an authority in movie matters but they don’t seem to respect him. Why? I think you’ll find these are usually two different groups of people. The people who don’t respect him seem unlikely to cite him as an authority. > [@](#): > > Some people around here say he’s seen better days. When and why? Often this is due to his giving an unfavorable review to a favorite movie. The most notorious examples are _Fight Club_ and _The Usual Suspects_, both of which got negative reviews, and both of which have rabid fans all over the internet, some of whom take a criticism of the movie as if it were a criticism of them. More recently, he gave the two Lord of the Rings movies positive reviews, but for the more ardent fans, this wasn’t enough, because he didn’t declare them to be great movies. The people who obsessively analyze the minutia of the books and the movies sometimes seem to label others less knowledgeable than they unfit to offer criticism, unless such criticism agrees with them. > [@](#): > > And in an unrelated note, which other movie critics that are any good can I find in the web? Cervaise has a great informative site but it slowed down a lot in number and frequency of reviews and the ones that are added are usually of obscure movies I haven’t/won’t/can’t see. I read Ebert and Cranky Critic (Chuck Shwartz) at [crankycritic.com](http://crankycritic.com) every week. Cranky has the annoying habit of referring to himself as “we” in his reveiws, but he offers a nice “everyman” type of review. He tends to dislike “artsy-fartsy” type stuff, but he has a specific set of criteria he uses (never compare to source material, a movie should be comprehensible in a single viewing) very consistently. Ebert recommends James Berardinelli, and I like him too. He offers a nice middle ground between art-house snobs (Rex Reed) and Joe Six Pack type reveiwers (Joe Bob Briggs). > [@](#): > > ]I’d appreciate having grammar/spelling mistakes pointed out. Start a pit or IMHO thread griping about some rule of grammar. Everyone who responds will nit-pick your posts to death. ---
**Author:** ![Tarrsk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/97f17d/32.png) [@Tarrsk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tarrsk)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/24 "2003-02-24T05:45:53Z")
[The Flick Filosopher](http://www.flickfilosopher.com/) is far and away my favorite movie reviewer, better than Ebert by far. She’s clever, original in her writing, and articulates her opinions intelligently, demonstrating the geeky love for film that Harry Knowles does without the need to go into rambling, incoherent rants about unrelated subjets. Her [review of A.I.](http://www.flickfilosopher.com/flickfilos/archive/012q/ai.shtml) is one of my favorite reviews, even though I disagreed with her opinion of the film (I thought it was excellent until the last half hour or so, at which point it took a straight nosedive into the ground). ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/25 "2003-02-24T06:08:56Z")
If you like Ebert and can get to Champaign, IL (or is it Urbana?) for a weekend in April, Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival is a blast. Great movies shown in a beautiful old theatre, with the directors and stars of the movie often there to do a Q&A afterwards. The day I was there, they showed the documentary _On the Ropes_ with one of the three boxers in attendance and the other–the one who was jailed–live on the phone from NYC. They also showed _Jesus’ Son_ with Billy Crudup for a Q&A, and _A Simple Plan_–which Ebert admitted was not exactly overlooked but he felt it was underappreciated, as it was one of the best movies he’d seen in recent years–with Bill Paxton talking about it afterwards. I think his reviews are very insightful, both before and after the movie, and we agree probably 80% of the time on good movies. (He’s a lot more forgiving than I am about bad ones, but that isn’t saying much.) Dr. J ---
**Author:** ![Eddie\_the\_Dane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b5a626/32.png) [@Eddie\_the\_Dane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eddie_the_Dane)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/26 "2003-02-24T13:43:33Z")
Ebert gave “Daredevil” a good review - suffice to say that any credibility he once had in my estimation is gone and gone for good. I prefer to use the “Rotten Tomatoes” site for an amalgam of reviewers’ opinions: > **[Rotten Tomatoes: Movies | TV Shows | Movie Trailers | Reviews](https://www.rottentomatoes.com)** > > Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets ---
**Author:** ![Silentgoldfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@Silentgoldfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silentgoldfish)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/27 "2003-02-24T13:50:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Eddie the Dane \* > \*\*Ebert gave “Daredevil” a good review - suffice to say that any credibility he once had in my estimation is gone and gone for good. > \*\* Why, cause he liked it and you didn’t? This is a pretty good example of “he disagreed with me and that means he sucks.” ---
**Author:** ![middleman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9a140/32.png) [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/28 "2003-02-24T14:21:02Z")
I also use Rotten Tomatoes for my reviews, but when there, I always scan the “Cream of the Crop” section to see what Ebert thought. The reviewer that baffles me is the guy from EW. He has had soon incredibly bizarre grades over the last few years. ---
**Author:** ![Fibber\_McGee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a6a055/32.png) [@Fibber\_McGee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fibber_McGee)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/29 "2003-02-24T14:27:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by watsonwil \* > \*\* > The reviewer that baffles me is the guy from EW. He has had soon incredibly bizarre grades over the last few years. \*\* You are, I take it, referring to the notorious Owen Gleiberman? I don’t understand that guy at all . . . ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/30 "2003-02-24T14:29:26Z")
I really like Ebert, mainly because _he writes well_. He certainly knows how to turn a phrase. His reviews are frequently extremely funny, especially for the movies he pans. I can’t count how many “obscure” films I have seen after reading an Ebert review. Or not necessarily obscure, but ones I would never have picked off the cuff. Take _Antoine Fisher_ for a recent example. Would I have seen it anyway? Maybe, maybe not. But after reading Ebert’s review I made a beeline for the theater, and was able to take my wife, mom, and stepdad. It made for a wonderful afternoon. Sure, sometimes I disagree, but he is very good at pointing out _why_ he liked or disliked a particular movie. I don’t get all in a huff if he pans a personal favorite (_The Hudsucker Proxy_ comes to mind). Plus, his commentary on the _Dark City_ DVD was excellent. (Another example of a movie I saw based on his review). ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/31 "2003-02-24T14:41:29Z")
Thumbs up. His _really_ negative reviews are things of beauty, even if you disagree with them. How can you dislike someone who says something like: “_Mad Dog Time_ should be cut up to provide free ukelele picks for the poor.” “You remember Doug McClure. Good. I don’t.” “After six months, a week, and two days of suspense, we can now relax: the worst movie of 1979 has opened.” “I don’t want to review _Friends and Lovers_, I want to flunk it. … I get tapes in the mail from tenth graders that are better made than this.” “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.” ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/32 "2003-02-24T17:18:42Z")
Let’s not forget his infamous review of _North_: > [@](#): > > I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it. Heheheh. ---
**Author:** ![KidCharlemagne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ed8c4c/32.png) [@KidCharlemagne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KidCharlemagne)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/33 "2003-02-24T17:38:25Z")
Roger Ebert is the only reviewer who can consistently give me an idea whether or not I will like the movie (and not just whether or not he did). I like him because he isn’t afraid to give a “thumbs up” to movies that he personally likes just because they are easy pickins for critical commentary. I also like the fact that he gives you a classical critique but then just ends up saying whether it made for a fun two hours or not. ---
**Author:** ![beajerry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@beajerry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beajerry)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/34 "2003-02-24T17:50:25Z")
thanks for the flickfilosopher link, Tarrsk, she’s pretty damn good. ebert is one of the best–love of movies, doesn’t try to give quotable onliners, good cinematic knowledge… harry knowles i like now and then, but i just cannot stand his tangents into stuff that is absolutely boring to me but seems fascinating to him (the drive to the theater, who he sat with, how the weather was…) i do like his enthusiasm for movies, though. i also like [rottentomatoes.com](http://rottentomatoes.com) what could be more democratic? this is a no-capital day. ---
**Author:** ![Stephe96](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Stephe96](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stephe96)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/35 "2003-02-24T18:28:57Z")
Ebert gave the original ‘Die Hard’ two stars. He later gave three-and-a-half stars to an unwatchable, much-hated sequel to a rip-off of ‘Die Hard!’ (‘Speed 2,’ in case you didn’t know). Buh bye, credibility… ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/36 "2003-02-24T18:43:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ECJones29 \* > \*\*A lot of people don’t respect Ebert because his best-known screenwriting credit is “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” a name-only sequel to one of the worst movies of all time. BTVOTD is supposedly much better than the original, for what that’s worth. > > \*\* It’s not a sequal, it’s a remake. More like a spoof, really. ---
**Author:** ![SolGrundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/37 "2003-02-24T19:29:29Z")
I’m not crazy about Ebert, but I don’t think he’s as evil as people make him out to be, either. He does a fairly good job of doing away with all the pretense, and will frequently judge a movie on its own merits instead of whether it’s high-brow or low-brow. Few things are as tiresome as people who talk about movies as if they have something to prove, that they need to validate their opinions by talking about _cinema_ and _mise-en-scene_ and such. But I think that whole “populist movie reviewer” thing is also what damaged Ebert’s credibility. When Siskel and Ebert got to be really big names, to the point where they were celebrities themselves and even doing cameos in movies as themselves, it made a lot of people perceive them as being too mass-market, or having no semblance of objectivity anymore. Probably the most damaging was when they started the whole “two thumbs up” business; it seems shallow enough to reduce your opinion of a piece of art to a number of stars or something, but when you go all the way down to “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” it just seems meaningless. Of course, they always did more lengthy recaps of the movie and explained their reviews on the show, but the “thumbs up” was what got all the attention. My biggest problem with Ebert is that his writing is often very sloppy. There’s at least one factual error in just about every review of his I’ve ever read. Usually it’s something trivial, but it just lends an air of incompetence to the whole thing. And actually, I take it back – my **biggest** problem with Ebert is that he’s won a Pulitzer Prize for his film criticism. And that bugs me because a) I’ve never won a Pulitzer Prize (although the fact that I’ve never written anything counts against me), and 2) the whole field of film criticism feels like bottom-feeding to me, instead of truly creating something of artistic merit. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Number Six \* > **More recently, he gave the two Lord of the Rings movies positive reviews, but for the more ardent fans, this wasn’t enough, because he didn’t declare them to be great movies. The people who obsessively analyze the minutia of the books and the movies sometimes seem to label others less knowledgeable than they unfit to offer criticism, unless such criticism agrees with them.** That’s just not true. There was a whole thread about it on this message board and the complaints were crystal clear. Whether or not he gave the movie three stars or whatever, is irrelevant. The annoying part was that he kept harping on the same point – that the movies weren’t as tranquil and whimsical as the book. That’s not obsessive minutiae, that’s the whole theme of the book. And it’s nonsensical; the books aren’t light and airy but are about a world-wide war. The reason that bugs people, myself included, is because it just comes across as arrogant and sloppy. He makes the same criticism over and over again about the movies’ not being faithful to the source material, and then admits that he’s not that familiar with the source material, either. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/38 "2003-02-24T19:51:04Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Fibber McGee \* > \*\*You are, I take it, referring to the notorious Owen Gleiberman? > I don’t understand that guy at all . . . \*\* Entertainment Weekly has that weekly box of movie grades given by other reviewers. It’s amazing how many times the EW grade will either be the highest or lowest of them all. Many weeks, they will be highest or lowest (or at least tied) for every single movie on the list. I’ve noticed this for years so it’s not a one-time or new phenomena. Of course, according to my local movie reviewer we recently had twelve pictures rated 10 out of 10 playing simulataneously. I don’t think there are twelve 10-worthy pictures released over a decade, so one of us has bizarre tastes. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/39 "2003-02-24T23:01:28Z")
\<\< C K Dexter Haven says he didn’t know much about movies 35 years ago. Maybe not, but he’s learned a lot since. His reviews just drip with details about the movie business, obscure movie references, and inside knowledge of directors, writers, and actors. \>\> Well, that was the problem 35 years ago, too. Only he’d get the facts wrong, the details wrong, the references wrong, etc. ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2003, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068/40 "2003-02-24T23:38:20Z")
Besides [Rotten Tomatoes](http://www.rottentomatoes.com), there is [MetaCritic](http://www.metacritic.com) and the [Movie Review Query Engine](http://www.mrqe.com). **Laughing Lagomorph** _My main criticism is he sometimes reviews the movie he expected to see, rather than the movie he actually saw._ Don’t all of us do this ? We have prejudices formed about actors (from past roles), directors, topics. We also form an impression from trailers, from gossip, from reviews. Heck, from our general prejudices of what constitutes a good movie. As long as a critic realizes what his/her prejudices are and **reveals** them implicitly or explicitly, I think we can expect a good review. **Narrad** _Also “an year” and “that request [in] my sig” in your last post are errors._ The first error is indeed an error in most dialects of English, although “an year” is pretty common in Indian English. The second, might not be an error, if the OP meant to indicate that the request should be his new sig **verbatim** rather than _in_ the new sig. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ebert-thumbs-up-or-down/157068.md?page=3)