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Personally, I think they're snobs. Roger Ebert in particularly I cannot stand to the point I actually feel satisfied to know he's dead. Very few people have I ever felt that for.

Ebert had a poor understanding of Star Trek (from the reviews I recall reading) and was very ignorant on the topic of video games (but that didn't stop him from chiming in on them). His reaction to The Black Cauldron will always make me happy, though.

I think that they were really good and funny duo. They made they movie reviews actually entertaining to watch. So basically I agree with Doug Walker about those two.

Entertainment does not equal to intelligence - or compassion.

I never really watched them on tv, but I occasionally check out Ebert's reviews online after I watch a film. He had his blind spots and his rating system wasn't perfect, but he was a talented writer and could really get at the heart of why certain films were special (or terrible). Plus I appreciate that the guy just loved movies. Maybe watching him on tv was a different experience.

Do you have an example in mind as far as the implied lack of compassion? If anything one of Ebert's drawbacks was that he sometimes adopted a moralistic or sentimental stance on certain ostensibly edgy films, when a more detached view would have allowed him to see what the director's intentions actually were.

You can private message me. I don't feel like sharing it here.

Yukaphile wrote: ↑Wed May 22, 2019 3:27 am You can private message me. I don't feel like sharing it here.

You shared far worse.

Well, it should be obvious I am trying to reform, duh.

One thing I'm wondering... what was their review for Empire Strikes Back? I know critics didn't like it, and I'm willing to bet they were among the initially confused critics wondering why this was not A New Hope 2.0.

Roger Ebert tried to judge films by their own standards; if it's a western then how good of a western is it? Gene Siskel looked for movies to transcend their genres; will this western appeal to people who aren't aficionados of westerns?

Ebert preferred films that didn't require people to have background knowledge before watching them. That's why he sometimes had wildly different opinions of genre films than people well versed in the source material (The Phantom Menace, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, etc).

That said, I could usually tell from his reviews whether I would like a film regardless of whether he liked it.