About the Author

ROGER EBERT was born in Urbana, Illinois, and attended local schools and the University of Illinois, where he was editor of The Daily Illini. After graduate study in English at the universities of Illinois, Cape Town, and Chicago, he became a film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967 and won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1975. The same year, he began a long association with Gene Siskel on the TV program Siskel and Ebert. After Siskel's death in 1999, the program continued with Richard Roeper as Ebert and Roeper, a show that is syndicated in more than two hundred markets. Ebert was a lecturer on film in the University of Chicago's Fine Arts Program, an adjunct professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Illinois, and received honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Film Institute, and the University of Colorado, where he conducted an annual shot-by-shot analysis of a film for thirty-five years at the Conference on World Affairs. In 1999 he started an Overlooked Film Festival at the University of Illinois, selecting films, genres, and formats he believed deserve more attention. He is the author of The Great Movies, the bestselling annual volume Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook, and Roger Ebert's Book of Film, in addition to a dozen other books. He died in 2013.

Reviews

“Ebert’s enthusiasm and . . . straightforward prose are ideal for examining films . . . You remember why he’s the only film critic ever to win the Pulitzer Prize.” —New York Post

“[T]hese pieces reflect Ebert’s long, thoughtful, informed familiarity with these films. His impeccable credentials as an accessible populist encourage thinking that his recommendations . . . may be taken to heart by mainstream moviegoers who avidly follow his newspaper and TV reviews.” —Booklist

“An appreciation of the greatest movies by the greatest movie enthusiast . . . I read this book with pleasure, enlightenment, and a desire to see many of the movies again, because I had missed what Roger saw.” —Paul Theroux

At times, Ebert's second collection of 100 essays on great (but not, he's careful to point out, the greatest) movies reads like an anthology of recycled reviews from his Chicago Sun-Times column, especially when he gets talking about the bonus features on DVDs. But anyone looking for a crash course in cinema viewing-regardless of whether they've been through Ebert's first Great Movies collection (published in 2002)-will find plenty of rewards here. Some of the selections may be obvious (12 Angry Men; West Side Story), but Ebert constantly surprises, not just in the foreign film selections but in the elevation of cult favorites such as the "bizarre masterpiece" Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. In praising older films, Ebert often takes the opportunity to criticize modern Hollywood, and his attacks can get snarky (for example, is it really unthinkable that Annie Hall would beat out Star Wars for an Oscar if they came out today?). Given Ebert's preferences, it's not surprising that fewer than a dozen American movies from the last two decades make the cut. Some of his choices are sure to spark debate; two Japanese cartoons, for example, may strike some as excessive, especially since the treatment of live-action Japanese directors barely extends past Kurosawa. Then again, it's hard to imagine a better purpose for such an anthology than getting people talking about-and watching-movies. 100 b&w photos. (Feb. 1) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

"Ebert's enthusiasm and . . . straightforward prose are ideal for examining films . . . You remember why he's the only film critic ever to win the Pulitzer Prize." -New York Post

"[T]hese pieces reflect Ebert's long, thoughtful, informed familiarity with these films. His impeccable credentials as an accessible populist encourage thinking that his recommendations . . . may be taken to heart by mainstream moviegoers who avidly follow his newspaper and TV reviews." -Booklist

"An appreciation of the greatest movies by the greatest movie enthusiast . . . I read this book with pleasure, enlightenment, and a desire to see many of the movies again, because I had missed what Roger saw." -Paul Theroux