magiadoreal

To call Roger Ebert one of the great populist film critics is to damn him with faint praise. Though he took pride in working for the scrappier of the two Chicago dailies, the Sun-Times, and though we do have him to thank — or curse — for popularizing the thumbs-up/thumbs-down approach to criticism, his approach to moviegoing was actually refined. When he died last year , he left behind both a body of writing and a way of looking at movies that opened them wide to the world. So many critics write to show off how much they know — it's a way of keeping you, whoever "you" are, at arm's length. Ebert wrote to let you in. To read him is to feel you're pulling up a chair. Director Steve James captures that quality and more in Life Itself , his documentary about Ebert's life and, notably, these last few years of it, after recurring health problems and multiple surgeries left the critic unable to speak. That didn't mean Ebert lost his voice: He w...