How the hell did Siskel and Ebert get so popular? They're terrible reviewers

[MartyMcFly]

Siskel liked highbrow shyt, Ebert liked lower brow shyt - his main criteria if o remember was did a movie succeed in doing what it set out to do, regardless of budget.

They had a hardcore rivalry in Chiraq, while working for different papers, if I remember, so seeing them together on the old local show was cool. If they agreed on a movie, it was dope.

I do love Ebert's philosophy that a movie is about more than what it's about. I try to tell my friends that all the time. Just because you love the subject matter of something like Dear White People doesn't mean that alone makes it a dope movie. How it accomplishes that and executes it is just as important if not more so

 

[re'up]

I can say after reading at least 4 of Ebert's review book, (The Great Movies, Your Movie Sucks, I Hated, Hated This Movie) he is a brilliant, understated reviewer, I try to channel his reviews when I write my own. Also, easily the funniest reviewer of all time, hands down. You can read his bad reviews and laugh for hours, which I do, fairly regularly.

 

[N711oir]

Oy vey

 

[AnonymityX1000]

I can say after reading at least 4 of Ebert's review book, (The Great Movies, Your Movie Sucks, I Hated, Hated This Movie) he is a brilliant, understated reviewer, I try to channel his reviews when I write my own. Also, easily the funniest reviewer of all time, hands down. You can read his bad reviews and laugh for hours, which I do, fairly regularly.

Ebert was my G.
I agreed with many of his reviews. And if he liked something I would at least check it out. These guys were American icons and no movie reviewer can even approach their level of fame. They put me onto many low budget, indie, low distributed movies as a kid as well. They loved movies that's really my only criteria in order to take a reviewer seriously.

 

[Sensitive Blake Griffin]

Ebert was my G.
I agreed with many of his reviews. And if he liked something I would at least check it out. These guys were American icons and no movie reviewer can even approach their level of fame. They put me onto many low budget, indie, low distributed movies as a kid as well. They loved movies that's really my only criteria in order to take a reviewer seriously.

i def liked ebert way more but siskel had me on tilt with that fukkin terminator review

 

[AnonymityX1000]

i def liked ebert way more but siskel had me on tilt with that fukkin terminator review

yeah Siskel was a bit of a snob but whatever he had to watch like 10 movies a week as his job so what if he missed some details. It happens. Yer looking at it as someone who reveres that movie. It was just one of many he had to review that week, he had 0 reverence for it. It was just another movie in a wave of thousands he had reviewed at that point. Different perspectives.

 

[BulletProof]

If it wasn't for Ebert banging Oprah, her career wouldn't exist.

Fun fact.

 

[Sensitive Blake Griffin]

If it wasn't for Ebert banging Oprah, her career wouldn't exist.

Fun fact.

wait, ebert fukked oprah?

 

[BulletProof]

wait, ebert fukked oprah?

Yup.

 

[BXKingPin82]

siskel hates silence of the lambs

 

[wire28]

Because they talked about movies on a level people didn't feel talked down to and their rating system was very simple: thumbs up, thumbs down. Critics can be wrong breh, it's not like jurassic park or terminator both got rave reviews across the board when they came out. We have the benefit of hindsight and history. They didn't

so you are making a loop hole for when you write glowingly about age of ultron in two years

breh siskel didn't even realize that the future shots in the terminator took place on earth and not some other planet. Did he even watch the movie?

i think he just skimmed through

 

[MartyMcFly]

so you are making a loop hole for when you write glowingly about age of ultron in two years


i think he just skimmed through

I'll write glowingly about my bowl movements before I say anything nice about that piece of shyt

 

[THEREALBRAND]

I ought to neg you for disrespecting Rogawd Ebert


He's the person that got me into watching movies when I was a kid. My freshman year of college I had a collage of people I admired up on my dorm room wall, he was the only non-black person that made it up on that wall. That dude changed how I view movies and life in general.

 

[NZA]

it could be that the market they were in and the unique gimmick of being rivals helped them standout enough to get the spotlight. then after that, the long tenure they got meant familiarity, and familiarity helps make a review much more valuable. reviews from people who have preferences you cant suss out are only useful for objective information. the subjective parts are a bit of a mystery until you see the flick. by having two argumentative reviewers with different tastes using a remarkably long amount of time to discuss a film, you are given a tool for deciding if you should see a film that is far more powerful than a trailer but less spoilerific than talking to regular people who've seen the film to decide if you really want to see that movie.

knowing that ebert was more politically correct and against "gratuitous violence" meant his thumbs down to an action flick for its negativity and gratuitousness was probably a good sign to me that i would actually like the movie because i love the era of the 80s and 90s when action movies were going for a "hard R" rating. his political correctness also meant that i probably would like a lot of dramas he likes because he will specifically point out that it has minority characters with meaningful parts; something important to me.

today, the internet is inherently siskel and ebert-like. you get tons of context, tons of variety of movies reviewed, and the ability to follow specific people and learn their tastes which in the past was harder to do for people who lived in small media markets like i did during their time. movie reviews from the arizona republic in the 90s would not have given me the kind of info on all the movies - big or small - that i would want and i doubt i would gain a long term understanding of the reviewers' preferences they employed or freelanced.

 

[Poetical Poltergeist]

Peep their Aliens review. Especially Siskel, they sound like two pussies. Dissin' the goat action film.