Roger Ebert The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Roger Ebert (1942-2013) was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death. In 1975 he became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. With Gene Siskel he co-hosted Sneak Previews and then At the Movies, turning thumbs-up/thumbs-down into a national shorthand for whether a film was worth seeing. His reviews of the films covered in this wiki range from enthusiastic to skeptical, but they share a consistent critical method: judge a film by how well it achieves what it sets out to do, not by whether you approve of what it sets out to do.

Ebert reviewed films by what they were trying to be, not what he wished they were

Ebert spent 46 years at the Chicago Sun-Times, filing reviews of roughly 300 films a year. His critical philosophy centered on a principle he called "Ebert's Law": "It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it." He was offered jobs at The New York Times and The Washington Post after the Pulitzer and turned both down because he did not want to leave Chicago. His television partnership with Siskel, which began in 1975 on public television and ran in various forms until Siskel's death in 1999, made film criticism a mainstream spectator sport. After losing the ability to speak following cancer surgery in 2006, Ebert continued writing online until his death on April 4, 2013. (wikipedia, britannica)

He reviewed nearly every film in this wiki and his assessments ranged from four stars to open skepticism

Ebert gave Blow Out (1981) his highest rating — four out of four stars — and called it Brian De Palma's "best and most original work." He praised the film for a quality he found missing in De Palma's earlier thrillers:

"De Palma is more successful than ever before at populating his plot with three-dimensional characters. We believe in the reality of the people played by John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, and Dennis Franz." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1981)

He identified the film's unsettling power as coming from its closeness to real American political history:

"There are times when Blow Out resembles recent American history trapped in the Twilight Zone." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1981)

For The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), he gave three out of four stars. His review located the film's appeal not in the heist mechanics but in the performances and the feel of the city:

"[The movie's appeal] doesn't depend on the plan or on the easily foreseeable plot. It depends instead on a nice feel for New York City and some fine, detailed performances." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1974)

"Walter Matthau is gruff, shaggy and sardonic as a Transit Authority lieutenant; Robert Shaw is clipped and cruel, and the supporting performances are allowed to grow and take on personality." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1974)

He was one of the strongest champions of Body Double (1984), giving it three and a half out of four stars when much of the critical establishment was attacking it:

"Body Double is an exhilarating exercise in pure filmmaking, a thriller in the Hitchcock tradition in which there's no particular point except that the hero is flawed, weak, and in terrible danger — and we identify with him completely." — Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com (1984)

On Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Ebert was the notable dissenter. Where Pauline Kael called it "more sheer fun than any movie I've seen since Carrie and Jaws," Ebert found Kael's enthusiasm "inexplicable" and was skeptical of the Watergate and pod-conformity readings that other critics treated as the film's strength. His minority position on that film has remained a minority position at every subsequent reassessment. He and Siskel discussed the film on Sneak Previews in 1978. (wikipedia, popcultureretrorama)

Ebert and Siskel also reviewed Outland (1981) on Sneak Previews, where their disagreement about the film's genre was on full display. No written Ebert review of Outland appears in the rogerebert.com archives.