I remember when I first aspired to a be a film critic
back in college, my feelings about Siskel and Ebert centered on annoyance that
critical opinions on cinema could be reduced to a few minutes of a TV segment
and a binary “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” decision. They were hacks, I thought,
and had no place in real discussion of criticism. At some point, however, I
began to watch clips from their show for the entertainment value of their
arguments. Eventually I started actually reading Ebert’s reviews.
