Told largely in his own words, Roger Ebert’s legendary life spent at the movies now has the big-screen treatment it so richly deserves. Combining the reminisces of family, friends, and the filmmakers whose careers he touched, “Life Itself” takes you from Ebert’s days as a college newspaperman, to his gin-soaked newsman era at the Chicago Sun-Times and life as a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic and populist TV pundit, to regaining his voice online after losing it to cancer. Director Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”) was given considerable access to Ebert in the final months of his life, and while Ebert’s death looms large over the film, so does his unwavering passion for the movies, a love that inspired us all. Imbued with the same wit, honesty, and empathetic revelations his reviews were famous for, this is a movie of such devastatingly beautiful emotion, we can’t help but think he would have given it a thumbs up.
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Allergy to OriginalityDrew Christie | USA | 4 min. | 2012