Ebert's Bests, Chicago Shorts

A treasury of year-by-year ten-best lists, plus personal reminiscences by the man whose name became synonymous with the movies.

In Ebert’s Bests, the iconic Roger Ebert takes us through the journey of how he became a film critic, from his days at a student-run cinema club to his rise as a television commentator in At the Movies and Siskel & Ebert. Recounting the influence of the French New Wave; his friendships with Werner Herzog and Martin Scorsese; and travels to Sweden and Rome to visit Ingrid Bergman and Federico Fellini, Ebert never loses sight of film as a key component of our cultural identity. In considering the ethics of film criticism—why we should take all film seriously, without prejudgment or condescension—he argues that film critics ought always to engage in open-minded dialogue with a movie.

All this is accompanied by decades’ worth of annual ten-best lists, which showcase Roger Ebert’s  recommendations—while at the same time reminding us that hearts and minds, and even rankings, are bound to change.