The tragedy of Roger Ebert is that, although he had a vast knowledge of great cinema, he established a niche where he was expected to mainly write about ephemer

The tragedy of Roger Ebert is that, although he had a vast knowledge of great cinema, he established a niche where he was expected to mainly write about ephemeral popular films. His time was mostly spent on Hollywood blockbusters and popcorn, and he was appearing in media where he could not go into any great depth due to space limitations, or because that would be a turnoff for his mass audience. So, only in a few Ebert productions like his "Great Movies" books can one get a sense of the films that really mattered to the man and to art. Compare this to a critic like Richard Brody, who in his career has been fortunate to focus entirely on art cinema (though of course Brody’s net worth is probably an order of magnitude less than Ebert’s was).