I briefly had a review gig, highly amateur, that was even compensated. Ebert had an influence on me in at least two ways which immediately spring to mind. Fir

I briefly had a review gig, highly amateur, that was even compensated. Ebert had an influence on me in at least two ways which immediately spring to mind. First, he has biases. Go and read his review of Leon (aka The Professional) and you will know what his gut reaction will be to something like Moretz's role in Kick-Ass. He didn't seem to pay much attention during "genre" flicks and a couple of his review shows that. However, he displayed his biases clearly. You could account for them. He did not dress them up in academic language or try to justify them in a manner that was beyond any reproach. I could mentally just adjust for what I would get out of his reviews of most horror films. Because people have biases, an open reckoning of them is as fair as you can get. Second, reviews are to be written on multiple levels, each accounting for a different audience. What I call the TV Guide review consists of stars granted, a few actors mentioned, and a very brief subject summary. At another level, he writes for people who want to know, "Given what I care about, would I want to spend my time and money seeing this film?" At a third level, he talks to people who have already seen the movie, people who have the ability to engage with the language of film and debate its merits. Each of these levels is valuable. Each is its own particular craft and requisite skills, not to be evaded no matter what the subject matter. I sometimes disagreed with his ratings but I rarely found a review which did not add something to my experience of a movie.