Roger Ebert's 10 Greatest Movies of All Time
Roger Ebert helped bring film criticism to the mainstream through TV shows, books and the rise of the Internet, most notably the long-running review show At The Movies (first with Gene Siskel, then Richard Roeper). He balanced subjectivity and objectivity, often summing up his feelings about a film in a few paragraphs while holding himself to a high journalistic standard.
His sharper or more confounding takes are part of a legacy shaped as much by personal taste as by critical rigor. Ebert said his choices were guided by emotional reaction: "The cinema is the greatest art form ever conceived for generating emotions in its audience.
That's what it does best." He did not want to rank his favorites, so the ten films he picked appear here in no particular order. Among his selections, Casablanca earned praise for its perfect narrative structure, timeless tragedy and sharp, quotable dialogue, while Citizen Kane was noted for changing the language of cinema and telling a story of power, corruption and loss.
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