"You slide down in your seat and make yourself comfortable. On the screen in front of you, the movie image appears—enormous and overwhelming. If the movie is a good one, you allow yourself to be absorbed in its fantasy, and its dreams become part of your memories" 
 
 Roger Ebert wrote those words in 1980 for The Atlantic magazine, a love letter to the medium that became his employer: the movies. After a 46-year tenure as film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, several decades hosting a hugely influential television show, a landmark Pulitzer Prize, and countless thumbs in both directions, Ebert died Thursday at age 70. 
 
 He loved the movies, and loved writing about them—and he was damned good at writing about them. His reviews were a unique combination of scholarly, witty, occasionally sarcastic, and masterfully entertaining. His ability to craft an exhilarating rave of a film was equally matched by his stinging zingers. As we remember him, here’s a look back at what one lifelong admirer considers his 10 best reviews. Plus, no retrospective on Ebert’s work would be complete without a roundup of his most biting takedowns. 
 
 E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial 
 
 “This movie made my heart glad. It is filled with innocence, hope, and good cheer. It is also wickedly funny and exciting as hell. E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial is a movie like The Wizard of Oz, that you can grow up with and grow old with, and it won't let you down. It tells a story about friendship and love. Some people are a little baffled when they hear it described: It's about a relationship between a little boy and a creature from outer space that becomes his best friend. That makes it sound like a cross between The Thing and National Velvet. It works as science fiction, it's sometimes as scary as a monster movie, and at the end, when the lights go up, there's not a dry eye in the house.” 
 
 —March 22, 2002 
 
 Casablanca 
 
 “If we identify strongly with the characters in some movies, then it is no mystery that Casablanca is one of the most popular films ever made. It is about a man and a woman who are in love, and who sacrifice love for a higher purpose. This is immensely appealing; the viewer is not only able to imagine winning the love of Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman, but unselfishly renouncing it, as a contribution to the great cause of defeating the Nazis… 
 
 Seeing the film over and over again, year after year, I find it never grows over-familiar. It plays like a favorite musical album; the more I know it, the more I like it. The black-and-white cinematography has not aged as color would. The dialogue is so spare and cynical it has not grown old-fashioned. Much of the emotional effect of Casablanca is achieved by indirection; as we leave the theater, we are absolutely convinced that the only thing keeping the world from going crazy is that the problems of three little people do after all amount to more than a hill of beans.” 
 
 —September 15, 1996 
 
 Toy Story 
 
 “Toy Story creates a universe out of a couple of kids’ bedrooms, a gas station, and a stretch of suburban highway. Its heroes are toys, which come to life when nobody is watching. Its conflict is between an old-fashioned cowboy who has always been a little boy's favorite toy, and the new space ranger who may replace him. The villain is the mean kid next door who takes toys apart and puts them back together again in macabre combinations. And the result is a visionary roller-coaster ride of a movie. 
 
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 For the kids in the audience, a movie like this will work because it tells a fun story, contains a lot of humor, and is exciting to watch. Older viewers may be even more absorbed, because Toy Story, the first feature made entirely by computer, achieves a three-dimensional reality and freedom of movement that is liberating and new. The more you know about how the movie was made, the more you respect it.” 
 
 —November 22, 1995 
 
 Raging Bull 
 
 “Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull is a movie about brute force, anger, and grief. It is also, like several of Scorsese's other movies, about a man's inability to understand a woman except in terms of the only two roles he knows how to assign her: virgin or whore. There is no room inside the mind of the prizefighter in this movie for the notion that a woman might be a friend, a lover, or a partner. She is only, to begin with, an inaccessible sexual fantasy. And then, after he has possessed her, she becomes tarnished by sex. Insecure in his own manhood, the man becomes obsessed by jealousy—and releases his jealousy in violence… 
 
 The equation between his prizefighting and his sexuality is inescapable, and we see the trap he's in: LaMotta is the victim of base needs and instincts that, in his case, are not accompanied by the insights and maturity necessary for him to cope with them. The raging bull. The poor sap.” 
 
 —January 1, 1980 
 
 Platoon 
 
 “It was Francois Truffaut who said that it's not possible to make an anti-war movie, because all war movies, with their energy and sense of adventure, end up making combat look like fun. If Truffaut had lived to see Platoon, the best film of 1986, he might have wanted to modify his opinion. Here is a movie that regards combat from ground level, from the infantryman's point of view, and it does not make war look like fun.” 
 
 —December 30, 1986 
 
 Beauty and the Beast 
 
 "Beauty and the Beast slipped around all my roadblocks and penetrated directly into my strongest childhood memories, in which animation looked more real than live-action features. Watching the movie, I found myself caught up in a direct and joyous way. I wasn't reviewing an 'animated film.' I was being told a story, I was hearing terrific music, and I was having fun. The film is as good as any Disney animated feature ever made—as magical as Pinocchio, Snow White, The Little Mermaid. And it's a reminder that animation is the ideal medium for fantasy, because all of its fears and dreams can be made literal." 
 
 —November 22, 1991 
 
 Titanic 
 
 “James Cameron’s 194-minute, $200 million film of the tragic voyage is in the tradition of the great Hollywood epics. It is flawlessly crafted, intelligently constructed, strongly acted, and spellbinding. If its story starts well within the traditional formulas for such pictures, well, you don’t choose the most expensive film ever made as your opportunity to reinvent the wheel. … 
 
 Movies like this are not merely difficult to make at all, but almost impossible to make well. The technical difficulties are so daunting that it’s a wonder when the filmmakers are also able to bring the drama and history into proportion. I found myself convinced by both story and saga.” 
 
 —December 19, 1997 
 
 Hoop Dreams 
 
 “A film like Hoop Dreams is what the movies are for. It takes us, shakes us, and makes us think in new ways about the world around us. It gives us the impression of having touched life itself. 
 
 Hoop Dreams is, on one level, a documentary about two black kids named William Gates and Arthur Agee, from Chicago’s inner city, who are gifted basketball players and dream of someday starring in the NBA. On another level, it is about much larger subjects: about ambition, competition, race, and class in our society. About our value structures. And about the daily lives of people like the Agee and Gates families, who are unusually invisible to the mass media, but have a determination and resiliency that is a cause for hope.” 
 
 —October 21, 1994 
 
 Star Wars 
 
 “Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them. 
 
 Star Wars works like that. My list of other out-of-the-body films is a short and odd one, ranging from the artistry of Bonnie and Clyde or Cries and Whispers to the slick commercialism of Jaws and the brutal strength of Taxi Driver. On whatever level (sometimes I'm not at all sure) they engage me so immediately and powerfully that I lose my detachment, my analytical reserve. The movie's happening, and it's happening to me.” 
 
 —January 1, 1977 
 
 Fargo 
 
 “Fargo begins with an absolutely dead-on familiarity with small-town life in the frigid winter landscape of Minnesota and North Dakota. Then it rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen. 
 
 To watch it is to experience steadily mounting delight, as you realize the filmmakers have taken enormous risks, gotten away with them and made a movie that is completely original, and as familiar as an old shoe—or a rubbersoled hunting boot from Land's End, more likely.” 
 
 —March 8, 1996 
 
 Ebert’s Best Burns 
 
 "Was there no one connected with this project who read the screenplay, considered the story, evaluated the proposed film and vomited?" 
 
 —from Last Rites review, November 19, 1988 
 
 "This is an old idea, beautifully expressed by Wordsworth, who said, 'Heaven lies about us in our infancy.' If I could quote the whole poem instead of completing this review, believe me, we'd all be happier. But I press on." 
 
 —from Baby Geniuses review, March 12, 1999 
 
 “I will one day be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.” 
 
 —from The Brown Bunny review, September 3, 2004 
 
 “Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line." 
 
 —from Mad Dog Time review, November 29, 1996 
 
 "Valentine's Day is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think it's more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date." 
 
 —from Valentine’s Day review, February 10, 2010 
 
 "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo makes a living cleaning fish tanks and occasionally prostituting himself. How much he charges I'm not sure, but the price is worth it if it keeps him off the streets and out of another movie." 
 
 —from Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo review, August 12, 2005 
 
 "There is a movie called Fargo playing right now. It is a masterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see Little Indian, Big City, I will never let you read one of my reviews again." 
 
 —from Little Indian, Big City review, March 22, 1996 
 
 "Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way." 
 
 —from Battlefield Earth review, May 12, 2000 
 
 "If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination." 
 
 —from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen review, June 23, 2009 
 
 "I hated this movie. Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it." 
 
 —from North review, July 22, 1994 ||||| Roger Ebert, the popular film critic and television co-host who along with his fellow reviewer and sometime sparring partner Gene Siskel could lift or sink the fortunes of a movie with their trademark thumbs up or thumbs down, died on Thursday in Chicago. He was 70. 
 
 His death was announced by The Chicago Sun-Times, where he had worked for more than 40 years. No cause was specified, but he had suffered from cancer and related health problems since 2002. 
 
 It would not be a stretch to say that Mr. Ebert was the best-known film reviewer of his generation, and one of the most trusted. The force and grace of his opinions propelled film criticism into the mainstream of American culture. Not only did he advise moviegoers about what to see, but also how to think about what they saw. 
 
 President Obama reacted to Mr. Ebert’s death with a statement that said, in part: “For a generation of Americans — especially Chicagoans — Roger was the movies. When he didn’t like a film, he was honest; when he did, he was effusive — capturing the unique power of the movies to take us somewhere magical.” 
 
 Mr. Ebert’s struggle with cancer gave him an altogether different public image — as someone who refused to surrender to illness. Though he had operations for cancer of the thyroid, salivary glands and chin, lost his ability to eat, drink and speak (a prosthesis partly obscured the loss of much of his jaw, and he was fed through a tube for years) and became a gaunter version of his once-portly self, he continued to write reviews and commentary and published a cookbook on meals that could be made with a rice cooker. 
 
 “When I am writing, my problems become invisible, and I am the same person I always was,” he told Esquire magazine in 2010. “All is well. I am as I should be.” 
 
 In recent years, Mr. Ebert became a prolific presence on Facebook and Twitter, on which he had more than 800,000 followers, and was a blogger as well. 
 
 He fired tweets with machine-gun rapidity, on topics both profound and prosaic. He commented on pro football, his captions for The New Yorker cartoon contest, an old pub he once frequented, James Joyce short stories and untold numbers of movies and television shows, to which he linked. “Pixar is the first studio that is a movie star,” went one tweet. 
 
 He swore he would not become addicted to Twitter, but emphatically did. But Mr. Ebert — whose handle was @ebertchicago — never tweeted during a movie. 
 
 Mr. Ebert liked to say his approach — dryly witty, occasionally sarcastic, sometimes quirky in his opinions — reflected the working newspaper reporter he had been, not a formal student of film. His tastes ran from the classics to boldly independent cinema to cartoons, and his put-downs could be withering. 
 
 “I will one day be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of ‘The Brown Bunny,’ ” he wrote. 
 
 His thumbs-up-or-down approach drew scorn from some critics, who said it trivialized film criticism. Speaking to Playboy magazine in 1991, Mr. Ebert agreed that his television program at the time was “not a high-level, in-depth film-criticism show.” But he argued that it demonstrated to younger viewers that one can bring standards of judgment to movies, that “it’s O.K. to have an opinion.” 
 
 In 1975 he became the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, for his Sun-Times reviews. His columns were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad, and he wrote more than 15 books, many by skillfully recycling his columns. In 2005 he became the first film critic to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 
 
 “In the century or so that there has been such a thing as film criticism, no other critic has ever occupied the space held by Roger Ebert,” Mick LaSalle, movie critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, wrote in 2010. “Others as influential as Ebert have not been as esteemed. Others as esteemed as Ebert have not had the same direct and widespread influence. And no one, but no one, has enjoyed the same fame.” 
 
 With Mr. Siskel, Mr. Ebert popularized television film criticism. Their collaboration began in 1975. Mr. Ebert was asked to appear on WTTW, the public broadcasting station in Chicago, as co-host of a new movie-review program. He was intrigued, but then taken aback when told that Mr. Siskel, the film critic of The Chicago Tribune, would be his partner. 
 
 “The answer was at the tip of my tongue: no,” Mr. Ebert told Time magazine in 1987. 
 
 As for Mr. Siskel, he said he initially had no desire to team up with “the most hated guy in my life.” ||||| Roger Ebert, the most famous and most popular film reviewer of his time who become the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism and, on his long-running TV program, wielded the nation's most influential thumb, died Thursday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. He was 70. 
 
 FILE - This July 18, 2005 file photo shows film critic Roger Ebert next to a sidewalk medallion bearing his name that was unveiled under the marquee of the historic Chicago Theatre. The Chicago Sun-Times... (Associated Press) 
 
 Ebert had been a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967. He had announced on his blog Wednesday that he was undergoing radiation treatment after a recurrence of cancer. 
 
 He had no grand theories or special agendas, but millions recognized the chatty, heavy-set man with wavy hair and horn-rimmed glasses. Above all, they followed the thumb _ pointing up or down. It was the main logo of the televised shows Ebert co-hosted, first with the late Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune and _ after Siskel's death in 1999 _ with his Sun-Times colleague, Richard Roeper. Although criticized as gimmicky and simplistic, a "two thumbs up" accolade was sure to find its way into the advertising for the movie in question. 
 
 Despite his power with the movie-going public, Ebert wrote in his 2011 autobiography "Life Itself," that he considered himself "beneath everything else a fan." 
 
 "I have seen untold numbers of movies and forgotten most of them, I hope, but I remember those worth remembering, and they are all on the same shelf in my mind," Ebert wrote in his 2011 memoir, "Life Itself." 
 
 He was teased for years about his weight, but the jokes stopped abruptly when Ebert lost portions of his jaw and the ability to speak, eat and drink after cancer surgeries in 2006. But he overcame his health problems to resume writing full-time and eventually even returned to television. In addition to his work for the Sun-Times, Ebert became a prolific user of social media, connecting with fans on Facebook and Twitter. 
 
 The thumb logo remained the property of Ebert and Siskel's widow, and in early 2011, Ebert launched his new show, "Ebert Presents At the Movies." The show had new hosts, but featured Ebert in his own segment, "Roger's Office." He used a chin prosthesis and enlisted voice-over guests to read his reviews. 
 
 While some called Ebert a brave inspiration, he told The Associated Press in an email in January 2011 that bravery and courage "have little to do with it." 
 
 "You play the cards you're dealt," Ebert wrote. "What's your choice? I have no pain, I enjoy life, and why should I complain?" 
 
 Ebert joined the Sun-Times part time in 1966 while pursuing graduate study at the University of Chicago, and got the reviewing job the following year. His reviews were eventually syndicated to several hundred other newspapers, collected in books and repeated on innumerable websites, which would have made him one of the most influential film critics in the nation even without his television fame. 
 
 His 1975 Pulitzer for distinguished criticism was the first, and one of only three, given to a film reviewer since the category was created in 1970. In 2005, he received another honor when he became the first critic to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 
 
 Ebert's breezy and quotable style, as well as his knowledge of film technique and the business side of the industry, made him an almost instant success. 
 
 He soon began doing interviews and profiles of notable actors and directors in addition to his film reviews _ celebrating such legends as Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum and offering words of encouragement for then-newcomer Martin Scorsese. 
 
 In 1969, he took a leave of absence from the Sun-Times to write the screenplay for "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." The movie got an "X" rating and became somewhat of a cult film. 
 
 Ebert's television career began the year he won the Pulitzer, first on WTTW-TV, the Chicago PBS station, then nationwide on PBS and later on several commercial syndication services. Ebert and Siskel even trademarked the "two thumbs up" phrase. 
 
 And while the pair may have sparred on air, they were close off camera. Siskel's daughters were flower girls when Ebert married his wife, Chaz, in 1992. 
 
 "He's in my mind almost every day," Ebert wrote in his autobiography. "He became less like a friend than like a brother." 
 
 Ebert was also an author, writing more than 20 books that included two volumes of essays on classic movies and the popular "I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie," a collection of some of his most scathing reviews. 
 
 The son of a union electrician who worked at the University of Illinois' Urbana-Champaign campus, Roger Joseph Ebert was born in Urbana on June 18, 1942. The love of journalism, as well as of movies, came early. Ebert covered high school sports for a local paper at age 15 while also writing and editing his own science fiction fan magazine. 
 
 He attended the university and was editor of the student newspaper. After his graduation in 1964, he spent a year on scholarship at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and then began work toward a doctorate in English at the University of Chicago. 
 
 Ebert's hometown embraced the film critic, hosting the annual Ebertfest film festival and placing a plaque at his childhood home. 
 
 Ebert also was embraced online in the years after he lost his physical voice. He kept up a Facebook page, a Twitter account with nearly 600,000 followers and a blog, Roger Ebert's Journal. 
 
 The Internet was where he forged relationships with his readers, posting links to stories he found interesting and writing long pieces on varied topics, not just film criticism. He interacted with readers in the comments sections and liked to post old black-and-white photos of Hollywood stars and ask readers to guess who they were. 
 
 "My blog became my voice, my outlet, my `social media' in a way I couldn't have dreamed of," Ebert wrote in his memoir. "Most people choose to write a blog. I needed to." 
 
 Ebert wrote in 2010 that he did not fear death because he didn't believe there was anything "on the other side of death to fear." 
 
 "I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state," he wrote. "I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting." 
 
 ___ 
 
 Online: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/
– Roger Ebert loved good movies—here's his top 10—but those reviews aren't nearly as fun as the ones for god-awful flicks. Some of the slams getting passed around in the wake of his death today: Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo: "Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks." (After Rob Schneider questioned the credentials of an earlier reviewer.) North: "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained it." Last Rites: "Was there no one connected with this project who read the screenplay, considered the story, evaluated the proposed film and vomited?" Brown Bunny: “I will one day be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.” Mad Dog: “Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line." Little Indian, Big City: "There is a movie called Fargo playing right now. It is a masterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see Little Indian, Big City, I will never let you read one of my reviews again." Baby Geniuses: "This is an old idea, beautifully expressed by Wordsworth, who said, 'Heaven lies about us in our infancy.' If I could quote the whole poem instead of completing this review, believe me, we'd all be happier. But I press on." For more, see Today.com and the Daily Beast.