The Last Film Critic: Chicago and the Slow Death of the Professional Movie Review

In 1975 (that is 50 years ago as of this writing), Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times became the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize. To be clear, the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism itself was still barely out of diapers at that point, first awarded in 1970. But even then, the first five years of the award celebrated architecture, music, television, and art critics.

It gives some context to the state of film criticism that year, which also saw the debut of Opening Soon… at a Theater Near You on WTTW, Chicago’s local PBS affiliate—a show featuring Ebert and Chicago Tribune film critic Gene Siskel. It was the first iteration of what the show came to be called, once the two sparring rivals grew famous enough to have their names growled in the voice of Don LaFontaine in every television teaser: Siskel & Ebert.

Here on the other end of half a century, Chicago Tribune film critic Michael Phillips accepted a buyout to leave the paper this past month. The Tribune has also eliminated the position Phillips held down for 20 years. He departs the Tribune less than a year after Richard Roeper (Ebert’s cohost following Siskel’s death in 1999) left the Chicago Sun-Times in similar fashion: With a buyout, and the elimination of his position.

Speaking with Paste, Phillips said he’s aware that his generation of critics—and fulltime print journalists in general—is passing out of the industry. Prior to his time as film critic for the Tribune, Phillips was the paper’s drama critic and also wrote for the Los Angeles Times, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Dallas Times Herald.

“This is the first time in 41 years that I haven’t been working full time,” Phillips said. “That represents a hell of a lot of dumb luck and also being born at a certain time when you could zigzag around the country, in my case, in between two niche specialties, theatre and film, and get a really lovely career in daily and weekly newspapers out of it.”

For Phillips, Chicago’s major metro papers ditching their critics is another indicator of a contraction in news media. The movies beat, he said, is just one of many areas where news organizations are cutting back, to the detriment of local coverage.

“There’s a lot of nostalgia out there about the irony of the city that gave us Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel and At the Movies no longer employing any full-time daily film critics,” Philllips said. “We’ve lost a lot more than that, as have many other markets. You can talk about criticism as part and parcel with what I think a good news org is up to. When you start shaving away entire beats of coverage, that really is a sign of defeat, that the financial priorities and journalistic priorities couldn’t justify with the owners the value of maintaining compelling, engaging arts coverage in a city like Chicago.”

A Critic’s City

Chicago’s place as a bright spot in film discourse wasn’t solely the work of Siskel and Ebert, though their names and legacies are unavoidable among those who did their own heavy lifting.

Dann Gire was the Arlington Heights Daily Herald’s film critic until he, too, recently opted to take a buyout—he hopes to continue freelancing for the paper until at least this coming December, when it will have featured his byline for a full 50 years. Having gotten into the position almost by accident after a career covering cops and courts in the Chicago area (he was the only applicant with any film courses on his resume), Gire went on to co-found the Chicago Film Critics Association and serve as president for 22 years. Although its first iteration went bust in the ’70s, he participated in a second attempt that stuck. The association’s first official award ceremony in 1989 drew Spike Lee and John Hughes.

Gire said the lack of such an organization in light of the Siskel & Ebert phenomenon was one of his motivations in co-founding it.

“[The Siskel and Ebert phenomenon] was a unique moment in time, when two individuals came together with the right personalities and the Midwestern mentality, which was crucial to their success,” Gire said. “I thought, well, New York has a film critic association, L.A. has one, Boston, San Francisco, and why doesn’t Chicago have one? We’re the city with the two most popular and admired and most acknowledged film critics and we don’t have a film critics group?”

Neither Siskel nor Ebert joined at first, but Gire said Ebert eventually came around, and it was a mark of prestige for the group, which continues under president Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com’s Managing Editor. (Siskel remained aloof.)

Chicago’s place as a hub of film discourse came about in no small part to Siskel and Ebert’s presence, the efforts of organizations like the Chicago Film Critics Association, and the litany of others that carry the men’s names: the Siskel Film Center run by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, RogerEbert.com, and Ebertfest, the annual film festival administered by the University of Illinois, originally known as “Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival.”

Deirdre Crimmins, newest member of the Critics Association board, said losing print critics like Phillips and Roeper is a glaring absence for their respective institutions, in light of how much film news is happening Chicago.

“The film scene here in Chicago, with the Music Box Theatre and the Siskel Center, is just so strong,” Crimmins said. “The idea of that no longer being considered a part of what there is to write about is kind of weird. The Chicago International Film Festival is coming up. Are [those papers] going to send someone to it?”

Regardless of how Chicago’s two flagship daily papers are or aren’t going to cover the arts, it isn’t the end of criticism in Chicago, of course—there’s an entire roster of essential film writers just among those affiliated with the Chicago Film Critics Association. But the end of the jobs once held by Siskel and Ebert are another in a long series of bellwethers that tell of a change—not just to an industry, but to a craft.

Gire said the end of his position at the Daily Herald came about due to a sad reality facing print media. Money is tight, and a film critic’s salary has become a financial albatross for publications fighting to stay afloat. Gire said his salary was among the highest in the newsroom, and that it was clear where cuts would happen if he didn’t leave of his own accord.

“Many of the major newspapers have access to the wire services, and it’s a lot cheaper to use that than to have a full time person on staff,” Gire said. “Critics’ jobs are not as essential as the basic news crews and editorial staff.”

But if that’s not worth keeping in-house for cash-strapped print media, what’s so important about it? What is being lost?

Why Is Criticism Even Important?

“Criticism is the most personal writing of the journalism world,” Gire said. “An excellent review reflects not just what the movie is about or who’s in it or ‘Does it suck?’, but, if you’re doing it right, is an evaluation of an art form that’s filtered through the perspective of the author.”

Some of the value in having many critics, and distinct local voices, Gire said, is that sticking with a particular reviewer’s distinct tastes and areas of expertise can also teach the reader about their own tastes in comparison.

“It’s not the job of a critic to tell the audience what to do or think. It’s their job to deliver an honest personalized evaluation of the work—to determine its value, not its entertainment qualities alone,” Gire said. “You can get to know [a reviewer], and say to yourself, ‘He liked that film, but I tend to disagree with him on those,’ or ‘He hates this movie, maybe I’ll try it!'”

Readers also lose valuable local insight into movies, Crimmins said. Even just having a reviewer who recognizes when their city isn’t being represented respectfully or correctly is a loss for local readers.

“I think what’s lost there is readers feeling like they’re seen, like they can relate to the material,” Crimmins said. “Why would I pick up a newspaper if I can hop online and see the exact same thing? You stop paying attention to things that you think aren’t for you.”

Nor, Phillips said, is it just large cities like Chicago that suffer from the loss of their own, in-house critic, or their own person to hold down any journalism beat.

“Even in an area like Champaign-Urbana [home of Ebertfest], you start taking that coverage away, and your world gets a little smaller,” Phillips said. “It doesn’t do anything to sustain a readership for the future, and it’s too bad.”

What’s Coming Next?

Gire acknowledged one other thing about older film reviewers from traditional outlets: All too often they were older white men, writing for their own perspectives.

“In the olden days, and it’s not that olden, movie reviews were dominated by white, male, middle-aged reviewers, and there was this tendency to talk to the audiences as if you could control them,” Gire said. “Gene Shalit was famous for saying ‘Don’t walk to see this, run!'”

And, he said, this more exclusive brand of critic was writing in a time when film was much less accessible than it is today. It’s never been easier for someone to become immersed in film history.

“In the beginning the gatekeepers were very strong. There was a homogeneity to the product, and that wasn’t good,” Gire said. “Today, the teens and college kids have access to every movie made on the planet. It used to be that if you wanted to become a well-rounded movie critic, you had to go to big cities and find places that had a wide variety of stuff that wasn’t just Walt Disney or Paramount or Universal. Today’s audiences can see and absorb and enjoy and talk and dissect more movies in 10 years than I was able to do in a lifetime.”

Film criticism—or at least writing on the art form—has experienced a similar quantum leap. That’s a double-edged sword, said Clint Worthington, a current member of the Critics Association and Assistant Editor at RogerEbert.com.

On the one hand, Worthington said, the rise of online spaces has made cultural criticism like his more democratized than ever, but on the other, it has ushered in an age where search engine optimization and the attention economy are making things harder for everyone—traditional publications and online-native outlets like Consequence, where he first freelanced, or The Spool, which he founded in 2019 and sold in 2023 (and where he remains Editor at Large).

This decentralization also means the newest generation of film writers don’t have the benefit of as much institutional knowledge and financial support, he said.

“The state of our industry is such that the last few people who can make a fulltime living as critics are the newspaper guys, and when they are gone, they’re not going to be replaced,” Worthington said. “In my early years, I didn’t have the benefit of a strong editorial hand. I’ve had great editors at Consequence and RogerEbert.com. They’re also busy taking on an insane workload. You kind of can’t expect the same rigorous edit that people who came up in newspapers did. We’re emulating what we’ve seen in the folks that did have it, and as those people disappear, the Roepers and Phillipses of the world … there is a brain drain that happens.”

Worthington also said that the algorithmic ground keeps shifting under these scrappier, online-native publications, forcing them to chase what’s popular.

“Sites are shuttering every day, more and more qualified people are fighting for work,” Worthington said. “Even Google’s shift to AI overviews affects site traffic. I hate that we have to focus on [search engine optimization], but the attention economy is so fierce that we have to do whatever we can.”

I asked each of my interview subjects what they thought was the most important thing to get across in film writing now, while they fight to stay relevant in a changing film industry, a shrinking media environment, an internet run by the A.I.-obsessed. Worthington brought up an oft-repeated Roger Ebert quote: “It’s not what a movie is about, it’s how it is about it.”

“A film review is the beginning of a conversation,” Worthington said. “The best way we can combat this kind of shrinkage is encourage people to increase and develop their curiosity about film beyond just watching the thing.”

For Crimmins, it’s about providing insight that the wire isn’t—much of her writing covers festivals that feature films off the beaten track.

“I think everything coming off the wire ignores the fact that criticism and cinema studies are not just reviews,” she said. “There’s always a need for a hot take, or putting a film in a historical context that might not be in the marketing. I feel like there’s a lot of engagement with that material, and people seem to be open to that sort of writing.”

Phillips said the work of critics is in part to help guide readers as film fully enters the streaming era, and the amount of choices have become overwhelming.

“Any moment in film history, good or bad, healthy or less so, you look for critics who can be honest brokers to help you sort through the morass of choices out there,” Phillips said. “We have more movies than we can keep track of, streaming that we don’t even know we’re paying for half the time. That’s the moment you look for somebody to help guide you through it, not with a piece that literally A.I. could’ve written, but a good, opinionated, informed bit of insight. That’s why I want to read critics now more than ever.”

The end of Phillips’ tenure at the Tribune doesn’t signal the end of movie coverage in Chicago, and it doesn’t mean he’s out of the game, either. Phillips remains as involved in Roger Ebert’s institutional legacy as anyone. He’s now in his 11th year as advisor and mentor of the U of I College of Media Roger Ebert Fellowship, and he’s a regular presence at the annual Ebertfest at Champaign’s Virginia Theatre. Phillips is also a steady presence on the Filmspotting podcast, and can be heard weekly on the WFMT.com film music program “Soundtrack.”

But it sure is the end of something that started something.

“Right now, we have a situation where we have to look to some cities where criticism is still viable: L.A., New York, or smaller cities that still have fulltime film critics like Boston and Philadelphia,” Phillips said. “But Chicago just isn’t one of them right now.”

Kenneth Lowe is a regular contributor to Paste Movies. You can follow him and support his entertainment and fiction writing at his Patreon.