coming in now with a liberal-barfing predictive thumbs down.
You got that right.
Why would I watch leftists worshipping a leftist? Besides having horrible taste in movies, Ebert was a leftie jerk.
I think your prediction is probably spot-on; incidentally, the director of “Life Itself” (Steve James) was also the responsible for the basketball documentary “Hoop Dreams,” which Ebert absolutely loved. So in a sense, Steve James owed his career to Roger Ebert, so I’m expecting less biography and more hagiography.
In fairness, Hoop Dreams was a great film, and Ebert was correct when he lambasted Hollywood for failing to nominate it the “best documentary” category back in 1994. He also exposed the hypocrisy of the selection committee in that category, which (essentially) panned every entrant except the documentaries they wanted in contention. Despite that, Ebert was back slopping at the Hollywood trough in no time, and conveniently “forgot” that some of his friends deliberately rejected a very deserving documentary.
From his early days at the Chicago Sun-Times (late 60s) until the late 80s/early 90s, Ebert was one of the best writers on film, bar none. But once he became a brand and felt compelled to share his superior liberal vision with the rest of us, he was insufferable.