Awake in the Dark

A collection of greatest film reviews from a critic who “understands how to pop the hood of a movie and tell us how it runs” (Steven Spielberg).

Pulitzer Prize–winning film critic Roger Ebert wrote movie reviews for the Chicago Sun-Times for over forty years. His wide knowledge, keen judgment, and sharp sense of humor made him America’s most celebrated film critic—the only one to have a star dedicated to him on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His hit TV show, At the Movies, made ‘‘two thumbs up’’ a coveted hallmark in the industry. From The Godfather to GoodFellas, from Cries and Whispers to Crash, the reviews in Awake in the Dark span some of the most exceptional periods in film history, from the dramatic rise of rebel Hollywood and the heyday of the auteur, to the triumph of blockbuster films such as Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the indie revolution. The extraordinary interviews included capture Ebert engaging with such influential directors as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Werner Herzog, and Ingmar Bergman, as well respected actors as diverse as Robert Mitchum, James Stewart, Warren Beatty, and Meryl Streep. Also gathered here are some of his most admired esssays, among them a moving appreciation of John Cassavetes and a loving tribute to the virtues of black-and-white films. A treasure trove for film buffs, Awake in the Dark is a compulsively readable chronicle of film since the late 1960s.

“[Ebert] has a keen understanding of the way [movies] work.” —Martin Scorsese

“[Ebert’s] criticism shows a nearly unequalled grasp of film history and technique.” —A.O. Scott, New York Times