Metacritic reviews

James tells this unapologetic story with little sympathy, as per Ebert’s wishes, and a lot of passion—he wants the audience to really know who Roger Ebert was, and understand the importance of his work.

James cuts — as in all of his best work — straight to the human heart of the matter, celebrating both the writer and the man, the one inseparable from the other, largely in Ebert’s own words.

Life Itself gives measured and pragmatic reflection to many of the things that are most interesting about Ebert's personal and professional life.

James has done a wonderful job of telling a colorful life story.

This is a big-hearted, absorbing documentary about a writer who kept on writing until very near the end. Anyone who cared about Roger Ebert will find it necessary viewing.

Far more than just a tribute to the career of the world’s most famous and influential film critic, the often revelatory Life Itself is also a remarkably intimate portrait of a life well lived — right up to the very last moment.

This is an impressively clear-eyed and deeply moving portrait.

Unusually moving (not only to stray film critics in your crowd), director Steve James's keen profile of the late, great Roger Ebert works both as a compact appreciation of the reviewer's vast public impact, as well as an unflinching peak into a cancer patient's final months, fraught with pain, hope and constant treatment.

It isn’t surprising how warm and enjoyable Life Itself is – James is a singularly talented documentarian who literally owes his career to Ebert, and Ebert approached the facts of being filmed the same way he faced films, or for that matter faced anything: With honesty and good humor.

There's a sense throughout of Steve James rushing and dutifully covering all his bases to evade accusations of creating a puff piece.