Film

Life Itself

Steve James adapts Ebert's memoir into a documentary that's really two films spliced together: the story of a brilliant, combative critic who made movie love a public language, and the unflinching record of his last months, jaw gone, voice gone, spirit intact. Funny, painful, and finally about what it means to keep working while dying.

TMDb rating7.5

If you liked this

Won't You Be My Neighbor?2018

Another documentary about a gentle, principled public broadcaster who used a mass medium for moral seriousness rather than spectacle, and whose legacy still catches people off guard with how much it can make them cry.

But If you find nostalgia-driven hagiography cloying, this one leans hard into reverence with almost no critical distance.

Won't You Be My Neighbor? poster

RBG2018

A crowd-pleasing portrait of a sharp, combative public intellectual who became beloved late in life, built from archival footage and warm testimony in exactly the same key as Ebert's film.

But It's more celebratory highlight reel than searching biography, and skates past complexity in favour of inspiration.

RBG poster

Gleason2016no page yet

An intimate, unsparing documentary about a public figure's body failing him while his mind and marriage carry him through, filmed with the same close, unglamorous honesty as Ebert's final chapter.

But It's relentlessly sad in a way that offers less humour or levity to lean on than Ebert's story does.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Cinema Paradiso1988

Ebert's whole career was an argument that movies could be a serious, transformative love — this fiction film tells that exact story from the inside, as a boy's lifelong devotion rather than a critic's.

A tender, old-fashioned Italian drama about a boy who falls in love with movies in a small-town cinema and never really leaves that love behind — cinema as first religion.

But It's unabashedly sentimental and slow, closer to a lullaby than a documentary's brisk momentum.

Cinema Paradiso poster
More like this (8)

Hoop Dreams1994

Steve James's breakout documentary, following two Chicago teenagers chasing basketball scholarships over years — the same patient, novelistic eye for ordinary life that he later brought to Ebert.

But Three hours long and rooted in 1990s Chicago basketball culture that some viewers may find themselves outside of.

Hoop Dreams poster

Amy2015

A documentary built almost entirely from archival footage of a brilliant public figure, charting talent, fame, and decline with the same intimate access and eventual heartbreak.

But It's a much darker, more tragic story with none of the tenderness or hard-won peace of Ebert's ending.

Amy poster

Val2021

Val Kilmer's own decades of home footage, narrated through a throat ravaged by cancer, make this an eerie mirror of Ebert losing his voice and turning the loss itself into the subject.

But Kilmer's rambling, self-mythologising narration can feel indulgent compared to Ebert's clarity and self-awareness.

Val poster

Iris2014no page yet

A charming, late-career documentary about a sharp-tongued creative personality still working and delighting audiences into old age, with the same affection for a singular voice.

But Lighter and less confrontational about mortality — it's a celebration first, an elegy only in retrospect.

Score: A Film Music Documentary2017

For anyone who loved the film-nerd texture of Ebert's world, this is a warm, talking-heads tour through another unglamorous corner of moviemaking craft that rarely gets its due.

But It's a straightforward, admiring survey with none of the personal or emotional stakes of a life story.

Score: A Film Music Documentary poster

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present2012no page yet

A documentary about a demanding artist's life's work colliding with an unresolved great love, culminating in a public, emotional reckoning that echoes Ebert and Chaz's late-life devotion.

But Performance art documentaries are a specific taste, and some will find the central relationship melodramatic rather than moving.

Wit2001

Swap documentary for fiction and critic for professor, and it's the same confrontation: a sharp, witty mind using language and intellect as its last defence against a dying body.

Emma Thompson plays a brilliant, acerbic scholar facing terminal cancer with unsparing intelligence and dark humour, in a spare, devastating HBO adaptation of Margaret Edson's play.

But It's a stripped-down, theatrical two-hander with almost no plot relief — bleaker and more claustrophobic than Ebert's film ever gets.

Wit poster

The Odd Couple1968no page yet

Siskel and Ebert's on-air chemistry was pure odd-couple friction — genuine irritation fused to genuine need — and this film is the comic template for exactly that kind of double act.

Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau bicker their way through a classic comedy about two mismatched men forced to share a life, needling each other constantly while quietly depending on it.

But Broad, dated sitcom-style comedy with none of the emotional weight or real stakes of Siskel and Ebert's actual partnership.

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Recommended by

The Kid Stays in the Picture, Dick Johnson Is Dead, Cinema Paradiso, Val, Cameraperson