Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel Ebert Changed Movies Forever, by Matt Singer. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2023, 352 pp

In today’s ever-expanding landscape of online cultural criticism, the aphorism “Everybody is a critic now” is a timely and succinct description of our era. Matt Singer, editor of ScreenCrush and current chair of the New York Film Critics Circle, offers his historically aware perspective on the contemporary boom of film reviewing in Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever, recounting the life and career of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. Their onscreen collaboration, which lasted for nearly twenty-five years (1975–99), dictated the future developments in the field of film criticism while setting the standards and assessment criteria for the subsequent wave of television film reviewers. Siskel and Ebert, who worked as film critics in two of the most prominent Chicago newspapers at the time they began their collaboration (the Tribune and Sun-Times, respectively), locked horns in countless heated debates while deliberating the latest box office releases in their immensely popular television show, originally dubbed Opening Soon… at a Theater Near You.