I've only ever been an occasional movie reviewer, and never a serious one, but as a constant writer I've always seen him as a great example of pithy and powerful prose. A lot of yesterday's coverage referred to his plain "midwestern" language, but really, it was simply that he was a clear writer who never used fancy words when ordinary ones would do.
Last night I decided I needed to watch a movie instead of the usual TV lineup, and I picked "The Godfather" from Ebert's list of 100 greatest movies of all time. I had the Blu-Ray set of all three movies (the third can be largely ignored) but hadn't opened it, so this was a good occasion.
Thanks to