Roger Ebert is memorialized by Scott Tobias, one of my favourite movie reviewers. As this obituary shows, you can fill at least part of the void left by The Great Ebert by checking out the AV Club, where Ebert’s disciples carry on his work.
Now, please pardon my indulgence as I break obit form and speak personally, but as a film critic operating out of Chicago, I can’t pretend that I didn’t know him or that he didn’t have a profound impact on my life—an impact that he likely didn’t know and that’s likely shared by so many other film critics and cineastes, whether they had the pleasure of meeting him or not. Cinema is a river with many tributaries, and I’m sure I’m not alone among movie-crazy teenagers in the ‘80s in using Roger Ebert’s Movie Home Companion as the boat downstream. You go through all the four-star reviews. You see Taxi Driver, and then of course you have to see Raging Bull, and then every other Martin Scorsese picture that sits on the video shelf. And then you get into the movies that influenced Scorsese, which is a lifetime in itself. You argue with him, you glean insights in the things you watch, you learn an entire new way of thinking, talking, and writing about the movies. And you never stop watching. You never stop debating. You have a companion for life, even now that his is over.