It’s hard to believe that I’ve been reading Roger Ebert’s reviews for over a decade now. He’s a thoughtful writer and as much as I’ve disagreed with some of his reviews (he gave Anaconda four stars), I always find myself comparing opinions with him on some of my favorite gems. That said, he’s grumpy bastard if you have to work for him as I did in the early 2000′s, porting his television reviews to the web. Often times, we’d receive the shows too late in the day for our Monday posting deadline, resulting in a venomous phone call from his television people. When Ebert was unhappy, they were unhappy and were they were unhappy, life was miserable.

In any case, Ebert has been generally positive with Romero over the years. He didn’t quite “get” Night of the Living Dead when it was released but he thoroughly enjoyed Dawn of the Dead. Ebert enjoyed Romero films because Romero used zombies as metaphors instead of targets. Even when Romero fumbled, Ebert could find a silver lining in the dropped ball which says a lot for Romero’s skills as both a writer and director.

These days, I’m thinking Ebert is a little cashed out on zombies. He recently reviewed Survival of the Dead and the old flame appears snuffed. In fact, I got the sense that Ebert was having a hard time staying interesting in just writing the review. Here’s a snippet:

All true. But after you’ve seen, oh, I dunno, 20 or 30 zombie movies, you sort of stop caring very much, unless something new is going on, as in “Zombieland.” At this point, I find myself watching primarily to spot and appreciate entertaining new ways to slaughter zombies.

With the rumor of a couple of new Romero zombie movies in the works, hopefully he’ll reawaken Ebert’s love of the dead. I’m not betting on it, but it would sure be a fine thing to see.

Survival of the Dead Review (rogerebert.suntimes.com <- new window)