Roger Ebert Home

My Favorite Roger: Lisa Nesselson

"Love and Hate and Knowing, or Do Wings Have Angels?"

Why did I choose this blog post?

My immediate thought goes to this one, in which Roger defends the Alex Proyas film "Knowing" and eloquently goes to bat for Nicolas Cage's right to exist. Since David Gordon Green's "Joe" hit the fall festival circuit colleagues have been hailing it as a "return to form" for Cage. "Joe" is fine, but it's not FUN. "Knowing" is outrageous FUN. It does one of the things movies do best which is take us places we're unlikely to go in any semblance of our real lives. Roger's arguments for why the movie is way better than the critical establishment cares to admit could be applied to, say, "The Lone Ranger"—another movie I enjoyed because I was unaware that I was "supposed" to hate it.This essay inspired an incredible string of reader comments, almost all of them worth reading. I remember reading through the comments and Roger's comments to the comments and thinking "Gosh, not only was the movie fun but reading what other people have to say about the movie and the questions it raises is also fun."

I remember feeling grateful that Roger had a blog and that it was attracting so much high caliber activity.

Latest blog posts

Latest reviews

Comments

comments powered by Disqus