Knowing (2009)

Ok, so Nic Cage may not be the actor of the century but he does do poe faced well, lol. However this movie is highly under-rated. Chandler Canterbury is fantastic and the special Fx are some of the best ive ever seen. The storyline is also thought provoking and new. My only gripe is the ending, which wouldnt have been my choice.

Fmovies: From the trailers of Knowing you'd be convinced that you're going to watch a cheesy, try to save the world picture with a wound tight Nicolas Cage at the center gritting his teeth and ducking his way to the perfect ending. Well, you'd be partially correct. Cage is definitely giving his wound tight hero routine that he's worked so hard to develop over the last half dozen films. As for the cheese factor, that's where you'll be surprised. Director Alex Proyas manages to deliver a rather decent sci-fi flick that has plenty of suspense and intelligence.

The plot turns around John Koestler (Nicolas Cage), an MIT astrophysics nerd turned Indiana Jones when a time capsule is discovered at his young son Caleb's (Chandler Canterbury) school. Inside are drawings from students in 1959 predicting what things would be like in 2009 some 50 years later. The drawing that Caleb comes home with isn't a drawing at all but a series of seemingly random numbers. Koestler becomes obsessed with the numbers and their meaning or what they seem to mean. The whole thing shakes him to his scientific core and a quest has begun.

The film is very lucky to have director Alex Proyas from films such as Dark City which is his true geek film and critical acclaim as well as I, Robot and Garage Days. The visual and special effects are outstanding. It was surprising how much suspense was in the script (Ryan Douglas Pearson and Juliet Snowden) which gave the film a real thriller atmosphere which continues to build in tone as the mystery is unraveled.

I admit I went into this film expecting a rehash of National Treasure on a more global scale. The sci-fi aspect of the premise is very well thought out and told. The acting by co-stars (Chandler Canterbury, Rose Byrne and Lara Robinson) are solid performances and stand in complementary contrast to that of the tightly wound Nicolas Cage. The geek factor of Knowing is rather high with lots of number configurations and what-if scenarios which is great for the sci-fi fans. At times your brain may have to turn on in order to follow the film, but that is what made Knowing such a pleasant surprise to me.*

I have read a lot of totally negative views about this film, and so I can only say that some people simply have no imagination.

"Knowing" works at every level. It is a brilliantly executed film. And the final is breathtaking.

I watched this film with my wife and we are not easily pleased movie watchers.

I find myself being critical of the negative reviews, because I am astounded at their lack of imagination.

Without imagination, we would never have had The Time Machine thanks to Herbert George Wells. This is just one example.

Another is Steven Spielberg's "Close Encounters". Imagination is the key word here, and so many reviewers did not have any whatsoever.

Knowing kept my wife and I on the edge of our seats, it was clever, it was imaginative, it was first class.

Knowing fmovies. I know it's a bit late for a review but I feel compelled to reply to some of the criticism leveled at this movie. The reviews tend to be based on a few mistaken assumptions.

1) The movie is pro scientology propaganda

If there is any truth to this then the propaganda is very obscure, as a quick reference to scientology symbols does not include the 7 pointed star as per one detractor. To state that the movie uses a numerical based prophesy and that this is indicative of scientology is conspiratorial and nonsensical. Both the bible and koran are full of them. Maybe I am too ingenuous but at no time did I feel I was being led along a path of conscription to scientology.

2) plot holes due to slim chances of a text fortuitously falling into the hands of a person intelligent enough to decipher the meaning and be the father of one of the chosen survivors and have the descendants of the original prophecy play a part in the fruition of the plan.

fair enough, but nobody seems to question as to why the prophesy itself is possible. Surely if the universe was deterministic, as suggested by the very presence of a prophecy, then a sufficiently advanced civilization able to foresee the prophecy would also be able to foresee the path they have subscribed to the resolution they have decided on.

3) The movie doesn't make sense or jumps around too much.

Fortunately there are many straight forward shows and cartoons to watch instead .

I thought this was arguably one of the best movies of our time. With that said, I've gotta admit I'm a scifi movie lover and these movies are my kinda thing.

This movie literally had everything I typically LOVE in a movie, a great beginning, a thriller climax, and a killer ending. There were no plot holes to this film, which initially made me love this movie in the first place. One thing I love about this movie has to be after I watch it a couple of times- I actually notice little hidden things in the climax that ultimately lead up to the ending, things you don't typically notice when you first watch this movie.

Those who love the indie film-type endings, or those who love horror or slasher films, or actually anyone who likes cliff-hanger endings- this might not be for you. But if you love apocalypse type movies, or are a thriller fanatic then you'll hopefully like this movie. This movie also supports the Christian/Catholic faith- so if you are against it in any way- this movie may not suit you. With that said, it's NOT a Jesus loving movie. The ending has a lot to do with the Christian faith and if that's not for you- don't watch it.

All in all, this is a pretty spectacular movie. The music was on cue with everything in the movie and the scenes were incredible. Each scene had you gripping onto your seat in anticipation. Although this is very under-appreciated, I hope you will give this movie a try.

I feel a strange shift of priorities within moviegoers today, when a movie like District 9 can use very familiar content and simply shake it around a little, and then be hailed as a masterwork of originality and become immensely popular - while a movie like Knowing will be heavily questioned and criticized beyond it's proportions despite, or perhaps due to, the fact that it actually takes an actual leap of originality. I wonder when the latest time it was I saw a Hollywood-movie end up where this one ends up. While not being perfect, Knowing still is a proper science-fiction film in the vein of 2001 - A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Certainly not as good, for various reasons, but at least clearly part of the genre.

The storyline of Knowing is kind of a reversed bottle neck, by the end the multitude of the story is as big as it gets but to begin with, we are in a kind of X Files territory where we get a spooky prologue with a mystery note being dug under the ground (I won't go into the details, because it's really not important for me to go over them) and post credits we pick it up 50 years later when the note ends up in the hands of MIT professor John Koestler (Nicholas Cage) who is one of those I-lost-my-wife-so-I-lost-my-faith kind of guys, believing that the universe as we know it is all random and coincidental. Easily cracked, the numbers on the note, written by a little girl and buried for five decades, declare the dates and places of all future disasters to come, including death tolls. Cage sees 9/11 predicted from this little girls hands in 1959, as well as the Katrina and several disasters that haven't taken place yet. Without saying too much, he doesn't like what he sees at the end of the list of numbers.

I have heard the movie be called predictable. Looking back, I must admit there's a lot of places where I could have seen a lot of things coming. Many quite blatant clues are placed right in the very first couple of scenes and if you know your plot and character mechanics, you would spot some obligatory scenes to come. However, I didn't. It seems I was in on the ride. The plot of the movie, I think, expands in such a methodical way that as long as you get sucked in to begin with, you don't ask any more questions. The mystery is intriguing enough to have you focus on the next shot, not the overall story. I was fairly annoyed by the story device that was seemingly on the side of the plot, dealing with Cage's kid being stalked by a couple of evil, albino trench-coat-guys looking like a bunch German electro-goths. I found that they distracted the viewer from the more interesting, down-to-earth kind of story going on with Cage. But come the ending of the movie, nothing is really earthbound and they seem kind of forgivable in retrospect. Just like in Close Encounters, Knowing is a movie that starts out cryptic but ends out in big scale cathartic satisfaction and harmony, as if it all (*all*) makes sense in the end.

As for the flaws, I didn't mind the story or any of the plot holes (which mostly are arguable anyway). What did bother me probably more than anything else about the movie, though, was it's unfortunate big-time flirt with the melodrama. Take the score for instance, by Marco Beltrami, not really king of the subtle, and it's unfortunate for a movie which deals with this unusual hypothesis to have such operatic and stereotypical acting. And why, WHY, do Hollywood-movies nowadays feel the need to use those HORRIBLE matte paintin