Knowing (2009)

Director: Alex Proyas

Writers: Ryne Douglas Pearson, Juliet Snowden, Stiles White

Composer: Marco Beltrami

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Chandler Canterbury, Rose Byrne, Lara Robinson, D.G. Maloney, Nadia Townsend, Alan Hopgood, Adrienne Pickering, Joshua Long, Danielle Carter, Aletha McGrath, David Lennie, Tamara Donnellan, Travis Waite, Liam Hemsworth

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Knowing is Everything...

Plot: In the fall of 1959, for a time capsule, students draw pictures of life as they imagine it will be in 50 years. Lucinda, an odd child who hears voices, swiftly writes a long string of numbers. In 2009, the capsule is opened; student Caleb Koestler gets Lucinda's "drawing" and his father John, an astrophysicist and grieving widower, takes a look. He discovers dates of disasters over the past 50 years with the number who died. Three dates remain, all coming soon. He investigates, learns of Lucinda, and looks for her family. He fears for his son, who's started to hear voices and who is visited by a silent stranger who shows him a vision of fire and destruction. What's going on?

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!! YARRRRRR!!!!

I'm kind of torn with this one.  But first, Cage is pretty good and he leaves out the ham he sometimes delivers.  It's a down the line regular guy this time, OK if the regular guy is a professor at MIT.  The special effects set pieces are magnificent. How about that plane crash with the flaming bodies running from the wreckage?  WOW!  Then there's the shots of NYC being laid waste by the sun rays or something.  I wasn't exactly sure what it was but I went along with it.  But a film can't be all about the effects and still be interesting.  It's got to have a story and some good direction.  Proyas did a great job in delivering the tension and the mostly quick pacing.  There's that section toward the end that leads up to Diana taking the kids that slows the momentum.  That's the slowest spot.  After that you get the kids being taken up to heaven, a planet or whatever by what appear to be aliens or angels or alien angels or angel aliens.  I don't know.  That took the wind out of the sails.  But then, how else could you explain the kids writing the numbers, etc.  Ugh. Now that I'm thinking about it the less sense the whole movie makes.  Was the girl in '59 chosen?  Were there a shit ton of other kids chosen?  I'm confused and suddenly I don't care anymore.  Still, for the most part, it wasn't that bad of a picture.  How about those flaming crash survivors?