These reviews will be old school, new school, and whatever school I want reviews of both movies and video games.
Movie trailers are designed to have you say "I want to know what happens! I'd better go give that young gentlemen at the counter my hard earned money to see what happens!". However, sometimes you see a trailer where you want to know what happens, without that messy "Actually Seeing The Movie" to get in the way of it.
This is exactly what I felt when I saw the trailer for Know1ng. It showed Nicholas Cage finding a sheet of numbers buried in the ground for 50 years, that predicts every single disaster since it was written, and is now almost out of numbers, meaning it could be the end of the world. Meanwhile, strange men in black outfits are talking to his child, the one who found the numbers in the first place.
I actually ended up seeing the movie with some friends. I sat down, expecting a pretty lame movie with a ridiculous plot. But I came out of the movie feeling truly satisfied. Why?
I hadn't had a good laugh like that in a movie in a looooong time. We'll get to that later, let's go to a quick plot synopsis...
But let's talk about the big thing: this is easily one of the most ridiculous plots I have ever seen in my entire life. So much stuff is packed into this movie, and none of it is anything other than laughably strange. The men in black, the fact that Cage has the best luck in the world in that he is always right next to the disasters as they occur, and the strange voices always heard. Certain plot points are put in that really had no point...like Cage's wife being dead, for example, which has no additions to the plot at all. Other plot points are so minor that it's clear they were simply added in for the sake of adding a few extra minutes of random tension to the movie.
But let's be fair. Let's say that you really like the ridiculousness of it. Let's say you're a fan of over the top science fiction. In that case,this movie WOULD be for you...except for one thing. This movie has a fatal flaw, having nothing to do with the sci fi aspect of this movie, that is a death blow that absolutely no movie can recover from:
EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IS COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY UNLIKABLE.
Nicholas Cage is a drunk, a bad father, and generally a jerk. Caleb, his son, is a stuck up snot who hates his dad for no reason. Diana, Lucinda's daughter, is constantly hysterical and also terrible with the kids, at one point leaving them alone in a car in the middle of the woods to go examine her mom's house. And Diana's daughter is a know it all who barely talks. I've truly never seen a movie that is supposed to have good guys be the main character, but have all of them just be so...bad! It makes them nigh on impossible to give a crap about, and thus, impossible to care about the actual movie.
This is a movie that you will only enjoy if you have a really good sense of perverse comedic value, and even then it's hard to really like. The original premise is interesting, but the actual execution, revelation, and conclusion of it is so completely unbelievable that the movie works better as a parody/comedy than a sci fi/mystery movie.
The Brian J's Final Sentence: Just too over the top to take seriously, even as a sci fi movie, brought down by characters completely unlikeable.
I hope you enjoyed my first review, I plan on doing a lot of these for, as I said, both video games and movies. Thank you for reading, and watch out for snakes.
Movie trailers are designed to have you say "I want to know what happens! I'd better go give that young gentlemen at the counter my hard earned money to see what happens!". However, sometimes you see a trailer where you want to know what happens, without that messy "Actually Seeing The Movie" to get in the way of it.
This is exactly what I felt when I saw the trailer for Know1ng. It showed Nicholas Cage finding a sheet of numbers buried in the ground for 50 years, that predicts every single disaster since it was written, and is now almost out of numbers, meaning it could be the end of the world. Meanwhile, strange men in black outfits are talking to his child, the one who found the numbers in the first place.
I actually ended up seeing the movie with some friends. I sat down, expecting a pretty lame movie with a ridiculous plot. But I came out of the movie feeling truly satisfied. Why?
I hadn't had a good laugh like that in a movie in a looooong time. We'll get to that later, let's go to a quick plot synopsis...
A girl named Lucinda, 50 years ago, started hearing voices in her head (they council her, they understand, they talk to her). She wrote the numbers down and put them in a time capsule, which a young boy named Caleb gets 50 years later, and then he starts hearing voices in his head (They talk to him, the...oh nevermind, nobody will get the joke anyway). Caleb's dad, played by Nicholas Cage, finds the sheet and realizes that the numbers correspond to every disaster that's ever happened in the past 50 years, along with latitude and longitude coordinates and number of deaths.
Caleb starts to be visited by mysterious men in black suits and sunglasses, and Nicholas Cage (who drinks a lot throughout the movie while coping with the death of his wife) tries to figure out what the end of the numbers mean. He tracks down Lucinda's daughter, Diana (who has a daughter of her own), and together they realize that the numbers are signaling the end of the world. As the disasters happen around them and they try to solve the mysteries, their children are continuously visited by the men in black, who give them SMOOTH STONES.
As the US government finally alerts the population of the coming disaster (caused by solar flares, but I'm pretty sure that's not how reality works), the men in black steal the children. Diana gives chase in a car, but is struck by a semi truck and killed, leaving Cage to track his son and Diana's daughter down. Once he does, he runs into the mysterious men in black with them. At this point, you're wondering what the hell is going to happen, how the hell is this crisis going to be resolved, how is anything going to work out?
And as you're in the height of confusion, the alien space ship comes down.
Yes of course I'm serious.
The men in black turn out to be aliens, who want to save the boy and girl because they predicted the end of the world years ago, and sent Lucidna those numbers to help warn people. As they take the children away, we see hundreds of spaceships leaving earth, so we realize that there were lots of these aliens saving kids. After the world explodes (with some really cool effects to show the solar flare destroying a major city), we see Cage's son and Diana's daughter on an alien planet amongst strange looking plants, eventually running towards a tree in the distance. And then the movie is over.
When that spaceship first came down, I legitimately laughed loudly in the theater. From the point that the aliens came down, I treated the movie like a comedy, and was instantly a lot more entertained by the movie. I sat there, laughing at the amazing Deus Ex Machina of the aliens, as well as the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
Caleb starts to be visited by mysterious men in black suits and sunglasses, and Nicholas Cage (who drinks a lot throughout the movie while coping with the death of his wife) tries to figure out what the end of the numbers mean. He tracks down Lucinda's daughter, Diana (who has a daughter of her own), and together they realize that the numbers are signaling the end of the world. As the disasters happen around them and they try to solve the mysteries, their children are continuously visited by the men in black, who give them SMOOTH STONES.
As the US government finally alerts the population of the coming disaster (caused by solar flares, but I'm pretty sure that's not how reality works), the men in black steal the children. Diana gives chase in a car, but is struck by a semi truck and killed, leaving Cage to track his son and Diana's daughter down. Once he does, he runs into the mysterious men in black with them. At this point, you're wondering what the hell is going to happen, how the hell is this crisis going to be resolved, how is anything going to work out?
And as you're in the height of confusion, the alien space ship comes down.
Yes of course I'm serious.
The men in black turn out to be aliens, who want to save the boy and girl because they predicted the end of the world years ago, and sent Lucidna those numbers to help warn people. As they take the children away, we see hundreds of spaceships leaving earth, so we realize that there were lots of these aliens saving kids. After the world explodes (with some really cool effects to show the solar flare destroying a major city), we see Cage's son and Diana's daughter on an alien planet amongst strange looking plants, eventually running towards a tree in the distance. And then the movie is over.
When that spaceship first came down, I legitimately laughed loudly in the theater. From the point that the aliens came down, I treated the movie like a comedy, and was instantly a lot more entertained by the movie. I sat there, laughing at the amazing Deus Ex Machina of the aliens, as well as the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
But let's talk about the big thing: this is easily one of the most ridiculous plots I have ever seen in my entire life. So much stuff is packed into this movie, and none of it is anything other than laughably strange. The men in black, the fact that Cage has the best luck in the world in that he is always right next to the disasters as they occur, and the strange voices always heard. Certain plot points are put in that really had no point...like Cage's wife being dead, for example, which has no additions to the plot at all. Other plot points are so minor that it's clear they were simply added in for the sake of adding a few extra minutes of random tension to the movie.
But let's be fair. Let's say that you really like the ridiculousness of it. Let's say you're a fan of over the top science fiction. In that case,this movie WOULD be for you...except for one thing. This movie has a fatal flaw, having nothing to do with the sci fi aspect of this movie, that is a death blow that absolutely no movie can recover from:
EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IS COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY UNLIKABLE.
Nicholas Cage is a drunk, a bad father, and generally a jerk. Caleb, his son, is a stuck up snot who hates his dad for no reason. Diana, Lucinda's daughter, is constantly hysterical and also terrible with the kids, at one point leaving them alone in a car in the middle of the woods to go examine her mom's house. And Diana's daughter is a know it all who barely talks. I've truly never seen a movie that is supposed to have good guys be the main character, but have all of them just be so...bad! It makes them nigh on impossible to give a crap about, and thus, impossible to care about the actual movie.
This is a movie that you will only enjoy if you have a really good sense of perverse comedic value, and even then it's hard to really like. The original premise is interesting, but the actual execution, revelation, and conclusion of it is so completely unbelievable that the movie works better as a parody/comedy than a sci fi/mystery movie.
The Brian J's Final Sentence: Just too over the top to take seriously, even as a sci fi movie, brought down by characters completely unlikeable.
I hope you enjoyed my first review, I plan on doing a lot of these for, as I said, both video games and movies. Thank you for reading, and watch out for snakes.
