tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post6789283442812163765..comments2024-03-17T10:11:46.952-04:00Comments on Film Experience Blog: Knowing ReviewNATHANIEL Rhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11597109147678235399noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-65161880642325080652010-03-18T00:42:24.685-04:002010-03-18T00:42:24.685-04:00Oh, man, I'm watching it right now and really ...Oh, man, I'm watching it right now and really liking it. It's sooo flawed: bad VFX, everyone just screams in the last fifteen minutes...but it's pretty well-done. The music is so stylized 1950s, so I totally dig that. And while I don't believe in Jesus, I'm totally fine with mainstream movies that have a Biblical edge to them...as long as they're good. But I understand that that condition is where we disagree in the first place ;)<br /><br />That said...why would feverish religiosity calm down once Bush left office? Hasn't it always been thus in the USA? And if it became more pronounced in the past decade, I think that has more to do with 9/11 than with the President.Walter L. Hollmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13636732594078157905noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-56346509571095599022009-05-03T19:58:00.000-04:002009-05-03T19:58:00.000-04:00I love KNOWING! I think it's the best hollywod end...I love KNOWING! I think it's the best hollywod end-of-world-disaster film that has ever been made. Every end-of-world film that hollywood made never really ends the world, fellow Americans always saved the day. But this one does end the world while still maintaining to keep the hope factor for humanity. I salute Proyas and the writers for their bravery and brilliance to do so.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-87235310942207484262009-04-07T02:00:00.000-04:002009-04-07T02:00:00.000-04:00mmmm. I guess I'm in the minority on this one, Nat...mmmm. I guess I'm in the minority on this one, Nat, but I thought it was a great movie. Proyas and the writers deliberately decided to make this an opressive world with constant sense of dread, and some of your complaints - the "cheap shot" of the american flag, for example - are actually there in an ironical way (that shot comes right after a great sequence that could be read in a satirical way: Cage's character thinks it's going to be a terrorist attack and in the end results to be an accident, it's irony playing over the xenophobic paranaoia the western world lives in). The movie actually plays in several ways, and is open to interpretation, leaving up to you if they're aliens, angels or actually suggest that our religions are distorted ways of reality. I thought it actually delivers solid entertainment and a nice amount of questions which answers aren't actually chewed for you to swallow. I'm not going to say it's a masterpiece - as Ebert does, actually - but to me, this is going to be probably the "underrated" movie of the year. Plus, it features the best plane crash and train wreck in film history (the latter being a spit in its face of the infamous Die Hard with a Vengeance one, in which no one died or got barely hurt, lol).Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17365271118815910721noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-37001275042712978102009-03-29T13:16:00.000-04:002009-03-29T13:16:00.000-04:00DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE, I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO PAY T...DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE, I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO PAY TO SEE IT AND I STILL BELIEVE IT IS A PIECE O CRAP AND A WASTE OF MY TIME, AND ANYONE ELSE'S TIME WHO SAW IT.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-30417669522985752792009-03-24T17:40:00.000-04:002009-03-24T17:40:00.000-04:00The ending of this movie is not about Christian Ra...The ending of this movie is not about Christian Rapture ... it is about a Mormom idea of Heaven and afterlife Vs. Christian.<BR/><BR/>Christians believe Heaven is about unity with the body of Christ ...each individual must accept Christ as savior - which means your family may not be there.<BR/>Christians do not believe there will be giving and taking in marriage in Heaven.<BR/><BR/>Mormons believe Heaven is about being with your family forever ...something stressed in this movie. They also believe That each worthy man will be given his own planet ( like the kids ) <BR/><BR/>If this was about Christian rapture The preacher grandfather , his wife and daughter Grace would have been the ones raptured not left to burn. <BR/><BR/>Christian believe salvation comes through Jesus and as as someone else noted the truck at the end implies Jesus din't save anyone.<BR/><BR/>Though I believe the tuck says Jesus is the Tree Of Life ( not Jesus is the way the truth & the life ) <BR/><BR/>Someone said for the kids not to run to the tree ...the tree is supposed to be the Tree of Life ( it's in a field of finest wheat another symbol for life ) it's suppose to shw Jesus didn't save anyone but Life continues.<BR/><BR/>The Theology of this movie is very Mormon not very Christian ( keep in Mind Dark City was heavily soaked in Mormon symbolisim too ) <BR/>Much of Mormonism looks like Christianity ...they use the same words but define them differently as is seen in the conclusion of this movie.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-5703211120975248002009-03-24T04:06:00.000-04:002009-03-24T04:06:00.000-04:00Hey, much better movie than all the susy-wish-I-wa...Hey, much better movie than all the susy-wish-I-was-in-films have let on. Keeps you guessing and gives you something to discuss when you leave the theater.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04432264759910800598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-74653527977666708782009-03-23T08:44:00.000-04:002009-03-23T08:44:00.000-04:00So, better or worse than The Happening? Because th...So, better or worse than The Happening? Because this one sounds pretty awful as well.Pfangirlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04881211213654928985noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-88524587485538053002009-03-22T22:29:00.000-04:002009-03-22T22:29:00.000-04:00I thought that the film was great until the last 1...I thought that the film was great until the last 15 minutes. At that point I wished I had not wasted my money. If you watch it, look for the van in the next to last scene where Nicholas Cage is driving though the looters. The van is brown with white lettering saying "Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life". I can only assume that the reason for that particular message was to show that Jesus, and therefore, God, could not save anyone. What we needed was alien intervention. Salvation was not through the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ and was not for all who believed on His name but was rather only for a few children, chosen by an advanced race to be breeding stock for a new race. This is an old theory. Some believe that this planet was “seeded" by aliens with their DNA. Interesting thought but where did the Aliens get their DNA from? I believe the film attempted to discredit Christianity, Judaism, and Muslim beliefs. I need look no further than the appearance of the large tree during the last scene, representing, I believe, the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. So God did not place Adam and Eve in the garden, but rather, aliens did. There are obvious references to the first chapter of Ezekiel in the last part of the movie. Could this be an attempt to re-define God through New-Age theories? Perhaps, although there is no reference to God in a positive light anywhere in this book. What I perceived was an attempt by revisionists to explain what Ezekiel actually saw through the eyes of science rather than the dimwitted and dull eyes of a 5th century B.C. religious zealot. While I do not mind in the least films and books which open our minds to discussion (The DaVinci Code) I cannot see this film as anything less than an attack and a slap in the face to all who believe in the God of the Old Testament.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-75846672841689144062009-03-22T10:40:00.000-04:002009-03-22T10:40:00.000-04:00Haywood -- welcome! I hear what you're saying and ...<B>Haywood</B> -- welcome! I hear what you're saying and it's true that Cage has given better performances than MANY actors combined. But that was years and years and years ago. Plus I'll never understand people thinking Colin Farrell is a bad actor. The only explanation I can ever think of for people thinking this is that they haven't seen his smaller or artier films in which he is nearly always very good (In Bruges/Tigerland/The New World) and/or at least trying to do something interesting with the character (A Home at the End of the World)<BR/><BR/>he's so underrated as an actor (although, yes, very overvalued as a celebrity)<BR/><BR/><B>PDB</B>... I think some people are probably willing to give it credit for going "dark" in the finale but to me that's not risky at all. It's just pandering to the sizeable crowd that ate up Passion of the Christ. The apocalypse/rapture crowd. And that "Eden" finale was just about the dumbest thing i've seen in movies in many years.<BR/><BR/>I guess I'm reacting to it strongly because once Bush left office I was hoping that America could chuck the feverish religiosity for awhile. Lord knows that didn't make things peaceful and happy in the middle east --it doesn't make people happy anywhere though everyone refuses to notice this.NATHANIEL Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11597109147678235399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-59260016560780076962009-03-22T09:50:00.000-04:002009-03-22T09:50:00.000-04:00This was a terrible movie. But its main weakness ...This was a terrible movie. But its main weakness is not Nick Cage; it is in fact a mishandling of the story, beginning with the realization that knowing does not mean you can impact the future. In other words, the people here cannot make a difference. So the criticism is with the vision itself; unlike Dark City and the Crow, which were about the infinite spirit of “man” to make difference. The last 25 minutes of Knowing unfold (unravel would be more appropriate) like the screenplay had been lifted from a far right Christian perspective focusing on what some call The Rapture (where the chosen get to leave Earth while it is consumed by the fires of Armageddon. The stylized imagery at the end of the movie is like an overly zealous bit of religious propaganda. The chosen children, those who heard the whisperings of the pale people, romp across a new Eden with their bunny rabbits to re-populate the human species; a second (or third, or fourth) chance. They have forgotten all of their human connections. So there is no human growth here. We do not learn from our mistakes. Of course the writers could have taken a different tack. They could have used instead of “The Rapture” a biblical scene from the Old Testament when the Angel of God said he would spare Sodom and Gomorrah if he could find just one righteous soul. Nick Cage played just such a character, and in the end he found a personal redemption, not just because he felt the pain of all those who died in spite of his best efforts to save them, but because at the end, he gave up his only son to a better life knowing he would die. That single act was the act of a truly good man. This is the moment that should have been rewarded with salvation; in fact, from a structural perspective, the entire movie/story had been moving in the direction of the saving the earth. The more intrinsically logical and satisfying end would have been as follows: The pale people (those angelic beings – did you note their wings --, having found the one righteous man, would have banded together to protect the earth from the solar blast, thus giving mankind time to grow spiritually, and providing an ultimately satisfying end to a rather ordinary story overburdened with tiresome clichés.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-27359119481875974542009-03-22T08:59:00.000-04:002009-03-22T08:59:00.000-04:00Okay, First off.... If you hate Nic Cage and you h...Okay, First off.... If you hate Nic Cage and you hate his hairplugs... goto www.ihatenic-cageshairplugs.com .... Otherwise chill. The movie was good. Predictable, YES! But still good. I understand he is not the best actor of all time, but I can think of MANY more that are worse than he is. Colin Ferrell, Will Ferrell, Tyrese, Paul Walker, Steven Segal, Chuck Norris, etc. etc.... They were all in good movies, but as actors they are horendous.. ::THink:: Keanu Reeves in SPEED. The symbolism in the latter half of the movie was an interesting added bonus, religion vs. science, and the truth many feel that the two can coexist as one. Take out the actors that everyone here seems to despise and look at the movie as a whole. Great movie. And btw.... Dont Go To The Tree Kids!!!!!!!!!!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-68045590493596084132009-03-21T13:28:00.000-04:002009-03-21T13:28:00.000-04:00So, I didn't actually know this movie existed unti...So, I didn't actually know this movie existed until I read Nathaniel's review. Seriously.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-63855103316058497772009-03-20T20:06:00.000-04:002009-03-20T20:06:00.000-04:00Rental!Rental!Karenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06039130895443623988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-52433577186347435472009-03-20T19:43:00.000-04:002009-03-20T19:43:00.000-04:00Damn, and I was really looking forward to this! I ...Damn, and I was really looking forward to this! I guess I'll have to go see Duplicity instead. ::sarcasm::Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-4079329313412056582009-03-20T18:16:00.000-04:002009-03-20T18:16:00.000-04:00Yeah I saw this film about a month ago at a press ...Yeah I saw this film about a month ago at a press screening, and even professional critics were laughing all the way through it.<BR/><BR/>The funniest parts for me were Rose Byrnes "THE CHILDREN!!" ranting, Nicholas Cage kneeling in the rain looking up, but number one has to be the classic line "You want somma this?!" *beats up tree with baseball bat*.<BR/><BR/>Comedy of the year.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-89001610578751272272009-03-20T18:02:00.000-04:002009-03-20T18:02:00.000-04:00I agree with anonymous 5:01. Though sadly, I thin...I agree with anonymous 5:01. Though sadly, I think there are some other worthy entries on that list that would be much more painful to write about (*cough*JulianneMoore*cough*).<BR/><BR/>I have to say, though, I don't see why everyone has to keep ragging on Nic Cage's hair plugs as if that's what makes the performances bad. The performances are just BAD all on their own. The way he keeps trying to hide his baldness AND weird-looking face by bad overly long haircuts certainly contributes, but is by no means the determining factor. And the fact is, there are most likely many good actors walking around with plugs no one notices, because they're handsome actors with GOOD plugs and and they don't have bad acting and bad haircuts drawing attention to them. I'd actually put money on (very hunky) Patrick Wilson being in this category.<BR/><BR/>Nic Cage unfortunately just isn't able to work it. And yeah, you'd think as an "action hero" of all things, he could handle just not having hair.adam k.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13485604493059621307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-55746236878109316392009-03-20T17:01:00.000-04:002009-03-20T17:01:00.000-04:00You should do a top 10 some time of biggest gaps b...You should do a top 10 some time of biggest gaps between an actors best and worst performance. Because the difference between say -Next and Leaving Las Vegas is ridiculous. I think its crazy how an actor capable of being brilliant can sink so low ...same goes to Deniro and Pacino latelyAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-38346143796389294942009-03-20T15:41:00.000-04:002009-03-20T15:41:00.000-04:00Erich, thanks for catching the silver lining. If t...<B>Erich</B>, thanks for catching the silver lining. If the world is ending I'll never have to see Nic Cage's hair plugs again. Wheeeeeeee<BR/><BR/><B>anon 1:57</B> good point. <BR/><BR/><B>Katey</B> yeah. I keep reading "inventive" and i just wonder what's being invented. It must be a doomsday machine. if this is <I>good </I> filmmaking the cinema is dead.NATHANIEL Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11597109147678235399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-20722632659925647762009-03-20T14:29:00.000-04:002009-03-20T14:29:00.000-04:00Wow...kudos to you for even watching this film. I ...Wow...kudos to you for even watching this film. I could barely bring myself to watch the trailer.<BR/><BR/>I think the body snatchers got to cage soon after Raising Arizona.Sally Bellehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00522865527270681536noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-8899338080541757052009-03-20T14:16:00.000-04:002009-03-20T14:16:00.000-04:00I loved this, of course, but will there be a Dupli...I loved this, of course, but will there be a <I>Duplicity</I> review up soon?BeRightBackhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09386424531104200511noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-14662980520882552072009-03-20T13:57:00.000-04:002009-03-20T13:57:00.000-04:00"With Jason Statham and Bruce Willis and Jude Law ..."With Jason Statham and Bruce Willis and Jude Law and all these people never hiding their diminishing or absent hair why must Cage continue to have such terrible fake hair???"<BR/><BR/>Jason Statham and Bruce Willis and Jude Law are all handsome hahaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-4565225988058364402009-03-20T13:10:00.000-04:002009-03-20T13:10:00.000-04:00Nice writing! I like the punchy ending and your ru...Nice writing! I like the punchy ending and your ruthless coming down on sound cues. Fuck them sound cues! It's typical that someone like Cage would run around trying to avert inevitable disasters and upsetting the balance of flow, instead of trying to sit through an acting class or two, like the whole world wants him to.<BR/><BR/>It's amazing that an actor can luck out and be in a string of hits, so then years later, after strings of bombs, he's still getting top billing. Thank god the world will soon end and hopefully we will be FREE! Free of the Cage!Erich Kuerstenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02850572368098319317noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-50559572852121820492009-03-20T12:34:00.000-04:002009-03-20T12:34:00.000-04:00And it was kind of fun, right??I've been a little ...And it was kind of fun, right??<BR/><BR/>I've been a little horrified by reading occasional reviews/tweets talking about how Proyas is the man and how inventive this movie is. I guess people really, really want to give him credit for Dark City and The Crow and not admit that this movie is TERRIBLE. <BR/><BR/>And Brooke, I think this is one of those movies you'll catch on cable in 10 years and wonder how in the hell it ever got made.Kateyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06602654660381174664noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-11962215577821987742009-03-20T11:31:00.000-04:002009-03-20T11:31:00.000-04:00Ha!I am but by that point in the movie i was more ...Ha!<BR/><BR/>I am but by that point in the movie i was more terrified by how much the hair sticks out on either side of the face. It's such a weird frame for that face. I really don't get it. With Jason Statham and Bruce Willis and Jude Law and all these people never hiding their diminishing or absent hair why must Cage continue to have such terrible fake hair???NATHANIEL Rhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11597109147678235399noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8256060.post-62914987676869521312009-03-20T11:28:00.000-04:002009-03-20T11:28:00.000-04:00"We’re actually still looking at Nicolas Cage look..."We’re actually still looking at Nicolas Cage looking at something when we're told to be very afraid."<BR/><BR/>You mean, you AREN'T terrified when you look at Nicolas Cage's hairplugs?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com