knowing Tagged Articles at Cinematical

3 - 2 - 1 ... There's nothing like a ticking time bomb to give any movie a sense of urgency. Whether it's a literal set of explosives (as in Speed), a new ice age (The Day After Tomorrow), alien attack (Independence Day), hostage execution (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three), fatal poison (Crank), or the threat of loved ones being killed (Nick of Time), it's an honorable tradition to ratchet up the tension by pitting heroic characters in a relentless race against the clock.

This week marks the home video release of Alex Proyas' Knowing, a somewhat insane thriller in which astrophysicist Nicolas Cage comes to believe that future disasters can be predicted -- and races against time to stop the next one. You have to see it to believe (or mock) it. If you're in a countdown frame of mind, here are seven more entertaining thrillers that feature seriously motivated heroes trying to avert disaster. Consider this a starter list; see if you can be the first one to list your favorite(s) in the comments section. Go!

7. Back to the Future (1985)

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is just an ordinary high school student, doing a favor for good old Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) when he finds himself transported back in time 30 years. Before he knows what's happening, he's dodging Oedipal issues and trying to make sure his parents fall in love before he is gone, baby, gone. He is highly-motivated, to say the least, resulting in a pulse-quickening race in which a literal clock plays a major role.

Knowing
Forget Nostradamus. In this Nick Cage flick, a young girl in the '50s draws a picture of numbers for a time capsule. Fifty years later, when the contents are examined, it turns out that those numbers indicate the dates, death tolls, and coordinates of major disasters, and a few haven't happened yet! But it's not exactly the doomsday flick fans would hope for. In his review, Jeffrey M. Anderson says: "rather than becoming a comfortable hybrid between a small, smart movie and a big, dumb movie, Knowing became a horrible mutation, bulging out in all the wrong places, with unsightly scars where the butcher's knife had been." Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

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Push
Not every Dakota Fanning movie is a shocker of a drama. In this psychic espionage thriller, she plays a "watcher" and one of the psychic rogues determined to end a creepy government agency. (Also stars Chris Evans, Djimon Hounsou, and Camilla Belle.) For this feature, Anderson said: "Push is a better-than-average sci-fi thriller with genuine jolts and unexpected texture." Rent it. Also on Blu-ray.

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The Unborn
A girl is plagued with bad dreams, ghosts, and supernatural unpleasantness, so she hunts down a spiritual advisor in Gary Oldman to help. But that's not enough to help this film. Peter Martin wrote earlier this year: "Not even the sight of the lovely, lean and fit Odette Yustman, whose last name became Yowza! when the trailer and pics first hit the net, can salvage the film from mediocrity." Skip it. Also on Blu-ray.

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Also out: Night Train, Border Town, Five Fingers, A Day in the Life, The Prodigy, Flying By, Dead Wood, Applause for Miss E, One Missed Final Call, Garrison, Rivers End, Scorched, See Dick Run

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

This week we face an existential crisis as we approach the box office and must decide between Fighting (253 screens) and Knowing (264 screens). Let's listen in on this inner conflict.

Mind: Clearly we must choose Knowing.

Body: There you go again. You're forgetting that there can be no Knowing without Fighting.

Mind: How so?

Body: Just think about the cavemen days. No one would have had the opportunity to learn anything if the caveman hadn't learned how to hunt dinosaurs.

Mind: That's ridiculous. What have you been watching? "The Flintstones"? And how could the caveman have fought dinosaurs without stopping and thinking about how to make weapons?

Did you see any of the three big studio releases this weekend? Early box office returns indicate that Alex Proyas' apocalyptic science-fiction drama Knowing drew larger audiences than John Hamburg's bro-mantic comedy I Love You, Man or Tony Gilroy's clever Duplicity. Putting it in star terms, it looks like Nicolas Cage beat out the teaming of Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, as well as one-time box office champ Julia Roberts and Clive Owens. But did audiences flock to Knowing because of Nicolas Cage, or despite him?

I'm in the latter camp, and that's because his track record of choosing interesting projects has taken a nose dive since he won an Academy Award in 1996 for Leaving Las Vegas. As well expressed by John Anderson in The Washington Post, Cage's performance in Con Air marked the turning point, after which there have been "few detours from the action star/blockbuster track upon which Cage has trod with particularly graceless aplomb, and virtually no humor at all, except on top of his head, where his hair is continual source of mirth and mystery."

As I watched Cage as a college professor and widowed father in Knowing, I was struck by how hard he seemed to be Acting (yes, with a capital "A"), emoting with every muscle in his body vibrating, never giving a straight line reading for fear it might be considered ordinary or unimportant. Anderson wrote: "He glowers, he hunches, he looks meaningfully into the distance without it meaning anything at all."

Like Anderson, I miss the juicy, funny, very human Cage of Raising Arizona, Valley Girl, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Wild at Heart. He was sometimes overindulgent, but he compelled me to watch what he would do next. Not anymore. Do you still love Nicolas Cage?

Nic Cage-heavy advertising propelled Knowing to the top of the box office and a decent $24 million opening weekend, though we'll see what happens once audiences get a load of what this exceedingly weird movie is actually about. The arrival of Monsters vs. Aliens won't help either. I expect at least a 50% drop-off next week.

What's interesting about the $18 million bow for I Love You, Man is that I'm pretty sure the movie got an assist from the Judd Apatow brand even though Judd Apatow didn't have a damn thing to do with it. It's Paul Rudd + Jason Segel + tone. People love these clever, raunchy male-fantasy movies, and there's no end in sight. On the other hand, Duplicity may have come off as too smart for the room, as pervasive marketing, Clive Owen and Julia Roberts didn't amount to more than $14 million for Tony Gilroy's film. That's more than Gilroy's Michael Clayton ever made in a weekend, but that movie was platformed.

Watchmen's looking like $115 million at the end of the day. Other holdovers are looking more impressive: Coraline and Madea Goes to Jail are still bumming around the top 10 after seven and five weeks, respectively; the latter is by far Tyler Perry's highest-grossing film, while the former has parlayed a $16 million opening to what will be an $80 million finish.

The full top 10 after the jump.

Let's assume for the moment that there's such a thing as a hard line between "small, smart movies" and "big, dumb movies." Of course, we all know this isn't true -- just take a look at The Matrix (1999) for one example -- but this distinction will help me explain just how Alex Proyas's new Knowing doesn't work. It will also help simply because I don't want to give away the film's major plot turns and ending. (Although I'm afraid I may not have done such a good job of that; so if you're hoping to avoid spoilers -- even unintentionally implied ones -- please stop reading now.) OK, so let's assume that hardly anyone ever sets out to make a "big, dumb movie," except for maybe Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckhemier. Let's assume that Alex Proyas started out to make a small, smart movie, just like his great Dark City (1998).

Then let's assume that Nicolas Cage came on board, and since he was fresh from big, dumb hits like Ghost Rider and the National Treasure films, the producers begin to tailor it for him. It became bigger, with more plane crashes, car chases and explosions. But rather than becoming a comfortable hybrid between a small, smart movie and a big, dumb movie, Knowing became a horrible mutation, bulging out in all the wrong places, with unsightly scars where the butcher's knife had been. Now the movie's ideas no longer flow from one to the other; sometimes they make huge leaps and other times they just fizzle out. And the movie's big, dumb elements come in all the wrong places; they provide lots of anxiety but little relief.

Despite having the biggest opening weekend of the year, Watchmen took a sharp dive in its second weekend, falling about 66%, but still holding on to second place. Dwayne Johnson's new Disney outing Race to Witch Mountain took top honors, with the horror remake The Last House on the Left scaring up a respectable third. Miss March took in only $2.4 million, which is only enough to buy tenth place. Here's the top five:

1. Race to Witch Mountain: $25 million
2. Watchmen: $18 million
3. The Last House on the Left: $14.6 million
4. Taken: $6.6 million
5. Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail: $5.1 million


Three new ones this week providing a combination of laughs, thrills and romance.

Duplicity
What's It All About: Julia Roberts and Clive Owen are former intelligence operatives (CIA and MI6 respectively) who have traded in their cloaks and daggers for the world of corporate espionage. The two join forces to swindle their respective companies out of a product that will mean a fortune for whoever patents it first.
Why It Might Do Well: The two leads are the big attraction here.
Why It Might Not Do Well: The 60% rating at Rottentomatoes.com is still considered "fresh" but underwhelming.
Number of Theaters: 2,400
Prediction: $19 million

I Love You, Man
What's It All About: Paul Rudd plays a man about to marry the woman of his dreams, but with no guy friends to serve as best man, he sets up a series of man dates to court a new best friend. Jason Segel plays a personable yet possibly psychotic man who quickly becomes Rudd's BFF.
Why It Might Do Well: Both of these guys have made me laugh a lot in recent years, and the Tomatometer is up to 77%.
Why It Might Not Do Well: I think this one is pretty safe actually.
Number of Theaters: 2,500
Prediction: $22 million

Cinematical has received four brand new exclusive images from the film Knowing, which you can check out -- along with several previously-released images -- in the gallery below. Directed by Alex Proyas (Dark City) and starring Nicolas Cage, Knowing is an action-thriller about a professor who stumbles across terrifying predictions about the future inside a time capsule, and then sets out to prevent them from coming true. The very adorable Rose Byrne also stars, and Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) is credited as one of the film's screenwriters. I've been diggin' the creepy vibe in this one for awhile now, and I like Proyas as a director -- so I may take a chance right this second and predict that Knowing will be worth the watch when the film hits theaters on March 20.

Check out the new images in the gallery below, and the trailer after the jump.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Hugh Jackman returns to the role of the adamantium-clawed Wolverine. I loved the first two X-Men features and even kind of liked the third one, but the idea of Wolvie going solo without the rest of Xavier's crew leaves me kind of cold. Start sharpening your claws for a May 1 release.

Eden Log
The trailer for this French film is delightfully vague. Apparently the movie portrays a bleak future set in a subterranean world. I'm not real clear on the details, but the imagery is fascinating. This one goes into limited release in February.

I Love You, Man
Paul Rudd plays a man about to get married, but finds himself without male friends and in need of a best man. Soon he's good pals with Sydney (Jason Segel), but his relationship with his fiance begins to suffer. Both of these actors have made me laugh before, but I don't know about this one. Spread the love on March 20.

Against the Dark
Another zombie apocalypse? Nope, it's a vampire apocalypse this time, and with much of the world's population annihilated our only hope is a group of vampire hunters led by -- wait for it -- Steven Seagal. I'm not a Seagal fan but I can see this one having a certain B movie appeal. It comes out on February 10.

Back in July, Eugene brought up the initial teaser for Nicolas Cage's new thriller, Knowing, and as Cage struggled to crack a numerical pattern that has a nasty habit of correlating with major disasters past and future, it struck me as some sort of cross between The Mothman Prophecies (not bad) and his own Next (not good).

Now, this latest trailer comes across as more of a mix between Mothman and Dark City, which was also directed by Knowing helmer Alex Proyas, which gives me mild cause for concern. It's nothing against Dark City -- which is a fine film and all -- but I find the introduction of pale figures known only as "the whisper men" significantly less intriguing than the central doomsday concept. Whatever answer I had hoped might be behind the mystery at hand simply didn't involve creeps who often stand on the horizon and, well, whisper.

The train and plane crashes seem creep enough as it stands, and for all I know, those fellas on the outskirts could figure into the plot quite nicely. I, and we, won't know until March 20th if my skepticism is unfounded. At the moment, though, are any of you guys and girls sold on this?