KNOWING (a review)

KNOWING (2009) (a review)

An action sci-fi movie starring Nicholas Cage.

The story: Jonathan Koestler (Nick Cage) is a single father. When his son's school opens a time capsule, his son gets a piece of paper with weird numbers on it. His father realizes it is a code and that the numbers refer to disasters that happened AFTER the time capsule was buried. There are also three numbers unaccounted for -- three disasters yet to come. He tries to warn them, but only becomes a suspect himself. There are other strange people gathering children as well. And John needs to reconcile with his father. The disasters get worse as John realizes the final one will mean the end of the world...

Was it good?

Kind of. A lot of the movie worked. And I liked Nick Cage in this role. He makes a lot of bad films, but in the right role he can still be a superb actor. However, the movie does have the problems. First is that it's a downer. I mean, yeah, it's an end of the world movie but 2012 (for all it's hokum) at least got right that the movie should end with hope. This movie felt like a downer.

Also, the people kidnapping children and stuff...I mean it just felt so off. It was like a different movie entirely. This movie kept feeling like it was getting pulled in different directions -- it's about stopping the disasters, it's about his father (which was okay), then it's about this girl he meets, then it's about these kidnapping... It meant that what started out as a pretty cool first half just unraveled into a lot of unfocused hokum in the second half. My guess (and it's purely a guess) is that the writer didn't know what to do once he realized he had set out an end of the world scenario where it would be impossible to save people. Now what do you do? Well you intro new elements and try to throw in some weirdness. In all fairness, they did manage to avoid that "Hollywood" cliche ending, but unfortunately they didn't replace it with a better ending.

The funny thing is that it is all made up, so if you've come up with a scenario that is giving you problems...just change the scenario! It's fiction -- you can change whatever you want! If they had kept this movie on concept -- a message in a time capsule that fortells three disasters and a man's attempt to stop them -- it could have been pretty cool. Once they abandon that (basically once he realizes that it is impossible to do anything) is when most of the unraveling happens.

It's a shame because the first half I liked a lot. Enough to...

*** RECOMMEND FOR RENTAL ***

MEGAMIND (a review)

MEGAMIND (a review)

This is the second of two recent animated super-villain movies. The first was DESPICABLE ME (reviewed HERE) which featured Steve Carrell as the main villain. This one features the voice work of Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill, and Brad Pitt.

The story: Megamind, the arch-villain of Metro Man, is in jail but he breaks out and is able to finally defeat Metro Man and take over the city. Except then he becomes bored. He realizes he needs a hero to fight, so he decides to create a superhero, Tighten, except that superhero becomes an even worse supervillain than Megamind. Also, Megamind in disguise begins to date Roxanne, a woman who hates the villainous Megamind. Then to svae the girl he loves Megamind has to become the cities hero and defeat Tighten.

Was it good?

Not really. it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't especially good either. The problem is the core of the story just isn't that compelling. It basically is a guy who gets what he wants and then becomes bored. That's not much of a story. And him falling in love and deciding to become a hero, while okay, isn't real compelling either. Compare that to the much better DESPICABLE ME where a super villain has lost his funding and must try to steal the moon to regain his line of credit, but is thwarted by a more successful supervillain and now must use three orphans to try to defeat this other supervillain. That's a heck of a lot more interesting than just someone trying not to be bored.

As a result just about everything works better in Desp-Me than in Megamind -- the jokes are funnier, the action scenes are more interesting, the characters are more interesting. It all comes from concept and story. The stronger the motivation, the more interesting the heart of the story, the easier it is to get everything else to work around it.

The two things MEGAMIND does have is some first rate animation and great voice work. The animation is fantastic and I'm a big fan of Will Farrell and Tina Fey, even if this isn't their most interesting work.

For adults, there isn't enough here to recommend. For kids, there is probably enough to keep them entertained even if it won't rank as a classic.

*** KIDS -- RECOMMEND, ADULTS -- RENTAL ****

Still the animation is first rate and I'm a fan of