Knowing ( The movie )

[MOBIUS]

Empirically speaking, I have already seen the trailer and didn't like it. I know Shyamalan movies are **** (post 6th Sense and Unbreakable) because I have seen them (I only saw The Happening because it was free. It was still ****) - so for something to be deemed worse that them means, given what I have seen so far, that I know enough to know that it will in all probability be ****.

[Q Classic]

To be honest, the trailer looks kinda bad, and the reviews aren't too positive.

That's why I'm considering downloading it, as opposed to actually paying to see it. Worst comes to worst, it's suitable white noise that I can then delete to free up the 700mb.

As far as the ethics of downloading it? I wasn't going to pay for it. I never intended to see it. Thus, it's not really a "lost sale".

[Naked Gents Rut]

The MPAA has just been warned.

[FrostyBoy]

IMDB has a decent rating for it so far. (7.1). User opinions seem positive too. And looks like most people EXPECTED it to be cheesy.. but it wasn't.

[Joseph]

I saw the movie, and it was OK in my book. This could really happen in real life. We are only 93,000,000 miles away.

[Q Classic]

Metacritic has it at 41, RT at 23%. Sure, IMDb has it at 7.1, but it also has Twilight at 6.1, The Fifth Element at 7.4, and X-Men 3 at 7.0.

I'm not sure I put much faith in IMDb ratings, since they're going to be self-selecting. People will vote if they really like it or really hate it--not if it's eminently worthless and forgettable, like this one looks.

Of course, I'm skeptical of your opinions, honestly, FrostyBoy. Largely on account of your gullibility with regards to OnLive, as well as your previous thoughts on style and design, so you're unfortunately kinda confirming them.

[FrostyBoy]

You failed to understand me Q. I was fully aware of the problems of OnLive. I simply wanted to have an optimistic outlook on it.

If this were 60 years ago, and I asked on the forums, "Can we land on the moon?" Asher would have said "No" and list all the technical reasons why, and he would sound very convincing. But does that mean it can't be done? No, it doesn't.

I'm skeptical of ratings too, but I am MORE skeptical on review sites. You just have to know how to read the ratings on IMDB.

For example, Twilight got a high rating because only people who are stupid enough to watch it in the first place would even bother to check it out on IMDB and put in the time to vote - hence, high rating.

[KrazyHorse]

Especially those who see the movies first. I wouldn't be surprised if the tendency is for the ratings to drop over time.

[Docfeelgood]

It's their loss.

[Docfeelgood]

Plot** plot** plot** plot

Plot

The film opens in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1959, where a competition is held among the students of a new elementary school to celebrate its opening. The winning plan, from student Lucinda Embry, is to bury a time capsule containing the students' drawings of the future to be opened 50 years later in 2009. She is prevented from finishing her image, which is actually a series of seemingly random numbers, and goes missing during the ceremony. Her teacher later finds her in a gym closet, frantically scratching the remaining numbers into the wood of the door with her hands and begs them to "stop whispering". Fifty years later, the time capsule is opened and the pictures are handed down to the new generation of students. Caleb, the son of MIT professor and astrophysicist John Koestler, receives Lucinda's envelope. While initially dismissing them as random numbers, John accidentally discovers that the numbers have accurately predicted the dates, death tolls, and locations of every major disaster in the last 50 years; three of the events have not yet occurred.

When the first event occurs, a commercial plane crash which kills 81, the legitimacy of the numbers is confirmed. As his wife died in one of the past events, John starts to believe his son was chosen to get Lucinda's prophecies for a reason. After Caleb receives a vision of future global catastrophe from a silent man, John tries to contact the late Lucinda's daughter, Diana, to gain more information, but is rebuffed. But when John also predicted the second event, a collision between two trains on the New York City subway system, killing people on both trains and on the platform, Diana and her daughter, Abby, visit John and Caleb. They investigate Lucinda's old mobile home in the woods, discovering walls of news clippings of the events and a drawing of Ezekiel's Wheel. During their investigation, the group encounters the silent man and three others, who vanish in a flash of light when John confronts them. Later Caleb is found writing numbers very similar to the ones that Lucinda wrote without realizing what he is doing. This may suggest that those numbers are predictions for future events. As a result of the confrontation, Abby is revealed to have been contacted by the "whisper people."

Initially believing that the last event will kill only 33, John eventually re-examines the numbers after Diana's mention on how her daughter used to write numbers and letters backward. He discovers that the final digits are not "33", but actually "EE" written backwards, and the upcoming event is a massive solar flare unlike any other. It will be so strong, it will kill "Everyone Else". As Diana prepares to travel to a system of caves she believes will save them, John breaks into the school to steal the door Lucinda scratched the numbers on. At his house, he begins to scrape the paint off the door, but Diana refuses to wait for him, and leaves with the kids. As the solar flare approaches, it begins to disrupt cell phone signals, preventing John from contacting Diana. She is finally able to contact John through a gas station pay phone, and he tells her that the coordinates are those of her mother's house, which he believes is safe, while the caves won't protect them from the solar flare's radiation. When panic erupts at the gas station following the government's activation of the national Emergency Alert System and the president's announcement of the solar flare, two of the "whisper people" hijack Diana's car with the two children. Giving chase in another car, Diana is killed trying to run a red light, dying exactly at midnight, on the very day her mother predicted.

Arriving back at Lucinda's mobile home, John discovers the children are safe and comfortable in the presence of the "whisper people." The "whisper people" are revealed to be celestial angel-like beings who invite the children to escape the destruction "to help everyone start over." At first, Caleb is very reluctant to go when his father is not invited to come along; John successfully persuades him to go, saying that they will be together again eventually. The group of "whisperers" leave Earth on their "ship," a massive structure resembling Ezekiel's Wheel, as other ships also depart Earth. As anarchy reigns in Boston, John arrives to be with his father, mother, and sister just as the solar flare strikes Earth and kills all life on the planet. In the last scene, Caleb and Abby are dropped off on what appears to be a new Earth (albeit with at least two moons) as the other ships drop off their passengers. The movie ends as the two children, dressed in entirely white clothing, run toward a large white tree, possibly being the Tree of Life.

[MOBIUS]

Great. A ****ing religious 'Angels coming to save us' eden rebirth Christian bollocks movie...

I venture to suggest that the reason the IMDB ratings of this film are relatively high is because most IMDB posters are American, and most Americans are Christians who believe in God - of course those gullible idiots would like the movie given the inference that the 'good people' get saved and that the 'evil people' are burned to a crisp in the resulting armageddon...

Yes, I have really been 'converted' to seeing the movie now!

[Elok]

If I had to watch 300 to say that it was spectacularly gay and blindingly stupid, all of you have to put up with this Cage flick to pan it as well. It's only fair. Feel my pain!

[MOBIUS]

But that's the point - you didn't have to see it. Doesn't anyone have any free will here to make their own decisions any more!?

[Elok]

Sorry, Drake/NGR whined at me that I wasn't allowed to call 300 a crummy movie until I'd actually seen it. So I got it from the library, saw it, confirmed that it sucks, and reported back to Poly several months ago. If I wasn't spared, why should you all be?

[Naked Gents Rut]

You actually watched 300?