Knowing

[1.0
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Well, here's the story: In 1959, a Lexington, Massachusetts elementary school class draws pictures for inclusion in a time capsule. The only exception is strange little Abby, who insists on covering the page with digits. Nevertheless, it goes in with the other students' work. Jump to the present day, the time capsule is opened, and Abby's number list falls into the hands of young Caleb Koestler. His widowed semi-alcoholic father John, played by Nicolas Cage, is intrigued, and eventually works out that it's a chronicle of disasters, describing the time and place of major losses of human life. And only most of them are in the past.

The rest of the movie chronicles John's frantic efforts to figure out what's going on and see if Abby's final prediction of disaster—and as you can probably dope out from the DVD box over there, it's kind of a biggie—can be prevented.

Spoiler: nope, sorry humanity.

The only out is these weird, slightly menacing, folks hovering around Caleb (and also, as it happens, Abby's granddaughter). What's up with them?

I'm not a fan of movies where nothing the characters do make the slightest bit of difference to the final outcome. (Although they go through a lot of anguish on the way.) The movie also adds in heavy dollops of new-agey sophomoric mysticism, which also irritates.


Last Modified 2024-01-31 5:22 AM EDT