Just over ten years ago, heads in the critics circle were turned when the great Roger Ebert proclaimed the so-so reviewed science fiction movie DARK CITY from director Alex Proyas as being the best film of 1998.
He was pretty much the only critic in the universe who lauded the film with high grandeur, saying “it stirred my imagination like “Metropolis” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” and “that it was a triumph of art direction, set design, cinematography, special effects–and imagination”.
He would again review the film in 2005 as part of his “Great Movies” series and after so much time had past, he had the same reaction to the film which had pretty much by then fallen into geek obscurity.
I believe more than ever that “Dark City” is one of the great modern films. It preceded “The Matrix” by a year (both films used a few of the same sets in Australia), and on a smaller budget, with special effects that owe as much to imagination as to technology, did what “The Matrix” wanted to do, earlier and with more feeling.
Ebert would record not ONE but TWO audio commentaries for the film’s dvd release (both are a delight to listen to, if nothing else to hear a critic completely geek out over a MODERN film and not something made before any of us were born) and it’s wonderful to see a film critic, someone as esteemed as Ebert just go completely crazy over a film that most people thought was good, very good but not a “classic”.
The whole DARK CITY saga reminds me of my own feelings towards VANILLA SKY, a movie that got generally good reviews among the regular critics but soon fell into obscurity but I have lauded the film since and plan to in the future. Maybe I too should do an Ebert styled essay on it?
Anyway, this week Ebert has once again geeked out over an Alex Proyas movie, calling the Nicolas Cage disaster movie KNOWING, one of the modern science fiction greats. Yes, that’s the movie about the ridiculous numbers and Cage’s awful line delivery, his crazy psycho screen persona, that awful embarrassing haircut and very lame plot.
Ebert says….
“Knowing” is among the best science-fiction films I’ve seen — frightening, suspenseful, intelligent and, when it needs to be, rather awesome.
To read Ebert’s geek out review, CLICK HERE.
11 Comments
i was not planning on checking out this film, but after ebert’s enthusiasm i have to give it a shot.
I think Ebert has had one too many radiation treatments. He’s talking like a man who wants to play nice on his way out the door.
And yeah, I know it’s a mean thing to say … but prove me wrong. The guy hasn’t given a film under three stars in probably two years. Something is definitely off about his recent reviews.
He gave “Shuttle” one star. THIS WEEK.
Well, then SHUTTLE must be a random collection of cutting room floor scraps, because Ebert loves EVERYTHING these days.
I thought proving you wrong would be enough to… prove you wrong, but how about some more.
Race to Witch Mountain: 2.5
Quantum of Solace: 2
Last House on the Left: 2.5
Sunshine Cleaning: 2
The Spirit: 1
Wow it’s amazing what you find when you look at things before making claims, isn’t it?
Pink Panther 2: 2
Push: 1.5
I mean, that’s just recently. I just scanned the front page. Over the past 2 years, you said? I’m interested to see what he was doing back when that radiation wasn’t corrupting his thoughts so bad.
I saw Knowing last night and I really liked it. There’s no doubt that the third act is a bit out there but as a whole the film is intense and thought proking. In some ways this film reminded me of Miracle Mile. A bit silly but still exciting. Personally I don’t get all the nic Cage hate. I really enjoy him. He certainly can carry a film and he’s not that over the top in this one except for one brief moment. The Plane crash scene is amazing as it’s actually pretty scary the way if was shot. Overall I liked Knowing despite flaws. Its worth seeing.
chuck
I agree with Roger Ebert. The film is a brilliant play on determinism, fate, and faith. As in Dark City, Proyas conjures an equally dark vision that contains visual elements and special effects which transcend much of the simplistic reviews gunning toward it. As for Cage, he is the perfect everyman, quirks and all, and gives emotional weight to the film.
Just saw it. Terrible dialogue, but a strong story carries it. Three stars.
I saw ‘Knowing’ last night. The wife wanted to see it more than me, but I thought it would be, y’know, alright. It was kind of like being asked if I wanted to go to McDonalds: I wouldn’t scream ‘fuck, yeah!’ at the possibility, but hey, I was open to it and I figured it would be acceptable at worst.
Except that, as it turned out, it was like going to McDonalds, being given a burger, biting into it, and discovering that what you thought was a reasonably so-so burger was in actuality A GREAT BIG STEAMING TURD.
The first two thirds of the movie were okay, hokum, obviously, but enjoyable enough. But then you get the Von Daniken/Left Behind crap with the angels-as-aliens, and you realise the whole point of the film is that Nic Cage, the GODLESS SCIENTIST, can be reunited with his father, THE GODLY PASTOR, and realise that SCIENCE IS WRONG and YOU MUST HAVE FAITH IF YOU WANT TO BE SAVED. Except even then you actually won’t get saved, because you aren’t pure enough, or you don’t believe hard enough, or you haven’t been chosen, or there are only child-seats on the spaceship or some such crap.
There are so many other things I want to say about how shit this film was, but I’ll keep most of them for my blog for reasons of space. But essentially, Knowing is awful, awful bilge, like an episode of the X-Files written by Ned Flanders. Only worse, because Flanders is actually a decent human being beneath his fundamentalist exterior, whereas the writers of this thing, on the evidence, are the worst kind of smug, superior, only-the-righteous-will-be-saved dispensationalist bastards going. Shame on them, frankly, and shame on Alex Proyas (whose other work I quite like), for getting drawn into directing this crap. A film which makes one long for the storytelling subtlety of M Knight Shyamalan really doesn’t deserve to be made at all.
The world is ending, take your bunny rabbit and get in the spacecraft….yes, this happens in The Knowing.
My friend Frank thinks it shold have been called ‘The Guesing’, because we still are.
The first ¾ of the film is not so bad. Then it just gets weird – which is ok, but it’s gets kind of self important at the same time, even the music gets pompopus. It’s like annoucing ‘this is an important movie and it means somehting”.
Also, check out the cast and crew credits – this was an Australin film, except for Cage, this was 90% Australian.
Ok… so not only does the movie take iself very seriously, it’s also lacking in hunmour. And wit… and charm and …. I could go on.
Anyway, I’ve got no idea what really went down with this picture.
A disappointing movie that I thought would be good since Ebert went nuts over it. The moral of the story seemed to be that if you’re a schizophrenic and hear voices, the ETs will rapture you off the Earth before it’s destroyed. If you’re a non-schizophrenic bible-thumper, well … you bet on the wrong team.
One Trackback
[...] Roger Ebert “geeks out” over The Knowing. Makes me want to see it. [...]