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"Knowing" is an underappreciated disaster movie that holds its cards close to its chest for most of its run time. That it starts as a movie of one genre, and then pivots to a different one more than half way through didn't sit well with critics and audiences of the time, and these days it's one of many forgotten Nic Cage movies. If you are able to go into it fresh, with little knowledge, I find it utterly captivating. The comparisons to Shyamalan are tempting, but the roots of this movie are closer to Spielberg and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" than "The Sixth Sense". There's a great mystery, a couple quirky kids, and a Dad who is just trying to do the best he can to make sure everyone is OK. Actual Shyamalan's "The Lady in the Water" is a good comparison, and like that movie, "Knowing" is overly maligned for being pretty fantastical at times. The action scenes in this movie are true surprises, and use clever misdirection tricks (in both direction and plot) that will force the audience to anticipate one thing to happen, when really it's going to be something completely different. This fits the vibe of the entire film, and the ending goes in territory that most don't see coming. There's Beethoven's standby "7th Symphony" to score all the unsettling parts. Its faults are in its child actors, who aren't Spielberg caliber and deliver pretty serious, important lines in the wooden way that that child actors often do. You have to sort of drop everything and believe in the world director Alex Proyas created, much like his previous, excellent film "Dark City". There's also a decent amount of sappiness and forced religious meaning in the film that's hard to avoid. These flaws are minor though, and overall it's a great movie that is a fun watch once a decade or so. I hadn't seen it in awhile, having forgotten most of the core twists, and came away just as gripped to my seat as I was in the theater.

Jumbled. “The Bank Job” is jumbled, both literally in the movie by the robbers, and in the script by the writers. This is a movie that rides the wave of better Guy Ritchie films and looks the part, but feels cheaper and worse made. Even the normally kinetic Jason Strahan is muted. It’s a shame, because you can feel that there’s a good movie in there somewhere, but there’s too much going on and it gets… well, jumbled. “The Bank Job” has lots of twists, and the title event happens early enough in the movie that you wonder what the back hour of the movie will be about. Well, there’s a lot in that bank, and that drives a cascading tumble of events that leads to said twists. This is apparently inspired by a true story, and there’s some end cards before the credits roll to let us know some of the side characters were real people, but the robbery itself is a pretty boring affair. Nearly every scene in “The Bank Job” feels like a worse version of something you’ve already seen. The heist recalls “Sexy Beast”, the twists between the cops and robbers feels similar to “The Departed” and Jason Strahan reminds me of similar favorite actor Jason Strahan (sic) in similar, better movies. It could be worse, and it has its moments, but “The Bank Job” drops the bag pretty early on. One last comment. If you’re a fan of random, unnecessary nudity scenes, this movie seems to find a reason to add them.