Ambrose Bierce Will Know KNOWING's No Good

Rating: 6/10 (22 March 2009)

Okay, Ambrose, I was going to give this a "1" rating (out of 10), but I gave it five bonus points for the classical music excerpts included in the otherwise overbearing score (two points for each of the uses of the saddest-music-in-the-world--used so much more effectively in Tarsem Singh's 2006 masterpiece, THE FALL--aka Movement II Allegretto from Beethoven's 7th Symphony in A Major, Opus 92=4 points, and one point for a piece after your time, the Jupiter Movement from Gustav Holst's Planets suite). It seems like Nicolas Cage (portraying M.I.T. astrophysicist John Koestler here) has done about eight similar I-try-to-save-the-world flicks in the past five years, and he's surprised everyone by being even lamer at this than Kevin Costner used to be. The only reason Bierce would want to see this is for the special effects rendering of the Prophet Ezekiel's wheels-within-wheels UFO. But will someone who has been in the deep freeze for 136 years really want to sit through two hours of absolutely meaningless melodrama (c'mon, wouldn't the benevolent aliens have something better to do for 50 years than to whisper into the ears of doomed people and make them scribble endless strings of numbers, from which NO GOOD COULD COME, even with John Koestler's totally implausible deciphering trick?) for five minutes of Armageddon? I'm sure Ambrose will lose NOTHING by simply tivoing to the good part, if tivo and KNOWING are around in 40 years. (And didn't director Alex Proyas realize people would find it cheap the way he stole the Tree of Life from the much better 2006 Darren Aronofsky film, THE FOUNTAIN?)
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: The body of noted American author (An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge) Ambrose Bierce, born June 24, 1842, recently was discovered in total cryogenic hibernation at the back of a Central American warehouse. Bierce is expected to be fully defrosted by late 2049 or early 2050. Based on my 85 previously posted IMDb comments and background in Bierce studies, the author's guardians have commissioned me to review a periodically updated list of films to help guide his future leisure pursuits, with the provision that my comments also be made available to the general public.