Drag Me To Hell (2009)

- 2 1/2 Eberts

I'm not that big on horror flicks but I had heard some pretty good things about this movie so I picked it up.
Overall, I thought it was well done. It was a well done creepy, scary movie. It wasn't on the level of The Exorcist, but it was made with that kind of shocking style.
If you are a fan of movies like The Exorcist and The Omen then you will probably enjoy this.
Roger thought it was OK and gave it 3 stars in his review. He said "Drag Me to Hell is a sometimes funny and often startling horror movie. That is what it wants to be, and that is what it is."

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

- 2 1/2 Eberts

I had been looking forward to this movie for a long time. I heard a lot of negative reviews. People were saying that it really wasn’t a Sherlock Holmes movie. I have to say that I just thought the movie was fair. Robert Downey Jr. really didn’t play Sherlock Holmes. He did have a friend named Dr. Watson, but Dr. Watson was engaged. He also lived at 221B Baker Street. He plucked the violin a little bit. He was good at making deductions (although this part was underplayed ). And he had an adversary/lover named Irene Adler.
This Sherlock was mostly a physical hero. He knew some form of karate and was fighting people for large portions of the movie. There was also something goofy about the character as portrayed by Downey, and Sherlock was definitely not goofy. The story was kind of convoluted and again looking to tap into the Da Vinci Code conspiracy themes.
I thought the look of the movie was really good. The street scenes, the room interiors and the House of Commons were really well done.
Overall I thought the movie was just fair. If the character hadn't been Sherlock Holmes but just some Victorian character I probably would have liked it better. I hope the sequel in 2012, where Sherlock meets Moriarty is more faithful to the Arthur Conan Doyle character.
Roger thought the movie was pretty good and gave it 3 stars in his review

Not Knowing Again

In his year ending picks of the Top Ten Movies of the year, Roger picked Knowing. I had already seen it, thought it was mediocre, but I thought I had to see it again. I couldn't be that wrong. Roger said in his listing.

"Among the best of science fiction films--frightening, suspenseful, intelligent,
and, when it needs to be, rather awesome. In its very different way it's
comparable to the great "Dark City," by the same director, Alex Proyas. That
film was about the hidden nature of the world men think they inhabit, and so is
this one. I loved the film's extravagance of energy, and the hard-charging
Nicolas Cage performance (so different from his work in "Bad Lieutenant.") My
praise stirred up a fierce pro and con debate among readers"

I love science fiction (and Dark City in particular) and I really like Nicolas Cage so I must have missed something. It started off well. The burying of the time capsule with Lucinda's numbers in it was creepy and interesting. Finding her in the closet with the whispering noises was just creepy.

John Koestler, played by Nicolas Cage, has a young boy at the school that is opening the time capsule from fifty years earlier. John teaches astro-physics at MIT. His wife has died and he things that life is just controlled by random events. His son gets the envelope with Lucinda's numbers. He also starts to hear the whispering.

John takes a look at Lucinda's numbers one night when he was drinking. It has 9/1/01 and the number of people killed that day. It also has dates and numbers for hundreds of other tragedies for the last fifty years, including his wife's death in a fire. Three of the dates haven't occurred yet. According to the numbers 81 people will die tomorrow.

The whispering people pull up in a car and give John's son Caleb a black rock. John just happens to be on the scene of where a plane crashes. He has now figured out the the other numbers he could not decipher before were latitudinal locations and he is at the location where the predicted tragedy will occur. John is really freaked out now. John thinks the numbers are warnings meant for him. Caleb starts seeing visions.

John finds Lucinda's daughter, Diana, and tries to talk to her. She wants nothing to do with him. The whisperers stand outside the house at night. John goes to the NY location where the next tragedy is to occur but he can't stop the train crash.

John hooks up with Diana and goes to Lucinda's old house. Meanwhile the whisperers come to the car for Caleb and Abby and say they can come with them. John confronts a whisperer and a bright light comes out of his mouth blinding him. John figures out what the code is saying :everyone else (ee) will be going tomorrow.

On a second viewing, I still think the movie is pretty mediocre. The beginning was good and I actually liked the ending idea, it was just connecting the dots that didn't work that well for me. Still, worth seeing.

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