Once one of the most interesting actors in the American cinema, Nicolas Cage is now the Peter Lorre of CGI: an actor forced, wide-eyed and ranting, to shrink in terror. In Knowing, Cage plays John Koestler, a soul-sick MIT prof, depressed because of the loss of his wife. Koestler overparents his pale son, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury). Under some amusing circumstances involving an elementary-school time capsule, the scientist gets his hands on a sheet of numbers. When decoded, they turn out to predict every disaster of the coming 50 years. As the horrific truth gradually sets in, young Caleb finds himself pestered by megrims of his own: "whisperers" (elongated, peroxided Billy Idols in Wehrmacht greatcoats). They stuff the boy's head with mathematical figures and present to him a spectacle of a world in flames, including, tragically, a moose on fire. In a remote trailer in the woods, John and the movie's girl, Diana (Rose Byrne), learn the secret of the numbers. After plagiarizing the punch line of a forgotten novel called Childhood's End by an obscure hack named Arthur C. Clarke, the various scriptwriters chucked it all and headed for the Bible. The film sets you straight: terrorizing you with apocalypse, it states that faith is the only salvation, emphasizing that only by becoming like children can we learn the truth. The money shots, better looking in Blu-Ray than they were in the theater, are the draw; too bad that's only five to 10 minutes of the film. To his credit, director Alex Proyas offers us the proverbial spectacular subway wreck that you can't take your eyes off of, complete with POV angles on the mushing up of bystanders. The CGI-gray skies during the plane crash aren't realistic enough to make it all more than just a momentary wow.

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