Reeling Backward: "Ghost Rider" (2007)

"Ghost Rider" came out the year before "Iron Man," which marks the official kickoff of the Marvel Cinematics Universe aka MCU. This puts it in the company of various other superhero movies based on Marvel Comics, which has been feast-or-famine territory.

These non-MCU films include the X-Men series, the first two Spider-Man iterations, a pair of lackluster Fantastic Four flicks and horrid attempted reboot, "Hulk," "Daredevil," "Elektra," various Punisher movies and the Blade trilogy, which has been deeply memory-holed by people still insisting that "Black Panther" was the first black superhero film.

"Ghost Rider" was pretty well savaged by critics but did solid business, enough to spur a 2011 sequel subtitled "Spirit of Vengeance." That did less business but was made for about half what the first one was, so it's not inconceivable that another one could ride again.

Plus, star Nicolas Cage seems to be riding something of a career resurgence. (Though he has reportedly sworn off the character.)

"Ghost Rider" has the reputation of being total garbage, and while it's not very good I would put it more in the trashy category -- meaning it has redeeming values even as it misses its targets, or takes aim at unworthy ones.

Tonally the movie isn't quite a straight-out comedy, which would put it years ahead of the watershed of "Guardians of the Galaxy," but something closer to self-conscious kitsch. Most of the actors seem to realize they're in a goofy movie and play their scenes with a mischievous twinkle in their eye and a "cashing a check" smirk on their lips.

If someone ever set out to make a superhero movie with the heart of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," they'd get something pretty close to this.

Strangely the one member of the cast who seems to be more or less playing it straight is Cage himself. He portrays stunt rider/pawn of the devil Johnny Blaze with a sort of sullen Elvis Presley shtick. His Johnny has a dead-eye stare and vaguely Southern warble. He spends most of his time cooped up in his garage/apartment in a ratty neighborhood, poring over books on the occult.

Cage doesn't transform into the flaming-skull, hog-riding antihero until one-third of the way through the film's runtime, which largely feels like wasted time. Here we establish the parameter of Blaze's history: son of a low-rent carnival stunt rider, he made a pact with the devil at age 17 to cure his pop's terminal cancer.

Alas, ol' Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda, extravagantly pompadoured and growly) plays dirty pool and immediately has dad killed during his next performance.

Johnny rides on down the road, leaving behind his once-and-only love, Roxanne. Twenty years later he has become the world's most famous stunt rider, known for leaping his motorcycle recklessly over impossible spans and recovering from seemingly fatal crashes on a routine basis.

His only real friend is Mack (Donal Logue), who arranges all the stunts and leads the crew, but keeps getting fooled by Johnny, such as bringing in military helicopters for him to jump over at a football stadium. I'd call Mack his drinking buddy, except Johnny don't drink, preferring martini glasses full of jelly beans or other sugary treats.

As far as lady loves in superhero movies go, Roxanne is pretty much the bottommost drawer. Played by Eva Mendes in full pout mode, Roxanne became a TV reporter who acts haughty but appears to have very little self-esteem. After Johnny stands her up at a restaurant to go hellfire-burnin', Roxanne downs a bottle of wine and demands that the waiter tell her she's pretty.

Woof.

Wes Bentley practically slithers as the heavy, Blackheart, who's supposed to be the rebel son of the Devil, sort of the way Mephistopheles was for God, or something. He's a shrimpy, pale dude all in black whose superpowers are a freezing touch and a totally douche-y personality.

I'm a little unclear on the metaphysics-slash-mythological backdrop. It seems the Devil creates ghost riders via a contract in blood, granting them powers but forcing them to act as his "bounty hunters" to go after people who are also indebted to them.

Apparently an Old West ghost rider named Carter Slade, a sheriff-turned-villain back when they rode horses instead of motorcycles, refused to uphold his end of the deal, stealing a contract for 1,000 evil souls in the town of San Venganza. Blackheart wants it so he can use their power to take over the world, and the Devil orders Johnny to get it back.

Wait, so the Devil... doesn't want to unleash hell on Earth? That seems a little off-brand for him.

Sam Elliott turns up as the gravedigger at a local cemetery where Johnny wakes up after his first transformation into the Rider. He seems to know an awful lot about the Ghost Rider employee benefit plan, schooling him in his newfound super-powers.

It includes the usual strength and durability upgrades, not to mention turning his head into a flaming skull. This is part of the hellfire Johnny controls, which not only burns but can transform inanimate objects into their melty fire-and-brimstone equivalent. So Johnny's high-handled chopper becomes a screaming, twisted machine with burning wheels and a shotgun turns into a damnation-shooting boomstick.

His favorite weapon is a length of chain he keeps coiled around his torso or the back of his bike, which when enflamed he uses to snag and burn his enemies.

The other biggie power is the Penance Stare, wherein the Rider has an evildoer look into his eyes (sockets, anyway) and they are confronted with the pain of all the innocents hurt over the course of their lives. Basically, they die a horrible death while confronting the stains upon their soul. Blackheart doesn't have one of those, but we shall see how that turns out.

The CGI effects of "Ghost Rider" were criticized at the time, but they look fine to me. The biggest downside is that the Rider doesn't look or sound anything like Nicolas Cage, his voice turning into the usual growly thing with a bit of reverberating ghost quiver.

Generally studios don't want to pay big stars a bunch of money and then hide their beautiful faces. "Iron Man" cleverly solved this with a HUD display inside his helmet so we still see Tony Stark. Here, it basically switches between Cage and the Rider.

I thought I caught Rebel Wilson in an early bit role as a punk girl who is saved by the Rider. Brett Cullen plays Johnny's doomed dad, and Laurence Breuls, Matthew Wilkinson and Daniel Frederiksen play a trio of fallen angels who act as Blackheart's lickspittle minions. Strangely, he never throws them at the Rider at once, preferring one-on-one encounters where they are easily trounced.

Mark Steven Johnson wrote and directed "Ghost Rider" after the relative success of "Daredevil," which sold a decent amount of tickets despite despite being not very good. Neither is this one, though I can't say I hated the film.

It's goofy and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, freely violating its own internal logic whenever the rules don't suit. Example: Carter Slade shows up in the place we most expected him, just so we can get a cool traveling montage of flaming motorcycle rider next to flaming horseman. Then he casually rides off, saying he could only "change one more time," bowing out of the final battle with Blackheart.

Really? How did Carter know this? Did Mephistopheles provide him with a handy readout or some such? I gotta say, he fares pretty well: a lawman who betrayed his badge for greed, ran away from the devil, lived an immortal lifespan, trains up his replacement and then goes for One Last Ride without having to actually sacrifice himself in classic cinematic wingman style.

As eternal damnation scenarios go, that's a pretty sweet gig.

Video review: "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"

Apparently, it takes an animated superhero to defeat Disney/Pixar.

I don’t mean to imply that the animation giant from Mouse House is deserving of villain status. Far from it. But they’ve dominated the Academy Awards category for best animated feature and short for a dozen years at least. It was time for new blood.

That’s why I think it’s great that “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” won the animated Oscar. Aside from simply being the best animated feature film of 2018, it also has a welcome theme about how anybody can find their inner superhero.

The idea is that several alternate universes collide, bringing a half-dozen or so different versions of Spider-Man into this existence. Peter Parker is still around, but as a burnt-out, middle-aged and paunchy version of himself.

The real star is Miles Morales (voice of Shameik Moore), an Afro-Latino teenager who finds himself manifesting the same Spidey powers. Other iterations include a couple of spider-girls, a film noir version (Nicolas Cage) and even a pig version named Spider Ham (John Mulaney).

They’re all battling Kingpin (Liev Schreiber), who’s building some kind of massive collider machine, along with a host of other reimagined Spider-Man foes: Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, etc.

Told in a cool visual style that feels like flipping through a comic book, this is one new take on a well-worn hero story that’s truly fresh.

Video bonus features are sumptuous. Aside from the lack of a filmmaker commentary audio track, it’s just about the whole hog.

“We Are Spider-Man” is a deep-dive documentary into how anyone can find the hero inside them. “Spider-Verse: A New Dimension” looks at the film’s signature visual style.

Other features focus on the voice actors cast; a tribute to Spidey creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko; an Easter Egg challenge; character designs; “Alternate Universe Mode” with alternate and deleted scenes; music videos; and an all-new short, “Spider-Ham: Caught In a Ham.”

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Review: "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

One thing I don’t get: why does the new Spider-Man wear sneakers? Wouldn’t that mess up his ability to stick to walls and such?

Oh, well. If that’s the worst complaint one has about “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” the retconned spinoff of the Spidey franchise, they’re doing alright.

After all, this is a story that brings in a half-dozen or so Spider-people from other dimensions, all battling their common nemesis, Kingpin. One’s even a pig in a miniature version of the iconic red-and-blue outfit named Peter Porker.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel about yet another version of Spider-Man, with yet another actor inhabiting the role. And an animated film would make it seem too much like a TV show, I feared.

What the filmmakers have delivered is an incredibly fast-paced movie that plays like a cinematic version of flipping through a comic book, with inset images and freeze frames intruding upon the normal imagery. It seems aimed at older kids (age 8 and up, I’d guess), though it’s an enjoyable experience the whole family can enjoy.

The notion here is that in our universe, Spider-Man/Peter Parker is killed by Kingpin (voice of Liev Schreiber) at age 26 after 10 years wearing the costume. This is witnessed by Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), a gawky Afro-Latino teen who has just been bitten by a radioactive spider himself and started to exhibit the same powers.

Kingpin had been building a massive collider device to breach dimensions, and as a result of the experiment several other versions of Spider-Man are sucked into Miles’ reality. They range from the creepy to the comedic, starting with Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), the aforementioned porcine knockoff. Nicolas Cage does the voice of Spider-Man Noir, who is from the 1930s and wears a trench coat and fedora hat, and even is rendered in black-and-white.

There’s even two females: Gwen Stacy/Spider-Girl (Hailee Steinfeld), who wears a cool white costume, and Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), a Japanese girl from a distant future who wasn’t actually bitten by the spider, but instead became friends and together they battle crime in a spider-robot.

The first one Miles runs into is a version of Peter Parker (Jake Johnson) who’s pretty close to the “normal” one, except life hasn’t gone so well for him. He’s about 40 years old, graying and a bit paunchy, divorced from Mary Jane and only fighting crime sporadically, mostly just handing his apartment eating pizza and feeling sorry for himself.

Miles forms a bond with this Peter, who after some kvetching is eventually persuaded to act as a sort of mentor/teacher. He helps Miles bone up on the Spidey powers, as well as discovering a couple Miles has that he doesn’t: the ability to turn invisible and emit electrical charges through his hands.

I liked the colorful, perspective-bending look of the movie, which combines elements of German Expressionism, steampunk, Japanese anime and probably a few others. The film was directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman, the latter of whom also co-wrote the script with Phil Lord (“The Lego Movie”).

For example, Kingpin is so big that his head appears on the front of his massive body, a few feet below his shoulders. Green Goblin is reimagined as a reptilian titan, and Doctor Octopus (Kathryn Hann) is a woman who sort of resembles Professor Trelawney from the Hatter Potter movies, less ditzy and more diabolical.

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” takes a Cuisinart to the hero’s mythology, cutting everything up into bits and reassembling the pieces into other configurations. It’s a lot of fun, even if I still don’t get the shoes.

Video review: "The Croods"

“The Croods” was pretty typical of this year’s crop of animated family films. Pleasant enough, great-looking and featuring a catchy song or two, it nonetheless didn’t offer anything that was especially engaging or clever. Designed to entertain wee ones with lots of bouncy slapstick action and cute critters, it accomplished exactly that, and little more.

It’s not a bad movie; not a great one, either; just good enough to satisfy as throwaway entertainment.

Set in prehistoric times, the titular family is a gaggle of ape-like cave people who live in utter fear every second they spend outside their darkened cave. Dad Grug (voiced by Nicolas Cage) has a motto: “Never not be afraid,” and it’s one they live by religiously.

Until, that is, rebellious daughter Eep (Emma Stone) pushes them to explore the wider world out there. They encounter danger and some fantastic creatures – the walking land whales were my favorite -- but also have amazing adventures. They hook up with a somewhat more evolved guy named … Guy (Ryan Reynolds), who shows them neat things like fire and shoes.

If this sounds familiar, as if it’s been repurposed from other movies, that’s because it has. It’s basically a stitch-together of “Ice Age” and “The Flintstones.” Some characters, such as the inexplicably reptilian-tailed Gran, exist only as comic relief.

Visually, “The Croods” is a marvel, with even stuff in the corners of the frame worth looking it. I just wish they could’ve given the same level of attention to the storytelling.

Extras are decent, and like the movie tend to be aimed at kids and ignore their parents.

The DVD comes with a handful of deleted scenes and two featurettes, one of which consists of music videos from other DreamWorks Animation flicks. “Belt’s Cave Journal” is a new short film featuring a couple of supporting characters.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo, and you add another featurette, “The Croodaceous Creatures of Croods!” spotlighting more of the film’s colorful beastiary. There’s also a drawing game for children, and a mobile app that lets kids build their own Croods storybook and color it, too.

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Review: "The Croods"

The storytelling in “The Croods” isn’t as sharp and emotionally engaging as the better recent animated flicks -- “Wreck-It Ralph,” “Rise of the Guardians.” But it’s such a visually imaginative landscape, one filled with sproingy action, that it turns out a good bet for families -- especially those with smaller children who will savor the heaping helping of cool creatures and goofy slapstick.

The set-up isn’t awfully original, the tale of a prehistoric family that must leave the safety of its cave and traditions in response to a radically shifting landscape. There’s an ape-like father, rebellious teen, cantankerous oldster, feral toddler and primordial pets as comic relief.

Basically, it’s a mashup of “The Flintstones” and “The Land Before Time.”

But despite its lack of innovative flair, it’s still a rousing good time and a never-ending feast for the eyes. I was especially impressed with all the different critters populating the film’s environment. There are walking land whales, a flock of killer dino-parrots, a giant rainbow kitty, an ancestor of Maurice Sendak’s wild things, and something that looks like a genetic splicing of a dog, a skunk and an alligator (it’s much cuter than it sounds).

It’s quite a computer-generated menagerie, and the animators’ imaginations are so dense they even put things in the corners and backgrounds that are neat to look at.

The Croods are hardcore homebodies. They spend days at a time scrunched together in their cave hiding from predators, coming out just long enough to round up some grub and skedaddle back to safety and darkness. Physically, they’re fearsomely strong and agile – they can bound and run fast enough to keep up with the beasts they hunt and those that hunt them.

Despite this, patriarch Grug (voice of Nicolas Cage) is one seriously conservative guy. He sees his role as clan leader/protector depending on never trying anything new: “Never not be afraid” is the family motto.
Mom Ugga (Catherine Keener) is a generic maternal-worrier type. Son Thunk (Clark Duke) is dad’s chubby, under-athletic protégé, Sandy (Randy Thom) is a pint-sized terror, and Gran (Cloris Leachman) is the resident complainer and Grug antagonist. Gran is literally a throwback, sporting a vaguely reptilian tail.

(One amusing running gag is that Grug is continually disappointed when Gran survives their various ordeals. “Still alive!” she crows, taunting her son-in-law.)

But Eep (Emma Stone), the oldest child, yearns to live in the sun and experience new things, leading to obvious conflict with Grug. That rift grows when they encounter Guy (Ryan Reynolds), a more advanced type who can make fire and invent things. He warns the Croods that continental drift will destroy their home, urging them to seek out high land.

Various adventures and hijinks ensue, with Guy and Grug vying for leadership of the little band, and Eep’s affections. “Ideas are for weaklings,” Grug insists, but his brute strength is no match for the intellect of Guy, who teaches them how to make shoes and use animals to their advantage, instead of just for munching on.

The Croods are drawn in bold exaggerated lines, with thick limbs and thicker torsos offset by incongruously itsy-bitsy hands and feet. The creatures are even more out of whack, such as Guy’s pet/advisor/accessory Belt, a little sloth-like creature with arms twice as long as his body and a tendency to vocalize their plight with a funny triad of beeps.

Writing/directing team Chris Sanders and Kirk De Micco probably needed to give the screenplay a few more rewrites to punch up the storyline. The more serious “life lessons” parts tend to feel like tacked-on accouterments. And Eep, the narrator and ostensibly the main character, keeps getting shunted aside in favor of Grug during the second half.

But whatever you want to say about the conceptual crudity of “The Croods,” Sanders and De Micco certainly elicited solid voice performances out of their cast, and led their animation team to a place of wonderment and joy.

3 stars out of four

Review: "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"

I know what you're thinking: A live-action feature film version of a sequence from a 70-year-old cartoon starring Mickey Mouse and a bunch of ensorcelled brooms?

With Nic Cage in glib blockbuster mode? Reteamed with "National Treasure" director Jon Turteltaub? And Jerry "boom baby" Bruckheimer producing?

It almost sounds like a practical joke. But don't forget Disney previously leveraged a kitschy theme park ride with cheesy animatronic pirates into a multi-billion-dollar franchise.

The good news is the resulting movie is anything but cynical. It's a goofy, silly thrill ride without a thought in its pretty little head.

The fun parts of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" are really, really enjoyable. The parts that aren't fun really make you wish they would get back to the good stuff. The ratio of fun to not-so-fun isn't quite high enough for me to recommend the movie, but it's a lot better than first impressions might suggest.

Cage plays Balthazar Blake, an ancient sorcerer and one of three apprentices to the great Merlin, who was undone by his arch enemy Morgana (Alice Krige) with the help of Maxim Horvath (Alfred Molina), another of Merlin's pupils. Horvath went turncoat when his affections for the third apprentice, Veronica (Monica Bellucci), were rebuffed in favor of Balthazar.

In 740 A.D., Veronica trapped her soul along with Morgana's in the Grimhold, a prison inside a magic nesting doll. Over the years, Balthazar has imprisoned many of the evil Morganian magicians inside successive layers of the doll. He's spent the last millennium searching for the Prime Merlinian, the greatest sorcerer in history who will take up Merlin's dragon ring and put an end to Morgana forever.

Balthazar thinks he's found his candidate in Dave Stutler, a physics student with a severe confidence problem. Played by Jay Baruchel, Dave is a collection of tics and shrugs who can't even summon the courage to ask out his dream girl Becky (Teresa Palmer), let alone wield powerful magic in battle against evildoers.

Dave becomes a student to Balthazar, who teaches that science and magic are essentially the same thing, just focused by a sorcerer wearing a special ring. Dave's a screw-up at first, his spells fizzling or bouncing off the walls.

Turteltaub and his trio of screenwriters do include an homage to the animated sequence from "Fantasia," in which Dave zaps a bunch of mops into cleaning up his dank underground laboratory, with predictable results. You know it's coming, but I'm still glad the filmmakers included it.

Cage and Baruchel have a nice chemistry together, with Dave subtly mocking Balthazar's taste for long leather coats and pointy "old man" shoes. Dave's been told he's a loser his whole life, so when this strange guy pops out of nowhere and starts talking about him being mankind's savior, he can't quite swallow it.

Despite only a few days (apparently) of training, Dave soon turns into a half-decent sorcerer, and even gets Becky to notice him. Meanwhile, Horvath recruits his own sidekick, a Chris Angel-type magician/metrosexual who traded his meager sorcery skills for fame and fortune.

Everything builds toward a showdown with Horvath and the resurrected Morgana, who plan to raise an army of the undead, blanketing the land with evil, yada yada.

Was "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" necessary? No. The spell it casts over the audience is a silly one, but it doesn't totally fizzle.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "Astro Boy"

We are so spoiled.

When it comes to animated feature films, audiences have been enjoying a renaissance for so long now that we've come to look upon the extraordinary as the ordinary, the amazing as ho-hum.

With great-looking, smart and affecting flicks like "Up," "Coraline" and "Kung Fu Panda" seem to be falling out of the sky -- or at least dropping into local cinemas -- every few weeks, it soon becomes the new standard.

That's why "Astro Boy" feels like such an also-ran. The storytelling is aimed strictly at small children -- those over age 8 need not apply. As for the animation, if the film had arrived five years ago, it would be considered spectacular. But now, the somewhat flat surfaces and fake-looking hair practically announce its second-rate status.

Of course, the coiffure on Astro Boy's head is supposed to look artificial. The comic character's signature swoopy 'do that converges in a pair of points that resemble horns -- though as Astro protests, it's actually just hair gel.

The set-up is somewhat similar to that of "Wall·E" -- humans have junked up the Earth, so they leave it. In this case, it's not into space but just a few thousand feet up, as the denizens of Metro City float on an island hovering over the surface, which is where they throw all their trash.

A great deal of this refuse is broken-down robots, who are the city's iron-plated indentured servants -- cooking all the meals, driving the cars, etc. The two greatest scientists are Dr. Elefun (voice of Bill Nighy) and Dr. Tenma (Nicolas Cage), who have created two new limitless power sources: Blue energy and Red. The Blue is stable and safe, while any robot powered by the Red is likely to go off on a killing spree.

If you're wondering if this is a non-too-subtle riff on Red State/Blue State animosity, you'd be right. Of course, most of the jokes -- the power-mad president (Donald Sutherland) has a campaign sign urging "It's not time for change" -- will sail right over the heads of the target audience.

Tenma's son Toby (Freddie Highmore) is killed during an experiment, so Tenma recreates him as a Blue-powered robot, using some of Toby's DNA to implant him with the boy's memory. But Tenma rejects the creation, who can fly and perform other super-feats.

Faux Toby is exiled to the surface, where he discovers a troupe of children rummaging among the scrap for their benefactor, a kooky inventor named Hamegg (Nathan Lane). They dub him Astro, but the robot boy is afraid to reveal his nature to his new friends -- especially after discovering that Hamegg is only fixing up the old robots so he can fight them gladiator-style.

"Astro Boy" was directed by David Bowers, who also helmed "Flushed Away" from a few years ago. He also co-wrote the script with Timothy Harris.

As entertainment for wee ones, it's not poor fare, and the mix of bloodless action and cute/doofy robots will keep them mostly in their seats. Compared to other animated offerings, though, it lacks special powers.

2 stars

DVD review: "Knowing"

"Knowing" starts out as an intense little supernatural thrill, and slowly builds upon itself until it becomes a global disaster flick with computer-generated visions of the end of the world.

Nicolas Cage plays an MIT scientist whose son recovers a piece of paper put in a time capsule 50 years ago that contains a list of numbers that seems to predict every major disaster that's happened since. With several more as yet unfulfilled prophecies set to occur, it's up to him to figure out the clues to keep people from dying.

Cage gives a nuanced performance as a guy trying to wrap his mind around increasingly bizarre circumstances, while struggling to maintain a relationship with his young son. For those who only know him from his "American Treasure" movies or other bubble-gum pap, "Knowing" is a good excuse to reconnect with an actor of prodigious skills.

Director Alex Proyas ("Dark City") is a master at awe-inspiring visuals and building mood, but his handling of the more mundane demands of unfolding a plot tend to drag the movie down. Whenever we reach a scene where the scientists have to explain what's going on, it makes us long to get back to the weird glowing lights and strange blonde guys in black overcoats who appear from time to time.

The extras that come with the disc are better than average. There's a 12-minute making-of documentary that doesn't shed much new light, and a 17-minute feature talking to experts about how mankind has interpreted the apocalypse throughout time. Both are notable for the lack of any participation by Cage.

Proyas supplies a commentary track, using an unidentified questioner who prompts him on various topics. This has the benefit of keeping the commentary rolling virtually non-stop -- many one-person tracks have gaps of several minutes or more. It's moderately interesting stuff, but certainly not crucial.

Movie: 2.5 stars
Extras: 3 stars

Review: "Knowing"

Since winning a Best Actor Oscar 13 years ago, Nicolas Cage has been perhaps the strictest adherent to the “One for me, one for them” school of choosing roles. He’ll do a small, serious film for artistic reasons, like starring in Martin Scorsese’s “Bringing Out the Dead,” and then immediately follow it with a crassly commercial bit of tripe.

I don’t know if it’s cynical, but it’s good way for a star to retain his box office clout while also finding time for more personal projects that don’t generate much heat at the ticket booth. It’s led to some wonderful, offbeat performances in quirky movies that few people saw – go rent “The Weather Man” or “Matchstick Men” for two finer examples – sandwiched in between some absolute bubble-gum dreck: “Ghost Rider,” those “National Treasure” flicks.

After watching “Knowing,” I honestly don’t know which category it falls into.

At first blush, it certainly seems to be a small, intense thriller about a scientist who encounters some disturbing numbers that appear to predict the future. But it builds and builds upon itself, the events taking upon a broader and broader sphere of impact, until the movie reaches juggernaut proportions, with some huge action set-pieces straight out of a summer blockbuster.

The final act may leave some audience members feeling cheated, but I thought director Alex Proyas (“Dark City”) and his quartet of screenwriters earned the outsized ending, slowly and painstakingly ratcheting up the pressure, and the mystery.

Cage plays John Koestler, an M.I.T. scientist who’s raising his son Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) after the death of his wife. They live in a huge house that was once grand but is deteriorating under their feet. Things seem OK on the surface, but underneath there’s a dry rot to their relationship, too.

The mystery begins when a 50-year-old time capsule is opened at Caleb’s school. All the other kids got a picture drawn by a student from 1959, but Caleb received a page filled with numbers written by a disturbed little girl. John gets hold of the numbers and figures out they indicate the date of every major accident or tragedy over the last five decades, complete with the number of people killed.

Of course, there’s several more dates that have yet to happen, so it’s up to John to try to outpace these prognostications of doom. He tracks down the daughter of the girl who wrote the numbers (Rose Byrne), who has a child of her own. Meanwhile, creepy blonde guys in black overcoats turn up, menacing the children and leaving little black rocks as totems.

“Knowing” veers back and forth between some wonderful moments of tension and menace, but whenever they have to stop and have a long dialogue scene where John puzzles things out, the movie crashes to earth.

Proyas is a great visionary for mood and visuals, but when it comes to the meat-and-potatoes work of moving the plot from point A to B, his direction turns pedestrian. I kept wanting the overcoat guys to show up again to get things back to spooky.

I can’t tell you much about the last half of the movie, since its appeal lies in taking you to unexpected places. Suffice to say that some of it truly is unexpected, and some of it we’ve seen a dozen times before. With “Knowing,” you never quite know what you’re going to get.