In Which We Really Wish We Didn't Know

Albino Aliens Destroy My World

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Nicolas Cage's receding hairline has contributed to some of the finest discoveries of our time. Despite moving to the equator of his scalp in its latest mission — the Alex Proyas retarded thriller Knowing — it is more perceptive than ever. Knowing ascended to the top of the box office because Hollywood literally could not be troubled to make anything more challenging than an alien movie with this bald fuck for a weekend in March.

It is a challenge to make a movie this stupid; it is an almost impossible feat without some kind of help from the government or Roger Corman. Cage's character is a professor of astrophysics at MIT. In one of the film's early scenes, he's teaching his class. Whoever wrote this scene has to not only be completely unaware of what astrophysics is, he also has to never have attended a single college-level class in anything. As such, we can only assume this film was written by Jerry Bruckheimer and/or a sleeping german shepherd.

In Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, we witnessed an unprecendented series of events. An otherwise intelligent person created a feature-length movie that absolutely no one could enjoy without the benefit of LSD. Even under the influence, The Fountain almost exploded of its own stupidity. This was a movie so painful the studio that released it dumped the idea of a director commentary.

Here the achievement is far more impressive. The creators of this film must never have even seen anything more complex than a music video. They must never have fathered a child. They probably did watch The Fountain.

John Koestler (Cage) has fathered a child, although we know he is not really the father of a child. He finds out the location of three coming transportation accidents. Like any good father, he heads right toward them. He's a single father, mind you.

The trouble began when a precog named Lucinda Embry started hearing whispers in her head. Despite the fact that major wars on this planet have taken lives in the hundreds of thousands, a bunch of aliens have taken notice of small house fires as a precursor to the apocalypse.

The aliens manifest themselves on Earth first in a car, where they hand Cage's son a smooth stone that we later come to find out lacks any meaning at all. The aliens are albinos, perhaps in tribute to the albinos of Africa, many of whom were slaughtered for their body parts about which there existed a number of superstitutions.

The aliens desire Cage's son to restart humanity on another world. It's unclear why exactly humans are valued as a sentient species. Maybe it's because of the ease with which they perish in tragic accidents.

After realizing you paid for a film this stupid, you look for someone to blame. Much like Bernie Madoff is taking their entire responsibility for our economy's collapse, Steven Spielberg must be held responsible for this raging piece of shit. Without him, would we really have to endure interminably long movies that justify their existence by the alien spacecraft descending to Earth at the end?

We can also hold Francis Ford Coppola to be somewhat at fault. Without his tacit endorsement of his young nephew Nicolas Coppola's career, we wouldn't have to deal with this film or the prospect of a third National Treasure sequel.

And in fact those movies, searchingly obtuse though they may be, have the genial fun that is missing from the pretend seriousness of this dreary film. In fact Knowing is a secret laugh riot. We watched the film with a drunk black guy who was keen to comment on the hair on Nicolas Cage's son's balls. Fortunately the death of everyone on the planet was loud enough to drown him out by the end.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbles here.

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