The Forgotten (2004)

Fresh and Exciting

As Good As It Gets

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Good acting, and good buildup through most of the movie, but the ending completely ruined the whole thing for me. The foe, when finally revealed, is (as in so many sci-fi movies) trivialized and unbelievable. Their motivations were quickly passed over with a few lines of gobbledy-gook which propagate some of the most tediously common misconceptions about the most basic concepts of science."Experiments" don't fail; they produce outcomes. And you don't punish a researcher for an unexpected outcome - that's a success, because the experiment uncovered something that is not understood and which requires more research. On an emotional level, due in large part to the good acting, the movie worked really well. But the mood was just shattered by the "scary monster alien" trope at the end.

Julianne Moore is the mother of a nine-year-old boy, estranged from her Wall Street husband. The son is tenderly put on board a flight that disappears and is forgotten. Moore is frantic, along the lines of, "Where is my CHILD?" Seeking succor from her husband, she finds that he claims they never had any children. A shrink, Gary Sinese, tells her that such delusions are common and so forth. As is usual in these sorts of films, nobody believes her. It doesn't help that when she tries to explain, her speech turns to gibberish.Finally, she roots out a man, Christopher Kovaleski, whose daughter was a friend of Moore and her son. Kovalevski claims he never had a son but when he speaks her name the memories come flooding back. So what the hell is going on? Well, what's going on is that some supernatural force -- always referred to as "they" or "them" -- is conducting an experiment from outer space in an attempt to measure the strength of the mother-child bond. They've got the National Security Agency on their side, somehow; it's never explained how. This -- this -- force can make troublesome people disappear by whisking them up into the sky.Finally an agent from outer space -- an expressionless nonentity -- explains the deal to Moore in an abandoned warehouse. She's the last hold-out, he tells her, and he wants her to forget about her son "otherwise the experiment will fail." Pardon me while I put on my behavioral scientist's research hat. No, the experiment won't fail. It CAN'T fail. If the experiment was designed to measure the strength of the mother-child bond, that's precisely what it's doing. It's telling the investigator that everybody else has forgotten his or her child except for one or two irregular cases, Moore and Kovalevksi. If there are a hundred cases in which the erasure of memory worked and only two in which it didn't, well, those are the results. For most practical purposes, the bond is soluble.The first part of the film is interesting, shot in the most spectral parts of Brooklyn, which is in pretty bad shape to begin with. We see two people running hither and yon through dark alleyways and cowering in fields under the Williamsburg Bridge. Then, as the experiment is gradually revealed, the whole thing falls apart and become a shabby imitation of "The X Files" laced with expensive CGIs.The actors do a fine job. Moore is under-appreciated. She has a blocky, freckled beauty that doesn't fit the Hollywood stereotype but she's a splendid actress. Kovalevski's role is rather more constricting, but Alfre Woodard as a helpful police detective is compelling without seeming to reach for it.The director, Joseph Ruben, can't be held responsible for the weaknesses either. He doesn't show off with the camera and the editing is classical. Here and there, amid the wreckage, he stages a scene that's both functional and poetic."The X Files" had a respectable and solid following from 1993 to 2002. A reasonable guess is that the series served as the inspiration for this movie. Moore's character is named "Telly," two phonemes away from "Scully."

I love the third and final version of this video. The original Forgotten video was made before 1975. The second version of Forgotten was released in 2004. And, the third Forgotten was released in 2014.This movie was released in the same fashion as C is for Cycle by Ernesto Diaz Espinoza. The original C is for Cycle was made before 1975, a second version of C is for Cycle was released in 2012 and the final version of C is for Cycle was released in 2014.C is for Cycle from the ABC's of death combined with Forgotten is about a third person with two brothers fearing his death. The friends of the third brother and the second brother all worked tirelessly together to create an inspiring series of films, hoping to impress their superior and almighty Creator. Part of the mystery was to dupe one of the brothers into believing they were a different person while heavily sedated. I hope it worked. Did it?

The movie starts out alright, but, eventually, becomes downright unwatchable.This movie makes you think TOO hard. So hard that it stops being enjoyable and becomes a chore to sit through.The plot holes are so huge, you can't concentrate of the movie -- you just keep thinking "how in hell did they...?" and "but why couldn't they...?" and "how is THAT possible...?" The only reason I stuck it out, was to see whether any of my questions were going to be answered in a surprise twist or something. But NONE of them were. Quite disappointing.Initially, I thought the painfully obvious plot holes were actually a cleverly placed elements of mystery, but... nope, just gaping plot holes (that distract you from watching the movie).The first half of the movie was more or less O.K., but then... aliens??? Please! That was SO lame.