It sounds really cool. I'm a big fan of folklore and useless mythic information, and this sounds like it's right up there with that sort of stuff. It's got a great cast, too, although he had Kirsten Dunst and Ashton Kutcher originally, but Kutcher dropped out, then Dunst, and they recast Adrien Brody for Kutcher's role. I cannot imagine a better trade than that.
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Yeesh, I'm grateful for the new cast!! I love everything that Shyamalan has done, so I'm looking forward to it.
I'm especially anxious to see Joaquin Phoenix in some more roles. (and Adrian Brody...he's strangly endearing as well.)
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wow. sounds cool. Been kinda disappointed in his last couple movies, but he's got talent in there somewhere. (cutting him some slack in navigating through commercialization)
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I am a huge Shymalan fan. Which is weird, considering that his is a genre I usually go out of my way to avoid (horror/suspense).
But I had to see Sixth Sense because I knew someone in it, and then I had to see Unbreakable because an ex-lover of mine was in it, and then I had to see both movies again because they were just so awesome.
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Signs scared the crap out of me. Signs STILL scares the crap out of me. In fact, my friends like to have us all watch the DVD so they can watch me tweak out for the following two days.
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I thought Unbreakable was average, Signs was good, and The Sixth Sense a masterpiece (i heard his first movie was ----, but I can't remember what the heck it was).
One thing you can say about him is that he does tackle unusual subjects in interesting ways, even when he isn't entirely successful.
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I liked Signs, but it didn't reallly strike me as a horror movie. I enjoyed watching Mel Gibson's character evolve more than anything else.
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I think that M. Night Shamalyan is one of the greatest directors still living. He has an intuitve sense of what hightens suspense. I thought Signs was a masterpiece because a. his themes b. his incredible cinematography c. excellent acting
Unbreakable was good in terms of acting and directing, but I thought that the plot left something to be desired.
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Shymalan is going to be one of those directors that never puts out a bad movie. He seems to be very careful about what stories he chooses to tell, and each one has left me utterly surprised. And happy w/the money that I spent on them.
I really enjoy Unbreakable and Sixth Sense, but Signs was way too much for me - I was seeing that damn alien from the Mexican home video out of the corner of my eye for weeks. And long after that, simply remembering a few bars from the score triggered a good bit of anxiety. I generally like scary and suspenseful movies, but I've never had a director who scared me so bad that I couldn't see the movie again. But then maybe if I saw it again, I'd enjoy it more.
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Signs is a masterpiece. The exposition on faith (do you believe in coincidences?) is brilliant. You can see the movie's ending in two ways: was it just pure luck or was there divine intervention? I enjoyed that thought experiment as well as the overall tone of the movie.
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I'm sorry, but casting Mel Gibson as an "atheist" was sheer stupidity. His character was a theist caricature of an atheist, and quite offensive. I was so ticked I walked out of the movie.
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Unbreakable was the best of the three, by far. The scene in the train station was one of the best directed scenes in any movie ever.
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Actually, I never thought Gibson was an atheist in the movie, he was a Christian minister who had lost his faith. And that is something of a completely different matter. In that role, I thought Gibson provided one of his best performances.
Edit: To add that I agree that Unbreakable was the best of the three movies, so far. Bruce Willis is an incredibly underappreciated actor and his chemistry with Samuel L. Jackson was spectacular. The camera work was inspired and the editing paid homage to modern comic books pacing.
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M. Night Shayamalan is the Mozart of directors. Every work he produces is perfect. You may not like the story, you may not agree with the philosophy or the world view, but for what they are, the stories are perfectly realized, perfectly told.
I think Signs was best, but that's just because it was my favorite, not because it was better than Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. (I would love to see a sequel to Unbreakable, but I doubt Shayamalan would ever do it.)
I wondered if Shayamalan had made any other movies, and an internet search turned up the title Wide Awake. I have been looking for a copy of this movie in video stores for weeks, but haven't seen it. Has anyone seen this movie? Obviously it is not as popular as his later movies, but even if not everything had quite come together for him, some of the magic had to be there. Shayamalan has such a distinctive style.
One other thing, isn't it cool the small rolls he plays in the movies himself? In Signs he had a pretty substantial roll, in fact. I loved it when he said, "By the way, don't open the pantry. I shut one of them inside." Then he floored it and took off in his stationwagon. But a few minutes before that, it was rather intense when he observed that people who kill reverend's wives don't go to the front of the line to get into heaven. He's really a pretty decent actor.
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Signs had a serious flaw with the aliens. First: they have interstellar spaceships and they have a hard time with a cellar door? They can't find the people easily. They are walking through fields with dew and fog, and water is so damaging that it burns them on contact?
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I'm sorry, but I just found Signs laughably silly. Not only was I not frightened, I was disgusted by the pat religious themes AND the sad, pathetic aliens and their odd weaknesses to doors and simple molecules. That said, it was well-paced and not particularly over-acted.
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I ran across some essay of some sort on Shyamalan, and it said that one of the reasons The Sixth Sense was such an unexpected gem, was that his freshmen effort was so horrid.
I have not seen it, and I have no idea what it's about, so you can take that for what it's worth, but if it were something special, I'd imagine it would be getting more pub and/or marketed on video after he became a success. Neither has happened.
As for Unbreakable, I just don't see it. A decent movie, sure, an interesting idea, sure, but there was something missing, it felt a bit hollow, it felt like they just didn't quite get the job done on it. That being said I thought Jackson and Willis did a good job, I just think that the story wasn't particularly as well fleshed out as the initial idea/treatment would suggest.
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You can't analyze Signs too much in terms of logical plausibility. I mean, come on, why would these aliens visit a planet made up of 70% water when they can't stand that stuff?
The aliens are not the point of the movie. It could be a tornado, a famine, a war, or any completely ordinary disaster. The movie is about a man making peace with his faith and a family coming together during a crisis while dealing with their mother's death.
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quote: I'm sorry, but casting Mel Gibson as an "atheist" was sheer stupidity. His character was a theist caricature of an atheist, and quite offensive. I was so ticked I walked out of the movie.
He wasn't an atheist. He was a preacher who was mad at God. He never denied His existance.
Signs was a movie about faith more than aliens. I loved it. Thanks, Amka, for bringing out the flaws that I had never noticed. Even though, I will still love it for the things it made me feel and realize in my own life.
I thought his other two were brilliant as well. Unbreakable was my least favorite of the three, but it ranks in my top 20 favorite movies.
If only he didn't seem so darned pleased with himself...
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The aliens scared the CRAP out of me. But I've been scared of aliens since I was a little kid. Like Lime, I'm tweaked out for days after seeing Signs. I love that movie, though. Sixth Sense nearly as much Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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While I enjoyed watching Signs, I hated HATED the fact that apparently thousands upon thousands of other people died but his family was saved by an odd message (I'm assuming from God) channeled through his wife's dying words. Why were they so special? Because he was a preacher? Because he needed that to believe in God again? I hate that kind of protrayal of God, and that contrivance sorta ruined the movie for me at the end.
/***Spoilers***
That said, Unbreakable was a terrific flick. I'd say that it just barely wins out over Sixth Sense for my favorite of Shyalaman.
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Ralphie, we don't know if his was the only family to receive signs. In Mel's (I can't remember the character's name) explanation on the two kinds of people in the world he said that one kind (and I'm badly paraphrasing) see the signs and the other chooses not to. So, maybe those who choose not to heed "signs" given to them are those who died.
Darn, now I have an Ace of Base song stuck in my head!
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Leslie - I may have missed the importance of that statement relating to what we're talking about. I only saw it once because the ending left a bad flavor in my mouth.
Unbreakable was still better. Posts: 7600 | Registered: Jan 2001
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Shymalan is nothing less than a fantastic director. I very much look forward to seeing this new movie of his.
Signs was the least thought out movie ever. There are multiple flaws in the plot, and This page explains it better than I could, though the man writing is otherwise a complete jerk.
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Yeah, he's extremely amusing. Check out his site in great detail if you're looking for some laughs. (Insert offensive material warning here)
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Ralphie, you do not have to see the ending of Signs as an example of divine intervention. If you are an atheist, you can say that it was just a fairly lucky coincidence (which was my view).
I loved the ending because in his darkest moment, Mel Gibson's character decided to make a leap of faith instead of giving up to despair. Even though I don't think God had anything to do with it, I do respect his character's choice. Posts: 4116 | Registered: Apr 2002
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If you noticed, I put the word "atheist" in quotes, precisely because he clearly wasn't an atheist.
But one of the claims made by those who those who marginalize atheism is that we actually believe in God, but are merely angry at him. That's exactly what was going on with Gibson's character. He was acting out all kinds of anger, and taking it out on his son.
If Shyamalan had added a truly atheist character to provide some balance, it might have worked out. But too many times I have been accused of the kind of behavior Gibson exhibited, because I'm an atheist. It seems to me that the movie was making the same accusation.
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Glenn, I don't think the movie was making an accusation about atheists. Remember, Gibson's character started out as a minister.
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And long after that, simply remembering a few bars from the score triggered a good bit of anxiety. I generally like scary and suspenseful movies, but I've never had a director who scared me so bad that I couldn't see the movie again. But then maybe if I saw it again, I'd enjoy it more.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Even though, I will still love it for the things it made me feel and realize in my own life.
