M. Night Shyamalan film discussion

The Signs scene that everyone was talking about a page ago was pretty scary alright -- but whenever I think of it now, I just remember how they parodied it in Scary Movie 3 and I laugh.
 
Joe Kalicki said:
Well, the big reveal is
that the Village is some weird group of people living in an old-fashioned society in the woods, while just a ways away is modern day civilization. Not all that exciting, really.
This was forshadowed a number of ways, the main one I can recall is
some dialogue with a woman who mentions getting assaulted in an alley, it's some really anachronistic dialogue for the period the movie was supposedly taking place in. There's other such anachronisms that I don't remember quite so vividly.
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Yeah, I guessed it too. But, I told myself "Nah, he wouldn't do that."

And he did. And I said "**** this. I'm done." and walked out.
 
I still say The Sixth Sense is his best film. It's just SO scary and SO moving and SOOOO incredibly well-acted..... it's just perfect. It's one of the best movies ever made. And unlike some hugely overrated crapfests(coughcoughUsualSuspects), the twist, despite being perhaps the best one in any movie, is just a huge bonus. If it had never happened, if it had ended 5 minutes earlier, it STILL would've been one of the best movies I'd ever seen. But then he throws that in and completely turns the movie on its head and adds yet another layer to it, and best of all makes it demand a rewatching rather than make it unrewatchable for lack of any future impact.

I'd probably rank The Sixth Sense as one of the 25 or 30 best movies of all time.
 
Rewatched Signs. Still sucked.

They're all up in arms about the mysterious intruders. Oooh, crop circles are making news on EVERY CHANNEL, you have one in your front yard, could it be the press? Nah, if it's not neighborhood vandals it's got to be aliens.

I also liked the military guy who explained the concept of scouts like it was a revolutionary, mind-blowing idea.

At first, I didn't want to criticize the book for being stupid. Aliens as vegetarians? They might be vegetables! But I figured it was supposed to be stupid. But then it's used to justify the aliens crawling around on the ground. LAME!

No one thought of destroying or altering the crop circles?

Is 400 really that many cities? It seems pretty low to me. Can anyone else put this in context? Although if they were really harvesting people rather than invading, it would make more sense to put a lot of troops in an area with high population density.

How did the aliens know about the coal chute if they get locked in pantries? What'd they do, scan the house?
 
M. Night is a great director; he knows how to make an eerie scene and is great at cinematography. The problem is he is typed cast into making a bunch of movies with shock twists and many of the stories feel too stretched to fit the time length also he's been making too frequently. I really liked Signs, but it got a little boring in the middle and that one kid with the book was annoying the hell out of me. But scenes like that home movie with the alien and them going to the basement are really great and where he's strengths lie.
 
Random said:
M. Night is a great director; he knows how to make an eerie scene and is great at cinematography. The problem is he is typed cast into making a bunch of movies with shock twists and many of the stories feel too stretched to fit the time length also he's been making too frequently. I really liked Signs, but it got a little boring in the middle and that one kid with the book was annoying the hell out of me. But scenes like that home movie with the alien and them going to the basement are really great and where he's strengths lie.
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He should definately be doing Twilight Zones episodes. He could be the new Rod Serling.
 
TwilightEL said:
Rewatched Signs. Still sucked.

They're all up in arms about the mysterious intruders. Oooh, crop circles are making news on EVERY CHANNEL, you have one in your front yard, could it be the press? Nah, if it's not neighborhood vandals it's got to be aliens.
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They mention vandals in the beginning, they don't think it's aliens until the lights appear above the cities

I also liked the military guy who explained the concept of scouts like it was a revolutionary, mind-blowing idea.
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It is when you think about aliens.

I think about aliens

Then I touch my hairy nipples.

At first, I didn't want to criticize the book for being stupid. Aliens as vegetarians? They might be vegetables! But I figured it was supposed to be stupid. But then it's used to justify the aliens crawling around on the ground. LAME!
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I honestly don't remember this.

No one thought of destroying or altering the crop circles?
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It was too late by that point I thought

Is 400 really that many cities? It seems pretty low to me. Can anyone else put this in context? Although if they were really harvesting people rather than invading, it would make more sense to put a lot of troops in an area with high population density.
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Would it? The humans had no chance, at least that's what the aliens thought, so they wanted as many people as they could get, so they just thinned out their forces, and see how many they got. It was their first invasion, and I had a feeling that the aliens were planning to come back over and over again, with better intel.

How did the aliens know about the coal chute if they get locked in pantries? What'd they do, scan the house?
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The alien locked in the pantry was at a different house than the coal chute. And it's called suspense, you need to relax.
 
Joe Kalicki said:
How? I never believe anybody when they say this, because there's no actual evidence of it until you see the end. If it's a guess, it's a total left field guess.
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I really wish I could've seen it before getting spoiled, because I guessed a Supernatural episode with a similar twist literally less than ten seconds after seeing the character introduced. It'd be nice to see if it was a fluke or not.
 
Re: The Happening

compound said:
Yeah, Unbreakable was the only one that I can say I really liked, as a movie.

Sixth Sense entertained me, but I can't say I *liked* it. Signs freaked me out (but that's not saying much, because so did both versions of The Ring, and The Others, and The Blair Witch Project, so it *really* doesn't take much to creep me out). I found Lady in the Water unwatchably dull -- which is uncharacteristic, because I've loved just about every other movie Paul Giamatti has appeared in. And the premise of The Village didn't interest me enough to want to see it -- plus, I read about the twist, and it seemed totally out of the blue, from what I understand about it. At least Sixth Sense had sufficient foreshadowing for the surprise to make sense, once it's finally revealed.

More than anything, I find Shyamalan over-rated. I wouldn't go as far as Hibiki, to call everything "crap". But it's certainly given more undue hype than it's worth, IMHO.
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yeah, crap is a little harsh, but on a serious note, too much layers just killed it for me. It's like he just wants to add everything in at once instead of committing to a singular scenario. Sometimes the twists seem force as opposed to needed or necessary for the movie to work. The Village could have been really great if it didn't have that last twist at the end.
 
Joe Kalicki said:
It would, because if you know there's a twist you go in looking for ti and it's easier to figure out.

I had no idea about Sixth Sense and thus it was amazing.
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eh, I didn't know the ending and it still wasn't that great. The story wasn't spectacular. I don't think i'd put it in my top 100 of all time, but it was a good watch.
 
I love all of M. Night's movies (and by "all" I of course mean the popularly known ones, ie, The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, and Lady in the Water). Of these, my favorite is probably The Village. I don't know why; I really just need to see them all again to remember. However, Signs was also tremendous fun, as was Unbreakable, and Lady in the Water was pretty interesting as well. The Sixth Sense, I didn't like as much because of a number of things; however, I think the most important factor in that was simply the fact that I didn't see it until literally yearts after it came out, and not only had the ending been spoiled many times over, but it had been made out to be such a good movie by everyone I knew and the internet that no movie could have lived up to "the hype," as it were.

Good lord, if that wasn't a run-on sentence, I don't know what is.

Anyway, this new movie looks kind of interesting; however, I just hope he doesn't get too heavy-handed with the global warming stuff. That could get annoying. Really annoying.
 
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