Lady in the Water

[BarronVangorToth]

No love for M.Night, T, what's up with that?

He comes off well in interviews PLUS he writes and directs his own stuff and Unbreakable, Sixth, and Signs were all great films and even Village was better than most films that year.

[brandofo]

I'm afraid Signs and the Village were terrible movies, but I enjoyed Sixth Sense and I will probably check out this new one if it gets decent reviews.

[Blarg]

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No love for M.Night, T, what's up with that?

He comes off well in interviews PLUS he writes and directs his own stuff and Unbreakable, Sixth, and Signs were all great films and even Village was better than most films that year.

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Signs had some good parts but was basically not very good at all, and Sixth Sense had many good parts but was one of the most predictable and obvious movies -- at least that took themselves even halfway seriously -- that I've seen in a long long time.

[BarronVangorToth]

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the most predictable and obvious movies

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The problem is that by a movie like it doing its job correctly, it becomes "predictable" and "obvious," making those defacto compliments. It takes someone special to make something that different that you can figure out so easily. If anything, I think most people that dislike M.Night's work do so not because they don't like it ... but because it's so staggering to see someone do so much while seemingly doing so little. Some great movies many people just don't "get," his you do ... and for some it almost makes it worse, forcing the subconscious to feign disdain.

[Blarg]

I think that's way off the mark. First of all, calling Sixth Sense a great movie and then moving on from there is begging the question. It's not mind-blowing and it's not a great movie either.

He isn't doing anything astounding in it. He's merely cranking something cheesily obvious in an entertaining way. It's good craftsmanship after bad, unfortunately. The obviousness from the get-go of the central conceit of the movie is not disrupting my subconscious and making it play tricks on me, nor does feigning anything come anywhere near any part of my reaction; the leaden clumsiness of its lack of even a half-arsed attempt to be believable is irritating and pulls one from the continuous dream a fiction is supposed to be. This is one half-assed obvious movie.

Is it still a fun movie? Despite the total crapitude of its obviousness from the very beginning, sure. It's mindless fun, but I was forced to watch it from the outside of the experience I should have been having. It was a solved puzzle whose main rewards, I suppose, were admiring the pieces.

If the puzzle took at least a little figuring, I guess it could be gloried in a little more. As it was, I felt cheated. I'm still amazed that some didn't figure out the gimmick immediately. And I'm not convinced that gimmick movies, even ones that at least tried to conceal their gimmic a little, have a real claim on greatness. By that standard of evaluation, O. Henry would have won the Nobel Prize for literature.

[samjjones]

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what the hell is Southland Tales??

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The new Richard Kelly flick about time travel and the end of the universe.

[tdarko]

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No love for M.Night, T, what's up with that?

He comes off well in interviews PLUS he writes and directs his own stuff and Unbreakable, Sixth, and Signs were all great films and even Village was better than most films that year.

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I have only thought Unbreakable was good, I like that movie, own it and still watch it. It has a cool feel to it and the twist and turns aren't completely stupid. His other movies though, TERRIBLE, especially Signs and The Village. Signs was numero uno on my Worst Blockbuster movie ever until War of the Worlds came along and made it look like Citizen Kane. Sixth Sense was alright the first time, it just isn't a great movie to me. To me, it takes more than a big twist at the end to make a great film, what about all the poor jumbled up mess in the middle?

I do really like Unbreakable though.

[wisehandpoker]

The only problem I've had with MNS is that every film had had a similar you-aren't-getting-all-of-the-information-so-you-know-there's-a-twist-near-the-end feel, so I'm trained to look for them. Kind of makes the exersize pointless. I've found each film to be a little less interesting than the one proceeding it.