I'm mainly seeing it to show support for scifi and also Morgan Freeman
Exactly. And I also want to see if I'm right or not. After a while, twists get easy to guess but the fun is in guessing the right one!
And it was either see Oblivion or After Earth. And, despite Signs and Unbreakable being two of my favorite movies, I still have forgiven Shyamalan for The Happening.
Hmm, I wonder what Film Crit Hulk would say about the plot contrivances in Signs?
But we should probably forget I said that
Signs is such a good movie until it falls apart.
If someone knew nothing about the film or the man who made it, I would highly recommend they see it. Unfortunately once you know Shyalaman's MO you're expecting the ending to give you a twist and when it comes you just groan and go "Come ooooon".
But man, seeing it in theaters right when it came out? It was great.
Hmm, I wonder what Film Crit Hulk would say about the plot contrivances in Signs?
But we should probably forget I said that
Signs is such a good movie until it falls apart.
If someone knew nothing about the film or the man who made it, I would highly recommend they see it. Unfortunately once you know Shyalaman's MO you're expecting the ending to give you a twist and when it comes you just groan and go "Come ooooon".
But man, seeing it in theaters right when it came out? It was great.
I disagree. I went in expecting a Science fiction movie, but instead I got Christian fiction.
I have begun watching The Hobbit. I'm watching it with my daughter, so we have to see it in chunks. Last night we got through the first third - shortly after they left the Shire and just after we see the backstory on Thorin and the Orcs.
It's not bad thus far, and I'm enjoying it to a point, but there is no way this needed to be a three hour movie, and I really doubt it even needed to be three movies. If LOTR can be told in three films, the Hobbit can be told in one. What transpires in the first hour of the Hobbit could easily be accomplished in 15-20 minutes. We don't need the prologue to be nearly as long, we don't need to watch a slow-mo version of the narration re: Thorin and the Orcs, we don't need to hear a goddamn Dwarf Song while they're throwing dishes around the house, the dinner scene doesn't need to be that long, and we don't need to watch basically the opening 10-15 minutes of Fellowship as a preface to The Hobbit. Based on the first third, I suspect that it's a 3 hour film not because it needs 3 hours to tell the story, but because someone wanted a 3 hour film and then worked to make that happen.
What's there is very nice to look at and interesting as characterization, but it's entirely superfluous and feels bloated as shit. I look forward to something happening that isn't basically "Dwarfs eat dinner and then invite Bilbo on a road trip." And I feel that if I wasn't already invested in the universe and familiar with these people, I would be bored to tears thus far.
To be continued...
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
God killed his wife to test his faith, and then sent an entire race of hostile beings to the planet in order to restore it.
Waa?
Where in the film does it say God killed his wife to test his faith. All it shows is that her death shook his faith and that God sent him messages to help restore it.
I have begun watching The Hobbit. I'm watching it with my daughter, so we have to see it in chunks. Last night we got through the first third - shortly after they left the Shire and just after we see the backstory on Thorin and the Orcs.
It's not bad thus far, and I'm enjoying it to a point, but there is no way this needed to be a three hour movie, and I really doubt it even needed to be three movies. If LOTR can be told in three films, the Hobbit can be told in one. What transpires in the first hour of the Hobbit could easily be accomplished in 15-20 minutes. We don't need the prologue to be nearly as long, we don't need to watch a slow-mo version of the narration re: Thorin and the Orcs, we don't need to hear a goddamn Dwarf Song while they're throwing dishes around the house, the dinner scene doesn't need to be that long, and we don't need to watch basically the opening 10-15 minutes of Fellowship as a preface to The Hobbit. Based on the first third, I suspect that it's a 3 hour film not because it needs 3 hours to tell the story, but because someone wanted a 3 hour film and then worked to make that happen.
What's there is very nice to look at and interesting as characterization, but it's entirely superfluous and feels bloated as shit. I look forward to something happening that isn't basically "Dwarfs eat dinner and then invite Bilbo on a road trip." And I feel that if I wasn't already invested in the universe and familiar with these people, I would be bored to tears thus far.
To be continued...
High frame rate fixes all those complaints. Not because it makes the movie interesting, mind you. It just makes it impossible to notice anything but the bad makeup and fake looking sets. The movie stumbles around being boring and nauseating and unpleasant with bird poop in its hair, and then just when you want to pull out your eyes, the riddle scene comes along and holy shit why isn't the whole movie this good? Once that's over, the movie wants to hang around and ask you what you're thinking when all you want to do is take a nap.
God killed his wife to test his faith, and then sent an entire race of hostile beings to the planet in order to restore it.
Waa?
Where in the film does it say God killed his wife to test his faith. All it shows is that her death shook his faith and that God sent him messages to help restore it.
The message in a form of a hostile extraterrestrial race. But it's okay, because God thought ahead and gave his son asthma so he wouldn't be killed by them, and gave his daughter OCD so he could strike down the aliens. So you see, even things you think might be bad are all part of God's plan.
God killed his wife to test his faith, and then sent an entire race of hostile beings to the planet in order to restore it.
Waa?
Where in the film does it say God killed his wife to test his faith. All it shows is that her death shook his faith and that God sent him messages to help restore it.
The message in a form of a hostile extraterrestrial race. But it's okay, because God thought ahead and gave his son asthma so he wouldn't be killed by them, and gave his daughter OCD so he could strike down the aliens. So you see, even things you think might be bad are all part of God's plan.
No, the message is in the form of being saved from hostile extraterrestrial aliens. The whole point is that God gave him everything he needed to deal with the threat to his family.
God killed his wife to test his faith, and then sent an entire race of hostile beings to the planet in order to restore it.
Waa?
Where in the film does it say God killed his wife to test his faith. All it shows is that her death shook his faith and that God sent him messages to help restore it.
The message in a form of a hostile extraterrestrial race. But it's okay, because God thought ahead and gave his son asthma so he wouldn't be killed by them, and gave his daughter OCD so he could strike down the aliens. So you see, even things you think might be bad are all part of God's plan.
No, the message is in the form of being saved from hostile extraterrestrial aliens. The whole point is that God gave him everything he needed to deal with the threat to his family.
...and He gave him those tools when He killed his wife and gave his son asthma.
God killed his wife to test his faith, and then sent an entire race of hostile beings to the planet in order to restore it.
Waa?
Where in the film does it say God killed his wife to test his faith. All it shows is that her death shook his faith and that God sent him messages to help restore it.
The message in a form of a hostile extraterrestrial race. But it's okay, because God thought ahead and gave his son asthma so he wouldn't be killed by them, and gave his daughter OCD so he could strike down the aliens. So you see, even things you think might be bad are all part of God's plan.
No, the message is in the form of being saved from hostile extraterrestrial aliens. The whole point is that God gave him everything he needed to deal with the threat to his family.
...and He gave him those tools when He killed his wife and gave his son asthma.
:rotate:
Or just used his wife's death as an opportunity to communicate with him.
I'm not saying it's a good movie, but come on. There's no support for the idea that God killed his wife to teach him a lesson in the movie.
we don't need to hear a goddamn Dwarf Song while they're throwing dishes around the house
Gotta disagree with this one. Music plays a part in The Hobbit and I'm glad they kept it in.
You may well be right (and I haven't read The Hobbit in probably fifteen years, so a lot of it isn't clear in my mind), but proper pacing and editing can incorporate something like the importance of music into a scene that's also doing other things - say, have them sing while marching, then move into a montage showing their travel with the song as an overlay. Something along those lines. The song scene is literally just the dwarves singing and nothing else (unless you count dish-tossing, which I don't). There was a more efficient and more effective way to get this across, is my point.
It's not a fatal blow for the film or anything, but it strikes me as something that could've been improved. I was skeptical at the outside that a 300 page book needed 9 hours of movie to relate the story, and the first hour of film didn't change my mind. I'm looking forward to continuing watching tonight, though, so the movie is clearly doing something right.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Actually, the dishes scene illustrates that the Dwarves, despite their gruff exterior, are a people of music, culture, and manners; not to mention ultimately good guests, in contrast to their initial presentation, along with displaying a level of coordination and solidarity that makes them out to be old comrades who function well together. I liked that scene. It was the superfluous stuff around that scene that needed cutting.
+2
Options
GreasyKidsStuffMOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered Userregular
In regards to Signs:
You can look at Signs as being a search for stable meaning in a world that seems to have none, ie. the random death of his wife isn't actually random at all. I mean, the crop circles themselves are signs themselves, with an (at first) unclear meaning. In that case, the aliens become a means for Mel Gibson to reaffirm his role as a a father (as well as a Father). In the end, he finds the greater meaning when his wife's final words finally make sense at the climax of the film; the aliens are defeated and he can move on with stability, finally! The aliens in that case are kinda like the aliens in Contact, in which they provide a means for reaffirming one's faith / transcendance of some kind. At the same time, they're also scary aliens that want to kill you.
The ending is kinda silly Shyamalan bullshit, sure, but thematically it's reasonably sound.
I'm not opposed to Christian Fiction as a genre. I'm just opposed to it being hidden behind a cloaking device.
But, religion's a touchy thing for a lot of people. If I want to discuss theology, I will seek it out. I will always, always give you the bird when you try to hand me your pamphlet on the street.
Signs is an example of the later. It was pretending to be one thing, then out came the pamphlet. It's unsolicited.
GreasyKidsStuffMOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered Userregular
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with there being Christian overtones to the science fiction proceedings of the movie. I mean, I guess you can be frustrated that the end suggests a higher power having a hand in everything, but when the entire movie is focused on a man who has lost all faith in the God he used to believe in, that kind of thing is bound to come up by the end of it. It wouldn't work if it was strictly science fiction and left the allegory out of it.
I rarely find the Christian God an interesting character. A little too infallible, and rarely gets any character development. >.>
Also, I wouldn't lump Eli in with Signs; the later involves divine intervention as it's plot resolution, while the former arguably has no divine influence at all. If you're going to insist upon putting an omnipotent and infallible God into a human story, it's important to keep their influence subtle enough that it does not detract from the triumphs and tribulations of the human characters. Which is part of why I largely liked Eli; not a perfect movie, but far more enjoyable than Signs.
Houn on
0
Options
RhalloTonnyOf the BrownlandsRegistered Userregular
edited April 2013
Signs could have had Mel Gibson as a Zoroastrian or a secular marine biologist and it wouldn't have mattered thematically. The final image was a person doubting their perceptions of the world, only to have a traumatic event clarity and affirm their ideas.
Kind of like Book of Eli in the sense that it's not nearly a good (or bad, I suppose) enough movie nor is the use of its chosen religious framework solid enough to generate the level of disagreement that it seems to inspire.
I'm not opposed to Christian Fiction as a genre. I'm just opposed to it being hidden behind a cloaking device.
But, religion's a touchy thing for a lot of people. If I want to discuss theology, I will seek it out. I will always, always give you the bird when you try to hand me your pamphlet on the street.
Signs is an example of the later. It was pretending to be one thing, then out came the pamphlet. It's unsolicited.
I wouldn't personally call it "Christian" fiction, but rather a movie with a spiritual or religious thesis - that there's order and meaning to the universe. Replace Mel Gubson with a Rabbi or Imam and you have the exact same movie.
Otherwise, I agree with shryke!
0
Options
AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
It is, perhaps, asking too much for Signs to deliver a full-on theodicy in a movie about scary space aliens. More after the spoilerA lot more after the spoiler Okay, buckle up your seatbelt, there's a thematic reading of Shyamalan's entire body of work after the spoiler (click if you've seen Signs):
To start with: in Signs, it's entirely possible to read the themes of faith and God to be entirely metaphorical. There's a point in the film that blatantly uses Shyamalan's cameo to equate the author/filmmaker with God. Mel Gibson's character being a priest and not, ya know, Deadpool, he interprets the ending through his spiritual beliefs; but it's quite possible to read the film as a meta-exploration of characters in a story whose greatest fear is that their tale is merely an arbitrary and unhappy series of random events. At the end they are reassured that, yes, there was a plan here all along, with careful foreshadowing, planted clues, and Chekov's guns there to ensure that they made it through their story alive.
Some further evidence for this reading includes, come on, we all know Shyamalan has a massive ego and would totally put himself in a movie as God, just as he put himself in a movie as the Martyr Whose Writings Would Change the World. Also, virtually all of his movies are, to varying degrees of explicitness, about finding and/or accepting your place or purpose in the world.
Unpacking that a bit, I've separated out these by film (um, twice--fuck you, I learned more as I was writing, there will be no restructuring) so you don't need to spoil any if you haven't seen them all. (With the exception of Signs, because presumably if you clicked on this spoiler, you've already seen it.)
The Sixth Sense:
Osment doesn't just learn not to be scared of ghosts; he learns that his ability is useful and finds solace in his new purpose, helping the dead to find peace. Willis, for his part, reassures himself that he is a good child psychiatrist, but the actual closing revelation impacts his place as a husband, arguably the more important of the character's two arcs.
Unbreakable:
This is obviously the most overt rendering of Shyamalan's singular thematic obsession, with its story of two men helping one another (more than they know) to discover their roles. (I consider it his masterpiece, a virtually flawless, thrillingly filmed and deliberately paced set of dueling character studies inspired by comic book mythology and dramatized by an intelligent and deeply emotional screenplay.) Fitting in with the overarching themes are a number of textual and metatextual elements, including Shyamalan searching for his own place after the unexpected success of his second film (Unbreakable even has him poke fun at his own methods, with one character telling another, "I hear this one has a twist ending). There's also the fact that, of a planned trilogy, Shyamalan only got to film his superhero's origin story, the part that most naturally fits in with his theme of assuming a purpose and understanding oneself. It's also all right here in the last scene, which is worth a rewatch:
The obsession is laid bare. You have Jackson's summation:
Do you know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you're here. That's... that's just an awful feeling.
But you also have the way he places the scene: rapturous. He's finally found what he's been looking for all this time, and even though that role is horrifying, the heroic music seems to swell for him. And why not? As essentially the creator (and nemesis) of this superhero, he shares some of the glory.
This may, by the way, be one of the finest twists in all of cinema. Rather than redefining significant chunks of information or relying on clues not given to the audience, it instead slightly recontextualizes our understanding of the character in a way that surprises but also makes perfect sense. It deepens the overall themes of the work by mirroring David's journey of self-discovery, including how both journeys are circumscribed by comic book tropes. And it's a wonderfully horrifying turn of the screw on David, who is sickened and diminished (in the first of two pull-back shots marking the two men as opposing equals) by the knowledge that in order for him to discover and embrace his purpose, actions which healed his psyche as well as his family, a vast human cost had to be paid. Discovering who you are and where you fit in is not without its price.
That's expanded upon in Signs, obviously, and it's something you guys picked up on--in order to reach his revelation, Gibson's character has to lose his wife, his brother has to end his baseball career, his son must have asthma, and so on. By making explicit the God/author connection (which, by the way, makes the scene in which Shyamalan's character gets out of dodge all the more interesting), the film gets at the nature of plot and plot contrivance, character and character growth, and suggests that religious narratives are themselves useful fictions that we invest with belief in order to give purpose to our suffering.
The Village is an interesting case: as we get further into Shyamalan's ouvre a second major theme begins to emerge, not entirely separate from the first: an overarching interest in constructed realities whose falsehood is revealed (hence the twist structure common across his body of work). Once revealed, it's up to the individual to decide whether he or she will accept their place within that false reality, or instead seek the truth.
In the Sixth Sense
the false reality is not, as you might think, ghost stories (which are full of ghosts who just need help), but family and marriage. The boy's relationship with his mother is built on lies--him lying to her about his traumatic gift, her not believing him when he tries to tell the truth. The last scene of their arc is the little boy telling the truth about himself and his grandmother's ghost, finally convincing his mother to believe him--the false notion of closeness has been punctured and replaced by truth--now that he knows his purpose in having this sensory ability, he is able to fulfill the desired familial role as a loved and accepted son. Meanwhile, Willis's psychiatrist is, of course, going through his own completely false reality in which he imagines his wife no longer loves him or even speaks to him and that she's having an affair. (Oh, and that he's alive.) He literally discovers that there are things he hasn't been seeing and information about himself he didn't know, realizes that his wife does still love him, and secure in the knowledge is willing to accept his intended path and leaving this plane of existence. Note also two major scenes involving videotape--at the end, the psychiatrist's wedding tape presents a welcome memory, while another tape reveals (after a puppet show) the sickening truth beneath the veneer of a healthy family.
In Unbreakable
the constructed reality is, again, marriage and family, the connections at first essentially being faked and then remade, remembered, reaffirmed as real over the course of the film. But you also have the constructed reality of comic books--and again, the ending twists this in another direction. At first Elijah acts as David's mentor, telling him there are these rules, and using that as a way to make his argument about David's nature and purpose more convincing. The film steps outside of this, however, once David goes out to fight crime--again, Elijah makes this explicit: "[T]his part won't be like a comic book. Real life doesn't fit into little boxes that were drawn for it." The ending twist reveals that Elijah's childhood interest in comics has in some ways shaped his psychosis in adult life. Elijah may choose to define himself by them, but it is definitely a construction, not a necessary aspect of the in-movie universe, and the film leaves it open whether or not David will continue to define himself in terms of that role.
In Signs, the constructed reality is the film itself, but also (arguably) religion. As I've already discussed, the two are intertwined throughout the movie. I'd only add here the synecdoche of this present in arguably the scariest scene in the entire movie, the South American birthday tape. In another movie by another director, this might have shown a children's birthday party entered and attacked by an alien, which might have been scary enough. In this movie, by this director, the alien doesn't attack but merely shocks by nature of its presence--the revelation that the cinematic perspective of the home video was flawed, because hidden within the frame (planted in advance) was an alien being. It need not attack, but merely walk off--it's the violation of expectation, of the assumed truth of our cinematic perspective, that terrifies. Less explicitly but more broadly, the entire film builds suspense out of hidden information. Off-screen sounds and restricted points of view (the blackout in the basement, for example, or the fuzzy reflection in the blade of the knife under the pantry door) abound, a coherent visual and aural strategy that not only adheres to classical horror and suspense filmmaking techniques but is thematically resonant with the way the plot hides information and plants foreshadowing and future important props in plain sight (all those glasses of water, for instance). Moreover, Gibson plays his priest as someone who has become emotionally and spiritually, if not blinded, then certainly nearsighted, essentially oblivious to early warnings of alien doings and the personal problems of the people around him. Rather than being connected with the world, he is cloistered, living a self-imposed isolation on that farm far from anyone else. When the trauma of seeing his family in danger allows him to realize the contrivances that have been placed for him, he can finally embrace his role as patriarch, priest, and character under his Creator's loving care.
Getting back to The Village, we have the strongest example yet of the constructed reality theme.
In fact, this complex, visually lush and wildly underrated movie can be read as an allegory for the Bush administration's War on Terror, complete with propped-up enemies, color-coded alerts, and antiquated social values. The film concerns itself with a society even more isolated than Gibson's farmstead in Signs, one built by the family members of crime victims to provide a safe place to raise their families (and get their historical reenactment on). They've deliberately traded freedom for security (not to mention comfort, health, and morality), and from the early funeral scene through the terrorist-analogue attacks committed by a mentally-ill Adrien Brody to finally Luscious's grievous injury, the film makes a strong argument that even their security, purchased so dear, is only an illusion: death (and the social ills that lead to violence) can find them, no matter where they hide, because it's an unavoidable part of the human condition. They try, though, enforcing the boundaries of their settlement on their children by constructing a fairy-tale-esque reality in which wolf-like creatures live in the woods and prey on those who stray from the village. Events puncture both of these fantasies (the story of the wolves, and the story that they can hide from suffering) for the protagonists, William Hurt's character and his blind daughter, Ivy. It all comes down to the question of whether or not he will allow her to leave the village, and whether or not she will choose to return. Ultimately Ivy steps into a fairy tale, assuming her place within it, and although her father risks losing the village they have built, he does so in the hope that its nobler ambitions will see fruit in generations to come.
Overall the pattern that is taking shape here is one in which a film's protagonists (with the exception of Signs, every movie has at least two) begin their story living within a false reality in which their role or purpose is unclear, uncover another layer (either a more true or more constructed reality) and then re-evaluate their selves, lives, and stories within the context of this new set of rules and information.
We're leaving behind Shyamalan's good films now, and I don't really care to go much further. He used to be an excellent filmmaker and his less than explicable slide into the cinematic garbage heap is actually quite depressing. It takes a hell of a lot for director to remove himself from my "I will watch whatever you make just in case it's really good" list once he/she is on there, but he managed it.
Briefly, I will say that Lady in the Water continues these major themes, but in a very facile and unsubtle fashion. Metatextually you have the film critic commenting on the story's tropes (that's not the only one--the film opens with a genuinely clever metaphor for a movie's emotional rollercoaster, as a family watches Giamatti's character battle a bug under their sink); in terms of constructed realities, you have the fairy tale elements come to life; in terms of finding your place, each character sort-of-but-not-really-because-this-movie-kinda-sucks discovers their role in the community, or at least in the community effort to fight off grass wolves or whatever. Giamatti's character likewise lives up to his single defined backstory trait (he used to be a doctor). Visually the directing here is still pretty great (the last shot is transcendent, actually, and Giamatti pulls a good performance out of thin fucking air) but the writing is pretty awful, and that's not even getting to the author self-insertion (clever in Signs, it's just pathetic here).
I don't remember enough of The Happening to discuss it in this context (thank God). I think Marky-Mark was in it? And Jess from New Girl? Make of that what you will.
And I turned off The Last Airbender not long in, once I realized that not only had Shyamalan failed at literally every other aspect of the movie, but he somehow made magic elemental bending powers boring and unfun. I will point out that Aang's story in the cartoon (not to mention virtually all of the major supporting characters' arcs) is about living up to societal expectations and ancient narratives and figuring out your place in the world, all of which is right up Shyamalan's alley. Time machine the cartoon back to him in 2002 and this movie might have been excellent.
This is the part where, in the conclusion of a thesis paper, I would make up some bullshit about how he was searching for his own place but ended getting lost in a constructed reality in which he's a misunderstood genius. But joke's on you, this is just a forum post. AND IT IS OVER.
Ephemera:
-This list obviously also does not include his first two movies, neither of which were ever widely seen and neither of which I have bothered to seek out, as by all accounts they are not even remotely good.
-The other thing on his credits list is the Stuart Little film (which he wrote but did not direct); I think you'll agree that his pet themes of family, constructed reality, and finding one's place are actually quite present within the film (as they were in EB White's excellent original novel of the same name).
+24
Options
darklite_xI'm not an r-tard...Registered Userregular
I finally watched Let Me In. I really liked the vibe it brought after being Americanized, but at the same time I wish they'd changed more. I get that it's a remake, but it would have been nice if they added their own touch to it, other than setting it in America.
Steam ID: darklite_x Xbox Gamertag: Darklite 37 PSN:Rage_Kage_37 Battle.Net:darklite#2197
@Astaereth - Just clicking Awesome doesn't seem adequate for that post. Bravo!
I especially agree with the part regarding hidden information. I found Signs to be utterly terrifying. Not because it tried to shock me or disgust me, but rather because it just hinted at what was going on. My imagination scared me far more than anyone else could.
What I love about Signs is that the aliens are sort of irrelevant. They're not a physical presence, they're the stand-ins for the unexpected tragedies we experience in our lives. They're adversity, fear, and doubt and it's fitting that the closest thing we have to arc words are "Swing Away". Swing away at adversity, indeed!
And theodicy is the perfect word to explain the theme of Signs.
0
Options
KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
Signs is one of the few scary movies I've sat through, and while the story was pretty dumb, I have to give props for 1) Mel Gibson's character running around the house trying to swear (even funnier in hindsight) and 2) the birthday party camcorder footage of the alien. Most of the scares were about not showing the scary thing, and somehow that shot managed to show the scary thing and still be just as scary (even replaying it multiple times).
GreasyKidsStuffMOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered Userregular
It's a sign (heh) Shyamalan did something right when the most commonly cited as scary part of Signs is the birthday video. I don't think anybody who's seen it (that I've talked to) has said something different.
Man I loved Drive. First movie in a while where Los Angeles was one of the main characters.
I also like Collateral for this reason. Tom Cruise's speech about LA and the thematic bookend at the end? That's basically my opinion of this place. Makes it even tougher for me to root against him.
It also captures the whole sodium-vapor, hazy twilight and palm trees ambience of nighttime in this city like no other.
Okay, second part of Lawrence of Arabia watched tonight.
Completely incredible, two moments especially caught my eye I didn't see previously.
The officer who stands up near the end to shake his hand "just to say he done it" is of course the man at the beginning of the film standing up to Bentley. But he is the very same medical officer who storms into the hospital in Damascus shouting "Outrageous!" and striking Lawrence, whom he took for a native.
The second moment:
Lawrence calls for for the attack on the Turkish soldiers, with the heart-stopping "No prisoners!", and afterwards they are again riding in formation, with Lawrence riding off to the side, haunted. A rider comes up and shows him grapes cut from Damascus. Lawrence takes one and eats it. We don't see his face, but the rider laughs and says merrily "They are not ripe!"
Sour grapes. That is damn ballsy film-making to do something like that.
Posts
Though I think I've figured out the twist:
Speculation spoilers:
I'm mainly seeing it to show support for scifi and also Morgan Freeman
Exactly. And I also want to see if I'm right or not. After a while, twists get easy to guess but the fun is in guessing the right one!
And it was either see Oblivion or After Earth. And, despite Signs and Unbreakable being two of my favorite movies, I still have forgiven Shyamalan for The Happening.
But we should probably forget I said that
Thought it was a slick little story that could have been a twilight zone episode.
That's enough for me to give After Earth a look. Will Smith's comments on why he didn't take the role of Django hurt it more in my eyes than shymalan
Signs is such a good movie until it falls apart.
If someone knew nothing about the film or the man who made it, I would highly recommend they see it. Unfortunately once you know Shyalaman's MO you're expecting the ending to give you a twist and when it comes you just groan and go "Come ooooon".
But man, seeing it in theaters right when it came out? It was great.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I disagree. I went in expecting a Science fiction movie, but instead I got Christian fiction.
It's not bad thus far, and I'm enjoying it to a point, but there is no way this needed to be a three hour movie, and I really doubt it even needed to be three movies. If LOTR can be told in three films, the Hobbit can be told in one. What transpires in the first hour of the Hobbit could easily be accomplished in 15-20 minutes. We don't need the prologue to be nearly as long, we don't need to watch a slow-mo version of the narration re: Thorin and the Orcs, we don't need to hear a goddamn Dwarf Song while they're throwing dishes around the house, the dinner scene doesn't need to be that long, and we don't need to watch basically the opening 10-15 minutes of Fellowship as a preface to The Hobbit. Based on the first third, I suspect that it's a 3 hour film not because it needs 3 hours to tell the story, but because someone wanted a 3 hour film and then worked to make that happen.
What's there is very nice to look at and interesting as characterization, but it's entirely superfluous and feels bloated as shit. I look forward to something happening that isn't basically "Dwarfs eat dinner and then invite Bilbo on a road trip." And I feel that if I wasn't already invested in the universe and familiar with these people, I would be bored to tears thus far.
To be continued...
And then it was just offensive.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Gotta disagree with this one. Music plays a part in The Hobbit and I'm glad they kept it in.
Waa?
High frame rate fixes all those complaints. Not because it makes the movie interesting, mind you. It just makes it impossible to notice anything but the bad makeup and fake looking sets. The movie stumbles around being boring and nauseating and unpleasant with bird poop in its hair, and then just when you want to pull out your eyes, the riddle scene comes along and holy shit why isn't the whole movie this good? Once that's over, the movie wants to hang around and ask you what you're thinking when all you want to do is take a nap.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
:rotate:
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I'm not saying it's a good movie, but come on. There's no support for the idea that God killed his wife to teach him a lesson in the movie.
You may well be right (and I haven't read The Hobbit in probably fifteen years, so a lot of it isn't clear in my mind), but proper pacing and editing can incorporate something like the importance of music into a scene that's also doing other things - say, have them sing while marching, then move into a montage showing their travel with the song as an overlay. Something along those lines. The song scene is literally just the dwarves singing and nothing else (unless you count dish-tossing, which I don't). There was a more efficient and more effective way to get this across, is my point.
It's not a fatal blow for the film or anything, but it strikes me as something that could've been improved. I was skeptical at the outside that a 300 page book needed 9 hours of movie to relate the story, and the first hour of film didn't change my mind. I'm looking forward to continuing watching tonight, though, so the movie is clearly doing something right.
The ending is kinda silly Shyamalan bullshit, sure, but thematically it's reasonably sound.
I swear, internet atheists these days are more intolerable than religious people.
But, religion's a touchy thing for a lot of people. If I want to discuss theology, I will seek it out. I will always, always give you the bird when you try to hand me your pamphlet on the street.
Signs is an example of the later. It was pretending to be one thing, then out came the pamphlet. It's unsolicited.
Also, I wouldn't lump Eli in with Signs; the later involves divine intervention as it's plot resolution, while the former arguably has no divine influence at all. If you're going to insist upon putting an omnipotent and infallible God into a human story, it's important to keep their influence subtle enough that it does not detract from the triumphs and tribulations of the human characters. Which is part of why I largely liked Eli; not a perfect movie, but far more enjoyable than Signs.
Kind of like Book of Eli in the sense that it's not nearly a good (or bad, I suppose) enough movie nor is the use of its chosen religious framework solid enough to generate the level of disagreement that it seems to inspire.
Edit: vamanos, children
I wouldn't personally call it "Christian" fiction, but rather a movie with a spiritual or religious thesis - that there's order and meaning to the universe. Replace Mel Gubson with a Rabbi or Imam and you have the exact same movie.
Otherwise, I agree with shryke!
Some further evidence for this reading includes, come on, we all know Shyamalan has a massive ego and would totally put himself in a movie as God, just as he put himself in a movie as the Martyr Whose Writings Would Change the World. Also, virtually all of his movies are, to varying degrees of explicitness, about finding and/or accepting your place or purpose in the world.
Unpacking that a bit, I've separated out these by film (um, twice--fuck you, I learned more as I was writing, there will be no restructuring) so you don't need to spoil any if you haven't seen them all. (With the exception of Signs, because presumably if you clicked on this spoiler, you've already seen it.)
The Sixth Sense:
Unbreakable:
The obsession is laid bare. You have Jackson's summation:
But you also have the way he places the scene: rapturous. He's finally found what he's been looking for all this time, and even though that role is horrifying, the heroic music seems to swell for him. And why not? As essentially the creator (and nemesis) of this superhero, he shares some of the glory.
This may, by the way, be one of the finest twists in all of cinema. Rather than redefining significant chunks of information or relying on clues not given to the audience, it instead slightly recontextualizes our understanding of the character in a way that surprises but also makes perfect sense. It deepens the overall themes of the work by mirroring David's journey of self-discovery, including how both journeys are circumscribed by comic book tropes. And it's a wonderfully horrifying turn of the screw on David, who is sickened and diminished (in the first of two pull-back shots marking the two men as opposing equals) by the knowledge that in order for him to discover and embrace his purpose, actions which healed his psyche as well as his family, a vast human cost had to be paid. Discovering who you are and where you fit in is not without its price.
That's expanded upon in Signs, obviously, and it's something you guys picked up on--in order to reach his revelation, Gibson's character has to lose his wife, his brother has to end his baseball career, his son must have asthma, and so on. By making explicit the God/author connection (which, by the way, makes the scene in which Shyamalan's character gets out of dodge all the more interesting), the film gets at the nature of plot and plot contrivance, character and character growth, and suggests that religious narratives are themselves useful fictions that we invest with belief in order to give purpose to our suffering.
The Village is an interesting case: as we get further into Shyamalan's ouvre a second major theme begins to emerge, not entirely separate from the first: an overarching interest in constructed realities whose falsehood is revealed (hence the twist structure common across his body of work). Once revealed, it's up to the individual to decide whether he or she will accept their place within that false reality, or instead seek the truth.
In the Sixth Sense
In Unbreakable
In Signs, the constructed reality is the film itself, but also (arguably) religion. As I've already discussed, the two are intertwined throughout the movie. I'd only add here the synecdoche of this present in arguably the scariest scene in the entire movie, the South American birthday tape. In another movie by another director, this might have shown a children's birthday party entered and attacked by an alien, which might have been scary enough. In this movie, by this director, the alien doesn't attack but merely shocks by nature of its presence--the revelation that the cinematic perspective of the home video was flawed, because hidden within the frame (planted in advance) was an alien being. It need not attack, but merely walk off--it's the violation of expectation, of the assumed truth of our cinematic perspective, that terrifies. Less explicitly but more broadly, the entire film builds suspense out of hidden information. Off-screen sounds and restricted points of view (the blackout in the basement, for example, or the fuzzy reflection in the blade of the knife under the pantry door) abound, a coherent visual and aural strategy that not only adheres to classical horror and suspense filmmaking techniques but is thematically resonant with the way the plot hides information and plants foreshadowing and future important props in plain sight (all those glasses of water, for instance). Moreover, Gibson plays his priest as someone who has become emotionally and spiritually, if not blinded, then certainly nearsighted, essentially oblivious to early warnings of alien doings and the personal problems of the people around him. Rather than being connected with the world, he is cloistered, living a self-imposed isolation on that farm far from anyone else. When the trauma of seeing his family in danger allows him to realize the contrivances that have been placed for him, he can finally embrace his role as patriarch, priest, and character under his Creator's loving care.
Getting back to The Village, we have the strongest example yet of the constructed reality theme.
Overall the pattern that is taking shape here is one in which a film's protagonists (with the exception of Signs, every movie has at least two) begin their story living within a false reality in which their role or purpose is unclear, uncover another layer (either a more true or more constructed reality) and then re-evaluate their selves, lives, and stories within the context of this new set of rules and information.
We're leaving behind Shyamalan's good films now, and I don't really care to go much further. He used to be an excellent filmmaker and his less than explicable slide into the cinematic garbage heap is actually quite depressing. It takes a hell of a lot for director to remove himself from my "I will watch whatever you make just in case it's really good" list once he/she is on there, but he managed it.
Briefly, I will say that Lady in the Water continues these major themes, but in a very facile and unsubtle fashion. Metatextually you have the film critic commenting on the story's tropes (that's not the only one--the film opens with a genuinely clever metaphor for a movie's emotional rollercoaster, as a family watches Giamatti's character battle a bug under their sink); in terms of constructed realities, you have the fairy tale elements come to life; in terms of finding your place, each character sort-of-but-not-really-because-this-movie-kinda-sucks discovers their role in the community, or at least in the community effort to fight off grass wolves or whatever. Giamatti's character likewise lives up to his single defined backstory trait (he used to be a doctor). Visually the directing here is still pretty great (the last shot is transcendent, actually, and Giamatti pulls a good performance out of thin fucking air) but the writing is pretty awful, and that's not even getting to the author self-insertion (clever in Signs, it's just pathetic here).
I don't remember enough of The Happening to discuss it in this context (thank God). I think Marky-Mark was in it? And Jess from New Girl? Make of that what you will.
And I turned off The Last Airbender not long in, once I realized that not only had Shyamalan failed at literally every other aspect of the movie, but he somehow made magic elemental bending powers boring and unfun. I will point out that Aang's story in the cartoon (not to mention virtually all of the major supporting characters' arcs) is about living up to societal expectations and ancient narratives and figuring out your place in the world, all of which is right up Shyamalan's alley. Time machine the cartoon back to him in 2002 and this movie might have been excellent.
This is the part where, in the conclusion of a thesis paper, I would make up some bullshit about how he was searching for his own place but ended getting lost in a constructed reality in which he's a misunderstood genius. But joke's on you, this is just a forum post. AND IT IS OVER.
Ephemera:
-This list obviously also does not include his first two movies, neither of which were ever widely seen and neither of which I have bothered to seek out, as by all accounts they are not even remotely good.
-The other thing on his credits list is the Stuart Little film (which he wrote but did not direct); I think you'll agree that his pet themes of family, constructed reality, and finding one's place are actually quite present within the film (as they were in EB White's excellent original novel of the same name).
I especially agree with the part regarding hidden information. I found Signs to be utterly terrifying. Not because it tried to shock me or disgust me, but rather because it just hinted at what was going on. My imagination scared me far more than anyone else could.
What I love about Signs is that the aliens are sort of irrelevant. They're not a physical presence, they're the stand-ins for the unexpected tragedies we experience in our lives. They're adversity, fear, and doubt and it's fitting that the closest thing we have to arc words are "Swing Away". Swing away at adversity, indeed!
And theodicy is the perfect word to explain the theme of Signs.
I also like Collateral for this reason. Tom Cruise's speech about LA and the thematic bookend at the end? That's basically my opinion of this place. Makes it even tougher for me to root against him.
It also captures the whole sodium-vapor, hazy twilight and palm trees ambience of nighttime in this city like no other.
Crap, I gotta see Collateral again.
Completely incredible, two moments especially caught my eye I didn't see previously.
The second moment:
Lawrence calls for for the attack on the Turkish soldiers, with the heart-stopping "No prisoners!", and afterwards they are again riding in formation, with Lawrence riding off to the side, haunted. A rider comes up and shows him grapes cut from Damascus. Lawrence takes one and eats it. We don't see his face, but the rider laughs and says merrily "They are not ripe!"
Sour grapes. That is damn ballsy film-making to do something like that.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar