I liked **Unbreakable **and Signs, and I even think The Village isn’t too bad. I don’t care that they don’t make a lick of sense, I enjoy watching them.
**Lady **is getting some pretty bad reviews, though. Sigh.
It’s tracking at 24% at RT, with 20% for Cream-of-the-Crop critics (and even that figure’s too high, given that they gave Ripes to several reviews that are not particularly positive except in relation to the others)
Paul Giamatti’s supposed to be terrific, though, so I’ll probably see it for that reason alone.
Roger Ebert savaged it pretty badly.
I like this…
“Why is the bitch in my muthafuckin’ pool? That freaks me the fuck out! Get the bitch out of my pool, or I will shoot the muthafuckin’ bitch in the head? Do you undastand, muthafucka??”
I didn’t care for The Village but I really liked Sixth Sense and Unbreakable – and I mostly liked Signs, too. But I don’t know… there’s an awful lot of consensus here among the critics. I think I’ll wait to hear more of the word of mouth, and maybe catch it on video to satisfy my own curiosity.
Actually, Roger Ebert is still recovering from his surgery. Someone is currently subbing for him on his site (though Roger was never a big Night fan in the first place).
Me too! It’s his best film, in my opinion.
I tend to like Kurt Loder’s reviews, but this one confused me:
I mean, that this moves sucks nasty goat ass I don’t doubt for one second. But what’s all this talk about “a director of Shyamalan’s caliber” and “his strengths as a filmmaker”? Does Loder mean to suggest M. Knight is anything but a stupifyingly tedious hack, who somehow stumbled, in spite of himself, into directing one barely watchable film (Sixth Sense), and has milked that dubious success for half a decade’s worth of total stinkers since?
Kurt, you’re slipping, man.
What kind of a name for a mystical species is “narf?” Did Pinky write this thing?
Well… sometimes, when a narwhal and a smurf love each other very much…
Do you mean the guy whose blog the link is too? The blogger seems like a bigger douche based on the rest of his posts. So a douche is calling another douche a douche? Yankee-my-wankee.
With a nymph being called a narf and the nasty critters being called scrunts, I don’t think I could get through this movie without laughing–that is, when not groaning.
Oh good, it wasn’t just me thinking that.
The Movie Spoiler’s page on LITW
All I can say is, Shyamalan must’ve gotten hold of some supremely primo shit.
As far as I can tell, this thread is not discussing the movie, it is discussing the reactions of critics to the movie. I started a thread for people who had seen the movie, but it was closed. So I will post the content of that thread here:
Lady in the Water - ridiculous
I saw Lady In The Water last night, and even though I had slept until noon that day AND had a 2-hour nap, I still dozed off because the film was so boring. It was also pretentious and ridiculous, complete Shyamalan self-gratification.
Lady In The Water could not figure out what kind of movie it wanted to be. It was not a horror movie, and it was not really a fantasy movie. It was not a drama because there was no tension between the characters, and it was not a comedy except for the unintentionally hilarious moments (of which there were many.) It just went nowhere, and had an incredibly weak story and lousy script writing.
It was impossible for me to take the fantasy element seriously with ridiculous words like “Narf” and “Scrunt.” It was just too goofy and ridiculous. And what were they trying to do with the name “Cleveland Heep?” Is there some kind of symbolism in it? All too goofy for my tastes.
The whole story, which, as I said, is weak, was so boring and lacking in ANY kind of drama or tension that it put me right into the arms of Morpheus. A poorly written mess, further proof that Shyamalan’s filmmaking is going downhill. Speaking of M. Nite, his casting of himself in a hackneyed, ham-fisted role as some kind of political martyr was unbelievably pretentious.
I have no idea how anyone could have enjoyed this movie. Did anyone here find it more bearable than I did?
As Charlie McCarthy said in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man,
All I can say is,
I actually liked it quite a bit (saw it last night). A number of things could have been better, but overall (apart from annoying people walking in uninvited from other films) it was a fine night at the cinema.
I would have to guess that this film might have gotten a better reception from the movie reviewers if MNS hadn’t
killed one off in the film, right after someone utters the line, “Who would be so arrogant as to assume they known what someone else’s intentions are?”
and I have to agree with you that he has an unholy predilection for casting himself in the most tragic role in his films, but overall it that it had a quiet magic I found extremely appealing.
But in this time when I hear the kids are text-messaging each other from the theaters on opening night to tell their friends whether to bother coming on Saturday, quiet magic does not carry the day. The velvet ropes the theater had put up to control entry during Friday’s opening went unused last night, and the theater was only half full.
Did they actually expect to be overwhelmed by the Teeming Millions demanding to see M. Night Shyamalan latest masterpiece right now, or is this the most overblown publicity stunt since some Grade B horror movie distributor got the idea of asking patrons to sign waivers absolving him of responsibility of they died of fright?
I saw Lady In The Water this weekend.
It wasn’t a very good film. It had its moments but it wasn’t very good. It didn’t suck…just was weak. I did enjoy parts of it though.
I want to like M. Night…I enjoyed 6th sense. I REALLY enjoyed Unbreakable. I also liked Signs (the parts where there were no guns and such hit me well in a surreal way).
I was very dissappointed in the Village. Very. Lady in the Water would be my second least favorite M. Night movie so far.