Well, you felt the need to announce to one and all that someday you’d be so kind as to share with us all exactly why you hate Fight Club. I then am not allowed to let you know that at least one person doesn’t give a rat’s ass?
You confuse the hell out of me, but as I said, we’re likely to agree sometimes, and those are some damn fine movies. I especially love that you mentioned At Close Range, which I think is terribly underrated. That movie haunted me the first time I saw it, and hasn’t lost any of its power in the decades since. It has a killer cast (Sean Penn, Christopher Walken, Chris Penn, Millie Perkins, Mary Stuart Masterson, David Strathairn, Kiefer Sutherland, Candy Clark, Crispen Glover, Tracy Walter), a fascinating story based on a true story (IMDB tagline: Like father. Like son. Like hell.), great acting, great scenery, great music…I think the movie is generally well-regarded, but it doesn’t seem to come to people’s minds often enough when they’re talking about crime movies. Thank you for listing it first.
The Panic in Needle Park is, well, Pacino. Nuff said. And Bound of course, we saw Bound the day it was released in theaters and became big fans.
Hey man, just goes to show that it’s hard to judge someone’s tastes based on a few opinions. I would NOT say anyone in this thread is an idiot or a “negative barometor” because they liked movies I don’t like.
Anyway, we love each other now. Cool!
And cool that we both liked At Close Range. I think it’s very chilling movie that shows the dark heart of small-time criminals. Walken’s greatest performance perhaps? Just scary and well-made as hell. I need to get the DVD, probably haven’t seen it in 20 years.
OK. I’ll even stipulate that Starship Troopers would have been redeemed if it has been equally unpretentious (i.e. if it had disclaimed any connection to the original Heinlein, either as a supposed adaptation or an even more supposed “satire”).
I saw the theatrical trailer. It was the first in a line of several that elicited no reaction beyond “get this crap off the screen and show the movie (or at least the Spidey 3 trailer” already).
I am another M. Night Shyamalan fan. I love his movies. Yes, he has his own signature ways of doing things, but so does Tim Burton, and everyone seems to think he’s a genius.
It seems to me that it’s “in style” to hate M. Night Shyamalan. People love to go to his movies with the intention of figuring out the twist before everyone else, and then talking about how stupid it was because “I knew the twist from 5 words in!”
Whatever happened to suspension of disbelief? I really enjoy his movies. I enjoy not letting myself see the twist until I’m supposed to. So what if there’s always a twist? Is that a crime? In every Spike Lee movie there’s a part where someone runs, but he makes it look more like they’re floating. God, whatta schmuck! Or maybe it’s just a signature and we should live with it and enjoy the rest of the movie.
Just my 2 cents. 
Yeah, when she whispers “The Lady in the Water. Rated PG. Starts July 21”, it kind of loses its effect.
It wasn’t his film, but Tarantino’s monologue about the homoerotic subtext in **Top Gun ** was a classic part of Sleep with Me. “You can ride my tail anytime!”
“Genius” is a bit strong, but he’s great, if extremely uneven. He does brilliant, excellent films, and then turns around and does absolute complete shit (Planet of the Apes, anyone?).
The first time I saw the trailer, I whispered loudly to my husband, “I don’t want to see it.” Both of us then cackled like loons.
I’m actually pretty good at suspending my disbelief. Or perhaps I’m dumb and don’t pick up on obvious hints. So when I figured out both “twists” in The Village, you can rest assured that it wasn’t because of my utter brilliance at predicting movie plots, nor was it the product of trying and trying to figure out what was going on. The surface of the movie simply didn’t hang together; there was no way to suspend disbelief and the “twists” were so obvious that even my hard-headed self figured them out. I couldn’t speak for his other movies, because I don’t remember The Sixth Sense all that well and Signs didn’t really have a twist in the same vein. But I’m quite apt to suspend my disbelief and The Village didn’t work for me anyway.
Hey, that’s totally cool. If there’s a specific movie someone dislikes, there’s nothing wrong with that. I just find that more and more people are slamming M. Night Shyamalan as a director when he’s only put out four big movies in his entire career so far, and it seems that most people like 2 or 3 of them.
But suddenly after The Village, which I admit was his worst film, everyone was talking about how “stupid” M. Night Shyamalan is, and how “stupid” all his movies are, and how he’s just a joke and so on and so forth, and heck, now that we’re on the topic, wasn’t Signs kinda dumb? Yeah, that M. Night Shyamalan, what a hack.
But last time I checked, most people (not all, no hate mail please) liked at least 50% of the FOUR movies he’s put out. I’ve had this conversation dozens of times, and it’s always the same thing. It seems that people think he’s a hack, because that’s how we’re supposed to feel about his movies.
Granted, the kid in the trailer seems like a bad choice for marketing, and I’m interested in a discussion about directors and how much power they really do have over the marketing of their films, but I’m going to reserve judgment about the film itself until I see it.
If M. Night Shyamalan puts out nothing but turkeys in the next few years, I’ll think about joining the “he’s a hack” team. Deal?
Now that we’re on the topic? I’m still trying to assimilate the information that not all people consider Signs a stupid, shitty movie, and now you’re saying that people didn’t start saying that until after The Village?
I was calling that movie dumb way before The Village (which I liked).
Yeah, I don’t remember many people not hating Signs.
In my opinion, The Sixth Sense was pretty good, though nothing particularly amazing. Signs and The Village were simply spectacularly bad. So among the three of his movies that I’ve seen, I have a definitely negative opinion overall. I never particularly noticed it being trendy to hate Shyamalan, but I have noticed that the adoration that he was showered with after The Sixth Sense has diminished quite a lot.
Okay, so you started calling it stupid earlier.
My point wasn’t when this-person-or-that-person said this-movie-or-that-movie sucked. My point is, it’s fine if you don’t like a particular movie or three, but it’s another thing to say the director sucks. Particularly when most people liked the first two movies.
No?
Personally I’ve only liked 1 of his 4 movies I’ve seen. (were there others?)
I enjoyed 6th sense, the other 3 were awful. I’ll probably see this one cause my BF likes crap like that but with only a 25% track record so far, I seriously doubt I’ll like it.
But see, this is exactly the point that a lot of other people have brought up. The point of The Village has nothing to do with the “twists”. They’re just there. I went in to the movie already knowing both twists, but that didn’t bother me in the least. I enjoyed the movie because of the atmospherics and the acting (which I guess goes to Cervaise’s point about MNS’s being an overrated writer and an underrated director).
Plus, in this case the suspension of disbelief isn’t so that you don’t figure out the twists. It’s so you can believe that the characters haven’t figured them out. That, I was perfectly willing to buy.
Then he could do a character study without all the melodramatic crap.
Then why are they there? Why the interminable “suspense” when the answers are found? Why, when we look into the shed where I knew those animal costumes were hiding did they spend about two minutes panning the camera as slowly as they possibly could if they weren’t trying to build suspense for the big reveal? He certainly shot The Village as a suspense film, with all sorts of long pauses right before revealing some new detail. Why, if those plot twists were unimportant, did he follow the conventions of that genre so precisely?
I don’t buy this idea that just because he fails so dramatically at doing half the tasks of filmmaking, he must therefore have meant to fail. He did a terrible job at that movie, and trying to say that he did it on purpose is completely unconvincing. If, in fact, he had set a convincing period and atmosphere, it would have been an interesting development (although I don’t believe he could have without rejiggering the plot a whole lot, and getting rid of the wolfy-things entirely in favor of some more subtle evil.)
I’m a little confused. Maybe I’m just uncouth, but the only one of the four movies that I thought had a lot of “melodramatic crap” in it was Signs. I’m not sure how that accusation applies to The Village,, unless you consider the “twists” themselves the melodramatic crap.