I enjoyed it even when I was straining my eyes searching the screen for little movements or hints. This one had me hooked just on the opening credits, loved them, and then they are carried thru the end credits, just cool. The score is awesome, even when its not present, you feel it. Very clear and sharp print.

Anyway, its one of the few, very few I would pay evening price for if I had to.

SPOILERS AHEAD

As far as the movie goes, I left feeling kind of empty and let down.
All the buildup didnt amount to much and there was no real suprise at the end other than how to kill aliens.
I thought it was really good up until the end.
I did, however, have the same disappointed feeling about UNBREAKABLE but ended up liking the film eventually.

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Find me online
AOL: Dexter Caldwell
yahoo!: dexter_caldwell

"It is the opinion of the entire staff the Dexter is criminally insane."
 

Shyamalan seems to have this thing going where his movies all build up to some point, but you have no clue what that point could possibly be or how it could possibly work. Then you get to that point, and think, "Oh my God. Of course. How could they have ended it any other way?" I don't think that this picture is as good as THE SIXTH SENSE, and it sure as hell isn't as good as UNBREAKABLE, but it's still a pretty solid movie.
 

I enjoyed it a lot. Shaymalyan's (sp?) movies seem very "cinematic" and well-crafted. He keeps things just a little "off" so the audience has to guess what's going on. Like that military recruiter guy -- you're watching him and thinking "What's the deal?". Things tie up nicely at the end. I wasn't blown away but this is a solid movie.

 

Anyway, very effective use of the back surround channel (Surround-EX)

I enjoyed it, but it's not something I want to see again. Night's pacing is a bit too slow for my taste.
 

I did like this film more than "Unbreakable" but still the ending was a bit on the weak side. The only things that really made it for me were the funny bits, such as the little girl and her water drinking habit and Joaquin Phoenix' tirade about 30 year old nerds who never had girlfriends but winds up behaving the same nerdy way right down to the Hershey's Kiss aluminum foil thingie on his head.

The movie did have some excellent use of surround sound. I watched it at the Carmike 8 in Lawton, presented in THX-DTS. The aliens' scurrying actions were really well demonstrated in the surrounds. The DTS track also had some pretty good jolting moments, especially when the aliens were getting into the house. This film is indeed a Surround-EX enabled show. I noticed the 5 digit serial number on the DTS CD-ROMs denoting DTS-ES capability rather than the usual four digital nomenclature for straight 5.1/5.0.
 

(spoilers ahead)

1. Corn is wet at night and in the morning. Not just when it rains, but all the time. Dew forms only a couple hours after sunset, and stays on through the morning until the sun burns it off. But yet water was their nemesis, and at the beginning when they woke and ran through they were dry.

2. It would be a very rare occasion indeed for a farmer NOT to have a gun in his house. I was expecting all along for someone to grab a shot gun and wait, but it never happened.

Other than that, the movie was OK. The further it removed itself from reality, the less interested I got.

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"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" - Homer Simpson
 

2nd viewing for me, and I liked it more this time. One of the best movies released this year.

I figured the reason they had no guns in the house was that Mel Gibson's character was an ex-preacher and maybe he was opposed to having weapons because of that. Or maybe after what happened with his wife he decided it was too risky having weapons in the house with the 2 young kids there. No more tragic accidents.

HOWEVER...

I decided against it. Let's face it. I am one of the few people that just didn't like "the 6th sense", because I guessed it at the beginning. It was too easy! Unbreakable, while a better film, was way to friggin slow, and had a very unsatifying and very quick ending.

Now that signs has raped everyone at the box office, with about 60 million in sales, I figured I will wait to rent the DVD, or better yet, get it on HBO.

Besides, I agree with Chad on the believability issue. My uncle in nevada is a rancher, is a religeous leader, and there are guns. It is standard for ranchers and farmers to have them around. There is no law enforcement for these families, other than that.

That's not the only reason I don't want to see it, but it just doesn't really entice me at all.

Dave
 

I thought the movie was great though. Well made, and great acting....it kinda reminded me of Independence Day witht the whole alien invasion thing. i think its one of the better movies to come out this year.

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3% Body Fat. 1% Brain Activity.

that could explain a few odd things related to acting abilities...
 

I agree though that some people will not like this movie. It is slow and talky sometimes, and the aliens are really not the central point of the story.

 

I also question the wisdom of Mr. Shyamalan casting himself, when he is obviously out of his league acting wise. It is too distracting from the storyline. Hitchcock did it right... on, then off. If you blinked, you could miss him.

I predict this film will fall fast.

Republicans want everyone to carry a gun, its much more fun that way.

Dave
 

As far as the left wingers (I'm assuming that's what you meant, Jason) pushing their agenda, Mel Gibson has gone against anti-gun nuts in his movies before, most recently "The Patriot" where he caught a lot of slack for showing kids killing men with guns. I can see M. Night making that decision, though, because I don't know his stance on that issue.

Regardless of why guns weren't there, it made it unbelievable to me. That and the fact that corn gets wet at night.

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"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" - Homer Simpson
 

Michael - We are seeing the movie for what it is, or at least what we thought it was. That's the whole point of these reviews. By your "sit down and shut up" theory, Runaway Bride should be just as enjoyable to watch, right?
 

I enjoy every film for what it is. If I ruin it for myself by analyzing it then so be it. I don't do it in the theater, I do it LOOOOONG before I get there, and for about two minutes afterwards.

I enjoy most films, but I really get dissapointed on big let downs.

Dave
 

Dave
 

-Claude
 

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The man with the magic hands.
 

I am not usually a good judge of acting, but this is the first movie I've seen in a while in which the acting and scriptwriting (dialogue) seemed wooden to me in a bad 1950's sci-fi kind of way. Think 'Plan Nine From Outer Space'. To me, there were moments that were that bad.

The advantages of the movie, on the other hand, were the tension and suspense that were created. Shymalan has a knack for knowing where to place the camera and to make effective use of as little as possible. A lack of sound, a lack of light, a lack of props and especially a lack of special effects. He's good at getting back to the basics of what makes effective filmmaking.

The part where the house was being boarded up followed by the retreat to the basement reminded me strongly of 'Night of the Living Dead'. When the kid was suffering from the asthma attack in the basement, then it was 'Panic Room' all over again. The area in which I have a preference for films like 'Night of the Living Dead' over a film like 'Signs' is that it too knows how to create suspense but it dispenses with the 'character development' and 'backstory' schtick which, like I said earlier, should be dispensed with as far as I'm concerned because that stuff never rings true for me anyway. I think of those techniques as a cookie-cutter method of creating 'depth'.

Major studio release are generally very, very bad at portraying emotional stuff that rings true for me which is why it's best left out. European films and independent American films are far better in this regard and I will turn to them if I am in the mood for a serious drama. This 'crossover' stuff where you have movies that want both bites of the cherry end up compromising BOTH aspects in the pursuit of a movie which 'has it all'.

Does anyone remember that 'A Stir of Echoes' was ignored at the box office in favour of 'The Sixth Sense' way back when? I much, much prefer ASOE because it chose to get on efficiently with the job of scaring us and didn't get bogged down with wanting to put lumps in our throats. If I want emotion I'll go rent an Ingmar Bergman film, since he does it better than anyone else. If I want to be scared I will turn to David Koepp or George Romero or John Carpenter or Dario Argento. Don't like this middle of the road stuff.

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Greg Mueller
Amateur Astronomer, Machinist, Filmnut
http://www.muellersatomics.com/
 

Film was very grainy, large distraction.

***WARNING>>> SPOILERS AHEAD***

I know, I hate spoilers in a review, but this is needed...

As an agnostic, I found it a very good thought provoking excercise in philosophical thought. What I did not like about this movie is its sudden end when the aliens just up and leave in the night without us getting the benefit of the experience. yeah I know its an artistic choice, and M Night wanted to make a more spiritual movie than a sci fi movie, but he made a sci fi movie and the ending was weak and weak and weak.

The choice of soundtrack for the ending when they beat the alien to death was more like a grandiose victory march, rather than a nice bone chilling score, like the rest of the movie had. This was very dissapointing and left me going... Hmmm... thats interesting.

As a result, I have no plans to ever see this movie again. Really. The ending is so crucial, and the way it was done was just whimpy and weak, almost a cop out to avoid looking too much like a sci fi movie.

Thats not to say the element of what he used as far as spirituality goes was bad, HOWEVER...

Choice of music. So crucial. A different score would have really pumped up the emotional aspect of the end and really taken us for a great heart jolting and tear jerking ending. Instead it left me wondering why I let someone pay to bring me to this film. Yeah I got three good spine tinglers, but that was it.

I give it two out of four stars, or one thumb up and the other one somewhere else. Not in my ass, but off doing other things.

Dave
 

The above is exactly what I thought was wrong with the movie and why I do not ever have to see it again.

Dennis
 

I found the 6.1 channel mix to be highly effective in this film, especially in the basement scene. It was one of the best I've heard. The cinematogrpahy was dark, but worked well in the DLP presentation I saw at Mann's Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Black levels are still a problem in the system, but only barely. The clearity of the rest of the image was luminous in quality. Very little grain of the film master showed with beautiful film-like images. Excellent.
 

Cineworld Bradford Deluxe Screen 12/09/02 6:20pm
Flat, SRD-EX (I'm assuming they remembered to turn the EX on)

Soft Focus. The 'Road to Perdition' Trailer was the worst for focus and no text ever looked right on screen.

After the adverts/trailers I saw about a second of the BBFC cert. Every thing went black. The masking opened to scope (I’m thinking –“Hmm I thought this was a flat film”). Then I saw the remainder of the BBFC tag incorrectly stretched to Scope. At that point the projectionist must have realised that this was in fact at flat film. The lens turret went back to flat for the opening sequence of the film. The masking was eventually pulled back in to flat. But it took a couple of tries. The masking didn’t seem in good heath. It made a loud squeaking sound.

So On with the film. First point. It seemed to be one of those films that looked as if I had walked in after it hade been on for 20 minutes. It went into the story far too early for me. I hated the first appearance of the alien (rooftop). It seemed to say ‘This film is going to be about FX” too early. Which is a misconception as it’s not an FX driven film. I liked the second alien appearance. And I like the fact that Aliens were attacking the world and we weren’t seeing it happen . The ending. I wanted to aliens to end up being good. Yes I wanted the big finale alien to be curing Culkin of his asthma in an E.T kind of way. Not ending up being battered to death.

I'm getting my student lone by the end of the week, so I may make a trip to Manchester to see this in DLP next week.

Overhyped and, ultimately, pointless.