Do not see this hunk of crap: Lady In the Water

Good lord has M. Knight Shyamalan gone insane?

I've loved all his movies up to this one. Lady In the Water is like trying to have a child tell you a story with all kinds of made up crap.

It already had a negative for me since that guy who was in Sideways is in it. I hate his acting and he's sucked in everything I've seen with him in it.

Stay far, far away from it. Big thumbs down.

Um, I thought he had been insane. Sixth Sense wasn't scary as advertised and it was pretty obvious what the twist was, but it was still well done. Unbreakable was nice for comic book geeks and (as a geek) I thought the twist was cool and I didn't see it coming.

Everything after that has been complete garbage. I was even going to give him another chance with the Village until I saw that fake boring 'documentary' he put out on Sci Fi just before the movie came out.

The story started out as a bedtime story M. Night told his kids, so that explains it.

Ive heard mixed reviews. Ill probably see it anyway. I actually like Giamatti's acting, and liked Sideways.

So did the Hobbit, and it's a classic though.

I sure hope Peter Jackson is able to get through all the legal loopholes to make The Hobbit. Man do I want to see that in the style of Lord of the Rings.

I read an article in Time about it, that was also an interview with Night. I loved Sixth up to Signs, Signs is actually in my top 10 favorites. The village was unspectacular, and uninteresting. Looks like this may be the same :(

I really enjoyed the movie for what it was...a fairy tale.

I came out of it with a very good feeling. Loved the cinematography, loved the story, loved the characters.

Overall, really liked it.

I wouldn't rate it as high as say, Sixth Sense or Unbreakable(as far as his movies go) but I'd rate it above Signs.

Vilk

M Night Shamhamalamadingdong cannot make good movies. Period. Stupid plot twists that render the movie to a state of senselessness ftl. I liked Signs up until the twist, it then became retarded.

Seriously, narf? Is just saying naiad that difficult?

He makes a mean AMEX commercial though.

"I sure hope Peter Jackson is able to get through all the legal loopholes to make The Hobbit. Man do I want to see that in the style of Lord of the Rings."

You mean a 220 minute movie with only 100 minutes of dialogue, action or other form of plot progression?

Perhaps I'm alone in this, but I really hate when the camera just pans around the screen, dramatic music swelling, and the plot doesn't move. It was the worse in Return of the King during the scene where Pippin lights the signal fire, then we get to watch like 8 minutes of other signal fires being lit before we hear the answer we knew we were going to hear to begin with. All we needed to see was Pippin light the fire, perhaps perhaps a couple more light to show us what is going to happen, and then see Theoden's reaction. Those 6 minutes could be added back to my life, or knowing Jackson, given him time for another goodbye scene.

Another example: In LOTR 1 (AKA Fellowship) Sam tries to swim at some point but cannot. He sinks into the water and we spend about 90 seconds watching him wallow around underwater while the "drowning music" plays. The whole scene is in slow motion because Jackson wisely deduced that watching someone drown in real time for 9 seconds couldn't get the point across.

I'm not saying every movie needs to be constant plot, dialogue or action. Often movies have pauses to allow us to think about what has transpired. But the idea of using 8 solid minutes to press home the point that "the message is being sent by fire" is reasonably new to cinema. Whats worse other directors have started doing it.

In Superman Returns, we see Superman lift no less than four heavy things and during each of these scenes we spend at least 3 minutes of just watching Superman laboring under the weight of something we know he can lift.

Some movies such as The Matrix have plenty of slow motion scenes, but so much is going on within each scene, and it is done so artistically that I think it's excusable.

Ok Randal, I suggest you /yourself.

Saw the previews for this and could have sworn it looked the exact same as the last M.Night Shamalamafamily production.

I think I can guess the trick ending from the preview.



Way to hide the ball M. Night.

Lord of the Rings was just three movies of people walking. =P

I liked both Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. Didn't like the last two so I doubt I'd like this one either.

Yeah...you're alone in that. That signal flare scene was beautifully done.

Anyway, like I'm gonna take movie opinion from the guy with the Matrix Reloaded avatar.

LotR are, collectively, the best 12 hour movie ever!

I loved The Sixth Sense, loved Unbreakable, and loved Signs.

Then...there was The Village. Holy hell, what a piece of crap.

Based on my virulently anti-Village feelings, I likely won't be seeing Lady in the Water.

Indeed. Funny enough, that's one of the scenes that sticks clearest in my memory. The point of it isn't to "tell you that a signal got lit"; it's to give you an idea of the breadth and scope of the world it's happening in. Like him or not (I could never get into the books, myself), Tolkien does things on a large scale. Scenes like that one did an impressive job of staying faithful to that, considering that each movie couldn't be 12 hours long. Whenever anybody mentions New Zealand, I always think of the mountains where those signals get lit. Their tourism board should pay Peter Jackson royalties.

What a twist!

Re: Lisboa's spoiler...


Nope!


Vilk

if my father was M night i wouldn't want him to tell me bedtimes stories

thats crazy bed times stories with no happy ending , kids want bedtime storiest to sleep and have nice dreams not complex nightmare

I don't understand why people get so bent out of shape about Shamalayan's movies. I've seen all his movies and they've all been good. Sure, none are among the best movies of all time, but compared to the steaming piles of feces that make up most of Hollywood's production, we could do worse than see more Shamalayan movies.

I guess what most people get angry about are the "twist endings." I've seen a few interviews with him while promoting this current movie, and he hasn't been trying to fool anybody with a twist since Unbreakable. I guess he made a mistake by having two movies with a similar plot device in a row. Now, everybody just watches the movies to see if they can figure out the "twist ending." They ignore the story, the actors and the rest of the film, so they can show everybody how clever they are by figuring out the end of the movie in advance.

I can tell you how 99% of movies are going to end well before the ending. Everybody else can too. As has been pointed out on movie threads in the past, there are only about 10 different plots in all the stories ever written. So it doesn't matter if you can figure out the ending of Shamalayan's movies. You can with every other movie as well. Either you like his dialogue and directing choices, or you don't. Ultimately that is what makes his movies good or bad. Not his ability to fool the audience in some imagined gimmick.

I actually liked the twist endings in Sixth Sense and Unbreakable. I didn't really like Unbreakable until about a week or two after I saw it. It took time to grow on me, and it's one of his best.

Signs was ok.

The Village was a complete piece of garbage. Rather than having subtle clues as to the twist and having a big reveal, Shyamalan hammers you in the head with what was already more than obvious. It was like he was trying to force a big twist.

Lady in the Water really doesn't have a twist. It's just stupid. I feel sorry for the actors.

LOL

You know, I have plenty of complaints about the LotR trilogy movies and none of them have to do with things you mentioned.

That scene in particular is one of the few times I feel Peter Jackson accurately portrayed the sheer breadth of the world and the distances involved.

Things that piss me off are his distortions of time and the things he ommited.

Did you know it was 10 years from the time that Gandalf left Frodo in the Shire to research the Ring and his return?

Did you know they stayed in Rivendale for more than two months at the Council in the House of Elrond?

That's just Fellowship. Don't get me started when they're under the Dwimorberg with the Dead Men of Dunharrow in Return of the King. That whole scene is wrong. It gets more agonizing for a Tolkien canonite as the films go on. They're not bad films by any measure, I love them...they just aren't accurate.

Now, to get back to M.Night. I loved The Sixth Sense. Unbreakable I didn't gain an appriciation for until I gave it deeper though. Signs actually blew me away. In my opinion at it's root it is a beautiful and very moving discourse on Faith. I didn't see The Village and don't really plan to see Lady in the Water.

I don't know about his last two films, but all the ones I saw had really profound messages to me.

Yeah, because we really need to slow down the fight so Trinity can do the exact same jump-kick-with-camera-panning-around in each of the movies.

You make some good points about cinematrography, but I'd be much more likely to dislike a movie because the plot and characters are non-sensical and the action is built more around looking cool than being interesting than because it ran long.

I'm with ya there Hodur, I liked most of his movies. Even The Village. I didn't watch it and go "Man that sucks, the twist is totally obvious and it's the worst horror movie ever!". Mostly because I wasn't going to see what twist ending there would be (the trailer + M. Night appearing in every one of his movies told you all you needed to know about that twist) and I didn't think I was going to see a monster movie or scary movie.

I already know what kind of movies he makes, he makes stories that happen to have some supernatural/alien themes but are ultimately about the emotions and spiritual journey of the people involved rather than about the supernaturals or aliens. Which is rather rare these days, if you look at the movies all of them so far have a common theme which is people growing, finding things out about themselves they didn't know, (re)discovering their purpose in life and gaining happiness through that. Somewhat predictable but then so are most action movies so eh, not bothered.

But I enjoy his style, yes it's slow but eh, I expect it so it's not like I'm thinking I'm going to see a Jerry Bruckheimer action flick and get disappointed when there's not enough explosions.

Mostly because of their promotion. He's touted as some master of horror and suspense and mystery...and I think he hits "acceptable" levels, but isn't really deserving of all the hype.

Which isn't his fault. Marketing could make Jesus look like an ******* if they put their mind to it. But he also doesn't help himself out when he goes on talk shows and trys to promote the twist endings, or how "supernatural" it feels. After this many movies, he's become very, very perdictable, even down to the casting of children. (Which is becoming SO ******* cliche in horror thanks to Sixth Sense).

In the end, for me, it just seems like he makes the same damn movie over and over again. Same feel, same camera work, same schtick, same themes, same stupid required twist ending. Which is fine. Plenty of writers/directors play their niche for all its worth. I'm just sick of hearing how "masterful" he is, or how "deeply disturbing" his story lines are....because please, after 3 installments of dark camera work, children who see ****, an ending which everyone harps on weeks before the movie is even out, combined with less than stellar box office sales, can we please start treat M.Night like what he is? A money maker for studios, not some super deep writer/director with amazing talent...

I liked this one. He's trying something new. One of this movie's biggest problems was that the previews COMPLETELY mislead you to what you're going to see. This is NOT a scary movie. It actually reminded me of Coccoon a lot.

It had its problems, and don't get me wrong, I hate Shyamalamadingdoodle as a person... arrogant prick.... but overall I liked this movie, and just because you hated Sideways doesn't give you the right to hate on Giamatti. Go watch American Splendor... even if you hate the movie, the man can act.

Shyamalalamalekam once famously compared himself to Hitchcock... and for that, I bear him a grudge - it doesn't mean I'll refuse to enjoy his movies, but it does mean that I want to cockpunch him for....



Shyogafiremalan occasionally reminds me of Peter Molynieux - the product is always palletable, but WAY sub-par for what the creator thinks of it.


Also,

Narf?

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Every time I see the previews for Lady, for some reason it reminds me of the movie Dark Water that came out last year.

That movie sucked too. Wasn't it a japanese movie first? I have yet to see a japanese horror movie that I liked. I'm always going "What the hell does that have to do with this?". Japanese movies and anime are weird.

Yes, it was remade from a japense production. And I'm not surprised you didn't like it. I've been watching a fair amount of Japanese horror lately, and I'm fairly certain that American's movie tastes have been bred in the complete opposite direction of their horror style. Japanese horror goes for the slow build, it goes for showing, not telling.

Compare that to M.Night who practically screams what's going on to you. The slow build is what gets most viewers, American audiences don't have the patience for the slow build. Which is really sad. I find Japanese horror 10x as scary as most American productions....the japanes can make a guy in a trash bag scary for an entire movie....In America we need expensive special effects to even come close to getting the scary across.

I think the problem people, including myself, have with Japanese horror films is that they're just random and dont make sense half the time. Or they have really silly plots that are just masked with...well, it isnt masked, people just ignore it, for some reason. Japanese horror films dont bore me, I just think their plots tend to be stupid. The Grudge and The Ring come to mind; they were retarded movies in Japan and they're American remakes didnt make them any better. o.O

My attention span is quite good, thank you very much. You're sort of lumping in too many people with your guesses.

The problem I find with japanese horror type remakes is that they use far too much of the stupid mood lighting/sounds/video flashes/etc. to make their scaryness and they leave huge 'wtf?' bombs all over the place. The stories are never any good.

I saw the Japanese version. It was ok but pretty disturbing and slow in an art film kind of way.

It's always seemed to me more that they imply the story instead of flat-out saying it - the movie is a vehicle to show everything that's happening around the story, leaving it to the viewer to put it together.

If I were to take a wild, flaming speculative leap, I'd propose that it's simply a natural extension of Japanese culture as a whole, where (as I understand it), actually coming out and saying something directly is rude, and it's instead considered "polite" to talk around an issue.

Shyamalan is at least equally guilty for the over-promotion of his films.

He's a prima donna writer/director with delusions of grandeur.

He was horribly offended that Disney 'didn't get his script' and only offered him 60 million to make this crapfest so he took it to WB (who gave him 70).

And anyone that over-emphasises their direction gets on my nerves.

'A M. Night Shyamalan Film' is right up there with 'A Michael Bay film'.

Keep going Night, you're almost on Bay's level now.

I think you've hit it right on the nose. Since I am not a fan of anime or Japanese anything, I don't know the culture at all so can't put those little nuances together.

Or maybe you just have to be the type of person that buys girls' dirty undies from a vending machine...

Toprem and Darth: Try harder next time. Cryptic replies mean about as much to me as dismissing my opinion automatically because you think I belong to some fanboi group.

I dont love the Matrix movies (the first one was decent). And my avatar (randomly picked from the Safehouse's selection) has nothing to do with the validity of my opinion.

If you want to respond to what I say,, please do so. If not, be quiet and save us both the time.


Dahne re messenger lights: "That's one of the scenes that sticks clearest in my memory. The point of it isn't to "tell you that a signal got lit"; it's to give you an idea of the breadth and scope of the world it's happening in..."

It sticks clearly in my memory too, because I spent eight minutes watching Jackson say "the world is large and the message is being sent".

Think of how rarely there is eight straight minutes of dialogue. This is a tragedy since the actors were good, and Jackson had plenty of great dialogue to draw from.

At any rate you are right about this being important to convey. But I think its already conveyed to death even by the end of the first movie. Firstly almost the entire movie is travel, and there are probably at least 10 shots where you see the characters walking, and then pan out with an extra long aerial shot to give you the idea that the world is large and the journey is impossibly long.

I dunno, I like not having everything laid out for you. Not necessarily a bad thing if the movie makes you think. ;p I don't think you really need to understand the culture to understand the movies, either.

For example - as I interpreted 'em, The Ring and The Grudge were both about the same thing: the foolishness of anthropomorphizing something which is, by its very nature, inhuman.

Sorry for implying you had a short attention span....

That said...

Yeah, you know, all of those things that directors micro manage to create the desired effect and impact on the viewer....totally worthless for a good movie. Because it's so much more effective for a ghost done entirely in blantant CG to pop out of the closet and say "I am the spirit of your dead mother who you killed while you were suffering from multiple personality disorder", rather than letting the audience work towards that themselves, or hell, maybe even formulate their own interpretation of what's happening. Frankly, its the WTF bombs that make movies interesting for me. Granted, some of them can purposefully go so far out there as to be inscrutable, but generally the scenes and plots that make me ask questions are way, way more satisfying that movies that like to wrap it all up with a nice little bow by the end of the movie.

Your mood and sensation comment really gets me. Because I'm trying to piece together what the alternative is in American films....most of which would probably piss you off.

The funny thing is the 'show it, don't say it' approach has been used by so many fairly respected directors. Hitchcock comes to mind for one. But my problem with the Japanese horror movies is more the talking around everything which is a more uniquely Japanese thing. It can make the movies feel too impersonal and you leave with no attachment to the victims. If you don't feel for the protagonist the movie doesn't really leave much of a mark. It just falls in the category of "some chick pissed off a ghost and got offed. oh and there was popcorn".

Personally I love it when horror movies do sounds and mood settings over "omg it's the Creature From The CGI Lab cutting off heads and running at us dripping with blood!!" approach. Not that I don't appreciate the CFTCL gore approach, I enjoy both. I got a big kick out of Slither for example, and I find gore scenes surprisingly hard to pull off very well. It's just that one is less used than the other.

No need. I thoroughly defeated you the first time.

Tsk, I didnt think you were so intellectually bankrupt Darth, I'll move on to another post.

My problem with The Village wasn't with the twist ending. I was fine with the twist ending. I just hated everything leading up to it. The random editing, the cruddy acting, the dreary pacing, and the uninteresting photography, just to name a few.

I liked Signs until I made the mistake of stopping to think about the plot for a second. I mean, if the aliens have that extreme of an allergy to water, they probably wouldn't have been able to survive in our atmosphere, let alone have time to get laughably trapped behind a rustic wooden door.

As for the panoramic shots in the LotR movies, there is one other aspect to them you may not be considering. Movies are art, and much like artistic paintings, movies can also give you aesthetically-pleasing visuals as well as story and characterization. I appreciate the lighting of the torches scene in Return of the King because of the breathtaking look the sequence provides. It is less about hastily progressing the story and more about taking a moment to drink in the amazing Middle-Earth scenery. Do you have the same "get it over with" attitude when you go to an art museum and see paintings hanging from the walls?

Deltar: "As for the panoramic shots in the LotR movies, there is one other aspect to them you may not be considering. Movies are art...It is less about hastily progressing the story and more about taking a moment to drink in the amazing Middle-Earth scenery."

Your point is valid, but watch LOTR again. Does anyone (aside perhaps from Aragorn) get as much screen time as long shots of just scenery? Count how many lines of dialogue Gimli and Legolas (for instance) receive. Two people overcoming racial based hatred to become close friends conveys a more important element of the story that showing us that Middle-Earth is big the 17th time doesn't it?

(Re-)read the books and see how much was left out in order to film long shots of New Zealand's scenery.

LOTRs use of the scenic long shot and use of the slow motion shot with dramatic music is new to the industry. No other movie to my knowledge uses it to that extent, especially when they have so much material to draw from and a cast of first rate actors.

In Lawrence of Arabia, the Director (David Lean) uses about a 2 minute shot to show us the vastness of the desert. There are plenty of other long shots, but something is always happening, and they dont number nearly as many nor as long in duration as in LOTR.

Movies are art, but they are not pictures, they are stories.

I'll see it on dvd. I hated 'The Viillage' with a passion. The idea of living a 'natural' , healthy life without modern intrusions, but based on a lie of ommision. The first child that died in child birth would be it to realize how flawed it was. Modern life has it's cursing but also it's blessings.

Signs, Unbreakable and Sixth Sense - I love those movies. I can watch them again and again.

This one - about fairy tales - I can get into. It's not fear or lack of it, but story telling that will make me watch it. The old bedtime stories were full of death, mayhem and whatnot. It was a passing of tales before writting was common. *shrug* It was also morality tales to a sense as well Red Riding hood- wolf dressed up as grandma - not everything as it may seem. Sleeping beauty - killing of innocence. Cinderella - be nice or things may change ( Cinder girl to princess)and people will gain power. Pretty basic tales.

I need to get Brother Grimm on dvd. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

I liked Unbreakable and Signs a lot. I liked Sixth Sense, but unfortunately I had the twist ruined for me prior to seeing it, so I likely don't have the same appreciation for it as other people.

I've really liked his twists in the other movies, and that's likely the reason I found The Village to be subpar. Sixth Sense and Unbreakable had those "pull the rug out from under your feet" moments with the twists. It turned the movie completely on its head. The Village, on the otherhand, really tried to exploit the twist by trying to do it in smaller revelations, all the while neglecting the fact that they were so interrelated that by the first one, all the dominoes had fallen, and the succeeding ones were just continual, unnecessary, and overdramatic reminders. There was also the fact that, in his other movies, the twist was the climax of the movie, where in this one it continued on for so long after the twist that it made it sort of secondary and caused the movie to have no pay off.

I will likely see "The Lady in the Water" after it comes out on video. I'm curious to see him do a movie in a different styling than his others.

This was just posted today. Though I'd say it's better than most of Shyamalan's other work.

I admit, I have not gone through the movies with a finetooth comb to count how many seconds of screen time each actor receives, nor have I tallied the number of lines spoken to add to a database that corellates usefulness and value on a sliding scale of 1 to 13. I tried once, but I ended up just enjoying the movies for what they were instead.


I don't judge movies based on source material. If you do, you will always be disappointed.


Um... okay? This is a strange thing to say considering you lend evidence to the contrary, as below: