Signs
TV ClubHouse: archive: Movies Sept 2002 - April 2003:
Signs
Jbean | Sunday, December 29, 2002 - 05:43 pm     i loved this movie. it was very scary, but touching at the same time. i cried toward the end when mel was telling the kids about them being born, and also at the end when they think the boy is dead. by the way, does anyone know if that little boy that played the son is related to maccalley culkin? (however it is spelled) i thought he looked a lot like him when he was younger. |
Jbean | Sunday, December 29, 2002 - 05:51 pm     ok, the boy IS macaluay culkin's youngest brother. i knew he looked a lot like him. his name is rory culkin. |
Calamity | Monday, December 30, 2002 - 01:23 pm     DVD comes out January 7th and I plan to get it as well. If only to find out if Shyamalan will include any extra info or clues about the storyline that will confirm or deny my and my friends' theories about why/how things happened. Some, like me, loved it even though there seemed to be major plot holes, while others thought it was simply silly. I need to prove I'm not a complete idiot for liking the movie . |
Curiouscat | Sunday, January 12, 2003 - 06:01 am     I just saw Signs for the first time - DVD rental. There's nearly an hour long section on the "making of" the movie. Many posters above were bang on with their thoughts on what the movie was about. I liked it all-in-all, but I'm really looking to seeing The Ring for the first time when it comes out on DVD. |
Fabnsab | Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 01:40 am     Oh, my. I'm with Monkeyboy. I just saw the dvd tonight and I thought this movie sucked a big one. I thought it would scare me and make me think and all that good stuff. The part with the alien being seen at the birthday party...come on! That was an extra in a green suit. It was bad. We laughed through the whole thing and I don't think it was meant to be a comedy. We were actually upset because we know we're in the major minority here. All I have heard were good things. The writing sucked too...The only thing I wanted them to explain was why the girl had visions and why she knew about the water. I wanted the aliens to be coming for her or something. Never happened. I am so disappointed. |
Lycanthrope | Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 11:26 am     While I don't think this flick was as big a stinker as some do, Spielberg's "Taken" was much, much better. Granted, he had 15 hours to tell his story, while M. Night only had 2, but I wasn't very compelled by this one. The best line in the whole flick was Joaquin Phoenix in the recruiter's office explaining why he always swung the bat when he played baseball..."It just didn't seem right not to swing." I played ball in high school and still follow the sport, so it's probably funnier to me than a non-fan. |
Monkeyboy | Saturday, January 18, 2003 - 06:13 pm     yep rewatched it tonight on DVD and it still sucked...lol |
Crazydog | Monday, January 20, 2003 - 10:19 am     I saw it on the airplane and I didn't like it. I was disappointed by it, I had expected much more. I thought it was boring and overrated. |
Hippyt | Saturday, January 25, 2003 - 05:24 pm     OKay,well,I LOVED it!I love M. Shamalayan's (sp)movies. When I watched Unbreakable,I hated it,but I was still thinking aboujt it 3 days later,anything that keeps me thinking like that is good. Of course Sixth Sense was great. I really like the faith questions this movie brings up. I have known people who have lost faith,and this kind of hit home. I also screamed during this movie,screaming is good!The kids were great,and I'm also a big Joaquin Phoenix fan. |
Luvmom | Monday, January 27, 2003 - 08:10 am     Put me in with the Loved it crowd.I just watched this last night with my husband and 9 year old daughter.I couldn't take my eyes off the screen the whole 2 hours.My daughter loved it too.I won't let her watch anything gorey but a good suspense won't do her any harm.I think M. Shamalayan is amazing.He's pretty brave putting that awful clip of him in that homemade movie.He's right.He couldn't act!!LOL |
Jedisan | Monday, January 27, 2003 - 11:01 am     MMMMMMMMM - Joaquin Phoenix. I'll co-sign that Hippyt.
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Skypilot | Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 09:50 am     I wish Shyamalan would just make a domestic drama and leave the supernatural/otherworldly stuff out. A movie about someone having a crisis of faith can be compelling enough without having to throw space aliens into the mix. Check out "The Last Temptation of Christ" or "Household Saints". I just don't like this guy's movies. It really feels as though he just makes stuff up as he goes along. For some reason the scene that immediately comes to mind is when the family is holed up in the basement and the alien is pounding on the door and Dad says something like, "It's not trying to get in, it's just making noise." HUH?? Am I to understand that these aliens came all the way here just to run around peoples homes pounding on their doors and walls? I mean really, what did they want? They sure left soon enough. All except for the one that got left behind and tried to kill the asthmatic child that was recuperating on the couch when there were two strong, healthy men to contend with. And frankly I'm tired of filmmakers slipping in the asthmatic or diabetic child to try and ratchet up the sense of peril. It's become a really tired device. And that bit about water being deadly for the aliens is another bit of tacked on nonsense. What planet did these aliens think they were coming to. Before they go making strange symbols in our crops they should stop and consider what makes our crops grow. Water. Lots of it. Falling right out of the sky. Finally, I just find Shyamalan's movies to be manipulative in the most obvious and annoying way. The scene where the TV news broadcast footage of the alien at the birthday party and the news anchor tells us that the footage we are about to see is "disturbing", only to show us an "alien" that looks about as convincing as that old photo of Bigfoot which was long ago proven to be a hoax. Just let the scene speak for itself. If it is truly disturbing we will be disturbed without any prompting. Alas, the scene was just lame like the rest of the movie. |
Hippyt | Tuesday, January 28, 2003 - 05:57 pm     Skypilot,could you say what you mean? |
Calamity | Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 12:43 pm     Skypilot: Maybe you should spare yourself the aggravation and just skip Night’s movies from now on (j/k!). Me, I enjoy his mix of the mundane and the fantastic even if it does seem a bit forced at times. The water thing - I know lots of people were hung up on this. I just figured that it wasn’t water itself that was toxic to the aliens; it was actually the microorganisms living in the water that affected them. (Remember how Bo kept calling the water “contaminated”?) Just as the invaders in ‘The War of the Worlds’ were wiped out by the unseen microbes in Earth’s atmosphere, the ‘Signs’ aliens had no defense against our aquatic bacteria, etc. Well, that was my rationalization, anyway! Of course this leads to all sorts of plot difficulties. What about humidity? A sudden cloudburst? Shyamalan didn’t cover these “hey-wait-a-minute” moments and I wish he had. So I simply told myself that just because these beings possessed such advanced technology didn’t mean they weren’t also reckless, desperate, or arrogant enough to come to a planet innately hostile to their biology. After all, we humans have journeyed into the vacuum of space, traveled beneath the oceans, and explored caves and volcanoes filled with noxious gases - all environments that are lethal to us but it has been to our benefit (if not to other species’ perhaps) to go to these places. I’ve also heard a theory that since ‘Signs’ is ultimately about faith, the aliens were actually devils or demons and the water was really Holy Water. Whatever the case may be, I did find it odd that for the second movie in a row, Shyamalan has made someone have a vulnerability to water. The home video reminded me of footage of Bigfoot also. But I didn’t find it hokey though and the appearance of the alien didn’t bother me either. My favorite part of the film was when the family climbed onto the car trying to hear the signal through the baby monitor. I got a shiver of expectation and wonder at that scene that the movie in the end didn’t quite fulfill. Still, I’ll take a movie that tries to be different and maybe sets its sights a bit too high over one that never aims to be anything more than mediocre any day. Or maybe I’m just a hack moviegoer who can’t recognize a pretentious, poorly conceived film when I see it ! |
Skypilot | Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 12:52 pm     Calamity, If you liked the scene with the baby monitor I think that you might like this movie that I saw years ago called "Static". Check it out at IMBd. It's the Mark Romanek/Keith Gordon film form 1985. If you can find it on video something tells me you might really like it. |
Skypilot | Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 01:11 pm     By the way Calamity, you are absolutely right. I should spare myself the aggravation of watching Shyamalan's films. I was sort of enjoying "The Sixth Sense" until that unfortunate "surprise ending" which I thought just suddenly blew plot holes in the rest of the movie like so many rounds of buckshot. "Unbreakable" was just...eh. I guess "Signs" was the third strike. |
Fabnsab | Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 08:43 pm     Skypilot, as you can tell from my above post...AMEN to everything you wrote! I didn't even want to get into the overused "my kid has an illness and I will conveniently forget their medication when we are locked up" tactic. It was too painful. This was my first Shamalan movie and I think I will definately skip the rest if this is an indication. |
Calamity | Thursday, January 30, 2003 - 01:55 pm     Skypilot: Yeah, if you haven't liked any of Shyamalan's movies yet there's probably a good chance his style just isn't your cup of tea. I say cut your losses and keep away unless he does something dramatically different. I looked up 'Static' on IMDB - it does sound intriguing. Couldn't figure out the poster picture though but then I saw a different image on another site that seemed more appropriate so maybe it was just a mix-up. I'll have to see if I can find this movie anywhere. I always like my reality mixed with a bit of "what if". |
Brenda1966 | Thursday, January 30, 2003 - 03:28 pm     I agree with those above Skypilot -- if you don't like Shymalan's work, skip the next one. But I do beg to differ that Sixth Sense's surprise ending blew holes in it. **spoilers may follow for all films **. On a second viewing (which I don't recommend since you hated the film LOL) you'd see that even though you thought something happened or thought Bruce Willis was talking to someone -- he wasn't. The plot is amazingly in tact. That's what makes this movie spectacular to me. His next film didn't blow me over. In fact I was disappointed in it, but it stayed in my mind. Most movies are so bland and generic I can't tell you a thing about them 3 months after viewing them. This one was different and the idea that someone is creating disasters to try and find a super-human creature that can survive them is quite unique and thought provoking to me. To me Signs was just a glorified XFiles episode. I enjoyed it for what it was. YEs, I'm tired too of the kid forgetting his medicine, but I loved the baby monitor thing and was freaked out to go home and turn mine on. I find it interesting that people here have named Signs as the worst film they saw last year. If so, they aren't seeing enough movies! LOL! I wonder why his films can cause such a strong reaction either way. This film is certainly not one of the worst from last year although I could see how it may have been the most disappointing. |
Lycanthrope | Thursday, January 30, 2003 - 08:17 pm     No, this wasn't one of the worst films of the year. I think it suffered from "expectation anxiety". You expect one thing but get something different. One of my co-workers, who is a fellow movie buff, said that "they're weren't enough aliens", so he was expecting more of an action/sci-fi/fantasy flick and he got something much more subdued and character oriented. From my perspective, I compare it to invasion/visitation movies of the past like "Close Encounters", "Independence Day", and the more recent "Taken". I liked all 3 of those movies a lot more than "Signs". Chalk it up to personal preference. |
Jed245 | Friday, February 07, 2003 - 06:07 am     I just watched the movie and it was great. Come on people how can you not like this movie. I mean if you were looking for a shoot em up. Well this isn't your movie. For those of us that were looking for multi aliens. I didn't get that from the commercials. The Commercials put me in mind of Phenomonome er however it's spelled. That John Travolta movie. But, the movie was really good in alot of ways. The questions of faith, and how it all tied together in the end. I'll say this much if you didn't pay attention through the whole movie then it would lose the effect. The sixth sense was the same way. So was unbreakable, but, unbreakable really had a few inconsistancies. Another movie that really ties everything together at the last scene of the movie, and gives ya that weird twist. Is Frailty I loved that movie too. :o) Jed. |
Max | Friday, February 07, 2003 - 08:21 am     I saw this movie a recently. I thought the way the themes of not understanding the big picture and questioning faith were very interesting and well played. What I didn't like was how deadpan everyone was, especially the kids. It was so pronounced that it distracted me. Maybe that was what Shymalan intended. I got to thinking about this movie's themes even more a few days after I saw it. That's when I fell and broke my ankle. When the paramedics and emergency room staff were taking my history, I said how ironic the timing was since I had broken the other leg just above the ankle in a similar manner (fallling on stairs) 17 years ago. I knew when it happened because when I had returned from the hospital, the Challenger blew up. Needless to say, when I got home from surgery and a brief stay in the hospital, sat in my living room with my leg propped up, and turned on the news to see that the Columbia had disintegrated, the "coincidence" was a bit bizarre. The movie poses the questions: Is there such a thing as coincidence? Are we all tied together in ways we cannot discern? Is there a bigger picture and a higher consciousness guiding the brushstrokes of our lives? I don't know all the answers, but my personal experience sure reminded me of the movie and it all makes me go, "Hmmmmmmm....." If the quality of a movie has anything to do with how much it makes you think AFTER you've seen it, then this is a good one. |
Jed245 | Friday, February 07, 2003 - 10:06 am     I agree with ya on that. One thing that seems to fit as a good description of the movie. Is the popular phrase. "Things happen for a reason." There is also a cartoon called dragon ball z. In one episode a man is killed and his son is kinda talking to his spirit. He is appologizing cause he could have saved his dad. And his dad responds by saying. "Hey don't say stuff like that for all we know what happened was for the best." The movie sends the message to me that an eventual good can come out of any bad situation. Even though if an eventual good does come of something bad. We'll not likely ever see the connection. Another point that really makes the movie good to me. .. When I was in high school I decided to skip a day. Knowing that I'd be in trouble... There was a really bad situation there and it turns out that was likely the best thing to happen. Jed. :o) |
Fluffybbw | Wednesday, March 05, 2003 - 12:07 pm     Could anyone tell me is this movie based on a book, a friend of mine at work was wondering about it, I have not see one, but I thought perhaps somebody here by know the answer, thanks very much. |
Max | Wednesday, March 05, 2003 - 02:39 pm     According to imdb.com, it's written by M. Night Shyamalan, so that would make it an original screenplay. |
Fluffybbw | Wednesday, March 05, 2003 - 02:42 pm     Thanks very much Max, I will tell my friend, that was very nice of you! |
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