WTF was the point of this movie? I mean can someone shed some light on the vision behind this turd? It seemed so promising but never went anywhere and at the end I was just expecting something to happen and then BAM!! There's like 2 lines of text to sum up the whole thing.
**Possible Spoilers** Well I get the general premise behind the movie, but what was the motivation behind its production process? What story were they actually trying to tell? So he's got super powers.. and he uses them to accomplish roughly nothing that could not have been done arguable better by the police. I mean in the end he actually just calls the cops and they mop everything up. We have no idea if Bruce Willis ever even plans on doing anything ever again.
Oh, I don't think it was that bad, Lady in the water was far worse (which if you haven't seen it, don't.) If you think about how exactly someone would get superpowers in real life, It would probably follow along those lines more than say, being able to turn your whole body into steel, control the weather, or shoot spider webs out of your hands. I agree about the ending though, very anti-climatic. He should have shot Sammuel Jackson or something.
Yeah I liked the reality of his powers and the discovery and all, but Samuel L. Jacksons character was just such an unbelievable lunatic that you could spot the ending from miles away and without any super human power to boot. The whole time I was wondering if Shyamalan ever even read a comic in his life. Any good hero has to have an arch nemesis and it was pretty obvious that no one else was going to fit the bill.
Unbreakable? welcome to 2001?!?! or was it 2002 when it came out! It's like watching Heat 6 years later and wanting to talk about the movie at work.. Unbreakable was cool.... What a twist!
O hI know I didn't expect a huge discussion here. I was just so shocked by the lack of an actual ending an a complete lack of any bonding between the viewer and the characters that I had to vent somewhere. I want to like it, but I just can't get past a few things.
In general, I think with Shyamalan movies, you should basicly be looking for more than just a story being told. There's quite a lot of technical work when it comes to camera handling, timing, music and setting/acting (even though Shyamalan likes to put himself in as a role and always complains about how he sucks as an actor, and he does. He's terrible). Basicly, there's quite a lot of inspiration, concepts and ideas to gather by watching Shyamalan movies, but if you're not interested in that kind of stuff, you're probably better off just getting whatever random "action movie of the month" or "comedy movie of the month" your local rental store recommends. And I give Lady in the Water a thumbs up for the usual technical stuff, the story, the choice of actors and the fact that it features a guy with A beefy arm.
Shyamalan's movies are so horribly predicatble now, every single one of them has some sort of 'twist' at the end of it, and they're all the same so you can pretty much guess it about half-way through. The only flick it worked for him was the 6th Sense, since then he tried it with The Village and Signs (which had the single worst ending of all movies ever made) and has never hit the mark again. A real twist for one of his movies would be for it NOT to have a twist, now that would be a suprise!
I remember watching this when it first came out back in 2000. M. Night Shyamalan was being praised through the roof for "The Sixth Sense" and everyone was expecting the same kind of superb in-depth film. Subsequently "Unbreakable" fails to deliver that sort of immediate impression. It's a film that gets better with viewing, however it is not really a classic like "The Sixth Sense" or "The Village". He also produced the pile of pooh that was "Signs" with Mel Gibson and was responsible for the screen adaptation of "Stuart Little" (if you have kids) so don't expect everything he produces to be outstanding. He's no Alfred Hitchcock. I remember feeling the same way as you. Good actors, a good beginning, some superb photography and the promise of something interesting. Walking out of the cinema back in 2000 I was like "Why did I bother with that?" If you fancy seeing a film that makes you really ponder on it, then get "Stir of Echoes" with Kevin Bacon. It came out JUST after "TSS" and regettably was compared too and was affected by everyone's opinion of "TSS". I.e. this isn't as good as... Actually, I personally prefer it. That little kids whispery, annoying voice, wooden acting and everything being red (hello, there's a give away folks!) got on my nerves and "Stir of Echoes" is a bit more interesting.
I also recommend Stir of Echoes if you haven't already seen it. At any rate - I liked Unbreakable. Although I admit I went into expecting it to be dull. The ending is a bit of a letdown but a lot of his movies are except Sixth Sense (the first go 'round). The Village's ending was beyond yawnable. Signs was just... yeah. I totally skipped Lady in the Water because I'm sick of his bullshit.
Lady in the water blew monkey chunks.. but I'm forced to agree, the guy with only half his body worked out was pretty funny. Yeah, Mr. Shyamalan's movies are really good from a technical sense, great camera work, good acting for the most part (even he himself isn't that bad of an actor.) But none of that really matters if the story you're telling doesn't make logical sense in the first place. That's his problem, people in his movies do not react how people in real life would. In that travesty known as The Lady In the Water, a sea nymph lives in a swimming pool and is being chased by strange dire wolves with grass growing on them. You would think if a naked woman showed up on your door step, chased by a giant plant-dog thing, you would suspect that something strange may be going on? Like maybe you would call someone, like the police maybe? And the first time you saw the monster, would you hang around for it to come back? Then the guy enlists his neighbors into some rediculous hokey chinese going away ceremony on the testomony of one old lady who doesn't even speak english, yeah that makes sense. Wouldn't you like, research what's going on a bit instead of just beleiveing the first old-woman-folktale you run accross? Then there's this monster, that's made up of grass and kills serveral people. It lives in his lawn. The gimmick is that it can "lay down" so you don't see it. Just not scary enough fellas, in fact it's kind of silly. It's like a squirrel that jumps on someone's head and disguises itself as a toupee. Why would I be afraid of a pile of grass? Plus, if it lives on the front lawn, then just mow the fucking lawn, or burn it, or put poision all over it, whaterver. Btw, the above paragraphs contain spoilers, so don't read them.
Yeah I'll have to check out Stir of echoes as it sounds pretty good. Somehow I was able to guess the surprise twist ending to the sixth sense based on the original trailer. So I've never really liked it to much as it held basically nothing in the way of suspense and mystery to me. I'm not generally much of a movie watcher because of things like this. My mind races to much during the movie and I can't just relax and let everything unfold in front of me. It's just not so fun sitting in a theater and deducing the ending before you're halfway through the film.
I'm a movie buff. One of my first memories is sitting in a cinema aged about 3 years old and crying my eyes out to Bambi. Walt Disney traumatised me as a child and I can't watch any of those films because (to coin a phrase used elsewhere in this thread I had never heard before) they "blow monkey chunks". What Disney did was make me hyper critical of films and even at an early age I knew what worked & what didn't. "The Village" for instance (again mentioned by someone earlier has having a terrible ending) is actually a very clever socio-political statement and a direct link to 9/11 regarding protecting your people from the world outside. It is a statement that could have been better written, but I liked the way it panned out. Great acting and a cast to die for, but like all of M. Night Shyamalan's films he feels compelled to "twist" the tale and you can almost see it coming like a route map. He gives you clues throughout the entire film and sometimes they add suspense, whilst at other points they ruin the surprise. He's not the best in his field, not by a long shot, but technically his films are amongst the best produced material to have come out of Hollywood recently. I love Jodie Foster....period! She is the best female actress to have ever come out of America. If you leave aside her early acting debut in "Bugsy", she has picked some of the most compelling films ever. "Nell" is great, "Silence of the lambs" is astonishingly accomplished and in my opinion goes one step further than Hitchcock ever managed. "The Panic Room" is great, well acted, full of suspense and has a superb cast. "Flight Plan" is the only film I have ever seen her in that I thought was badly produced, however the initial idea was a good one. Give me the list of Cohn Brother's films and I have yet to find one that didn't rock! I am such a big fan that my son was named after one of the brothers (Ethan). The most surprising film in recent months that I have seen (expecting to hate it) was "Jarhead". A total surprise to me was that "Rocky Balboa" was brilliant. Okay, not an earth shattering film, but the message being conveyed seemed a very personal one from Stallone and I think it came across as very heart felt & genuine. It's the first time I've seen him actually act. The photography was good as were the locations. It really comes across as a very human story rather than one of those "this could only happen in America if you are rich" films. We really should introduce people to some cracking European films. One of my favourites has got to be a German comedy called "Goodbye Lenin". It's a black comedy set in communist Eastern Berlin just prior to the Berlin Wall being torn down. The premise of the story being that a family already torn apart by the father defecting to West Germany when the children were young, is further turned upside down when their Communist partizan mother falls into a coma following a heart attack. Whilst in the coma Germany is reunified & communist Germany ceases to exist. Her world is gone! When the mother comes out of the coma the children are warned that "any shock could give her a massive heart attack and kill her". Thus begins a beautiful, simple tale of how the children attempt to keep the single most important fact that they no longer live in a communist country from her despite all the odds! Brilliant! Worst film of late (an older film now, but this thread seems to be about older material that we like / dislike anyway) was "V for Vandetta". The original comic books were superb. The film...blew monkey chunks lol. Natalie Portman gives a lack lustre performance and Stephen Fry, one of Britain's most likeable comedians was awful. There really isn't anything to recommend in the film. There's not a single scene that works perfectly and nothing ties up nicely. It's shite really and I was SO disappointed.
Yeah, the Cohen brothers put out some good movies, I've enjoyed all of them that I've seen. I myself am more into shlocky, exploitative movies. Movies with lots of blood and head explosions, midgets and chainsaws, giant rubber monsters and decapitations, people getting shot in the face and thrown out of moving cars whilst simultaneously being strangled to death with thier own intestines, cannibalism, ninjas, cannabalisitic ninjas, Troma movies, stuff like that. I am however able to appreciate a good film for it's artistic merits, even if it doesn't have any asskicking or head explosions in it.
Okay, my guess is you should never watch "Fried green tomatoes at the whistlestop cafe". It's probably entirely the opposite end of the film spectrum...
