FUCK M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN AND EVERYONE WHO LOOKS LIKE M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN
***WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD***
I like M. Night Shyamalan. I really do. This is supported by the fact that I've seen all of his movies. Okay, maybe not all, after all I don't think anyone outside of Shyamalan and his wife watched the indie movie that he made in India, but I did watch Wide Awake with Rosie O'Donnell and that little kid from Jack Frost. No, not the horror movie about the psychopathic killer who comes back as a snowman. The one where Michael Keaton dies and comes back as a snowman, which in a lot of ways is scarier. And now I've gotten so far off track that even I don't know where I'm going.
Shyamalan. Planet. Boom. Go.
I know this is certainly a minority opinion, but for my money his best movie is Unbreakable. My reasoning behind this is simple: it's the only movie he's made thus far that has any kind of rewatchability factor. Sure Sixth Sense is fun to watch a second time just to pick up on all the clues that you missed the first time around, but after that there's nothing. And Signs...that's like a black hole of suck. Granted I own it, but I own a lot of shitty movies.
People say that the story of Unbreakable unfolds too slowly and it's convoluted and Samuel L. Jackson has stupid hair, and all that's true but that's why I love it. It's just fun to watch. It's well acted and directed, the cinematography is great, and the soundtrack kicks fucking ass. It's just a fun movie, and more importantly it's the movie that made me fall in love with that crazy Indian fellow, dots not feathers. Of course The Sixth Sense got to me, as it did most of the world, but it wasn't until Unbreakable that I realized how truly talented M. Night Shyamalan was.
And then Signs came along.
Everyone is allowed one mistake. After all, look at Spielberg and A.I. That's a shitty movie if ever there was one. I just figured Signs was M. Night Shyamalan's one fuck up. Nobody's perfect. I walked away from Signs thinking that it was a perfectly good effort, it just had a few holes. Like why does a race of aliens, who are supposedly smart enough to build machinery enabling them to travel through the cosmos, go to a planet made up almost entirely of water when water is the very thing that kills them? Why? Nobody knows. Nevermind that fact. Mel Gibson found his faith again and that's all that matters. Yeah, but didn't lots of people die? Shut the fuck up! All we care about is Mel Gibson, his retarded brother, his sniveling little kids, and his faith. Shit!
See what I mean about holes?
Anyway, after being colossally let down by Signs, I was sure that M. Night Shyamalan's next offering would be better. How could it possibly be worse? Huh? How?
I'll fucking tell you how. You start with a colonial villiage. Toss in a crazy Adrian Brody. Mix that with an under-used Joaquin Phoenix. Throw a curveball of a twist ending. Top it all off with a former Happy Days star's daughter, and you've got yourself a bubbling cauldren of liquid shit.
I swear upon everything I hold holy, which isn't much, that I gave The Villiage a chance. Not that I didn't go into it expecting a piece of shit. Far from it. I've been looking forward for this movie for months. Maybe even a year. I'm saying that I gave it a chance in that I wasn't expecting too much of it. I didn't want to be wowed. I just wanted a movie that was better than Signs. And I didn't get it.
After watching the Villiage I have come to one undeniable conclusion...M. Night Shyamalan is just a rich man's R. L. Stine. If you gave R. L. Stine a video camera and Ron Howard's daughter this is what he would come up with.
So there's a villiage in the past that's surrounded by these woods and there's these spooky creatures in the woods. Only, oh wait, the creatures are just a hoax and the story isn't actually set in the past, it's in the modern day, but the villiage is cut off from the rest of the world? I'm almost sure that was a plot of one of the Goosebumps books.
It's a well crafted story. I'll give him that. You make the girl blind so that when she does go into the real world, or what have you, she has no idea what's going on. Great. Genius. Whatever. I don't have a problem with that. It's just that I think he's getting a hard on by fucking with the audience. He's not interested in making a good movie as much as he is in showing us something and then telling us that what we just saw was a farce. What he's doing is like two steps away from showing us a video with two monkeys fucking and then at the end going "Not so fast. One of those monkeys is gay."
I really do love M. Night Shyamalan. I think he might be one of my favorite living directors. And it is because I like him so much that I can say just how bad and ultimately insulting this movie is. It's like if someone you hate tells you that you're ugly. Who cares? They hate you. It's not like anything they say matters and they're probably lying about it anyway because they hate you.
It's when one of your friends tells you the same thing that you really have to worry.
M. Night Shyamalan is not making movies. He's making little novelty gags. And that's something that I just can't respect.
NEXT TIME
In my next entry I'm going have a new installment of The Bourne Paycheck and deliver my list of the ten best movies I've ever seen. And just incase there's any question The Villiage will not be on the list.
***WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD***
I like M. Night Shyamalan. I really do. This is supported by the fact that I've seen all of his movies. Okay, maybe not all, after all I don't think anyone outside of Shyamalan and his wife watched the indie movie that he made in India, but I did watch Wide Awake with Rosie O'Donnell and that little kid from Jack Frost. No, not the horror movie about the psychopathic killer who comes back as a snowman. The one where Michael Keaton dies and comes back as a snowman, which in a lot of ways is scarier. And now I've gotten so far off track that even I don't know where I'm going.
Shyamalan. Planet. Boom. Go.
I know this is certainly a minority opinion, but for my money his best movie is Unbreakable. My reasoning behind this is simple: it's the only movie he's made thus far that has any kind of rewatchability factor. Sure Sixth Sense is fun to watch a second time just to pick up on all the clues that you missed the first time around, but after that there's nothing. And Signs...that's like a black hole of suck. Granted I own it, but I own a lot of shitty movies.
People say that the story of Unbreakable unfolds too slowly and it's convoluted and Samuel L. Jackson has stupid hair, and all that's true but that's why I love it. It's just fun to watch. It's well acted and directed, the cinematography is great, and the soundtrack kicks fucking ass. It's just a fun movie, and more importantly it's the movie that made me fall in love with that crazy Indian fellow, dots not feathers. Of course The Sixth Sense got to me, as it did most of the world, but it wasn't until Unbreakable that I realized how truly talented M. Night Shyamalan was.
And then Signs came along.
Everyone is allowed one mistake. After all, look at Spielberg and A.I. That's a shitty movie if ever there was one. I just figured Signs was M. Night Shyamalan's one fuck up. Nobody's perfect. I walked away from Signs thinking that it was a perfectly good effort, it just had a few holes. Like why does a race of aliens, who are supposedly smart enough to build machinery enabling them to travel through the cosmos, go to a planet made up almost entirely of water when water is the very thing that kills them? Why? Nobody knows. Nevermind that fact. Mel Gibson found his faith again and that's all that matters. Yeah, but didn't lots of people die? Shut the fuck up! All we care about is Mel Gibson, his retarded brother, his sniveling little kids, and his faith. Shit!
See what I mean about holes?
Anyway, after being colossally let down by Signs, I was sure that M. Night Shyamalan's next offering would be better. How could it possibly be worse? Huh? How?
I'll fucking tell you how. You start with a colonial villiage. Toss in a crazy Adrian Brody. Mix that with an under-used Joaquin Phoenix. Throw a curveball of a twist ending. Top it all off with a former Happy Days star's daughter, and you've got yourself a bubbling cauldren of liquid shit.
I swear upon everything I hold holy, which isn't much, that I gave The Villiage a chance. Not that I didn't go into it expecting a piece of shit. Far from it. I've been looking forward for this movie for months. Maybe even a year. I'm saying that I gave it a chance in that I wasn't expecting too much of it. I didn't want to be wowed. I just wanted a movie that was better than Signs. And I didn't get it.
After watching the Villiage I have come to one undeniable conclusion...M. Night Shyamalan is just a rich man's R. L. Stine. If you gave R. L. Stine a video camera and Ron Howard's daughter this is what he would come up with.
So there's a villiage in the past that's surrounded by these woods and there's these spooky creatures in the woods. Only, oh wait, the creatures are just a hoax and the story isn't actually set in the past, it's in the modern day, but the villiage is cut off from the rest of the world? I'm almost sure that was a plot of one of the Goosebumps books.
It's a well crafted story. I'll give him that. You make the girl blind so that when she does go into the real world, or what have you, she has no idea what's going on. Great. Genius. Whatever. I don't have a problem with that. It's just that I think he's getting a hard on by fucking with the audience. He's not interested in making a good movie as much as he is in showing us something and then telling us that what we just saw was a farce. What he's doing is like two steps away from showing us a video with two monkeys fucking and then at the end going "Not so fast. One of those monkeys is gay."
I really do love M. Night Shyamalan. I think he might be one of my favorite living directors. And it is because I like him so much that I can say just how bad and ultimately insulting this movie is. It's like if someone you hate tells you that you're ugly. Who cares? They hate you. It's not like anything they say matters and they're probably lying about it anyway because they hate you.
It's when one of your friends tells you the same thing that you really have to worry.
M. Night Shyamalan is not making movies. He's making little novelty gags. And that's something that I just can't respect.
NEXT TIME
In my next entry I'm going have a new installment of The Bourne Paycheck and deliver my list of the ten best movies I've ever seen. And just incase there's any question The Villiage will not be on the list.
