THE VILLAGE. Best movie so far.

[Anonymous]

This Shyamalan-a-ding-dong guy who did The Sixth Sense and Signs has certainly found his voice in Hollywood and it is STRONG. The Village, which I just saw, was the best movie I’ve seen all year. It even beat out Spider-man 2 (which takes the number two rank in my book). Spider-man 2 thrilled and soared but The Village did so much more. It worked metaphorically and on a much deeper level.

I won’t give anything away. It’s billed as a thriller (and it is — more than a few times women screamed in the theater) but, like in Signs, many other genres rear their heads. Some parts are funny and some are dramatic. I was suprised taht It even ventured into a kind of love story (which is new to Shyamalan). It’s all great though. Everything works.

But I think the reason I loved this movie so much was because it was totally old fashioned. There was no CGI at all. There was nothing but a good (GREAT!) script and wonderful cinematography. Also (and Elfman must have eaten this up), no real sound effects (other than the noises in the woods) messed with the music (which was also phenomenal). J. Newton Howard could get as big as he wanted and as quiet as he wanted and the music was always heard. Shyamalon is to Howard as Danny is to Burton or Herrmann was to Alfred Hitchcock. I feel we’re gonna get a lot of memorable scores over the years from this pairing. So far VILLAGE and SIGNS are the best, I think.

Now, and remember this if you haven’t seen this movie, the thing I’ve learned about this guy’s (Shyamalan’s) movies is that you should NEVER walk into the theater guessing the twists or harboring any kinds of huge expectations because hype ruins a movie (no matter how good it is). There are twists and suprises and jolts and all that kind of stuff but don’t second-guess them. It’s great when it all comes naturally. Infact, tt preys on you like Ray Bradbury’s books or Serling’s Twilight Zones did in their hay-day.

Thank god for those few people in Hollywood that still know how to make decent movies. Shyamalan and Burton have become my favorites… infact, and this is no disrespect to Burton, but Shyamalan has even inched a few notches higher than the ladder [especially after I saw this movie].

Boycott Catwoman. This is the movie to see.

ALSO, buy the soundtrack. It’s kind of like Black Beauty (with that nice solo violin and harp and piano) but strays into sadder [much darker] territory as well (some cues are pure horror, in fact).

[Anonymous]

Can’t wait to see it. I’ve been wanting to see it for a long time.

[Anonymous]

I couldn’t disagree more.

THE VILLAGE is a total mess.

Overlong, self-indulgent, masturbatory, pretentious, ponderous dialogue that serves to only stretch screen time to painful proportions… Worst of all, it’s not frightening in the least!

This is the kind of film whose self-importance and bloat actually inspires the audience to laugh at all the wrong places (Noah’s death being the prime example). Speaking of which, the audience I saw the film with actually booed Shyamalan’s name when the end credits began to roll!

He found the suit UNDER THE FLOOR BOARDS!

If you’re keeping suits under the floor boards, what is the point of THE SHACK THAT MUST NOT BE USED(!!!)?

I could go on, but I just don’t care about this mega-turd enough to get angry.

Ryan

[Anonymous]

Wow, Ryan. I’ve never heard the world masturbatory used to describe a movie.

Or anything else, for that matter.

It’s awfully descriptive . . . and probably sums up the way I feel about movies and music. Thanks for the new vocab word.

[Anonymous]

Dude! Spoilers!!! Goddamnit!!!

Knight (I couldn’t care less what people say, I am gonna see this movie if only for the score)

[Anonymous]

I thought it was very predictable.

[Anonymous]

Don’t worry Knight. That doesn’t ruin the TWIST.

Well… I didn’t want to give anything about this movie away in my FIRST post but Ryan just revealed some big stuff. Before I go on, though, I must say this…

This is not an angry reply. I don’t want to be a dick. People have different opinions. Mine may happen to be the correct one but that isn’t the point. This is how a democracy works. Different people think differently. It’s up to all of you to form your own opinions based on watching this movie on your own. Don’t try to guess the whole way through and pick the movie apart. Don’t base your thoughts on one or two bad reviews. You won’t enjoy it if you watch it that way. As I said above, this movie works on a much deeper level.

Anyway,
(here’s a spoiler alert… by the way, that means I’m about to tell secrets from the movie and if you read ahead it will probably be ruined for you if you haven’t seen it yet. Who knows what else could happen after that. Death, maybe. I haven’t looked into it. Your head might explode.)

You’ve been warned. If you don’t want everything ruined, go the very bottom of this post. I continue the non-spoiler stuff below.

…..
SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS!!!

Let’s get the big stuff out of the way. The movie’s First Twist was that the monsters weren’t real. The second was that it was set in MODERN TIMES. There. I said it. MODERN TIMES. That’s how it ends. Boom. The town leader felt the world was going to hell and he started a world of his own. He preserved it by creating a myth for the younger generations to follow in a wildlife preserve that he owned. That’s a good plot, I think (it goes hand in hand with Bradbury or Serling). The younger generations believed what the elders told them (because they were The Elders!) and that’s not totally hair-brained in conception. Myths drove us for years before rational thought took hold. Hell, we burned people in Salem. Just like in this movie, people dressed in costumes (I believe) in the Aztec culture to preserve ideologies.

Now, as for this movie’s dialogue. Ryan was correct in noticing it wasn’t fashioned like a modern movie. The dialogue was meant (let’s underline meant) to be operatic. This was a false-period film. Near the end, when you see the two security guards talking, they aren’t speaking with frilly silver tongues of earlier on. They use words like “aren’t” instead of “are not” and don’t annunciate every damn syllable. They put us back into the real world. The OLD BRITISH MOVIE type dialogue spoken in the village was meant to take us away from the fact that everything was really set in MODERN TIMES. It made the end of the movie (which I admit, I guessed—partly at least) much more unexpected than it would be if they were just saying stuff like “what’s crack-a-lackin my thug dawg gangster homie?” or “Bump that! I’m gonna go chill.” (I just received unlimited street cred for saying that, by the way). The antiquated talking cushioned the fantasy world. If I haven’t ruined it for you yet, I’m about to now.

So Noah is the retarded character in the movie. We’re only human so, because of his disability, we give him sympathy unknowingly. In truth he puts on a monster suit and scares everybody in town, joined in the act by a few of those town elders who actually know about “the truth” as well. Remember the first monster-spotting scene? That wasn’t Noah in the suit. It was somebody else (I suspect William Hurt). Noah was under the floor-boards. So why does Noah dress up too? We aren’t told. We can guess. I guessed that he found out early on what was going on and, in a way to bargain with him to keep his yap shut like a good boy, the elders said he could wear the nice wart-hog suit. It’s just not answered. That’s not a bad thing, infact, I think that’s better. Going into too much detail might put us into The Matrix factor. Ambiguity is better sometimes. Noah’s character’s constructed well enough though. You don’t know why he smiles every time the bell tolls or the woods are made to rustle. We just assume he’s naturally goofy (that wacky Noah).

[By the way, before you ask any questions—I’ll say it again—ambiguity is sometimes better. At the end WILLIAM HURT says himself that the woods were made to rustle. Is that so implausible? If he’s rich enough to own the wildlife preserve, and pay the guards of the boarder, is he rich enough to create some noise in the woods? Ambiguity guys. Ambiguity.]

Moving on though, Noah gets a laugh during his death scene (granted) because he is such a bastard (the fact that he was originally the comic relief might have helped out too). Maybe your audience didn’t like the movie, Ryan, but audiences differ (mine applauded both the end and that scene where the animal-costumed guy bolts at the girl). Mine actually DID like it. Sure there was laughing on some occasions. It wasn’t because the movie sucked. Some of those funny scenes (the girl’s failed courtship for example) were, believe it or not, intentional. Some were constructed with dark humor (where the boy tells the elders of the monster’s death and evil-Noah’s parents start to weep… haha). That had to be intentional. It was funny for all the wrong reasons but it was still funny. It doesn’t take anything away from the movie.

Now, You say it wasn’t scary at all RYAN. I guess you had a stale audience. I heard plenty of screams in mine. My buddy David actually got popcorn spilled on him from this girl behind us [good times in Georgia, folks. Good times.]. BUT HERE ARE SOME “SCREAM SCENES” I REMEMBER THE AUDIENCE REACTING TOO IN PARTICULAR: (1) The first sighting of the man in the animal suit by the guy in the tree house thing; (2) The fuzzy scene where the costumed guy enters the house; (..here’s two tension scenes) (3) when the blind girl is awaiting her boyfriend with her hand out and fails to see the guy walking up in the background; (4) the child’s game on the stump; (some big jolt scenes) (5) The discovery of the hole by the blind girl; (6) When Noah bolts at the blind girl after about five seconds of standing still wearing that weird-ass Animal costume (my audience loved that and so did I because you think, for at least a moment, the creatures are real); (6) When Noah inches up closer to the blind girl while she is hiding out on one side of the tree. That’s off the top of my head.

But what about the plot holes, you ask? Fair question. The suit under the floorboards? Who the hell knows why there was an extra suit under the floorboards. You could presume all sorts of stuff. Obviously there was more than one suit. Maybe all the houses had one. Noah wasn’t the only one with a suit. It’s not answered. Maybe it’s an error in scripting although I doubt it. We’ll never know unless M Night does a commentary on the DVD. Ambiguity folks. M. Night loves his ambiguity. I personally assumed with only one suit in the shed that the suit belonged to WILLIAM HURT’s character. Obviously there was more than one costume and the elders had to take turns running amuck. All the elders had one suit for themselves hidden away. Noah’s parents certainly did. You can’t really make a successful myth with ONE costume (except for bigfoot). Ebert asked a similar question in his review: why is the mentally-retarded guy so goofy on some occasions but still does what needs to be done. WELL… It’s NOT TOO COMPLICATED! Stabbing a guy with a knife and then playing dress-up isn’t rocket science! I can tape a knife to my dog’s head and throw a costume on her and old girl will do the exact same thing Noah did on command. She’ll even sit and bark. It’s not like Noah was putting up a farce with his mental state or something (he was obviously not with it when he went for the second stab). It’s not like he took of a mask and was Dastardly Do-Wrong underneath with a pencil thin mustache.

But those little things don’t ruin this movie (for me). It works on other levels. The love story was old fashioned and almost Shakespearian but it was still interesting enough. There was a driving force in this movie. The stabbing of our male “hero” gave the girl “hero” incentive to finally leave town. We hope when watching that she will be successful. She is. Then there’s the TWIST. Then she returns and there’s the happy ending. We don’t see the blind girl’s doting boyfriend get better but we know things are in order when she gets back to town [*cough, cough* ambiguity *cough, cough*]. That’s not a BAD ENDING at all. The rest is left up to us to decide. I love those kinds of endings.

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OK FOLKS, IT’S OKAY NOW. THOSE GOSH-DARN SPOILERS ARE OVER!

My basic belief is that movies don’t have to be packed with those big special effects and CGI fillings of today’s commercial age. I sound like my mother but movies don’t have to be all sex and violence. Shyamalan mirrors that sentiment with his movies. He writes and directs material a family can go see together without much censorship and still does top-notch stuff with a seat-of the-pants style that many people (me included) appreciate. Shyamalan is one guy out there now who likes to do things like the old masters did (and by the way, ask Hitchcock why the birds attacked people—is that a plot hole or what? Maybe it’s just ambiguity!). Shyamalan’s is a good writer. In fact, he’s a great writer. He still has what it takes to blow our minds and (even though I partly guessed the ending to this one) he’s proved to me once again that he could have written a Twilight Zone episode every week if he’d lived during the 1950’s. He’s a flexible artist. That’s something to be respected.

If his movies do anything else at all they leave a lot for us to decide on our own after the curtain falls. The number one of what do decide was whether the movie was good or not. Critics are splitting on this one I see but the consensus likes it so far. Richard Roeper (who split with his buddy Ebert, a man who admittingly still likes Shyamalan) called this movie a large and wonderful metaphor. Some people trash this and others praise it. Down the road I see this being looked back on with mostly praise (just look at Batman Returns or, for that matter, PSYCHO!!!). I’m sure there will be many people out there who won’t like this movie for whatever reasons (there is always something) but see it anyway. Again, form your own opinion.

I promise that it’s worth it (for the music at least).

Thanks.

PS: I’ll agree with Ryan on One Thing. Masturbatory is a great word.

[Anonymous]

The movie was simplistic and maybe not as deep as Signs…but it was good – Mainly the love story…because the redhead is beautiful and wil probobly become the next Julia Roberts.

Noah laughs at the whole beasts in the woods thing because he already knew what was going on…so he really wasn’t so retarded as people thought.Theelders had suits, not just William Hurt, so he foundit and boom – went to take care of the girl. The scene with the knife and the stabbing was just unnerving; rivals the bayonet scene in Saving Private Ryan.

if at all, i saw it as the guy gets screwed and the girl comes to save him…That seems to be the central motivation, here, and alot of people may not really find any merit init, or be able to identify with it…But hey = Mary Jane Saved Peter PArker, so apparently this year seems to be frought with strong female characters helping their men out in times of need. This is the second time i’ve seen this….kinda interesting.

If at all, James Howard’s music reminds me of The Patriot a bit…all those violins. It also kinda echoes Signs…which was pretty damn good, scorewise.

To be honest, i was expecting werewolves, and i got kicked in the nuts when it turned into a modern world wildlife sanctuary….probobly not the best ending, but hey – at least M Knight didn’t beat the ending into our heads by showing the wedding, etc. I thought it ended pretty nicely with her holding his hand,bedside…

And Damn, man..Joaquin Pheonix is becoming an actor, dude…I felt for the guy in this movie.

— ALL this, and coming from a guy who DIDNT wanna see this movie. I really didn’t feel like going, argued with the audience, got some kids thrown out, and just got ornery up until the the story started to flow…and this is the expectation, so it’s not that bad…

[Anonymous]

The movie sucked, and I want my money back.

[Anonymous]

I just read a great review from this Canadian critic. He said — and was correct by saying this — that “this movie was bound to split the audience up and piss some people off.”. The then says, and I echo, “I, for one, liked it anyway.”

[Anonymous]

there you go…it ain’t all that, but it’s good on its own merit.

[Anonymous]

“THE VILLAGE. Best movie so far.”

Um, in the span of cinema history?

[Anonymous]

Well, if it is a love it or hate it kinda movie, then that is good. Those are usually the best (or worst) movies made .

Knight (THANKS for the spoiler alert, I’ll read what you wrote after I see the film)

[Anonymous]

good, because if you knew the spoiler, you wouldn’t want to go.

[Anonymous]

Heh, I know the big spoiler, and it makes me want to see it even more. This sounds like the most unintentionally hilarious movie since “Underworld”.

Burt

[Anonymous]

The trailer gave the twist away. How stupid is that?

[Anonymous]

I would be too scared to even watch the movie, I get scared easily

[Anonymous]

Its not even a horror story….it’s just a love triangle gone bad, with that whole coverup backdrop.

[Anonymous]

You guys can’t go in thinking this will be a horror movie. You have to keep your minds open. Anything’s possible in one of this guy’s movies.

Also, it’s gotten to the point where Shyamalan’s movies are virtually critic-proof, like with the Star Wars movies or (as of latest) The Passion. No matter who the hell blasts them people still go.

[Anonymous]

i still think Sixth Sense and Signs are his most emotional…

[Anonymous]

Signs is my favorite by far. The ending was his best to date.

[Anonymous]

Dawg Man, people go into this thinking THE VILLAGE is a thriller because the campaign promoting the film makes the film out to be a thriller. If the ads showed a bunch of period dressed bozos marbling their way through period speeches on cheap sets, then obviously no one would go see it.

Ryan

[Anonymous]

It is a thriller! It’s not horror. You can’t tell me there was no suspense at all in that movie.

[Anonymous]

… and all the ads for “Welcome To Moosepoint” made it seem like a comedy.

Just kidding Ryan.

Nat

[Anonymous]

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SPOILERS…

If the film is set in modern times, how is it that there is no air traffic, ever?

[Author]

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