Just Seen: Signs

Who hasn't seen the trailer for this one? If you have you know it doesn't give much away, apart from having something to do with
crop circles. No matter what I say everyone is going to see it. The film builds up nicely with some great touches of what you can't see only hear.

I thought all the acting was good and it has a great music score.
I work in the US quite alot and so saw it there. Also in August I've
seen XXX with Vin Diesel and Road to Perdition with Tom Hanks.
I could give a more in depth review of Signs but I'm sure you
don't want it spoiled!

If you have any questions about it please ask.

Mieville

Hey Mieville,
well I will see both so no spoilers please, but what did you make of XXX? I quite like Vin Diesel, he looks like the next action star. What's the film about? Presumably not rude movies!?

Thanks,
Dan.

Dan,

No spoilers then, XXX is about an extreme sports badass who
gets recruited by the US goverment to infiltrate a group of
really bad people. Nothing really original there then!

Safe to say theres alot of extreme stunts, James Bond gadgets
loud music etc. If you like Vin Diesel then you should have no complaints. I thought it was a great no brainer and your right
he is the next action star.

Mieville

[Drunken Master]

Looking forward to all of those films. I hate going to the cinema in America, they do tend to get excited of there. They were whooping at the end of Mummy returns.

[groundy]

mieville,

One important question you have left unanswered - is Signs any good (in your opinion offcourse)?

How does it fare against The 6th Sense and Unbreakable (by the same director)?

Groundy,

Signs has great suspense and on the whole I enjoyed it but it
did leave me feeling cheated. You can appreciate I can't go into detail of what I didn't like until after it opens.

Against his other two movies it nearly comes second. There is
so much I liked about Signs but...........


Mieville

[General Skanky]

That's good enough for me. It's on my shortlist of films to buy. It does look well made at least.

[groundy]

Thanks for the additional comments mieville. If nothing else, Signs sounds interesting as I always like films whereby the ending becomes a talking point, even if deemed a dissappointment.

I hope M Night Shylamannamanaarahan can one day make a film that's not all about the end tho... I mean the sixth sense was one thing but you really had to be a bit of a comic book geek to get any sort of wow factor out of the ending of Unbreakable.

[squid]

I know what you meen about feeling cheated .

The film did seem as though it was building to a big finish that did'nt realy seem all that big if you ask me .

I would'nt go out of my way to get the dvd but it was ok and worth a look .It could just be that it was a little slow for my tasts. I prefere to see mel do a lot of killing or at least a bit of gbh on my films . Never mind though

Anybody seen it yet?

Originally posted by James45
I hope M Night Shylamannamanaarahan can one day make a film that's not all about the end tho...

I'd advise you see 'Signs' then. Although the ending is strong, it isn't really a big twist like the previous two.

I thought 'Signs' was great, enthralling and very well made. Nice to see a director use his imagination to tell the story rather than running off to ILM to make his life easier. Some of the photography and shots also had a similar look and feel to the better 80s horror films which I liked.

Shyamalan has a gift for playing with the viewers emotions as well, probably more so than any other current mainstream director... I saw about 40% of the cinema crying at various points in the film.

In my opinion, 'Signs' is a better film than Sixth Sense but isn't quite as good as Unbreakable (although I didn't like the ending of that film at all) .

[Luc]

Saw it last night. Fantastic. Much better than Unbreakable and probably better than 6th Sense IMHO.

[Gambit]

got to go with [luc] on this one. Signs actually made me jump, which no films has done for a while. The contrast between funny and spooky is timed to perfection.

Signs was very good (excellent even) but I should've known from all the comic relief throughout that I would have felt dissapointment at the waste of an opportunity come the finish.
It only skimmed the surface on important issues such as the ambiguous nature of faith and religion versus science fiction/fact - even though it had the opportunity to tackle these head-on in front of a mainstream audience. All was shaping up well until the end (and this end will not recieve the notoriety of his previous films) when everything was sugar coated.

Spoiler: Having him regain his faith totally detatched me from the film. Personally (and I dont mean to go all A.I on this film) but if they had Mel Gibsons character regroup his series of flash backs after seeing the refelection in the televesion set and then cut to black - the open ending would have been far better. Not perfect but would have at least left people to think on their own - instead of people coming out of the cinema saying "well....that was scary wasnt it". /spoiler

Up until a crtain point this film is excellent but if you're looking for a punch at the ending like myself (and I'm not talking about a blood and guts, light sabre fight) dont torture yourself with the first 11/12's of the film. In fact, do see the film just dont let the film get your hopes up.

***/5