Category: Review

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:14:35 PM)
I’m working on a better non-spoiler review for The Village (where I reveal that it is, in fact, a dramatic romance, NOT a Thriller, as advertised!) and … well, a comic for today.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:14:43 PM)
hehehe

iain says: (9:15:42 PM)
I agree, I am about to post my own sort of review of the Village, where I reveal that people will probably not ever have the same experience as they had with Sixth Sense while attending a M. Night movie, and how that’s okay

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:16:01 PM)
Good, good.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:17:19 PM)
Interestingly for me, considering that Unbreakable barely had a twist and as far as I can tell Signs didn’t have a twist at all, expecting that sort of thing seems silly to me.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:17:58 PM)
Have you see the Village, then?

iain says: (9:18:17 PM)
yes yes

iain says: (9:18:23 PM)
I thoroughly enjoyed it

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:19:18 PM)
Also, I have spoken to more than one person who, apparently missing the gravestone, thought we were looking at a modern, secluded, Amish-type community, it never occurring to them that it was supposed to be set in the past, and thus, thinking the only “twist” was that the elders were the creatures.

iain says: (9:20:06 PM)
I think the twist in Signs was that there actually were aliens, and that it wasn’t anything else, it was… just aliens

iain says: (9:20:12 PM)
pesky aliens

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:20:44 PM)
I liked it a lot. I think I liked it more the second time than the first, because I knew what to expect, more. Less twist, less thriller, more romance and drama and excellent acting. Really, less expectation, but more accurate expectation.

iain says: (9:21:35 PM)
I was actually spooked by the movie a lot. And thought it was a good thriller. But, having someone clawing my arm off half the movie may have had some influence on that

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:21:42 PM)
Huh. I uhh… I thought it was assumed that it was an alien movie, with … aliens. And then I watched it and … there were these alien things going on, and at the end, an alien, and … well, a good enough movie, but … nothing surprising there.

iain says: (9:22:13 PM)
I watched it thinking it was really about the Rapture for some strange reason….

iain says: (9:22:19 PM)
so when it wasn’t that was a twist lol

iain says: (9:22:42 PM)
and now I watch it and I am really interested in the different characters coming to grips with their beliefs

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:23:11 PM)
The spookiest thing for me were the creatures themselves. When I first saw them and thought “oh no, they’re real! I have no idea how that’s going to work out, they’re clearly monsters!” and then when it was revealed they weren’t real, but there was one threatening her again! Damn!

iain says: (9:23:18 PM)
and ultimately, I thoroughly enjoy his movies, over and over again

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:23:31 PM)
YES. Signs is an excellent movie about faith.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:24:13 PM)
That scene where Merril… errr.. Lucius ducks around the corner and you first get a good look at the creatures, MAN. Got me both times.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:24:43 PM)
Like “Oh my gosh! There are really real monsters!” Even when I knew there weren’t.

iain says: (9:25:48 PM)
yes

iain says: (9:26:35 PM)
when they had shown the suit, and she was out in the woods, and then she was all freaked because her cloak was muddy and we were reminded that there were rumors of the creatures in the woods, I was all “OMG there might really be creatures still!”

iain says: (9:26:41 PM)
he got me

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:26:56 PM)
Yes. Exactly. I was almost in tears the first time, emoting with her.

iain says: (9:27:01 PM)
then I saw how the creature was moving, and instantly recognized it was Noah

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:27:28 PM)
Oh, I didn’t. But … what clues?

iain says: (9:28:03 PM)
the way he moved was just like how the creature moved, all sort of.. off

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:28:08 PM)
I was confident or … mostly confident that she knew it was him … but assumed so on her superior senses.

iain says: (9:28:32 PM)
we should post this conversation as a Spoiler Review

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:28:37 PM)
Excellent.

iain says: (9:28:42 PM)
shall I?

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:28:51 PM)
Let us finish it, maybe?

iain says: (9:28:55 PM)
okay

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:29:14 PM)
I’ll post it later, with my no-spoilers whatsoever review. Then I’ll have three levels of spoilers.

iain says: (9:29:16 PM)
she was, as the reviews all said, fantastic, Ivy that is. Stole the show

iain says: (9:29:21 PM)
heh

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:29:28 PM)
Yes. Bryce Howard is amazing.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:30:23 PM)
I am tempted to just keep watching it. If not for the whole money issue, I probably would see it several more times in theatres. As it is, I shall simply have to patiently wait for the DVD.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:31:01 PM)
(Oh, and probably try to dl it – so I can see it between now and the DVD release, like I did with the matrix Reloaded.)

iain says: (9:31:59 PM)
heh

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:32:03 PM)
And mostly for her performance. She is mesmerizing and excessively … believable? I mean, she draws me into the picture in a way Joaquin failed to.

iain says: (9:32:13 PM)
yeah

iain says: (9:32:17 PM)
not that he was bad

iain says: (9:32:29 PM)
but I can imagine others maybe doing as good a job in the role

iain says: (9:32:32 PM)
and I cannot with hers

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:32:38 PM)
no, no. Just that … his character was not the sort that would draw anyone toward them in so short a time, I think.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:32:50 PM)
yes, that is a reasonable and agreeable statement.

iain says: (9:33:17 PM)
oh, and I recognized M. Night’s voice immediately

iain says: (9:33:28 PM)
that was fun

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:33:44 PM)
Absolutely. My sister didn’t recognize him at all, even when they “showed” his face in his trademark reflection shot.

iain says: (9:33:49 PM)
lol

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:34:24 PM)
I’m quite interested to know what the originally shot ending was like. Hurt is quoted as preferring the original cut better.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:34:42 PM)
I suspect, from watching the film, that it is something subtle.

iain says: (9:36:40 PM)
and there was supposedly more explored with Sigourney Weaver’s character that the let in]

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:36:54 PM)
But it could be something as major as (my favorite of speculations I’ve read) this: When Ivy kills the creature, Noah’s face is not shown, there is no scene of his escaping/having a suit, and the last scene is a little different (with the elders), plus a shot of Noah in the quiet room (perhaps having injured himself somehow – that being an idea I’ve just had now). Implying that the creatures are real.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:37:07 PM)
that definitely seemed cut down.

iain says: (9:38:09 PM)
or it was really all about the Rapture

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:38:17 PM)
perhaps even with one of the elders missing from the final scene.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:38:44 PM)
implying that one of the elders tried to kill her, Noah’s father, perhaps, to prevent her from contacting the outside world.

iain says: (9:39:58 PM)
oh, and Judy Greer, whee!

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:40:09 PM)
Of course! But when isn’t Deadly girl excellent?

iain says: (9:40:18 PM)
I didn’t know she was in it until I showed up at the theater and saw her name in the opening credits

iain says: (9:40:23 PM)
right, well

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:40:34 PM)
I saw her face in a trailer, and was excited.

iain says: (9:40:56 PM)
I saw her a million times in the trailer and didn’t notice it was her

iain says: (9:53:46 PM)
oh, and the doctor’s ethnicity seemed odd to me for the setting and supposed time period when I was shown him, and some of the things they had seemed a bit much. Like their greenhouse

iain says: (9:53:58 PM)
but I still didn’t guess the secret “twist” outright

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:54:06 PM)
ethnicity?

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:54:23 PM)
What ethnicity should a doctor have been?

iain says: (9:54:38 PM)
he didn’t look European, I mean.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:54:52 PM)
You know Leeuwenhoek had greenhouses in the 1700s, right?

iain says: (9:54:56 PM)
everyone else seemed like the sort that would have settled that area

iain says: (9:55:05 PM)
no, I did not

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:55:16 PM)
I think that’s right.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:55:51 PM)
Actually, here: “The earliest recorded greenhouse was built about 30 AD for the Roman emperor Tiberius.”

iain says: (9:56:02 PM)
huh.

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:56:11 PM)
So the tech existed.

iain says: (9:56:16 PM)
kk

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:58:36 PM)
Actually, upon further research, all-glass greenhouses like the one seen there were not popular until the early 1800s.

iain says: (9:58:57 PM)
okay

teel@modernevil.com says: (9:59:10 PM)
sorry. Google is too useful sometimes and too useless others.

iain says: (9:59:15 PM)
lol

iain says: (10:03:41 PM)
well, I suppose I should sleep now. sigh. stupid @#$%^ sleep

teel@modernevil.com says: (10:03:53 PM)
okie-dokie. I’ll get this up soon-ish.

iain says: (10:03:58 PM)
k, seeya

teel@modernevil.com says: (10:04:02 PM)
night

So.

I did my very best not to learn anything about The Village after seeing the first real trailer for it. The makers did their very best not to tell anyone, anywhere, anything about the bulk of the film. The multi-page article on it I read in the EW had literally nothing to say about the content of the film; less actually than that trailer. And I did my best not to think too much about the film before I could watch it.

I failed on that last point.

I figured out the main “twist” the main crux of The Village weeks ago, perhaps months. You see, I like to do a thing where, knowing only the basic premise of a film I expect has a twist, I try to determine what the least likely and least satisfying twist would be for the movie to have and still be in keeping with the writer/director’s style and with keeping audiences satisfied on some level. I did it withSigns, and while my guess fits better (in my opinion) than the actual ending of the movie, it was not the one in the movie. I guessed wrong; very close to the themes and events and characters in the movie, but wrong. With The Village I tried the same thing, but I was right.

With Signs my guess at the “what” was incorrect, but the “Why” and how it effected the characters was spot-on. With The Village my guess at the “what” was spot on, but I couldn’t quite come up with the “why” or the “how” and I kept wanting it to be more complicated than it ended up being, more fantastic.

Knowing in advance what the secret was (or at least what wrong secret I was trying to get to fit with the things happening in the movie so I could write another fun review) made all the little things that don’t quite fit stand out. Every thing that was going on that didn’t sync with the idea I had for the “what” stood out to me because I was trying to think of how to explain it away in my pseudo-review. And then when I was right, when I was dead-on-right, I was as “shocked” as the rest of the audience at the reveal, because there were so many wrong things I’d basically given up on my idea and the premise of the pseudo-review; no one would believe my premise who was watching the movie. There was too much that didn’t fit, or was missing.

Or was there?

I’ll go watch it again. Soon. Maybe later tonight. I’ll try paying attention a little closer this time. There are more than two surprises in this movie, though two of them I figured out before they were revealed, and one of those was the crux. So there is still more to see, more to watch for.

And I think there is … more missing. Scenes and moments cut out to bring the film in at exactly two hours. Yes, it is paced slowly. Some would say it was paced slowly even considering the pacing of Shyamalan’s prior works. And I believe that many audiences would have become restless were the film to take longer. But I was drawn into the characters and their relationships, at this village and its people and its culture, and there were some things that were just not investigated enough, some details not quite shown but hinted at that I wanted to see shown. And I’ve read that the ending was changed or reshot and edited, that the people involved do not deny it was changed in some subtle ways and that some preferred the original ending better. I would like to know what has changed, what M. Night Shyamalan’s original ideas were, and how they differed. This ending, well, the last few moments, the last shot, the last cut, it just seemed … incomplete and abrupt to me.

Just because the reveal has been made, the secrets are out, does not mean I want to leave these people, this village.

I am simultaneously satisfied and dissatisfied by the movie and my own mind both and each.

And here is where the spoilers come from, your own mind:

If you know anything about this movie, you know the premise is that there is a village of people living in what appears (from the trailers) to be … around the 1800’s. The village is in a valley, in a clearing, surrounded on all sides by woods. There are “creatures” or “monsters” beyond the edge of the clearing, in the woods, but there is a “stalemate” or “agreement” between the people who settled the village and the creatures: If the people of the village do not trespass the border into the forest, the creatures will not trespass into the village. You also know that it is a film by M. Night Shyamalan, whose movies The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs have together earned over $600million domestically, has built a career based around a surprise reveal in the final moments of his movies. So you can reasonably assume that The Village will have some sort of clever twist, something that has been true the entire movie and changes the nature of the movie from what you thought you were watching, making the movie good for repeat viewings so you can see the little things you missed that might have told you what was going on, things that make a new kind of sense in a new kind of context.

And with the information in that paragraph alone, I have given away the whole thing. Well, at least as much as I figured out before the lights dimmed and the movie started, anyway. If I took the first sentence from that paragraph I would be giving a lot less away. And if you hadn’t already figured it out, you have now. But I did warn you there would be spoilers, didn’t I? In the title of the review, then in the preface to the above paragraph. If you’ve read this far, you have to have wanted to know what it was. And now you either do, or … still aren’t thinking.

Which is a fine way to go into a movie like this. There is enough other stuff going on that if you weren’t thinking about figuring it out the whole time the movie might be grossly more satisfying. Try to enjoy it, either way.

Funny movie, people.

Lots of good low-level humor. A lot of pothead humor which, although I am personally not one for the use of recreational drugs OR of that particular subculture, was pretty funny as a way to keep the story moving forward. And the requisite bathroom humor is early-on, so you’re not left thinking too much about Battleshits.

No real lulls in the humor. Definitely for the sort of person who like the structure and humor-style of Dude, Where’s My Car, a funny movie I also recommend. No alien conspiracies that I noticed, but some definite runners that come together beautifully in the end.

What do you mean you’ve never heard of this movie? Here.

Go watch the trailer.

It’s just like that, but for 88 minutes. And a LOT more jokes than you see there. Not like SOME movies that have advertising that gives everything away, this is just a taste.

And after the obvious stuff in the credits stops there’s nothing later, nothing at the end. No need to sit still. Go pee.

Good movie. I recommend it.

Good action, interesting camera work, interesting story elements.

And my favorite thing: Emotional hooks.

I don’t know for sure if you have to have recently watched The Bourne Identity for the hooks to sink in, but they’re there and they’re pretty well-crafted.

Sure, it’s reasonably easy to figure out what everyone on-screen is trying to figure out before they all do, but that’s not the point. You know from the very beginning what the crux will be, and seriously people, when the audience knows something the people on screen don’t that’s called dramatic irony. Since this is a drama (an action drama, yes), having dramatic elements that involve the audience in the drama is important. This isn’t a puzzle for you to solve, it’s a drama for you to take in as they solve it.

But whatever, watch movies how you like to. I can’t force you to enjoy them.

If you’re the sort of person who enjoys movies, you’ll enjoy this one. It’s good.

Excellent book.