Movies I Watched in May, Part 3

It's a little late, but here's the recap for the last movies watched in May, 2018...

Continuing our mission to introduce Allie to the cinema of M. Night Shyamalan, we watched this one, which seemed to mark the end of his “insanely popular” period. Coming on the heels of “Signs” (see the previous post), “The Village” is both more subtle and less fast-paced, which I didn’t necessarily mind (but I think audiences did). I like the methodical nature of the whole film, and as a bonus, the fact that everyone is living in what at least seems to be the past, Shyamalan’s weakness with contemporary dialogue isn’t apparent and the stilted language actually feels right. And though Shyamalan gets grief – much of it justified – for his twist endings, one reason I like “The Village” is I think it works as a spooky mood piece whether you buy the twist or not. Plus, with Roger Deakins handling cinematography chores, the whole thing looks goddamn gorgeous.

Writing a review of this is going to be a little tricky, because even though I did see the movie, I really didn’t see the movie – at least not as clearly as I’d hoped to. Whether it was the lousy projection, the lousy print or the lousy lack of changing the settings from 3D to 2D, whatever we saw in the theater was, no kidding, too dark to see. At first, we thought this was intentional, but as the movie played and we found ourselves squinting just to see which characters were onscreen, we realized something was wrong – but two separate trips to the guy at the counter didn’t help, so we just endured the rest of the film and did our best to figure out what was going on. Comments about actual film? Well, I liked Alden Ehrenreich more than I thought I would; I liked the robot rebellion in the middle but pretty much hated L3-37, the robot behind it; and I appreciated the ending didn’t involve blowing up something. Also, I enjoyed the Imperial March playing as background music during a recruitment ad for the Empire. In fact, that might have been my favorite part. I figure when it arrives on home video, I’ll give it another shot – because, to be honest, I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on.

Finished off the month with a little more M. Night, this time the 1999 blockbuster that put him on the map (and established his patented twist endings). When I saw it in the theater way back then, I guessed the twist about 10 minutes before it arrived, but the movie still works pretty well as an unnerving little drama even when you know what’s coming. Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment deliver solid performances, but the secret star of the movie is Toni Collette, who manages to ground the whole thing while still creating a distinctive character. One more thing – I’ve always thought Shyamalan took a pretty big chance by introducing the storyline of a mother poisoning her daughter about two-thirds of the way through. I can why he did it – to give Osment’s character something genuinely disturbing to uncover and let him save someone (the other daughter) from a life-or-death situation – but it’s the sort of thing that could derail an entire film if not handled correctly. Thankfully, this is back when Shyamalan had control over the tone he was creating, and it works. Somehow, it works.