Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: I must confess I didn't really like "The Sixth Sense" very much, and I was very disapointed with "Unbreakable", so I wasn't quite sure whether I would like M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs". What I found in this movie was much different than what I was expecting, and if nothing else Shyamalan knows how to use the camera and did a masterful job in the product.Signs stars Mel Gibson as an ex preacher who lost his faith after his wife's unfortunate death a few months earlier. He, his brother, and his two children live on a small farm in rural Pennsylvania. They awake right at the beggining to find a giant crop circle in thier corn field. This combined with strange animal behavior is a perplexing mystery, but the the family believes it to be a hoax untill crop circles begin showing up all over the world, followed by lights hovering over major world cities. Soon it becomes evident that they are witnessing actual ET activity. The alien visitors finally prove themselves to be hostile and the family must band together to survive the ordeal. Not the most novel idea, I know, but what is original is the approach. Almost the entire movie takes place in the house or on the farm, and the movie is completely focused on the point of view of this family, rather than a world-wide scope. You sort of travel through the experience along-side the characters, hearing news of what's going on from the TV and when they dont know what's going on niether do you. This effectively delivers the feeling of wondering what is happening in the rest of the world. The whole premise here is similar to the original "night of the living dead" with the characters smack dab in the middle of some amazing events pent up in a house trying to survive and having no idea what's going on or why. This is the 100% antithesis of "independence day"... so dont expect to get lots of visual effects or see amazing scenes of spaceships landing in washington DC. Through most of the movie you dont see any aliens, or only very slight glimpses at best, and the movie is a thriller deffinatley not an aciotn movie, nor much of a sci-fi work. Most of the time the movie works it's maghic by not showing you what's out there, but giving you a sense that it's there - a tactic under employed in today's effects ridden movies. To me the movie felt more like a comedy than anything else. "Signs" makes very effective use of light humor, and you'll laugh more than you will scream. Gibson does a great job and some great elements of humor were worked into various scenes. The best part of "Signs" other than the humor however is the directorial work and great visual style of Shyamalan. I must give props here, because it is well deserved. The camera work is excellent, and whole movie is very well done. Also a lot of metaphorical details are interwoven into the plot and events, and one could argue that "signs" has less to do with aliens than it does the main character's struggle with his own faith and an over all exploration of the age old question 'does everything happen for a reason? or is it all just random"? All these elements add up to make what would have otherwise been a poor movie at best into an entertaining, well done, movie with plenty of humor, some philosophical elements. The only flaws lie in the larger plot. The aliens are kind of dumb (strong enough to leap onto a 10 foot roof but not break down a door!). They have space ships capable of interstellar travel but instead of technologically advanced weapons they use hand to hand combat and organically ejected poison gas! (not kidding). There are moments in this movie where you will laugh not because of intended humor but in the rediculousness of what's happenening. You're telling me these people borded up thier whole house and just waited for the alien invasion without even having the foresight to grab some weapons? not even a shotgun or a knife or anything?! There are lots of moments like that. It helps if you view the movie lighlty as a comedy and pay more attention to the backstory of mel gibsons character. All in all I have many complaints about this movie as far as the whole alien invasion plot goes, but there was enough stuff to like about it to just barely earn it a 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Thrilling and utterly outstanding piece of film!
Review: "Signs" is the next thriller, offered by director/writer/producer, M. Night Shyamalan, who also made "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable". PLOT SUMMARY: "Signs" takes place in the rural farm area of Pennsylvania, where a retired Preacher lives with his two children and younger brother. Mel Gibson stars as Father Graham Hess, who has lost all Faith in God ever since his wife died in a terrible car accident. One day, Graham thinks his children, Morgan and Bo (Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin) are missing in the corn fields. He and his brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix), go out searching for them and discover the legendary Crop Circles in the field. At first, Graham and Merrill insist that it's nothing but teenagers playing jokes, but things start getting creepy when they watch TV and find out that Crop Circles are being found all across the Globe, according to the mysterious news that keeps on being repeated on every single radio station and television channel. When the family dogs start acting up, they are put outside and not much later, one of them dies. Other strange occurences that happen on the farm are that they keep on getting strange signals from Morgan's walkie talkie and someone--or something--has been tresspassing onto their land every night. Morgan keeps on insisting that it's "extra terrestrials" trying to make contact with Earth, but Graham won't believe it. However, when nothing else in Graham's theories seem to work, it all adds up to the fact that maybe--just MAYBE--Morgan might be right. MY OVERALL THOUGHTS: M. Night Shyamalan has taken the elements of religion, science, fiction, and even a little bit of horror, twisted them together, and turned them (along with top-notch acting performances, great special effects, and a superb storyline), into a spectacular and spooky film. Mel Gibson gives one of his best performances to-date, as the retired minster who's lack of self-belief in religion really nearly drives him to insanity with the Crop Circles. Joaquin Phoenix also gives a superb performance as Graham's younger brother who came to live with the family after Graham's wife died. Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin are amazing as the kids who believe what's really causing the Crop Circles to form are aliens trying to give Earth signals, as there are only a limited number of them and they are basically the same. The supporting cast does well, too...and M. Night Shyalaman even makes an appearence in the supporting cast, as he usually does in his films. The special effects are wonderful, and the storyline and plot are solid and strong--holds your interest to the very end. A real "thinker's film", and still manages to keep you entertained...and maybe even a little spooked. The DVD includes a nice package of extras including a six-part documentary on the making of the film, five deleted scenes, storyboards, and a featurette on Shyalaman's first alien film. The DVD is available in wide screen format. I highly recommend "Signs". Score:
100/100
A+
Rating: 
Summary: Hand-Wringing and Whining: Go Aliens!
Review: Reading the other customer reviews makes it evident that "Signs" is about a lot of things. Personally, I found this movie to be a wonderful and timely study of how certain minds in this world perceive the nature of evil and how to confront it.
With this idea in mind, I sat through this stinker out of sheer disbelief and with a somewhat perverse delight over a plot where the fuse burns with difficulty and there's nothing close to a pop at the end. The hand-wringing throughout this movie is truly tortuous. No coincidence then, that on the night when the alien invasion is pressed across the world, one of the characters huddles in a closet with the TV on -- the director's way of telling us the battle is raging in the distant cities and that others are doing the fighting and dying that will result in this family's liberation.
OK, so this is not meant to be a shoot-em-up space invasion flick; we get that. Even so, the behavior of these characters in the face of a threat was so annoying, I felt no empathy for them and instead, found myself wishing for their blubbering demise well before the final scene.
The truly frightening thing about "Signs" is the thought process of the people who made the movie, and that of the people in power today who are of the same mindset. That truly scares the hell out of me.
Rating:
Summary: A pretty good horror film
Review: I am a big fan of M. Night Shyamalan's movies. He did a good job with Signs. Although this movie did not leave me at the edge of my seat, I still found it entertaining.
In this movie, A revrend named Graham Hess(Mel Gibson) and his family live in a farm outside of Philidelphia, Pennsylvania. Ever since his wife died, Graham has quit his job as a revrend and his brother, Merril(Juaquin Phoenix) moved in with him and his family. One day, there are mysterious crop circles in the field and the family is led to believe that aliens are responsible. At first, Graham is skeptical of the idea but after seeing an aliens leg in the cornfield, he will soon believe that there really are aliens taking over the world.
Again, this was a really good movie but was more of a phsycalogical horror than an edgy one.
Rating: 
Summary: Read the Signs and Reviews.
Review: this is a dvd is nice to own but cant be watched everyday (as is always the case with other M. Night films). i like how the plot thickened and revealed one by one the myriad of coincidences which helped the characters beat the enemies.. one downfall though is the whole film being so predictable (or i expected too much). not sure if the director tried to imitate spielberg's style especially in the scene where phoenix and gibson gabbed and shared some coincidences in their lives. reminds of Saving Private Ryan and Minority Report in an instant ..
features-wise, loaded and deluxe in nature. very helpful in understanding the director's past and future career undertakings.. the making of the film was exhaustively discussed also. overall, nice dvd for a low price.
Rating:
Summary: Really,really awful
Review: Shyamalan's movies seem to appeal to the types who believe that facile,drippy new age mysticism is in some way profound.Sixth Sense was far from a great movie,but at least it had a bit of life.Unbreakable,Signs,and The Village are dead on arrival,and tedious almost beyond belief.
Signs finds Shyamalan again coaxing numerous non-performances out of his actors,but it's hard to see them do much with the lame script.Scenes play out with funereal grimness,as Gibson and company sleepwalk through the movie.In fact,all of M.'s actor's seem as if they've been kept awake for six or seven days solid prior to filming.I suppose this passes for 'drama'.
Others have described the dopey mysticism on which the plot is based,and it is,indeed,dopey,so I won't go into it again.
The most mystical thing to me is why so many buy into this director's schlock--I was certainly willing to give him a chance,but I will never watch another of his movies.Another Hitchcock he is most certainly not--Hitchcock's movies were always full of life and wit.Shyamalan is the anti-Hitchcock.For the many people who seem to have goten some enjoyment out of Signs,more power to you.This is still objectively an embarrassing movie,however.
Rating:
Summary: SHOW ME THE ALIENS!!!!
Review: SIGNS is one of those shows where the trailer is far better and more intense than the actual movie. Everything that is supposedly scary about this one (and I emphasize the word "supposedly") is revealed in the trailer. Think about it. What else is there? I felt like standing up and shouting out at the top of my lungs, "SHOW ME THE ALIENS!!!!" Instead I got bits and pieces, here and there and nothing else. Legs in cornfields. Clawed fingers coming under and around doors. Spanish-speaking kids (perhaps the most frightening scene of all) suddenly speaking in English so that we, the viewers, don't get lost? Not much more. Even at the climax of the story there isn't the definitive exposure that this movie (and its audience) screams for.
What did M. Night think he was doing? Thank goodness he didn't follow the same strategy with THE SIXTH SENSE or that one would have been equally boring.
Despite valiant acting efforts by Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix (for which I offer two stars instead of one) this one is a yawner that should have never been made.
THE HORSEMAN
Rating:
Summary: delivers what it sells
Review: i think alot of people were dissapointed by this movie because they thought it was going to be about aliens, but it wasn't. it was about signs. omens if you will, it was as much about aliens as a cake is all about the eggs you use to make it, sure they are in it but thats not why you eat the cake. it was a good movie but its a thinker and in the end it delivers what it promises, signs.
Rating:
Summary: Looking for the "EXIT" sign.
Review: I guess it would be fair to call M. Night Shyamalan "the next Speilberg," because his forte is making big expensive pieces of crap designed for mass-market consumption. The difference might be that while Speilberg liked to set up corny action-figure-style battles for the fate of the universe (or whatever), in which the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black purely for your ease of distinguishing between the two, Shyamalan likes to set up lame, schlocky "thrillers" with "shock endings" so utterly obvious that I have a bridge to sell to anybody who can't guess the twist by the end of the opening credits.
"The Sixth Sense"? Fine, we'll let that one slide; after all it's hard to be objective about it now that there have been so many copycat films featuring precious child actors with three names who whisper ominous-sounding rhetoric. I'll admit that the ending may come as a revelation to anybody who has never seen a movie before. "Unbreakable"? Clumsy and hamfisted in its plot manipulations towards a conclusion as trite and trivial as...well, as that of "The Sixth Sense." So we're starting to see a pattern here. Thus we arrive with inexorable logic at the next installment, "Signs," which takes the established formula of contrived suspense and penny-plain plot twists to the next level of redundancy.
Widower Mel Gibson (get it ladies - widower - now swoon on cue), his two kids (both suffering from patently plot-driven afflictions), and his brother Joaquin Phoenix (I have nothing sarcastic to say in parenthesis about him except that he should make better career decisions) wake up one day to find huge "crop circles" on the family farm. Turns out they aren't alone - hundreds of similar patterns start popping up in fields all over the globe with such rapidity that it's impossible to ascribe the phenomenon to human hoax. Then spaceships start appearing in the sky, and green men start popping up at kids' birthday parties. Looks like a good old-fashioned garden variety alien invasion.
Of course, this is just the "setup." Fans of this film will tell you that it's really all about the "message," and this has to do with the fact that Gibson's character used to be a minister, but lost his faith after his wife's tragic death. He's questioning the meaning of life, the validity of religion, the purpose of human existence - all in the most trite and cliched way possible, of course. Basically, he's mad at God for killing his woman. So God, never willing to let a sheep stray from the flock, duly sends a team of hostile aliens to almost-but-not-quite conquer the earth, purely to reaffirm Gibson's faith so that he can get started on "The Passion." "Signs," you see, refers not to crop circles, but to the apparently random events in our lives that can be seen by the enlightened as little messages from the Man Upstairs - such as your wife's death or the planet's invasion by extraterrestrials.
In other words, this film can't decide whether it wants to be hackneyed sci-fi or hamfisted psychodrama, so it acquiesces in alternating back and forth between the two, or trying (and failing) to make sense of one mode in terms of the other. The "stylistic flair" applied by ole "M" to the whole proceedings only emphasizes his fundamental bankruptcy of plot or point. If some people call this a "great movie," it's only because they can't distinguish style from substance, or, for that matter, Shinola from its notorious alternative. Personally, I'd rather re-listen to Orson Welles' "War" than put myself through watching this pretentious, boring piece of trash again.
Rating:
Summary: "M. Night Shyamalan's Signs"
Review: Signs is truly one of the most unique trillers I have ever seen. Filled with humor, thrills, chills, and bittersweet emotion, this beautifully directed film tells an amazing story that blows your mind and keeps your bones shivering.
"It's happening"
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