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Signs (Vista Series)

Signs (Vista Series)

List Price: $14.99
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The SIGNS Point To Terror
Review: Having come up with a massive hit with THE SIXTH SENSE and then taken a few steps back with the bland UNBREAKABLE, writer/producer/director M. Nyght Shayamalan has re-emerged with a winning science fiction/suspense film in SIGNS.

Mel Gibson stars as a priest in rural Pennsylvania who, because of the loss of his wife, has lost his faith and quit the church. But when crop circles appear in his cornfield, his sheltered life with his children and his younger brother (Joaquin Phoenix) takes a weird turn. As they continue to watch TV, they hear of more crop circles turning up all over the world until finally strange lights are spotted in the night skies over Mexico. Gibson becomes more and more unglued and paranoid; and in the ensuing siege on his house, he must regain his faith to survive.

Although it is still too early in the game to consider Shayamalan "the next Spielberg" (especially when the REAL Spielberg is still making superlative movies himself), SIGNS does show some of the Spielberg touches--suspense, shock effects, ordinary people and extraordinary circumstances. Gibson gives one of his best performances as the priest whose confrontations with the alien forces see him regaining his faith but nearly losing his mind in a wash of paranoia. As was the case in THE SIXTH SENSE, Shayamalan leaves little clues for the audience to follow as to how the story will eventually come out. Shayamalan also pulls a Hitchcock by making his own cameo appearance as a local neighbor with a slightly sinister look.

Although probably not quite the masterpiece that THE SIXTH SENSE had been, SIGNS is nevertheless suspenseful sci-fi entertainment, scary at times but never jaw-droppingly violent. James Newton Howard's score occasionally echoes his score for THE SIXTH SENSE but even shows the influences of Stravinsky and Bernard Herrmann. It is a very good film, and comes highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Worth Seeing Again!!
Review: I went into this movie expecting another entertaining Shyamalan thriller in the tradition of 'Unbreakable' and 'Sixth Sense'. While I enjoyed both, I couldn't help but be surprised by the depth and creativity of the director's vision in 'Signs'. If you want to be genuinely frightened, see this film. If you want to be moved, spiritually and emotionally, see this film. However, if you want a replica of 'Sixth Sense', you will surely be disappointed. There is no comparison.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It's like they said-The most fun you'll have being scared!!!
Review: My friends and I saw this movie in the theatre a day or two after it came out, and I loved it. It was the most fun I've ever had at a horror movie. One of my sister's friends (only 9) totally agreed until she had to walk home by herself(LOL). Maybe you won't belive me because I'm only a kid and you think I don't know what I'm talking about, but let me tell you this is no waste of money. It is probably put in the category of thriller or horror, but even though it is scary (I mean don't get me wrong I almost fell out of my chair I jumped so high), but it is also a funny movie that is full of suspense. It is so cool watching the end and finding everything out. It's like OMG that is so true, I can't believe I didn't think hard enough about this movie to see that. It is a very fun movie to watch and I would recommend it to almost anyone, unless they are nine and have to walk home from the theatre by themselves.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: sci-fi films
Review: I think this moives makes you think about it and it make whoever watch it be jumpy. I also think people watching sci-fi films have to get it to to have a impact on your life.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: I liked It
Review: I'm always up for sci-fi movies. I thought the movie was awesome. I'm sorry if I've dissapointed anyone who might have thought the film [disappointed]. I cannot go to a movie, however, and not like it just because of a couple minor flaws. The connection between Mel Gibson's wife and the end of the movie is actually exciting. God works in mysterious ways.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Alien invasion in a microcosm
Review: I hate when writers try to change a genre to fit their interpretation of how things should be. Or, let me put that another way, I hate it when writers try to change a genre to fit their interpretation of how things should be and do a horrible job of it. Personally, if someone wants to break new ground, I'm all for it, that's how we learn and discover new things. But M. Night Shyamalan doesn't do any of that, instead he paints himself into a corner in his current film, "Signs" starring Mel Gibson as a disenchanted priest/father/minister of some unknown religion trying to save his family from an alien invasion. The 'aliens' can apparently navigate across hundreds of parsecs of space to find planet Earth, but then need to place crop circles as directional and positional locators. And apparently Bucks County PA is of such import to them that they place crop circles in Mel Gibson's back forty. The aliens, despite all their advanced technology, can get locked in a pantry.

Firstly, it doesn't know what it is. It's not a horror film, because it isn't all that scary, suspenseful or even thrilling. It isn't science fiction, because Shyamalan insists on telling an alien invasion story from a microcosmic view point that never extends more than a mile or two from the Hess farm where the 'action', if I may use that term here, takes place. The only views of the rest of the world we get are from painfully stiff and fake-seeming news reports of alien ships around the world. This movie has no style, and someone ought to tell Mr. Shyamalan that there exists within the movie business numerous devices other than tripods and cranes with which to hold a camera. Either the camera is static, panning back and forth or rising above the action. There are no tracks, dollies, gimbals or anything that conveys motion, everything in the film seems to be a set-piece event with only a camera to bear witness to it. Everything in this film, characters, events, are so stiff that emotions are stifled if not smothered outright. No one reacts to anything in any consistent fashion. Worse, people's reactions to serious events are so skewed, that it quickly became unconvincing.

The most noticeable examples of this are when we learn that the aliens' presence is making animals a little nutty, supposedly the way they act when a predator is nearby and one of the Hess family Shepherds lunges at Mel's daughter. The son kills the dog (off camera) with a big barbecue fork to the throat and when Mel and the sheriff arrive on the scene, the son is staring blankly, the daughter is sitting on her swing set staring blankly, with only a few mute tears between them. Mel and the sheriff stare blankly at the dead animal. However, when Mel decides to put it to a vote as to whether the family should head for the lake or stay in the farm house, the son freaks when Mel states that because he represents 2 parents that he gets two votes.

There is no tension in this film. All we need to know, apparently, we learn from the son who reads ONE book on ETs and suddenly has them all figured out. And if he doesn't know it, the TV reveals everything else. If it's an invasion, he says, they won't use their advanced because we'll nuke the planet making it useless to them. They'll fight 'hand to hand' to prevent this, there seems to be no middle ground here. When it's revealed on the news that the aliens leave just as quickly as they arrived, the kid figures out that it's a raid and they're just harvesting humans. The crop circles themselves are map coordinates and while Washington and New York are major sites, so is Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

The worst aspect of the film is Gibson's character. Apart from being stiff, he plays a priest/reverend/father who lost his faith when his wife died 6 months previous. But when his son doesn't die from an alien gas attack because he was having an asthma attack and didn't breath it, he suddenly finds it again, as if it were hidden behind the couch all along. Second, exactly WHICH Christian faith did he belong to? He dressed as a Catholic priest and took a confession in a drug store, yet he can't be Catholic, because he was married.

Mostly though, this movie was just plain boring. I was never once on the 'edge of my seat' as so many people and the advertisements claim, and it isn't because I am so jaded a movie goer that 'Signs' just didn't reach me. I cried when Sully said good-bye to Boo in 'Monsters, Inc.' so I know it's not that. There is no suspense, no real imperilment of the family, only family pets left to die at the hands of the alien invaders. You can't makes these kinds of films in a microcosm, because there is just too much else to consider. It bored me, it really did, and I know Shyamalan can do better, because he had my undivided attention in 'The Sixth Sense', so why not this one? Because it's really that bad.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I expected a lot more out of this movie, the trailer really hinted at more. Instead of seeing a creepy movie I watched a movie about a man dealing with emotions, and the occasional alien. It just didn't add up for me.

The movie really drags on; you spend most of the movie watching the crop circles and delving into the family history. You find out that the father (A former pastor) lost his faith in God after his wife was killed by a neighbour who fell asleep at the wheel. He's now trying to raise his two children with the help of his younger brother, who once played for the minor leagues, but had the highest strike out record. Here are the four of them, living in a small house on a corn farm, trying to patch together their lives. Then the crop circles came.

For a movie that was hyped as much as it was, the special effects didn't live up to the promises. The spaceships that appear in the sky are glowing lights, no definition, no close ups, just small spots of light. You only get two good shots of the alien, along with a couple shots of their hands. They look like a stereotypical alien, tall, slender with long limbs and an oval head. At least they could have made them look more interesting.

Overall, the film is a disappointment, I think there were a lot of things that could have been left out. The biggest one to me was the death of the wife. You keep seeing minor flashbacks throughout the movie, which eventually play out completely and help save one of the children from an alien, but they don't add anything to the movie. Mel Gibson is a good enough actor to be able to portray his loss of faith and anger without a bunch of flashback scenes. I also feel the last 10 minutes or so of the movie could be cut off, the only purpose they showed was how the family could unite together and start healing. It's a nice thought, but since the movie was hyped to be about aliens invading earth, the family plot just seems to make the movie drag on.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: In my view
Review: I try and give every film a fair objective look. Signs was not about ailens, invasions, family, or us against them. It was about religion in todays modern world. Are what we see signs of proof or just a desire to believe. This movie proved that we all can miss the obvious and let or superstition get the best of us. If you go and see this movie you will be asking yourself some very important questions. Are we alone, is there a purpose to our existance, does everything happen for a reason, why is it that an advanced ailen race can design a space ship but can not open a pantry door? Acting was basic at best, plot was not well thought out. It is worth the cost of a video rental but the cost of going to the movies to see it was too much.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: VERY DISAPPOINTED ...SLOWWWWWW
Review: Well ...color this one ...for me at least ...WAR OF THE WORLDS IN COLOR .....thinking it was going to be an intelligent look at crop circles I was nearly put to sleeeeep by the slowwwwwness of this movie ..and very disappointed .....the Alien was from the X File Movie ..which I loved .. get your OWN ALIEN sir ...:) movie didn't make sense ...Didn't take CROP CIRCLES very seriously and I think we should ...Two friends went with me and they felt the same way ....

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Alien Corn Pone
Review: 'Signs' was a total waste of time. It was liken to watching old 1950's sci-fi flicks like "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" except both of these had some redeeming value or atleast substance worth discussion over a beer or two. Gibson was flat as usual....all of his character roles are interchangeable-indistinguishable ;"What Women Want" is the "Patriot" who lives next to a corn field with mowed down"Signs".Same O-same O.
I did wonder however what the reverend-gone farmer [too much] Gibson did with all of the corn raised on his 'farm'? No critters-no silos were evident.

And what pray tell was the bat bashing of the paper mache 'alien' by Rivers all about? I suspect it became his ticket back to the minors .


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