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Signs (Vista Series)

Signs (Vista Series)

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $11.24
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: SIGNS ventures into realistic realm of alien invasion
Review: A tad slow in the beginning but you won't have to wait long for this movie to jumpstart your fear level. I found the aliens in this movie to be quite disturbing to look at but certainly believable in terms of plan of attack, observing the humans, capture plan. Mel Gibson once again gives a impressive performance. Even Gibson's film kids are great. You just gotta see the "swing away" scene in the livingroom.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: signs
Review: I would buy yhis if it were in full screen as well as wide screen.I guess the makers don't care about more profit, I thought that was what it was all about. Guess I was wrong. All movies should be in both formats.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A huge disappointment...
Review: "Signs" cheats on its audience. It's a wonderful, dark, creepy, yet faithful film up until the last 15 minutes. Then it gets rushed, sloppy, and cliched. To sum it up, it's the biggest disappointment of the year. The performances in "Signs" are incredible. Mel Gibson is excellent as the priest Graham. Most of the scares work, but the subplots get in the way of what the movie's main conflict is, which is alien invasion. Instead, the film wants to preach to us about hope and faith while at the same time scaring our pants off with creepy clicking aliens. Which brings me to the end, a solution so contrived and dumb that it boggles me that so many people were willing to believe it. If you saw the movie, as yourself this: during the world-wide invasion, wasn't it raining somewhere? I'm not going to say anymore, but trust me, the end of the film is so dim-witted, I felt cheated leaving the theater. True, there are some incredibly good moments in this film, but the ending is a scam and really insults the audience's intelligence.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Everything But The Kitchen Sink
Review: Mr. Shyamalan is obviously a strong director and real movie buff - he applied both interests in putting together this philosophical science fiction flick, presumeably drawing from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", "The Birds", "War of the Worlds", "The Wizard of Oz", and whatever else. When Brian DePalma concocted "Dress To Kill" about 20 years ago it was a flawed tribute to Alfred Hitchcock. Here we have a flawed tribute to Alfred Hitchcock with nods to other directors. Shyamalan even includes himself in the movie a la Alfred, but the latter had the sense to get out of the way after his cameo. Here the guy gives himself an important role - the one who accidentally kills the wife of Mr. Hess [Mel Gibson] in an automobile accident and causes him to renounce his job in the religious community and his faith. The performance is unremarkable, to say the least.
The viewer might detect a fresh twist with a "Men Are Back" approach in the use of two strong male leads, Gibson and Pheonix,
as the former Preacher and former Baseball star who run a rustic household and bring up two children. But very soon it becomes apparent that they are lost men - one has abandoned his "Calling" and the other his dream of major league status. Both have bolted at the first *sign* of trouble. Pheonix was a home run hitter who struck out too much - Mantle and Jackson did too.... The children and a local Policewoman keep the boys in check.
Gibson's beliefs are furthur tested by a second *sign* - the huge crop circle right in front of his home, I mean a real big one the local pranksters couldn't possibly do overnight. His suspicious of a wider threat are validated when Shyamalan informs Gibson that an actual alien is trapped in the pantry of his house. In a page not out of "Lethal Weapon", Mel confronts the creature. He jabs at him from the other side of the door with a sharp implement. This thing is capable of operating a vehicle which can defy all laws of physics and travel an unimaginable distance through space but he can't find his way out of the broom closet. He is only injured by Gibson's attempt at capture.
The plot thickens as crop circles pop up over the entire planet and earth people are being attacked. Not a nice thing to do, but at least the attackers saw fit to warn us by creating the circles.
Finally, the aliens have descended upon Gibson's home. The four have locked themselves in one room waiting for the bad guys to go away. Unfortunately, Hess' aesthmatic son has an attack during the seige and needs his breathalizer. This requires someone to go and get it. Gibson's' first reaction is to hold his child and wish away the aliens and his son's condition. Science Fiction or not, that is very poor writing and directing. Perhaps the director and actor chose not to do the typical Super Hero thing and fight the enemy, but what Father would not rise to the occasion to try to save his Son? The ex-ballplayer Brother picks up his lumber and this time makes contact - he smashes the alien [looking something like a hybrid of the "Jolly Green Giant" and "Alien"] in a violent scene. However, if memory serves, it's a jar of water which ultimately does it in. Yes, H2O has properties which can destroy this entity. (Before he left his planet he forget to check out if this substance is prevalent at the place he targeted. That's like Clark Kent taking a job at the Daily Planet not knowing that it's insulated with Krytonite.)
Yes, they all lived happily ever after. Gibson reapplies his Frock and jauntily bounds out to work again. The fact that half the Earth is wiped out doesn't cramp his style. (We don't know if Pheonix reported to Spring Training).
Yes, there are secondary flaws even for the less attentive. There are also some notable things - Gibson's performance is, to my knowledge, unlike any other in his career - he goes with understatement and vulnerability and gets us interested. And the Director convinces us that you don't need to *see* the Monsters to be frightened by them.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Signs of weirdness
Review: I loved the people in this story..and was very disapointed at the almost lack of acting on thier part..It was very mundane...I also thought the whole alien taking over the world was a bit Hokey. There were a few jumpers..other than that I would have preferred a good nap.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Signs
Review: This is a movie it would appear, that you either love it or you hate it. I loved it. It has humor, mystery, and isn't gory like many such movies. It's a movie anyone can watch. Many I've spoken with just "didn't get" the movies message. Like others who really loved the film, based on the reviews here, I wouldn't have seen the film, fortunately I decided to see it and form my own opinions and am glad I did...the film is definitely worth seeing if you have an open mind and realize as you watch the film , everything plays the way it does deliberately.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The Dumbest Aliens in the Universe (contains spoiler)
Review: Okay, so the aliens have the technology to fly all the way here from somewhere out there in the cosmos, but they're stymied by...doors? Wooden doors? Am I the only one on this particular planet who thinks that that's the most bogus thing he's ever seen in a big budget movie? Even "Men in Black II" (a real piece of doggy doo) made more sense than that. And Mel read the script and thought that was an okay plot element? Hmmm...If you can get past that little bit of idiocy this might be the film for you. And the DVD? I particularly like the deleted scene entitled "Dead Bird" that lasts for 21 seconds (that's seconds, folks) that consists of a car driving down a road and passing...you guessed it: a dead bird. I can see why it was deleted. What I can't see is why it was included on the DVD...Man,I just can't get past that door thing. It completely undermined what might have been a creepy man-against-alien flick. Shyamalan's not a bad director, and he does manage a few scares, but...wood? The aliens are deterred by...wood?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good movie
Review: M. Night Shyamalan is messing with people in good and bad ways. In one way he's making people take their time and wait for the payoff from a movie. Most people are literally programmed for a film to last 90 minutes for everything to be explained up front for it to neatly wrap itself up and for all to be well at the end. Unfortunately really good films are not simple, like the audience for bad films. I really liked this movie not because of the building tension but because you weren't quite sure WHAT was going on. I didn't walk into the movie knowing if anyone would live or die or if their were kids playing on the roof, spirits come back from the dead or aliens dropping from outer space. The art to anything dramatic is the suspension of disbelief, of not knowing what's going to happen. That doesn't mean that the pay off will be enormous, simply unexpected.
There is a concept of synchronicity in the world, the concept that what you know is known and reverberates through the universe around you. That what makes no sense today, glasses and glasses of water everywhere, may be your salvation tomorrow. This film and M. Night Shyamalan take advantage of that and use it to stupendous results. He's a great writer and filmmaker and even her a surprisingly good filmmaker and I look forward to his work in the future to see if he's mastered this trick and has others up his sleeve as well.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Attack of the Not too Bright Aliens who Aren't Very Strong
Review: There has been a lot already written about how dumb this movie is: Aliens that can navigate interstellar space but need to carve up crops to know what to avoid. Aliens that can build invisible starships but can't get through locked doors. Aliens whose super weapon can be negated by holding your breath. Invaders that supposedly are here to conquer, but can be defeated if you hit them with a stick. And finally, creatures whose strategy is, "We die if we get wet, so let's attack a planet that is mostly water and where it rains a lot". Other reviewers say you must get beyond that. Look at the suspense, the reaffirmation of faith and the redemption of the main character.

The problem is that the flaws in the story are So enormous that they overwhelm the good direction, decent acting and pacing. All the suspense of the first half is negated once you see that the half-glimpsed menace really isn't much of a threat. It's hard to accept Mel Gibosn's character being revitalized by a miraculous deliverance or seeing how everything is really part of a Divine Plan when the obstacle to be overcome is something that can be surmounted with a baseball bat or a squirt gun. In order for those who gave this movie high marks to have a credible arguement regarding the "deeper" meanings of this movie, there must be a credible and serious problem that is surmounted. As it is, the situation that everyone in this movie is so worried about is just plain silly.

You can't have "deeper" meanings in something only 18 inches deep.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Different, good story and acting
Review: I would have to disagree with some reviews about the acting in this movie in a couple different ways - Gibson and Phoenix are both excellent but the child actors were very unconvincing especially Culkin. Otherwise the plot was very good with a couple of small holes, it's uniqueness and great acting by Gibson and Phoenix are what makes it very enjoyable to watch.


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