a bunch of movies I've seen

[Derived Absurdity]

The Sixth Sense - it's been a very long time since I've seen this and I had forgotten how good it was. A very atmospheric, incredibly sad, unsettling, frightening movie. I can understand why it was so much of a milestone when it came out. It's certainly flawed, yes, but there are many things I think it does flawlessly. The quiet dialogue and low-key atmosphere never lets up, even for a moment, so you're pretty tense and unnerved through the entire thing, so when the jump scares come, they actually work. They weren't overbearing and obnoxious, and even though they had yelps of violins which are typically used to inform you when you're supposed to be scared, they were very effective here. I didn't get the impression it was trying to scare me; it just showed me what was happening, and what was happening was self-evidently frightening due to the style and suspense. It didn't even really have the feel of a horror movie, which might have been what made it work.

Inglorious Basterds - Well I still like it, although not as much as I did the first time. In particular the rendezvous scene near the middle of the movie really dragged on and on. Its importance to the story didn't really justify the amount of time that was spent on it. Especially considering most of the characters in the scene were literally just introduced in the same scene or the one before, so we didn't get much time to connect to them, and I couldn't really care very much what happened to most of them. But other than that, the movie was pretty cool for what it was. There isn't too much to say about it, as there isn't anything to it beneath the surface as far as I can tell. The opening scene is one of the best opening scenes I've seen, and Mélanie Laurent, the woman who plays Soshanna, needs to be in more things. She was the highlight, along with Christopher Waltz as Hans Landa. In fact why isn't Hans Landa up there with Hannibal Lecter and Nurse Ratched in the pantheon of greatest movie villains of all time? He easily fits. One of the most chilling and hilarious performances I've ever seen. How many villains can be terrifying, deplorable, and hilarious at the same time? Not many.

Fruitvale Station - This one's a biopic of Oscar Grant, who was shot and killed by a cop in a train station two years ago. It follows the days leading up to his death. I don't know, I didn't like it. It felt really amateurish and manipulative. It portrayed Oscar Grant as near-angelic with almost no character flaws, a flat one-dimensional representation instead of the complex and multifaceted person he undoubtedly was and which most people are. I mean, in the beginning it shows him rescuing a dog after it was run over. There's no evidence he really did that. Do we really need to be shown him rescuing a dog for us to feel sympathy for him? It felt really cheap and manipulative even as I was watching it, before I knew the director made it up. It just felt it was trying desperately to tug at my heart strings, but it was so obvious and fake-seeming it didn't work. Michael Jordan gave Oscar Grant quite a lot of humanity and charisma, making it very difficult to dislike him no matter what he did, which made the movie's attempt to angelize him even more unnecessary. Yeah, I think Michael Jordan's performance is the only good thing about this movie.

Detachment - um... what the fuck was this? Don't watch this movie, like, ever. Seriously, what was that?

The Others - wow, that was pretty creepy. Not scary, but creepy. Nichole Kidman plays a pretty sympathetic and human character, when at first I thought she would just be another "evil religious lady" stereotype. In fact she pretty much carries the movie.

Take Shelter - what's not to like about this movie? Nothing, that's what. It's perfect.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

The sixth Sense is the first and last decent M Night Shyamalan movie. Everything else was uniformly awful - The village has its moments but
the twist was kinda obvious from the start..

I agree with your review of this tho, it was a great movie from start to finish.

Fucking love Inglorious Basterds but probably as much for it's style and music than anything else. Chris Waltz was an amazing villain, psychopathic and likeable all at the same time. Melanie Laurent was amazing balls, Strong/fearful/In control and at risk the entire time..
The only other thing I've seen her in was "Now you see me" which was amazingly lack lustre. So, I'd like to see her in more stuff but would rather she choose her scripts more carefully. Same goes for Chris Waltz tho, Django was pretty damn sub-par and anyone could have played his role in it.

Haven't heard of Fruitvale station and have no idea who Oscar Grant is. - Never heard of Detachment.

Haven't seen the Others in a long while but don't really remember liking it all that much. Once again, the plot twist is obvious almost from the beginning of the movie, especially seeing how this came after The Sixth Sense. Nothing wrong with how it was put together, the acting, direction or anything but overall - felt anticlimactic and unoriginal.

Never ever head of Take shelter

[BruceSmith78]

@Salmon, have you seen Unbreakable?

[Derived Absurdity]

I feel dumb then because the The Others twist caught me by surprise. Of course I didn't even know there was supposed to be a twist, so.

Take Shelter is amazing.

You don't like Signs and Unbreakable? They were okay. I didn't even think The Village was all that awful.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

@Salmon, have you seen Unbreakable?

I have & still agree with Salmon's assessment.

[BruceSmith78]

I liked Unbreakable better than any other Shamalyan or whatever the fuck his name is. Only movie of his I'd say was good. Saw The Sixth Sense once, and wasn't impressed. Ditto Signs and The Village. When he did that bullshit with Marky Mark I gave up on him.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Signs was good up to a point - and that point being the point before all the set-up (glasses of water, the swing away, etc" came together. It all went from feeling like it was going somewhere clever, full of foreboding and then collapsed in a ridiculous probability wave of utter nonsense. Aliens that come to a planet that is literally 2/3rds water - which rains water, and this kills them?

Watched the others when it came out and I think there was a bit of buzz around the twist.. I can't exactly recall if that's what happened or if it just felt like the sort of movie that would throw a twist at you. Either way, I do remember thinking very early on whether they would end up doing what they did .. and they did, which was disappointing.

The Village was ok - again, until they got to the twist, which given it was a M Night movie, was expected. I was just hoping he'd go in a different direction with it.. Once again, the movie was well made until the big reveal which was a let down.

Unbreakable - I remember being seriously stoked to see this given it was his next movie after The sixth Sense.. the shorts looked great, loved the premise, but watching the movie it lost me when they started trying to make a slow, quiet serious point around super heros and comic book lore being actually real.. and the climatic scene just didn't do it for me. M Night just seems to be making a habit of treating ridiculous premises with a sense of gravitas that come over all pseudo intellectual and self important.

[Derived Absurdity]

M Night just seems to be making a habit of treating ridiculous premises with a sense of gravitas that come over all pseudo intellectual and self important.

He and Christopher Nolan have a lot in common.

[Unvoiced_Apollo]

M Night just seems to be making a habit of treating ridiculous premises with a sense of gravitas that come over all pseudo intellectual and self important.

That explains how he completely fucked up The Last Airbender. I still laugh at Nostalgia critics review.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

They really don't.

I mean, yeah, both tend to take their movies a little more seriously than they probably should. Like or hate Nolan tho, his movies are a league apart from M Night. No where near as formulaic, much more involved/developed story lines, Nolan has a much grander/polished/ technical style than M Night. And while I'm not making the case that Nolan makes perfect movies, he is no where near as one trick/predictable.

I will never understand why you hate The Dark Night - when it comes to drawing a good villan, Heath's Joker is about perfect.
Memento was near to perfect, Inception was very much like Interstellar, slow and beautiful, maybe a bit "presuming on itself" but that either bothers you or it doesn't. Extremely well crafted/shot/acted/ directed. If you don't like it then its just a movie that isn't for you rather than it being silly or predictable.

I have a feeling that last comment was bait tho

[Derived Absurdity]

I was joking, bro.

And I never said I hate The Dark Knight. I said I liked it.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Ok then - can never really tell online.

I thought you didn't like the Dark Night? Dunno where I got that from then ..

Anyways - carry on

[Derived Absurdity]

I don't like The Dark Knight Rises, the third one.

I was just referencing the fact that Nolan's stories are often very silly and nonsensical, yet he treats them so portentiously and hyper-seriously that it becomes almost self-parody at some point.

[thesalmonofdoubt]

Yeah - I didn't love the last one, it was Ok and I actually liked it much more on the second watch, I think its biggest problem is that is simply isn't anywhere near as good as The Dark Night. Bane simply isn't as charismatic or unique as Ledgers "Joker" .. He's just a big unit in a silly mask with a ridiculous accent that's good at punching things.

I did like the opening scene tho even if it did feel more X-men than it did a Batman movie.. And this was one movie where I definitely did not predict the twist.

[Blade Azaezel]

Shyamalan is just awful. It's like a teenager writing short stories and trying to make them somehow intellectual. Unbreakable is the only film I actually liked.

[aels]

I liked Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable. The Village had flashes of good atmosphere, from what I can remember, but he was already on his downward slide.

[Derived Absurdity]

Signs is almost a perfect mix of all the elements that made Shyamalan good in the beginning and all the elements that made him bad later. It's the Goblet of Fire of Shyamalan movies.

There's a reason I forgot to mention why I thought The Sixth Sense was so effective. Both the kid's and the mother's acting felt really honest and real, at least to me. When he was trapped behind the door at the party near the beginning and he was screaming... that sounded pretty authentic. It was disturbing. Meaning he was a really good actor. He seemed legitimately scared and depressed and lost for the entire movie. If he seemed fake, like 90% of child actors, I highly doubt the movie would have been half as effective. He really saved it.

And the mother was just really sad too. She was losing her son and she had no idea why. So these dead people were actually having a serious psychological effect on characters whom I liked, which made the whole thing feel more intense. It was just like a slow grinding down, like a boy's mental state and his relationship with his mother were slowly being ripped apart for the whole movie, all because of these people, and there's nothing anyone could do about it. So they had emotional staying power, which made them scarier than they would have been if they had just been flitting in and out of scenes with no effect like so many horror movie apparitions do. This movie just shows how scary things/evens can be when there's a powerful emotional undercurrent with them, and how important that is.

I don't know if I'm explaining myself very well. Whatever, I like this movie a lot and I don't care if I can justify it or not.