moooovie talk

Today I feel like rambling about Lady in the Water.

I felt that it was actually pretty good. The main problem is that you have to swallow this crazy premise to actually enjoy the movie. Usually I hate that--my number 1 reason I despise Harry Potter is I just don't find it believable. The characters do NOT act like real people. And people are all, "it's fantasy, they have magic, that doesn't exist either." But I don't think that's any excuse for lazy writing. "Well I want my characters to do this for the sake of the plot, even though it's against their nature in particular, and human nature in general. Well, it's a fantasy, I guess I have license." And I think if Lady in the Water was really popular and people were constantly singing it's praises like Harry Potter, I probably would be like, "Well it has this wrong, this wrong, this wrong." What can I say, I'm ornery.

I think the other thing about it getting horrible reviews is I went in with low expectations. That always makes a movie better, unless the movie is such a piece of dreck that no one could possibly ever love it.

Speaking of expectations, I think one reason people hate it is they want it to be Sixth Sense, or at least Unbreakable. But if you compare his unpopular movies to like, an average hollywood movie, they're usually about as good. People just have higher expectations for this guy, and he lets them down. So yeah, I stand by it: I enjoy a crappy M. Night Shymalan movie better than 50-60% of what else I could be watching at the time.

I also like that most of his premises are just weird. When you watch one of his movies, you know that it's not going to be a story you've seen before repeated. Even though he seems to have thankfully given up his penchant for worse and worse "twists" at the end of every movie, you know it's going to be something fairly unique. A psychiatrist to a child who sees dead people.... who turns out to be dead, himself? A regular guy who finds out he's a superhero, and how that affects his relationship with his son? An alien movie that turns out to have very little to do with the aliens at all but mainly deals with faith and redemption? Some weirdos set up an 18th century village and make up animals to keep their kids from discovering the modern world? A guy finds a woman in the pool and has to help her inspire a guy and then get back to her world on a giant eagle? He's very good at taking a genre movie and cutting away the standard trappings of the genre to reveal the emotion and relationships. I also like to imagine what people think when he tries to get people to fund these movies.

Lastly: I really enjoyed Paul Giamatti, and I'm not really a fan of his to begin with, and I really liked the film critic, both the character and the actor, he's one of those guys you've seen in a ton of small parts and can't quite place.