# Signs



## bogi (Apr 3, 2002)

Not a good movie. The first half of it was good but then it just got weird. I don't want to spoil it for anyone but its only a rent/downloaded movie in my opinion. It has a pointless ending because of three reasons.


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## jrjcd (Apr 23, 2002)

i saw it last night also, and the ending didn't bother me at all(tho it was a bit rushed....you have to listen to mel's tv to get some quick end of film exposition)

i agree that it's more matinee fodder, but it has some pretty good jumps in it-someday, m. night is going to get his hands on a script with a killer ending (his main problem in his films that he writes himself)and turn out a humdinger of a flick...

btw-john howard newton does a GREAT riff on the type of scores bernard herrmann used to do for hitchcock...


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## TNGTony (Mar 23, 2002)

WAIT A MINUTE!!!! Bogi, I thought you of all people would have realized that the alien plot and the whole sci-fi plot was just to keep people interested while they told you the REAL story! The story was NOT about aliens trying to take over the world. But that was interesting none-the-less. I thought the ending was MARVELOUS (again talking about the (real) story. At the moment of revelation, I was grinning ear to ear. I knew how Mel would be dressed in the final scene.

The other thing I found extremely well done in this movie was the way that the movie was told EXCLUSIVELY though the eyes of the family. You as the viewer did not know anything more than the family you were watching. This first-person narration added so much to the tension and suspense that it didn't require wowing special effects to get you worked up.

There was enough humor in the movie to depressurize the audience and make it pretty fun.

I enjoyed this movie. I saw it at a matinee and thought it was worth the $5.50.

See ya
Tony


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## bogi (Apr 3, 2002)

I didn't like the other story it seemed to me like a Hollywood ending. Just once I would like to see a movie made with a sad ending where everybody looses like it would of happend.

There were some great cinematics like the knife and the alien behind the door. And when Phoenix was watching TV looking at the Spanish footage of the aliens(seemed like something i would do). But all in all the ending just seemed fake.

My Opinion is still rent it.


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## jrjcd (Apr 23, 2002)

go find a copy of "end of the world"...it's a cheezy flick, but it lives up to it's title...lol

or better yet-"beneath the planet of the apes"-that one's pretty apocraphal...


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## dlsnyder (Apr 24, 2002)

How many pet social/political causes did Mel Gibson endorse in this one?


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## jrjcd (Apr 23, 2002)

????? that's an odd question???

the imporatance of family...????
making sure you have a glass of water handy when the aliens come???


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## Mark Lamutt (Mar 24, 2002)

I finally saw this last night, and I really disagree with Bogi - I thought the ending was perfect. It plays directly to which of the 2 types of people you are - one that believes that there are no coincidences in life, and deep down somewhere knows that they aren't alone, or one that believes that luck is luck, and they are alone. The ending puts this story very strongly into the camp of the first type, which in my opinion is where it belongs.

Spoilers for those who haven't seen it:


Spoiler



All of the terrible things that have happened to the characters - his wife dying in the car crash so that her message could be imparted, his brother's failing in the minor leagues, but really knowing how to swing the bat, the son having asthma...all leading to them being able to survive the final day.



I found that setup to be beautiful. The movie would have been pointless and meaningless without the rediscoverance of faith, without the "happy ending" that is complained about.

This was the most terrifying movie I've seen in years, and one of the most beautiful.


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## TNGTony (Mar 23, 2002)

HALLELUJAH! Some one has seen the light! Mark, you nailed it! That is exactly what this movie is about. The whole thing is about faith. This is why Bogi's reaction was so unexpected by me.

See ya
Tony


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## gcutler (Mar 23, 2002)

I saw the movie tonight, and my friend who is a very astute person (Him and His wife usually have to explain movies to me) Was soooo put off by the Alien ending that while he got about the Faith issue, he still was disappointed with it. I was looking at it as the Alien stuff was intentional misdirection. I think if the Aliens were not succeptable to the Water and it had been something else more realistic he would have appreciated it more. I was more forgiving.

I was thinking of the entire planets water supply as "Holy Water" to the Aliens in the same vain When "TV's Buffy" throws the holy water on the nasty Vampires


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## John Corn (Mar 21, 2002)

I saw it...and it definitely wasn't what I expected. It was more about faith and all this stuff. But I still liked it. There were a few pop-out moments that freaked me out!


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## gcutler (Mar 23, 2002)

Best to be sitting in front of some "Yelpy" teenage girls. I can't hear anything due to all their screaming. But to be honest that did add to the atmosphere of the movie


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## Unthinkable (Sep 13, 2002)

Most overrated and overhyped vehicle since Michael Kamen's "Ginger" or "It" turned out to be a motorized two wheeled scooter. Panic Room did everything Signs does in a far more convincing manner with actual suspense and with much much better direction. M. Night completely pitched a 3rd straight 18 run game after once boasting to the press as reported in Entertainment Weekly that he could deliver what the mass audiences want every single time without exceptions. Gibson at the dinner table where he breaks down was way overacted with fake tears to the point of stuffed crust pizza with the cheese oozing out all over and the fact that he would abandon the one thing that was central and most sacred in his life after choosing to be a minister for life and losing someone special to him only made me dislike it even more intensely. If faith was that unimportant to him to the point where he would cast it into the ocean inside a bottle for someone else to find after devoting an entire life around preaching the values of it, then it must have not ever been worth having in the first place. I always thought faith was supposed to get people through the best and worst that life dishes up to you and not something you practiced part time when you felt it might be somewhat timely. M. Night managed to make an awful lot of money out of what seemed to me to be nothing more then another practical joke played on movie goers expecting something far more filled with actual englightening substance. All fluff there just like The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable before it.


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## jrjcd (Apr 23, 2002)

wait a sec!!!! whilst it's not the flying car i want, SOME of us appreciate the idea of of a two wheel scooter to get around(we also like the movable sidewalks at the airport)...


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## Unthinkable (Sep 13, 2002)

I hear ya jrjcd, but "it" or "ginger" was widely speculated to have been a completely newly engineered combustible engine that exhausted zero emissions, would run on an endlessly renewable energy source, and would also revolutionize travel for everyone. 
The Segway looks kind of neat admittedly on first glance, but I don't see it completely rendering bikes, skateboards, inline skates, motorcycles, etc... thoroughly extinct. Great idea for mailmen and folks that only travel short distances though. I did like the movable sidewalk when I flew into LAX many years ago come to think of it.


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## gcutler (Mar 23, 2002)

> _Originally posted by The Unthinkable _
> *...the fact that he would abandon the one thing that was central and most sacred in his life after choosing to be a minister for life and losing someone special to him only made me dislike it even more intensely. If faith was that unimportant to him to the point where he would cast it into the ocean inside a bottle for someone else to find after devoting an entire life around preaching the values of it, then it must have not ever been worth having in the first place. I always thought faith was supposed to get people through the best and worst that life dishes up to you and not something you practiced part time when you felt it might be somewhat timely. *


But in fact people and even Clergy do loose faith. Wheither it is valid or not is personal to each one, and at the time of the loosing of the faith (the death of a spouse) they may not be thinking the most clearly. So you can't discount that plot point based on your statements. I knew the Daughter of a former Southern Baptist minister. Her father could no longer handle saying something to a parishoner like "The death of your 5 year old at the hands of a serial peodphile was all part of gods plan". That issue made him leave the church as he felt he could no longer be a proper leader of the congregation. That also lead him on a path where he lost his faith. I haven't spoken to the girl in years, so don't know what ever happened. But what you discount does in deed happen.


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## Unthinkable (Sep 13, 2002)

I wasn't saying that Ghrame Hess' lost faith was completely unrealistic at all. Really it was just a rather doom and gloom hypocritical and shortsighted/narrowminded mindset portrayal where it becomes rather difficult to sympathize with his character as a whole. It would be the same exact comparable situation to me if I joined the police department here and then decided that the rules which applied to myself were completely different then the ones I spent years and years educating and training myself to enforce with others on a 24-7 basis. If I dedicate my life to cleaning up crime and corruption and then ultimately wind up with lines of cocaine on my dashboard and wads of confiscated drug money/drug paraphernalia for my own recreational use behind the local Dunkin Donuts why should I expect any sympathy from anyone? 

I read accounts of the whole losing faith thing happening every day in the papers, on the news, and in day to day chance encounters. Here in New England, you can't even turn on the local news each night without being bombarded with more and more accusations of Boston priests/parishoners/archbiships all clamoring at the thought of all the young people coming forward with constantly exponentially multiplying molestation charges. My point wasn't that the whole losing and regaining faith theme was unrealistic or something that entirely ruined it for me, but that it just added further to my dislike of this movie. 

David Fincher delivered so much more in the far superior Panic Room then what M. Night hoped to accomplish with Signs. In fairness, M. Night owes Fincher quite a bit of credit for liberally borrowing the same exact young character (Culkin in Signs, Kristen Stewart in Panic Room) afflicted by potentially life threatening breathing disorders and in putting his central characters in a situation where they are all locked inside from evils outside, but I digress. Signs just didn't really evoke a single positive emotion or reaction from me or challenge me to see things from an entirely new viewpoint which I hadn't previously considered. The whole tin foil hat scene where Joaquin Phoenix (Merrill Hess) joins Morgan and Bo Hess in actively trying to hide their thoughts from alien lifeforms was an insult to the intelligence of moviegoers everywhere. I'm not sure which was worse there really... the tin foil hat thing or the whole intercepted alien communications over a dusty old baby monitor which again was already better done with James Cavaziel and an old short wave radio in Frequency before Signs was even dreamed up. 

M. Night seems to be overly caught up in always presenting his young characters as being much further advanced in mindsights then adults and in always delving in a bit of the paranormal as his staple formulaic elements. With Signs it was intentionally marketed with crop circles and a possible alien invasion to play on consumer fears and reel in the unsuspecting masses to preach his sunday school tales of man losing faith, man regaining faith as opposed to actually telling the tale people paid money to actually see. I also can't let M. Night off the hook for his shameless oversized credits at the tail end of this movie where his name entirely fills up the whole screen with only 3 real bonafied movies to his name in which only 2 of the 3 can really only be looked at as legitimate hits for him. Unbreakable was an abortion for him and he admits it freely to the press. The movies he did before The Sixth Sense all fall into the completely forgettable range by all means.


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## gcutler (Mar 23, 2002)

My only issue with Signs was the issue of "Pre-Destiny/Free-Will". It is such a big topic that to have it as a hidden theme that rears its head only in the last few minutes does not do it justice.

Depending on which version of "Pre-Determination" is portrayed (not determined in movie) adjusts my points of view.

1) If you believe that everything good and bad is pre-determined by God, then to me my point of view is "Why bother, it is just a play where the actors are forced their lines an the outcome really serves no purpose, we have no control and therefore do not benefit from breaking our chains to try and better ourselves, etc. It would happen no matter what we do"

2) If you believe that the good is controlled by God and the bad ruled by the Devil, then the story makes more sense to me, as those supposedly bad things (baseball player fails and lives in barn, Asthma, etc, etc.) were really not as bad while the trully bad things (the aliens) were controlled by the devil (Asthma lesser of 2 evils in the story). At least to me that the outcome of the battle of good and evil is not pre-determined. The troops are all positioned and controlled but the battle is not won till after it is fought. Makes it more interesting.

My real opinion differs from either of which I just posted, I do not believe in Pre-determination at all. I believe we all have free will, but there are times where a little guidance steers us (call it intuition, angel on your shoulder, or pure luck) clear of bad things we would have walked right into.


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## Unthinkable (Sep 13, 2002)

I was more or less mostly disappointed in how M. Night completely devalued faith to the point of it being something you skip across the surface of a calm pond like a flat rock until it eventually runs out of inertia and sinks to the bottom once reality serves you up a curveball. I didn't really see it as black and white or cut and dry as just two different schools of thought that you can classify everyone into the way Shamalamadingdong does. His last three films haven't shown much depth/scope/range really when you consider all the repeated elements he keeps hanging onto so furiously. I'm concerned he actually believes all the overly premature hype written about him labeling him as the next Spielberg. I'm not even that big of a fan of Steven Spielberg and didn't care for AI or Minority Report all that much, but I'd still be incredibly reluctant to make such a bold claim the way that newsweek did prior to Signs being released.


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## gcutler (Mar 23, 2002)

> _Originally posted by The Unthinkable _
> * I'm not even that big of a fan of Steven Spielberg and didn't care for AI or Minority Report all that much, but I'd still be incredibly reluctant to make such a bold claim the way that newsweek did prior to Signs being released. *


Spielberg the the one director NOT to do AI. Stanley Kuburick was such a dark minded director that spielbergs more Rosey visions made AI either not rosy enough or not dark enough but somewhere in the middle where most people only cared about the special effects. Minority report also seems to lack the darkness that would have made it more interesting. It seems that speilbery is only cabable to handling real darkness in Schindlers List or Saving Private Ryan. But since Schindlers List was about a bright-shining action within the darkness, some might say Roseyness was valid at the end "The List is Life"


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