SIGNS
"... the work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out
of thin air...I cannot think of a movie where silence is scarier,
and inaction is more disturbing...In a time when Hollywood mistakes
volume for action, Shyamalan makes quiet films. In a time when incessant
action is a style, he persuades us to play close attention to the
smallest nuances...Instead of flashy special effects, Shyamalan creates
his world out of everyday objects. At the end of the film, I had to
smile, recognizing how Shyamalan has essentially ditched a payoff.
He knows, as we all sense, that payoffs have grown boring." --Roger
Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
"...the movie is all tricks and premonitions; it plays on our primitive
desire to see what's coming next in a way that proves a lot more compelling
than what actually comes next...'Signs' is a virtual homage to 'Close
Encounters of the Third Kind,' but Spielberg, in his stirring and
magical 1977 sci-fi daydream, took a classic B-movie premise--beings
from another world are coming!--and delivered something close to transcendence.
Shyamalan, in his gloss on Spielberg, sets us up for transcendence,
or at the very least a major wow, and delivers, instead, a highly
portentous B movie." --Owen Gleiberman,
Entertainment Weekly
"... a cockeyed alien-invasion yarn about a Pennsylvania farmer, self-defrocked
priest and recent widower whose faith in God is restored by a close
encounter of the Hollywood kind...'Signs' is really about spiritual
faith, not a supposition of alien life, and Shyamalan fuses the fictional
evidence of his extraterrestrials with the presumed righteousness
of God in a way that will make no sense to anyone who has ever questioned
either...In one of the nuttiest speeches ever given in a sci-fi movie,
Hess [Mel Gibson] divides people into two types--those who have faith
in divine order and are therefore comforted, and those who believe
they are alone in the universe and are therefore afraid...I can't
remember if Gibson has cried in a movie before, but he does enough
of it here to get Noah's Ark halfway up the mountain." --Jack
Mathews, The New York Daily News
"The smallest details and scraps of dialogue shimmer with a mysterious
significance that will be revealed, we trust, in another of those
rug-pulling surprise endings that are the director's trademark...Skillful
as he is, Mr. Shyamalan is undone by his pretensions...The movie's
fuzzy pop-spiritualism carries a disturbing implication. Unless you
have faith (in something tactfully left unspecified), it says, you
are putting the integrity of your family and the very lives of your
children at risk, and you no longer deserve to be called father--as
if skepticism, or indeed any but the most literal-minded expression
of belief, were a form of child abuse." -- A.O.
Scott, The New York Times
"Shyamalan's great gift is the creation of atmosphere, the conjuring
of spooky, unseen menace. When he gets around to doing this in 'Signs,'
all is well, but it's a tossup as to whether the film offers enough
of a payoff considering how long it takes to get where it's going...There's
a strain of quirky, laconic humor here that is unexpected but effective.
Less successful is the film's main theme, the power and even the necessity
of faith." --Kenneth Turan, The Los
Angeles Times
"... a compelling drama, a daytime nightmare that's limned in spare
but cumulative details. But if hardhearted reason must be heard, the
movie ultimately comes up short...Even though he shows some master
touches throughout the movie, Shyamalan flits a little too lightly
across the surface, like a pond skater...it just might be time for
Shyamalan to vary his key." --Desson
Howe, The Washington Post
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