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Lady in the Water (2006)
M. Night gets worse and worse
A bedtime story coming to life? That's fine, M. Night, but did you think to make the movie interesting, entertaining, compelling and such? It was that in some parts, but overall it just didn't hold up for me. Some characters were thrown in merely to throw people off, but to me those characters did nothing but drag the movie and waste time. Is that the extent of his imagination? He has to throw in characters and elements merely to waste time? That might work for a bedtime story, but movies aren't meant to put people to sleep. Shyamalan was seemingly so self conscious about the movie and criticism for it, that he threw in another unnecessary character, a movie critic by the name of Harry Farber who did nothing more than bumble through unnecessary lines, patiently stand in place waiting for something to happen (probably like a lot of the audience was doing) and to meet his demise (take that movie critics!) in a contrived way.
The story is little more than a jumbled mess, but hey, it's a bedtime story so that doesn't really matter. The fantasy world doesn't really have to make sense, but it should be entertaining. You can make up the rules, but there's more to the fantasy world than just making up the rules for it, M. Night. Explore it more, flesh it out more, don't spend so much time wasting time, and possibly give it some sort of meaning. Why didn't he stop and think that his bedtime story just might not have made for a very good movie? Others do, but those tended to travel outside the confines of an apartment complex. It was almost like Shyamalan watched Melrose Place and The Neverending Story back-to-back and his story sprang to life.
If this is the extent of his imagination and creativity, then Shyamalan is in trouble. Maybe he has run out of ideas, but I'm hoping that he just wanted to have some fun by trying to take a bedtime story he created and bring it to life. I hope he learned from this movie.
Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)
Recommend only for historical reasons
Charlie Chaplin stars as a con man who at the beginning is seen flirting with an unattractive, plump, country girl, Tillie Banks (played nicely by Marie Dressler). We soon learn why. Her father has money. He convinces her to steal her father's money, and they then run off to the city to get married. However, soon after arriving in the city Chaplin runs into his partner and love. The story then takes twists and turns along with some holes in the story, repetitive humor, and gets a bit too foolish towards the end.
The picture is crude, and the beginning nearly gave me a headache. Maybe because it was late when I watched it, though. It soon subsided, and I was able to somewhat get into the film, but it was still pretty hard to watch. Overall, it showed that comedies had a ways to go. It is credited as being the first feature-length comedy and Chaplin's first feature film.
Undefeated (2003)
A good movie that has its share of problems
This is John Leguizamo's directorial debut (he also stars), and it's only a little bit better than decent.
*SPOILERS*
Leguizamo stars as Lex Vargas, an amateur boxer from Jackson Heights, NY, who is looking to make it big. After seeing his brother get shot by a young kid trying to rob his brother's store, Lex takes his brother's words to heart - "I want you to be the best. Never lose," (something like that), and rises to the top of the Welterweight division going undefeated along the way. His friends are along for the ride, but they grow distant as Vargas climbs the ladder, and moves away from the neighborhood they all grew up in. He soon falls in love with his local promoter's girlfriend. After reaching the top, he's presented with a conflicting proposition - throw the fight to the up-and-coming hotshot boxer to generate interest and more money for the rematches. What does he do?
The problems I saw with the movie is that the pacing seems off - it goes from regular time to fast forward to slow motion, back to regular to fast forward again, etc... This causes some parts of the story to be rushed, and some parts to be a little more drawn out than they should be. Some of the story doesn't quite click as well, probably because of the pacing. It's not quite as cliched as some make it out to be, but there is a little bit. Most of the characters are rushed and not properly developed. Some of the acting isn't great, and parts of the dialogue could have used work, but overall it's not bad. Leguizamo is good in his role, and shows that he does have talent for directing, but shows that he needs to work on pacing and storytelling. It's kind of liked Leguizamo focused mainly on his character, and then spent only a little bit of time on the others.
House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
Don't waste your time *contains some spoilers*
Rob Zombie makes his directorial debut in this jumbled mess. It's suppose to be an homage to classic horror films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but why does there need to be (basically) another remake of TCM? Is stealing ideas from previous movies and doing them worse an homage? What happened to creativity? Originality? It just looks like they wanted to make a quick buck off of the popularity of previous horror classics. This is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre meets MTV and the results aren't pretty.
The story? There's not much of one - teenagers stupidly wind up in a house resided in by a crazy family. The poor camera work hinders the viewer's attempt at following the plot because of the fuddled imagery Zombie presents. Take a weak story, add in confusing camera work and what do you get? Nothing good. Some of what happens in the movie is left up to the viewer to decide, but to me the movie was such a mess that I just didn't care.
The characters are the same cliched fare. There's the dumb teenagers who don't yet know what they got themselves into, the crazy, stab-happy family complete with deformed and masked sibling, and some helpless cops. None of the teenagers are engaging or developed or charismatic or give you any reason to care for them so you don't feel any sympathy for any of them. Their subpar acting and poor dialogue doesn't help either. The family is crazy without any kind of explanation, but at least they're somewhat interesting. They're also annoying so you kind of want to see them get theirs. The deformed guy is just a useless 'Leatherface' thrown in as an "homage" and for some poor humor. The cops are the same useless cops who don't survive for very long which you've seen in countless other movies.
Is it actually a horror movie? Not to me. It's not scary at all, just weird. None of the characters allow you to connect with them and the camera work is muddled so there's no sense of suspense. This movie left me with a question: would a monkey throwing feces at a movie screen make for a better movie?