What's HAPPENING to M. Night Sanjaya's career?- Page 2

[ray-andallthatjazz86]

Posted: 6/12/08 at 8:58pm

THE VILLAGE was a waste of my money and time. What an awful film!
Apart from that I have only seen SIXTH SENSE which is indeed a great movie.

[insertclevernamehere]

Posted: 6/12/08 at 8:58pm

I think the problem is that he's trying to keep the surprise twists in his movies. He made his name in The Sixth Sense, which has arguably one of the best surprising endings in movie history. But his twists are now (in my opinion) so bad and predictible (I guessed the surprise in the Villiage from the trailers) it negates the whole movie.

[wonderfulwizard11]

Posted: 6/12/08 at 9:08pm

The only film I've seen of his is THE VILLAGE, and I hated that.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 6/12/08 at 9:30pm

Updated On: 6/12/08 at 09:30 PM

[roquat]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 12:48am

I must be the only person in the world who didn't guess THE VILLAGE's twist until it was actually revealed in the film. I found THE VILLAGE flawed but enjoyable, and Bryce Dallas Howard was a revelation (before Sam Raimi trashed her in SPIDERMAN 3).

SIGNS was gripping until the end, but that ending was so bad it negated the rest of the movie for me.

The first, lyrical LADY IN THE WATER trailers made me long to see it. Then they started marketing it as a horror movie and getting all screechy amd jittery, and I got repulsed and never actually went (I still haven't seen it.)

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 1:03am

Lady in the Water is really just a fairy tale. Simple, but nice I thought.

[LadyRosecoe]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 1:33am

I do adore his filmmaking, but have to say that I'm not much of a fan of The Sixth Sense and hated Unbreakable. The one that does it for me is The Village, I think it's mostly remarkable and Signs was creepily effective as well. I've yet to see Lady in the Water, but I'll be seeing this one on Tuesday.

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 1:45am

So I assume this is opening at the Walter Kerr Theatre?

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 3:25am

Cute.

[verynewyorkcurious]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 3:42am

M. Night Shyamalan

I'm not trying to correct the spelling, I could care less. They are two different people. You wouldn't make the same mistake if they were both white.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 8:22am

Updated On: 6/13/08 at 08:22 AM

[Roscoe]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 8:56am

I never particularly liked THE SIXTH SENSE, which was a nice little 30 minute TWILIGHT ZONE episode blown up into a 2 hour plus movie. Well acted, and all that, but a snooooooooooze.

Haven't bothered with his films since. There are way too many good movies out there to waste time on trifles.

[tazber]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:16am

You wouldn't make the same mistake if they were both white.

That is just a silly comment. The implication is that we don't care about how to spell someone's name based on their ethnicity.
What about Chuck Palahniuk? He's white and his name gets misspelled all the time.
Hell, even Kristen Chenoweth gets misspelled fairly often.

[Chloe]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:23am

I think a major reason for the superiority of The Sixth Sense is its editor, Andrew Mondshein, who hasn't worked on any of the other features.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:25am

Funny, I saw a poster for this in a Chelsea that someone had cut up the letters and rearranged them so it read "M. Night Shyamalan's THE HAPPY TIME". Who knew that musical was coming to the screen?

[jaystarr]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:30am

I am actually going to see the movie when it opens! I am actually a fan of his movies! I think its an acquired taste!

J*

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:38am

I figured out The Village during the opening, when I saw the dates on the tombstone. I didn't quite know how it was going to all play out, but I knew exactly when it took place.

I think all Indianish people are kind of the same, which is why Sueleen confused Sanjaya and Shyamalan.
Updated On: 6/13/08 at 09:38 AM

[tazber]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:40am

Well of course they are Phyllis. haven't you ever called a help center and been transferred to India?

They all sound the same, and none of them can understand English.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:42am

Is Jessie Jackson related to Janet Jackson?

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:43am

I think he's a great director of individual moments, but the whole is generally lacking with the exception of THE SIXTH SENSE. His clunky exposition and preachiness don't sit well with me either. Maybe he'd be better off directing someone elses script.

[tazber]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:52am

Duh! Of course they are related. They are also related to Samuel Jackson.

[nygrl23]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 9:58am

>>I think he's a great director of individual moments, but the whole is generally lacking with the exception of THE SIXTH SENSE. His clunky exposition and preachiness don't sit well with me either. Maybe he'd be better off directing someone elses script.<<

Well put.

It seems like he had a little help with Sixth Sense, and after that, he was on his own, and couldn't quite make things work as well.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 10:24am

I think he's a great director but should stop writing. That's where his movies fall flat.

I liked 6th Sense, loved Unbreakable, and really liked Signs up until the end. I felt he built The Village around the surprise ending and I ended up feeling cheated by it.

I think the reason people don't like him is because he has said things in interviews where he comes off sounding...a little full of himself.

[clever name]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 10:35am

This could probably be posted under the Unpopular Opinions You Hold thread, but I love all his movies. Every single one of them.

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 6/13/08 at 11:10am

A snippet of the review by Capone at Ain't it Cool News.com

""Is this movie actually being released?" Those were my first words when the lights came up after seeing M. Night Shyamalan's latest, THE HAPPENING. And the question was in no way rhetorical. I truly could not conceive of a world where anyone would allow a film this poorly made to be released. I know that Shyamalan is everybody's favorite punching bag of late; the writer-director had the misfortune of having his first three films (THE SIXTH SENSE; UNBREAKABLE; SIGNS) be very popular and varying degrees of great. How dare he. And while I'm far from a Shyamalan apologist (I liked THE VILLAGE; I tried and failed to appreciate LADY IN THE WATER), I think the man has talent. That being said, the man who made THE HAPPENING is a stranger to me. There's no way this can be the same guy who skillfully creeped me out time and time again with his work. I am truly and without exaggeration baffled by THE HAPPENING in ways that I'll attempt to explain, but I may simply fall forward from exhaustion trying.

The only thing I'd really heard about the flaws in THE HAPPENING before I saw it was that Mark Wahlberg's performance was bad on a legendary scale. And while I question his high-pitched line delivery in a few spots in this movie, Wahlberg fans can rejoice in knowing that it isn't their hero who kills this movie. Nearly every performance is terrible, and I'm a bit shocked that even the always-reliable Zooey Deschanel is acting like she's been struck by a car before the cameras began to roll. One guy I always look forward to seeing, John Leguizamo, has clearly been slipped some sort of tranquilizer. There isn't a single decent performance in the entire film, except may be that of Betty Buckley as an old woman living in home cut off from the rest of the world. Her acting is so off-the-charts gothic that I had to stifle my giggles the entire time she's on the screen."

Ouch!