4th Favorite Movie - Signs
Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...
I'm not sure why, but the closer I get to #1, the harder it is to get motivated to write each entry. It's weird, I know. You'd think I would be MORE excited about covering the movies that are in my top five! But while I may like the films that are closer to #1 more than the ones that are closer to #50, that doesn't mean I like WRITING about them any more. All that to say... I am going to try to get this one over with as fast as I can so I can do something else. Here are a few reasons why I like this movie so much:
*THE SUSPENSE: Like Hitchcock, M. Night knows how to use music, camera angles and settings to create suspense. The opening credit sequence is one of my all-time favorites, and a nod to films like The Birds and Psycho. Like Spielberg, M. Night knows it is sometimes better to NOT show the monster and thus allow the audience to scare themselves using their own imaginations.
*THE SCENES THAT MAKE YOU JUMP: There are a few of them here, especially the one involving the knife and the pantry door. This makes it a fun movie to watch with people who have not seen it before.
*THE HUMOR: The first time I saw Signs, I was surprised by the amount of humor in it. Joaquin Phoenix is hilarious, and both kids (the girl is the one from Little Miss Sunshine) have their moments as well. M. Night's attempts at humor in The Lady in the Water do not measure up, unless you count his made-up words like "narf" and "scrunt", which sound pretty funny when you say them.
*THE MESSAGE: Most people would say Signs is about crop circles, or aliens, but it is also about faith. Mel Gibson plays Graham Hess, a pastor who recently quit the ministry after his wife died in a freak accident. Graham figured that God turned his back on him and let his wife die, so he turns his back on God. In the pivotal speech of the film, Graham tells his brother that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who see miracles (faith group) and those who just see coincidences. As a reaction to his wife's tragic death, Graham has gone from the faith group to the coincidence group. Our first clue of this is in the beginning of the film, when we see the dusty outline on Graham's bedroom wall that indicates that a cross once hung there. Even though Graham put the cross away, it left an imprint on the wall that he cannot completely remove. Likewise, even though Graham has put his faith away, "signs" of it remain. Late in the movie he fumes at God, which may seem like a "faithless" thing to do, but it actually shows he has moved from the coincidence group to the faith group once again.
*THE HEART: When it looks to be the end for them all, Hess shares with his son and daughter the stories of when they were born. The stories that Mel Gibson's character tells are the actual birth stories of M. Night's two children. Again taking a page out of Spielberg's book, M. Night's films may always have something to do with the supernatural, but they also always have something to do with family.
Interestingly, production on the film began the day after 9/11/2001. While M. Night was filming a movie about the effect a tragedy can have on faith and on family, thousands of people around the world were learning firsthand for themselves.
*THE SUSPENSE: Like Hitchcock, M. Night knows how to use music, camera angles and settings to create suspense. The opening credit sequence is one of my all-time favorites, and a nod to films like The Birds and Psycho. Like Spielberg, M. Night knows it is sometimes better to NOT show the monster and thus allow the audience to scare themselves using their own imaginations.
*THE SCENES THAT MAKE YOU JUMP: There are a few of them here, especially the one involving the knife and the pantry door. This makes it a fun movie to watch with people who have not seen it before.
*THE HUMOR: The first time I saw Signs, I was surprised by the amount of humor in it. Joaquin Phoenix is hilarious, and both kids (the girl is the one from Little Miss Sunshine) have their moments as well. M. Night's attempts at humor in The Lady in the Water do not measure up, unless you count his made-up words like "narf" and "scrunt", which sound pretty funny when you say them.
*THE MESSAGE: Most people would say Signs is about crop circles, or aliens, but it is also about faith. Mel Gibson plays Graham Hess, a pastor who recently quit the ministry after his wife died in a freak accident. Graham figured that God turned his back on him and let his wife die, so he turns his back on God. In the pivotal speech of the film, Graham tells his brother that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who see miracles (faith group) and those who just see coincidences. As a reaction to his wife's tragic death, Graham has gone from the faith group to the coincidence group. Our first clue of this is in the beginning of the film, when we see the dusty outline on Graham's bedroom wall that indicates that a cross once hung there. Even though Graham put the cross away, it left an imprint on the wall that he cannot completely remove. Likewise, even though Graham has put his faith away, "signs" of it remain. Late in the movie he fumes at God, which may seem like a "faithless" thing to do, but it actually shows he has moved from the coincidence group to the faith group once again.
*THE HEART: When it looks to be the end for them all, Hess shares with his son and daughter the stories of when they were born. The stories that Mel Gibson's character tells are the actual birth stories of M. Night's two children. Again taking a page out of Spielberg's book, M. Night's films may always have something to do with the supernatural, but they also always have something to do with family.
Interestingly, production on the film began the day after 9/11/2001. While M. Night was filming a movie about the effect a tragedy can have on faith and on family, thousands of people around the world were learning firsthand for themselves.
Labels: movies
posted by Danny @ 6:43 PM
3 Comments:
Speaking of humor, my favorite scene of this movie is when they run out of the house to try to scare what they think is a couple of neighbors, and Gibson's character yells, "Ahh! I'm insane with anger!... I'm losing my mind" while his brother is actually acting angry and swearing.
That part is hecka funny. I remember when I saw this movie with you how disappointed you were with the ending. So when I saw that you commented, I thought you were going to talk about how implausible it was that a species of aliens could build cloaking spaceships to transport themselves across the universe but it never occured to them to bring along some rain ponchos and power saws.
Um, A) awesome movie. No time to read your full blog entry now, but I will as soon as I'm back from India. And B) thanks for the comment. It helps me to know that you and B are keeping up with us and what all is going on in our lives out here. I bought both of you some good-looking stuff today, so be looking forward to presents! *MUAH*
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