Signs

Year: 2002
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Screenplay: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, Abigail Breslin, Cherry Jones, M. Night Shyamalan
Genre: Science-fiction, thriller, drama
Running Time: 107 minutes

Summary: Former preacher Graham Hess (Gibson) lost his faith when his wife died in a car accident, and now works as a farmer a few miles outside Pittsburgh with his younger brother, former minor league baseball player Merrill (Phoenix), and Graham's two young children Morgan (Culkin) and Bo (Breslin).
Waking after a night disturbed by strange noises, the Hess family are shocked to find a large crop circle design in their corn field. Initially putting it down to local pranksters, the family soon discover that there have been reports flooding in from around the world of an unusually high number of crop circles appearing in a brief space of time.
Speculation is rife as to what caused the crop circles, some believing it to be an elaborate publicity stunt, some claiming it is a widespread hoax and others claiming that it marks the end of the world.
Morgan becomes fascinated with a book he buys about UFOs and extra terrestrials. The news reports on the television and radio become increasingly disturbing as strange lights are seen in the sky near the circles and video footage of briefly glimpsed strange creatures surface on the news. It soon becomes apparent that a full-scale alien invasion is under way, and the Hess family are among their targets.

Opinions: M. Night Shyamalan has had an interesting, if very uneaven career. From the highly successful and critically adored The Sixth Sense (1999) to the critically panned The Last Airbender (2010). Shyamalan is at his best when he is dealing with regular people pitted against otherworldly events. This film really has him doing what he does best, and provides an imaginative ground zero view of an alien invasion.
Unlike most films of this type there are no flashy spaceship effects or spectacular battles, or even ray-guns zapping everything in sight. The spaceships are seen briefly in TV news footage and then are basically lights in the sky. The aliens are barely glimpsed throughout the whole movie, and are usually depicted as just noises in the house.
The film features an impressively subdued turn from Mel Gibson as a tormented former preacher who is still stricken with grief and bitterness over the untimely death of his wife. Joaquin Phoenix is also good as the younger brother, who seems to be treated more like an employee than a family member. As the two kids, Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin both provide powerful and affecting performances.
The movie does have it's problems, most notably a ludicrous final revelation about the aliens, although that really comes too late in the day to spoil anything. Also the elements of family drama and alien invasion movie, as well as the film's surprising religious overtones, don't always gel. At times it comes across as a fusion of Ingmar Bergman and Steven Spielberg.
However, this is an intriguing and fascinating film and a cut above most alien invasion movies.

"See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Do you believe that there are no conicidences?"
- Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) philosophises in Signs.



Rory Culkin, Joaquin Phoenix, Mel Gibson and Abigail Breslin watch for Signs

The Singing Detective

Year: 2003
Director: Keith Gordon
Screenplay: Dennis Potter
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Robin Wright Penn, Jeremy Northam, Katie Holmes, Adrien Brody, Jon Polito and Mel Gibson
Running Time: 109 minutes
Genre: Drama, crime, thriller, mystery, musical, fantasy

Summary: In the present day United States, Dan Dark (Downey Jr.) is an author of pulp detective stories centering around the character of the "Singing Detective", a private detective in the 1950s who moonlights as a singer in a rock 'n' roll band. Dark is in hospital with severe psoriasis and is in constant pain and unable to move. To escape his situation he reworks the plot of his first book, imagining himself as the Singing Detective and people from his own life as the characters. In the hospital he often escapes into surreal musical fantasies and experiences disturbing memories of his childhood. As Dark's paranoia and bitterness increase, reality and fantasy begin to collide.

Opinions: This film is an adaptation of Dennis Potter's controverisal and hugely acclaimed 1986 miniseries The Singing Detective. The movie attempts the almost impossible task of effectively condensing a six hour television series into a one hour forty nine minute movie. The film updates the story from 1980s England to 2003 USA, and the fantasy sequences (and musical numbers) are updated from the 1940s to the 1950s also the name of the lead character is changed from Philip Marlowe (played by Michael Gambon) in the original. Dennis Potter, who died in 1994, had been very enthusiastic about the idea of a film version and the script had been circulating around Hollywood for a long time with various directors including Robert Altman and David Cronenberg, and actors such as Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino attached at different times.
The thing is that despite the film being savaged by critics, it isn't really all that bad, it's fast moving and entertaining with most of the themes and incidents of the original cropping up, it also features some good performances from a talented cast (including Mel Gibson looking almost unrecognisable as a bald psychiatrist). The problem is that it feels rushed. Lacking the time that the TV series had, various parts of the story just feel rushed, for example the "Singing Detective" mystery just seems abandoned part way through and the childhood memories which are a key part of the story or reduced to just a few brief scenes. The thing is that the film is frustrating because so much of the show survives that it just makes you miss the show.
By the way, if you've never seen the 1986 series dio yourself a favour and check it out as soon as possible.

"There are things in that book, doc, that are reaching out to grab me by the throat."
- Dan Dark (Robert Downey Jr.) in The Singing Detective