The Village

I avoid M. Night Shyamalan's (or Shama lama ding dong as a director friend of mine who shall not be named here calls him) movies like the plague and when the critics, who have long pampered and darlinged this tit head, shred one of his films chances are it iwll remain on my unseen list. Forever! On the other hand, when a lady lays a screener on me I'm not gonna let fly with just how much I hate this guy, I'll simply accept the gift, put it in one of the festering piles of "to be watched" littering my pad and think no more of it. Well, today was the day , THE VILLAGE came up in the pile and had to be watched and what a bloody pleasant surprise. He left Richard Mattheson alone and came up with something of his own for a change and the results are quite striking. With fine performances from Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt, Adrien Brody, Brendan Gleeson and Bryce Dallas Howard (who we'll be seeing as Gwen Stacy in SPIDER-MAN 3 later this week) THE VILLAGE delivers a strong broody feel with some absolutley amazing cinematography. With a tight script and a mighty fine ending for a change, I'm at a total loss as to why this film was slammed so hard. Sure, it has the Hammer feel to it, and this is not a bad thing, and there are serious WICKER MAN elements to it but not enough so as to be plageristic. So, I'll give credit where credit is due, the bugger, no matter what I think about him, really pulls the rabbit out of the hat with this one making THE VILLAGE worth a most definate looksy!