used to tell you bedtime stories
Behind the more mundane details, like Malcolm serving as a surrogate for Cole’s absent father, M. Night Shyamalan likes to put big ideas into his movies. Sometimes he’s a little obvious about it. Hell, Lady in the Water basically invents an entirely new mythology just to play at something big. I’ve got Lady in the Water playing beside me right now as I write this, and I’d say this is the point at which Shyamalan really became… well, a joke. Despite many seemingly incorrect notions about comic books, Unbreakable remains a fairly good film, even if it tends to be lesser Shyamalan. Signs , despite an overtly (ridiculously) religious ending, still plays quite well. The Village , with a few minor changes, would be great, but instead is just mostly (that is, through most of the film) good and partly just awful. Lady in the Water --well, it is something else entirely, Shyamalan getting bigger than himself. News reports on war in just the first few minutes of the film remind me of the news...