Lady in the Water

M. Night Shyamalan is mystique personified, or at least that is what the acclaimed director sees himself as. His first major movie, The Sixth Sense, was a near masterpiece with one mind-bogging twist of an ending. And his second film, Unbreakable, contained a quiet, controlled beauty that revealed a director who had confidence in the narrative and didn't resort to little tricks of the Hollywood blockbuster trade.
This was a director who had vision and stuck stubbornly close to that vision at whatever costs. He never felt the need to condescend to his audience, who he felt was intelligent enough to get what he was trying to convey.
But soon, as Signs and The Village showed, Night became a slave to convention, even if he told himself he wasn't. Audiences came expecting the twist, and his latter movies lost a little bit of that magic found in his first.
He tries to capture some of that magic back with his latest offering, Lady in the Water, a movie based on a bedtime story he told his children.
Thankfully, there's no twist here, even if you do find yourself out of habit waiting for one.
But the problem this movie has is Night is trying to be too fanciful, too trusting in his audience to simply suspend belief.
In this movie, Paul Giamatti, who is always a dependable character actor, plays a superintendent of an apartment complex who finds a young woman swimming nude in the apartment pool. Turns out the woman, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, is a narf from the Blue World who has come to find a writer, who happens to be played by the director in the largest role he has carved out for himself in one of his movies. This writer is composing something that has the potential to change the world.
That's pretty heady stuff, right? And guess what, Giamatti's character and everyone else buys the whole story by Story, the name of the narf.
This is a little too easy, because even though there have always been supernatural elements in Night's movies, Night has always made way for some of that natural skepticism to creep in before the audience gives over to believing the unbelievable.
Not this time. We're expected to take the big leap of faith in the whole story, and though this is a fairy tale, there's no grounding for the audience.
The characters are barely fleshed out, though Giamatti does give a powerful performance. Howard hardly says a word; she just stares with those big beautiful eyes of hers as if that's acting.
Night doesn't give the audience anything to invest in, so we just don't care.
He does, however, gives us some good scares (those scrunts are just darn creepy with those red eyes and gnashing teeth), and there is a nice scene with the film critic played by Bob Balaban.
Yet, in the end, the movie just didn't deliver. It didn't move me; it didn't make me feel anything, not like that last scene in The Sixth Sense, with Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette, where I admittedly choked up just a bit.
Instead, I left the movie theater hoping that Night comes back with something a lot better than this tepid fairy tale.

Pirates of the Caribbean

The sole reason a female co-worker wanted to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was Johnny Depp. She wanted to wallow in the sheer irresistable hotness of Depp.
Now, I may not share in her drooling admiration of Johnny Depp but I will say this: The only reason to see this over-the-top sequel is to witness the nutty and brilliant performance of Mr. Depp, an actor known for his odd but critically acclaimed choices.
Many a critic has made note that Depp is not one to star in such an obvious summer blockbuster as this movie, with eye-popping special effects, swashbuckling action and the photogenic Orlando Bloom and the stunning Keira Knightley.
No, Depp has always zigged while others have zagged. And this movie, as surprising a move as it may appear, may be Depp's own way of zigging.
His performance is an uncompromising one. He switches with a feminine swagger and speaks with a drunken slur, his eyes a little crazed and a little sane all at the same time.
And it is his performance that saves this sequel from totally sucking, for whenever Depp is on the screen, the movie feels a bit fresher than the cog in the Hollywood machine that it really is.
That's truly an achievement.
And let's be honest. It's nice to see Depp kick loose and have fun as Jack Sparrow, throwing all notions of what a pirate should or should not be out of the proverbial window.
Okay, I'll say it. Johnny Depp is pretty hot.

Superman Returns

For me, Christopher Reeve will always be Superman, his chest bearing the "S," that nice piece of curly hair fronting his forehead.
But more than 20 years later, Brandon Routh wears the blue and red suit, flying around saving the world in Superman Returns.
Routh is no Christopher Reeve, and you miss the chemistry Reeve had with Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane.
But Routh and Kate Bosworth, who has taken over as Lane, has none of the flirty fun Reeve and Kidder had in the original.
However, that's more than made up for in the eye-popping special effects and the bravura performance by Kevin Spacey, who portrays villain Lex Luthor.
This Lex Luthor is darker, more maniacal than the one Gene Hackman played. Luthor still has wit, but Spacey gives Luthor an edge, a cruel streak that is oblivious to having a conscience.
In a sense this is a movie that overall is darker, stripped away from the innocence of the 1978 version. We are not innocents anymore in a post-911 America, and the story picks up where Superman II left off, with the caped crusader disappearing for five years and returning to find Lois Lane with a five-year-old son and a fiancee who has won a Pulitzer for an editorial entitled "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman."
Here, the Superman as Christ-figure motif is impossible to miss, from the late Marlon Brando as Jor-El speaking of sending his son to save mankind to the crucifixion-like beating he gets near the end by Luthor's goons after he has been exposed to Kryptonite.
Sometimes, Bryan Singer, the director, lays that Christ symbolism on too thick, and the movie suffers for it, sucking the fun out of what Superman has always been.
And the movie is way too long for your typical action blockbuster, as if Singer doesn't know when to end.
But somehow, despite those flaws, you get caught up in the Superman saves the world wonder of it all, and you can see why people might want Superman to return...for real.