Screen scenes

  Touchstone pictures Mel Gibson, center,
stars in M. Night Shyamalan’s
“Signs,” a film about family and supernatural
happenings.

“Signs”
Touchstone Pictures
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix

If someone remade “Independence Day” from the point of
view of a quirky sitcom family, then you’d probably get
something pretty similar to “Signs.” Unlike the bloated
“ID4,” “Signs” provides that old Hollywood
magic where character is king. Graham (Gibson) is a former reverend
and patriarch of a dysfunctional family. He is father of the
precocious and contentious Morgan (Rory Culkin), and the cute and
says-the-darnedest-things Bo (Abigail Breslin). Graham’s
brother (Phoenix) is a brash, worldly ex-baseball player with a
soft heart. Together they make a striking cast, ordinary people in
an extraordinary situation. There are no romantic subplots, few
special effects, no heroism (save for the everyday kind), and there
isn’t even a very good story. What we do get is a rare
emotional tale of how a family deals with the loss of their
matriarch, and how it is tested through the arrival of crop
circles. Each character reacts to the phenomenon in their own
unique way, which seems more real and personal. Go watch
“MIIB” if you’re looking for special effects
extravaganzas. “Signs” is an intimate, mature film,
built on dialogue and raw acting. M. Night Shyamalan weaves his
work with his usual trademarks: gifted child actor performances, a
tale of supernatural happenings, an emphasis on family cohesiveness
and a somewhat twisted ending. Some of the shots, such as the
opening one, are absolutely astonishing with Hitchcockian precision
mirrored in James Newton Howard’s score reminiscent of
Bernard Herrman’s “Psycho.” Yet the film loses
cohesiveness at times. The twists seem too calculated, and you feel
manipulated by the overly-clever way certain problems in the film
are solved. Unlike the genius surprise ending of Shyamalan’s
“The Sixth Sense,” “Signs” ends with a
feeling of a sudden, tying-all-loose-ends conclusion, the same
impulse that drives Spielberg to tack a happy ending onto his
mostly dark and disturbing “Minority Report.”
Nevertheless, “Signs” delivers, on almost every level,
the ultimate Hollywood film for all demographics. It is a
scary-horror, funny-family comedy, science fiction-fantasy
thriller-drama with religious overtones. Light-years ahead of the
usual Hollywood fare, Shyamalan is making personal movies within
the studio system. That alone is worth the price of admission.
““Howard Ho

“The Good Girl”
Fox Searchlight
Directed by Miguel Arteta
Starring Jennifer Aniston, John C. Reilly

People have different ways of escaping life’s monotony. In
“The Good Girl,” Justine (Aniston) finds her escape in
an affair with a fellow store clerk who fantasizes he is the
troubled protagonist from “Catcher in the Rye.”
Although unhappy in life, her fear to make changes brings a sense
of compassion to her morally ambiguous acts. This dark comedy from
director Miguel Arteta (“Star Maps,” “Chuck and
Buck”) is both quietly hilarious and deeply troubling.
Similar to his past independent films, Arteta turns the film inward
to focus on the characters and their flawed relationships with one
another. This is truly a breakout role for Aniston, who in popular
culture is identified so closely with Rachel, her character from
the sitcom “Friends.” She gives a compelling
performance of a woman who must choose between her husband and
societal conformity, which resembles a jail sentence, and her
disturbed lover with whom she could not realistically start a life.
The film feels surprisingly real in the way that it portrays
life’s complexity. The hilarious, razor-sharp dialogue
layered over the serious events makes the film both entertaining
and gripping. While lines like, “If you love me, you’ll
meet me in front of Chuck E. Cheese’s,” seem oddly
pathetic, it is just this desperation to escape that gives the film
its power. ““Emily Camastra