[ambrose]

Why are you posting spoilers?

[goodieD]

I was kinda wondering whether to see this, since the only movies I go to are Mel Gibson flicks and stuff like The Omega Code. Couldn't really get the gist of the film from the trailers.

[Paul Atreides]

The movie was very good. Suspenseful, creepy, chilling, and suprisingly respectful of Christianity. A few vulgar words but no blood and gore. It is reminiscent of The Birds.

[anymouse]

Wasn't this posted about a month ago?

[Spiff]

My wife and I saw Signs yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. The moral of the movie was a breath of fresh air in today's ultra-polluted movie environment. It is great to see the topic of FAITH being portrayed in such a positive way in a mainstream movie. Unfortunately, they are trying to stealth the faith message to the masses and are portraying the movie in the trailers as pure suspense/sci-fi/horror. Some shallow movie-goers will be disappointed that this movie dies not deliver what they expected.

[jlogajan]

This movie was unintentionally a stunning example of the contradiction in religious faith.

The theme returned to over and over was whether you believed there was someone out there looking after you or not.

The unspoken yet unavoidable corollary is that the same entity "looking out for you" is also the one throwing the arrows at you in the first place.

No religion satisfactorily deals with this contradiction. They dance around it. This movie didn't even mention it -- it couldn't mention it. That would turn it into the theater of the absurd. Religion's dark secret remains undiscussed.

[jlogajan]

Ping to the Brit. :-) Yeah, I know this film won't be released in the UK until Sept 13. But you might enjoy the advance (not advanced, ha ha) discussion. It was an enjoyable film, despite some weaknesses which I can't detail without a spoiler alert.

It did fall down in the same way all religious themed films always fall down -- the contradiction of God as protector, while ignoring the fact that God is "protecting" us from his alter-ego.

[JediGirl]

well, that sucks. You didn't have to post what the pastor ended up doing. Spoils it for those of us who haven't seen it. Put spoiler somewhere in the title.

[tm22721]

The theme of the movie was that we are on our own. To depend on some nanny figure in the sky, is no better than depending on the nanny state.

Amen.

BUMP

[Wallace T.]

I liked the scene were Mel Gibson's two kids and his brother were wearing tin-foil hats to protect their minds from aliens reading their thoughts. I wonder if Mel Gibson or Shalmayan are Freepers.

[bvw]

Well ... I have my own thoughts as to this film. One thing I thought was great was the TV. First everybody is sitting around watching it, as if it is the center of the world. Then the young batsman sticks the telly in the understair closet to keep everybody from watching it. Then they get their news from the good old AM radio. Finally at the end -- it gets broken.

To me that was an excellent demonstration of divine jusrice acting in concert with human action.

[monkey]

The "faith thing" in the movie concerned whether God can be found in coincidences, accidents and signs. It certainly didn't strike me as "deep faith".

[Timesink]

I went to college with Manoj (the M. in M. Night - Certainly nobody ever called him anything but Manoj back then) at NYU. I wasn't in the film school, but most of my friends were, so I ended up helping them a lot either in front of or behind the camera, and spent a buttload of time in the film school building. Anyway, I don't know what his politics are, but in terms of his personal life he's one conservative dude. Kind of uptight (by college standards, at least), refuses to move out of suburban Pennsylvania, got married and settled down very quickly, etc. I'd be quite surprised if he turned out to be a hardcore Democrat.

I remember that the dean of the film school told them all during an orientation, "If one person out of every two graduating classes ends up with a successful career in film, then we have succeeded as teachers." Guess he's it.