After watching another Sox loss I have the urge to write about something other than baseball. So I decided to give a movie review.
I was actually able to get to theater for the first time this year. The baby slept at grandmas (thank you Grandma Nance and Papa Marv) and my wife and I were able to go see The Village.
Anyone who has seen a commercial knows the basic plot of the movie. The village is surrounded by a forest inhabited by some type of monster/animal/whatever. The villagers have a truce with these creatures by which they are not to enter the forest and the creatures will not enter the village.
I thought the movie did a nice job of portraying village life and showing the constant fear with which these villagers lived. Joaquin Phoenix plays the main character of the movie and requests to leave the village in order to get supplies from one of the towns beyond the forest. He is also involved in a love triangle with Williams Hurt's two daughters, one who is in love with him while he is in love with other. I guess that's about all the plot I can tell you before giving too much away.
The only trouble I had following the plot was when why my wife kept asking me if one girl was the Chief's daughter. Since there was no Chief, I assumed she meant William Hurt who seemed to be the village leader. It wasn't until the middle of the movie when she kept asking about the Chief that I figured out she meant Brendan Gleeson who we saw in the movie, The General, which she mistakenly remembered as The Chief. I hope by bringing this to your attention you don't experience the same problem.
M. Night Shyamalan has been criticized for being a one trick pony by trying to force plot twists on all his movies, but I think that criticism is unwarranted. While this movie certainly has plot twists, I never got the feeling that he was trying to pull on over on the audience as he did in the Sixth Sense. The plot simply unfolds and the full story is revealed to the audience.
This movie does have some holes, and will leave you asking "why would aliens invade a planet 2/3rds water if it kills them" type questions. But I enjoyed the movie and thought it was better than both Signs and Unbreakable. It's never boring and has a great cast including Joaquin Phoenix, Sigourney Weaver, Adrien Brody playing the town idiot, Brendan Gleeson, William Hurt and Bryce Howard.
This is definitely the best movie I saw in a theater this year. I also watched two movies on video this week, The Triplets of Belleville and Along Came Polly. If the Sox keep losing I might give a couple more reviews.