A Dama na Água

If you enjoy fantasy movies with good acting and an imaginative storyline; you will enjoy this movie.

The entire movie occurs in one very large apartment building with very engaging characters played by well known actors.

After the sixth sense people have been expecting M. Night to shock and amaze them time after time. This is of course impossible. He made signs and the village which had their twists but left the audience with more of an "oh yeah" feeling. More importantly though his movies have become deeper in their actual message, his newest film is no different. if all you want is the amazement of a twist your in for a disappointment. Instead look at this movie for the message of hope it leaves you with, or the humor that abounds, the great acting involved, or even the amazing visual style and suspense. but don't just sit in the theater waiting to be surprised, your just wasting your time and missing the point of a really good movie.

Wow, people sure do hate this movie. I don't understand why it has engendered such hostility. I mean, I can see problems in the movie that people could object to, but people are calling this the worst movie in years and the like, and I find that completely out of proportion.

So here's what I think: Direction Shyamalan has made movies before featuring ostensible everyman types, but this time he has moved away from Hollywood-everyman to a genuine everyman by casting Paul Giamatti as a sad sack building super. Giamatti is likable and quite funny, and the movie starts off with a breezy humor that instantly made me like it.

There are problems when the plot kicks in with the appearance of a young woman named Story. It turns out she might be a creature called a narf from a Chinese fairytale, so the first problem is, narf isn't remotely Chinese-sounding.

Still, I liked the way the movie builds, as Giamatti tries to help her and discovers neighborliness and credulity aren't dead. I enjoy the movie's optimism about people even if I don't share in it, and I like the way he spreads his typical revelations throughout instead of sticking them all at the end.

While people have claimed the story is slow, I thought it was well paced. And while I can admit to many of the criticized plot holes, I just don't care; it had the feel of a little fairy tale of the modern age, which I found quite charming. And the movie is frequently amusing, which counts for a lot with me.

My main criticism is that Lady in the Water would be a much better film with two minutes taken out. Shyamalan decided to savage movie critics, apparently stung by the deserved panning of The Village (which inexplicably received more positive criticism than this film). That's fine in itself, but in one scene Shyamalan simply steps outside of the movie to make fun of the critic. In itself it's a rather amusing scene, but you don't carefully create an atmosphere and encourage a suspension of disbelief and then just shock the audience into the real world in a petty act of vengeance. Shyamalan ignores one of the fundamental rules of film making; if any scene, even if it's the best scene in the film, takes away from the whole, you cut it. I'm very disappointed in Shamalyan for allowing his bitterness to trump his common sense.

It's a small thing, and I won't say it ruined the movie, but it was jarring. And perhaps that's part of why the reviews are so bad, because that scene made people drifting along on the movie's logic snap awake and start thinking about everything that was wrong. Although that's just a theory. Anyway, cut out that two minutes and it would be a considerable improvement.

As for people complaining the movie isn't that scary, well, I don't think it was trying to be that scary. I do think the director's intent is more important than what he's done in other movies. Just because he usually tries to scare us doesn't mean he is this time; I think he was just going for some mild suspense.

Anyway, while others are saying Shyamalan has lost it, but for me he's been consistent; one good movie, one bad one. Sixth Sense (great), Unbreakable (tedious, but interesting ending), Signs (good movie, tremendous ending), The Village (wretched) and Lady in the Water (funny and charming).

So I don't have high hopes for the next one, but this one was quite enjoyable.

I can't rate this film.

When I go to see a Shyamalan film, I expect to be entertained and stimulated, but I never know exactly how this will be accomplished. Shyamalan's films use ambiguity aesthetically and he draws his audience through the seduction of interpretive participation. Of all of his films, perhaps Lady in the Water does this most profoundly. Although I understood the entire film - the plot, the themes, the method - I walked away asking "what the hell did I just see?" It's easy enough to categorize the film. Lady in the Water is an absurdist comedy. But it makes you ask yourself why you are laughing. With Shyamalan's talent as it is, it is impossible for me to believe that any aspect of the humor of this film was unintentional. Yet the other side of LITW is dark fantasy, in the tradition of Michael Cohn's Snow White.

With a cast David Lynch would have been happy with, Shyamalan tells a fable from East Asia as it is experienced by a superintendent (Giamatti) at an apartment complex full of mundanely odd characters. A strange and beautiful young woman (Howard) has emerged from the complex's pool, apparently seeking contact with the surface world so she can find folkloric archetypes who can protect her from the evil creatures that hunt her and return her to her world beneath the waves.

Giamatti, Howard, and Shyamalan himself are all very entertaining. Howard - a very unusual looking and uniquely pretty woman - is shot so beautifully that it is very difficult to take your eyes off of her. M. Night's performance is so bizarre, it is hard to tell whether or not he is acting.

LITW is definitely the strangest film I have seen from Shyamalan. I have been up and down with him since the beginning of his career, enjoying his early films, very much disliking Signs, and being impressed with the Village. I believe that with the Village and LITW, M. Night is establishing a new and unique direction for himself. And if he keeps going this way, I will gladly follow.

I think the thing about this movie is that people may go in expecting it to be a weird horror/supernatural thriller. While it does have supernatural elements, its much more of, well, I guess a fairy tale. It's got some great scares but overall it will be enjoyed more if you know ahead of time your not going to be sitting on the edge of your seat.

The theme of "finding your purpose" definitely is poignant in this day and age, I love all the self reflexive humor as far as story structure goes too.

SFX were decent, not awe inspiring but good for what was required. The film is really about the characters though and their arcs. I'd say the film is much more for the introspective crowd than the hardcore comic kids who want plenty of screams.