The “Sex and the City” movie opens today, but really, wouldn’t you rather watch Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte spend a couple of hours at an isolated cottage, terrorized by a trio of masked psychos?
Yeah, me too. And in honor of “The Strangers”, here’s my latest Sympatico/MSN movie column, running down the admittedly short list of home-invasion movies.
(And yes, I know I left “Inside” out. I didn’t want to traumatize my readership that badly.)
hmmm Halloween?
Parts of Signs were effective, but was anyone else distracted by Mel Gibson’s father character not getting his daughter any help for her obvious OCD problems with water? Sure, it came in handy later, but CHEAT…CHEAT…CHEAT!
@ Kate — I don’t think that one would fit; all of Haddonfield is the stage for the Shape’s mayhem.
@ Chris — sure, but just remember, if you ask questions of the plotting in “Signs”, YOU ARE QUESTIONING THE WILL OF GOD!
Norm,
God? C’mon, I’m questioning the will of M. Night Shaymalan, who later proved himself a controlling, capricious and vindictive got in The Village.
And…3:36 am…still on Cannes time?
Oops…typo. Vindictive god, etc.
I’m posting from London, actually — this week was planned to be an elaborate post-Cannes geardown, and it’s gone swimmingly. On our way home soon, though.
And yes, I totally see your point re. M. Night, but am quite impressed with his “Signs” logic, which posits that everything that happens to Mel Gibson in the movie — the horrible death of his wife, children with asthma and OCD, an alien invasion of the planet — is part of God’s elaborate plan to restore Mel Gibson’s faith in, um, God.
Which worked out pretty well for both parties, all things considered.
“Swing away”, indeed …
So God wreaked planet-wide carnage as well as devastating personal tragedy so Mel Gibson would love him? No wonder Mel paid him back so brutally in The Passion…flog away! And the idea of religious experience as dysfunctional family dynamics is oddly compelling. Was Joan of Arc just a bratty middle child trying to get attention? Ane when is M. Night Shaymalan going to adapt the book of Job…but with a twist ending, of course.
Thanks for showing some love for “Signs”. I find people unfairly trash it because they were either expecting more aliens or were turned off by the God stuff. I’m agnostic, have watched it at least 6 times, and love the the hell out of it more and more each time.
Well It was certainly better than Evan Almighty
And I concede on Halloween.