The main theme/motif, the creepy strings heard in the trailer get a workout in this score, but in the best John Williams fashion, they are rarely played the same way twice. The motif gets scarier each time its played!

Track 9, "boarding up the house" has sort of a nice repeating theme in it, very enjoyable

Some parts of this score reminded me, of all things, of the older score to the Lucasarts adventure game, The Dig! The swirling, repeating strings in some of the quieter tracks made me think of that cd.

The final 2 tracks, "The hand of fate 1 & 2" are a great closer to the cd. Track 12 is a great horror/action track (I can only guess what is going on in the film) and track 13 wraps the score up in beautiful, piano-based manner. Similar to the gorgeous ending to the 6th Sense.

Over at the FSM board I see people complaing about this being a "boring" cd. That is completely untrue in my eyes. This is every bit as enjoyable as JNH's last 2 scores for Shyamalan's films (and with much better sound than Unbreakable!)

2 thumbs up!!

BobaMike

ps. nice cover art, and it's always cool to see all the performers listed!

[Message edited by BobaMike on 07-30-2002]

JNH's score is great even after that wonderful main title cue. It was a little jarring to hear it, because I was expecting a sinister Sixth Sense type of score. But it aids in the emotion that Night was going for.

JNH is moving up on my list. Well, I don't really have a list, but if I did, he would be moving up on it.

SPOILERS!

-the opening titles are cool....the credits are done in time with the music (heard on cd). Very neat.

-its nice to see a major Hollywood movie treat religion with resepct (instead of films like ENd of Days, Stigmata, and loads of others). IN fact, all of M. Night Shyamalan's films are religious in either tone or subject matter.

-for a movie about aliens, we see very few, and we don't see that ships that caused the crop circles at all!

-as with his other films, Shyamalan brings very many seperate elements together into a twist ending. This one is more involved that before, and made me smile at how things came together!

-The end titles! Anyone know if this is just tracks combined and edited, or a new piece. The theater was loud and I couldn't tell!

Overall, an excellent film!

1. Great main titles, very Hitchcock like, overture in tone. Definite highlight in itself
2. Great premise, a War Of The World movie from the perspective of the small intimate family setting. It's certainly "real" enough to entice some serious conversation.
3. Superb casts. The little girl is very cute. Joaquin is funny (especially when he's totally obsessed with the TV footage of the aliens). Mel is excellent in his role.
4. Good script/story. Funny and dramatic and suspensfull. Some reviewers didn't like the ending, but I was quite surprised. M. Night should try his hand at some more dramatic/action oriented directing.
5. Good music. Good spotting overall. Builds the tension at many points. The house invasion cue is good and so does the ending sequence... Are they on the CD?

I'm a big fan of sensory overload, but this film impressed me so much because it lets your mind do the work.

In this same vain, I liked it in Sleepy Hollow with Danny Elfman's name and Burton actually mentions that in the commentary.

I don't like the way people have used this movie to belittle the rather good movie that is Unbreakable. Much like the Coen Brothers Fargo, or Spielberg's Schindler's List, most critical response isn't going to be overwhelmingly strong to that artist's follow-up. Unbreakable had the misfortune of being that follow-up for Shyamalan. Thematically, the movie is consistant, touching on themes of faith, (perhaps moreso in a scene deleted from the original picture, in which Willis questions the pastor, who lost a loved one in the train wreck Willis survived.) family, and introduces the theme of weakness with water (and symbolically, feminity.)

quote:

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Originally posted by Lancelot:
Unbreakable required the audience to meet it at a certain level--a step that some audiences weren't very willing to make. Unbreakable is a much better film than people give it credit for.

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The facet of Unbreakable the most impresses me is the reality and indeed believability of the main character's transformation. If there were indeed superheroes--in the real, mundane world, this would undoubtedly be there experience. Simply a different take on Spiderman and Superman, where it seems all to easy to make the transformation.

In a sense Unbreakable is similar to Signs in this respect. We've all seen War of the Worlds and Independence Day...good movies in their own right...but Signs draws you in because it shows you a microcosm of the plight, how one family would be affected by these events and the stark reality of it all.

Perhaps his next is time travel.
Maybe off beat with a serial killer. Off beat for him.

It was too somber for a superhero story. It was very moody, and even when he takes advantage of his powers, the mood of the film never picks up. I can understand that he wanted it to look and feel different than all the other superhero movies, but the reason those movies had some popularity was because they were relatively light on their feet (even the first two Batman films).

Apart from the fact that Bruce Willis couldn't act his way out of a hatbox, I found the film non-sensical and just plain boring.

The Sixth Sense:

After you've figured out Brucy is a ghost in the first five minutes, the only draw to the film is Osmet's performance.

Signs:

Just as I don't go see films with Tom Hanks in them, I no longer watch films with Mel Gibson in the them.

James Newton Howard:

quote:

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Originally posted by SPQR:
Unbreakable:

Apart from the fact that Bruce Willis couldn't act his way out of a hatbox, I found the film non-sensical and just plain boring.

The Sixth Sense:

After you've figured out Brucy is a ghost in the first five minutes, the only draw to the film is Osmet's performance.

Signs:

Just as I don't go see films with Tom Hanks in them, I no longer watch films with Mel Gibson in the them.

James Newton Howard:

This fellow is sooooo overrated it's not funny. That he and Elfman can make mileage off of their insipid doodling, while no surprise (people actually like Debney's Cutthroat Island), their continued success is still a source of amazement to me.

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DON'T REVIEW UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THE MOVIE! Until you've seen the movie and heard the score, you don't know **** .

This is probably the most interesting score I've heard all year. Considering it's practically all based on one theme (more like an 'arrangement') it never loses steam and the variations are superb.

As noted by everyone else, the last 2 tracks are top-notch.

While I enjoyed the movie, I have to say that these were the most ridiculous aliens I have ever encountered in any medium. I did feel the absurdity of the aliens hurt the film, but not beyond redemption.

(Yes, I know that the film is really about faith and family, but for the reaction to the threat to be credible, the threat itself has to be credible.)

Aliens that can be damaged by water ought to at least wear a raincoat or some kind of protective covering on a planet whose surface is composed of 75% water. A rainstorm could ruin your whole assault. You would think that a race that can turn its ships invisible would have discovered waterproofing.

Why would they invade and engage in hand-to-hand combat? You can bet that in the US they faced plenty of homeowners armed with small arms and semi-automatic assault weapons. Obviously they can be damaged by direct physical assault, so the army should be able to put a good hurtin’ on them.

The films answer that they acted as they did so we would avoid nuking them is also ridiculous. I can see this rationale if they were landing craft and actual concentrations of forces that would make the use of nukes feasible, but small raiding parties aren’t logical targets. They should have at least been as well armed as the indigenous inhabitants.

The only answer that I could come up with is that they weren’t actually aliens themselves but rather were constructs that the aliens used for the raid and were considered expendable. The aliens wouldn’t care if they lost or were destroyed by a rainstorm. This would at least explain how such an absurd race of invaders could come about and why they would be vulnerable to water and why they would be sent into combat with an aggressive native species unarmed.

BTW, I thought that Unbreakable was stunning.

I found the tone perfect considering that this wasn’t meant to be 4-four world brought to life. It was meant to be an examination of what if a superhero actually existed.