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SIGNS By Rachel Deahl Review Film Critic Click for the Official Website Without even opening the cover of the latest issue of Newsweek, which features a picture of director M. Night Shyamalan behind a caption that boldly declares him "The Next Spielberg", the reason behind the gimmicky comparison becomes obvious after viewing Signs. Shyamalan, who rocketed into the Hollywood A-list after his debut feature, The Sixth Sense, landed him on the Oscar ballot, continues his stylized brand of simplistic cinematic spook stories with this, his third film. So, is this up-and-coming young moviemaker the next Spielberg after all? Signs proves that the answer to this question is both yes and no. Mel Gibson stars as Graham Hess, the stoic father of two young children, living on a sizeable farm outside of Pennsylvania. A former man of the cloth, Hess abandoned his faith after his wife was hit and killed by a dozing local driver and is now raising his kids with the help of younger brother, Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix). When the clan discovers a large, mysterious pattern carved into their corn crop, the group is seized by a panicked curiosity about who or what could be responsible. Is this the work of God? Have pranksters done this? Are little green men the culprits? Combining Shyamlan's distinctively slow, steadied camerawork with a kitschy 1950s style sci-fi TV show, Signs is a refreshing blend of opposites. From the opening credits, which feature stark black writing against a gray sun-splashed backdrop and accompanied by a grating staccato soundtrack, Signs is declared as a kind of extended episode of The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents from the very start. With Gibson and company living in a bizarrely enclosed burb lost somewhere between the 1940s and today (you gotta love a town where everybody calls you Father even after you've quit the Church), the feeling that Alfred Hitchcock will appear on screen in the final frame to explain what just happened never quite leaves. The triumph of Shyamalan's latest film once again shines through in the wonderful storytelling. With the action essentially limited to the house, Shyamalan shows great skill at developing a compelling and at times terrifying scenario that finally fits together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. Another surprising highlight comes from the exquisite ensemble cast, youngsters Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin are exception as the two smallest Hesses with Joaquin Phoenix once again shining in a supporting role (Phoenix nearly upstaged Russell Crowe in Gladiator). As for the reference to a certain other well-known filmmaker, the comparison is certainly worth noting because Shyamalan demonstrates here his unique ability to combine intelligent filmmaking with simple ideas and shiny American values. Steven Spielberg's genius isn't simply his ability to craft unforgettable images, it's his ability to craft those images in the context of identifiable stories that give mass audiences hope and comfort. It's Spielberg's unique, and uncanny, understanding of how to manipulate audiences and please them at the same time that sets him apart from his peers. It's a quality that is both fascinating and infuriating to watch unfold. In many ways, Shyamalan displays similar tendencies. Like Spielberg, he is wed to patriarchal themes, his films all attempt re-establish the nuclear family, a journey that, for Shyamalan, usually centers on children re-connecting with their father. In The Sixth Sense, a fatherless pre-teen gets a surrogate kind of dad in the form of Bruce Willis' ghost of shrink. In Unbreakable another kid connects with his dad through a comic book-like fable that turns his pops into a superhero. In Signs this journey takes on an added element of faith, as the story strives to turn Gibson's character back into both a father and a 'Father'. While there's no doubt that this young director displays shades of a Hollywood legend, Shyamalan still shares more philosophy with the elder director than style. Shyamalan certainly has proven that, like Spielberg at his worst, underneath his finely tuned stories often lay disappointingly hollow cores. FULL FRONTAL Grade: C Click for the Official Site Billed by Miramax as a kind of companion piece to sex, lies and videotape , Full Frontal was touted as the glorious reunion of the wunderkind arthouse director turned Hollywood golden boy, Steven Soderbergh, with the indie film company cum mainstream studio that put his first effort into theaters. In 1989, when Miramax released sex, lies and videotape, Soderbergh was an unknown and Miramax was far from a household name. The studio largely distributed foreign titles and groundbreaking works like Errol Morris' documentary, The Thin Blue Line (1988). And, when sex, lies and videotape exploded onto screens, there was much to be excited about. A bold and brilliant investigation into the nature of love, deceit, sex and our inherent need to watch, the film was undoubtedly the best of the year and easily the finest achievement of the decade. Today, Miramax is an established Hollywood player that clings to a shrinking reputation as a daring studio, distributing an equal amount of mainstream crap with a roster of independent pictures and foreign titles; the gamut swings from In the Bedroom and 40 Days and 40 Nights , to Baron. Soderbergh has evolved as well, from a daring innovator into a more conventional filmmaker. A cynic might cite this reunion as the joint venture of two sell-outs; if that's a bit unfair and overzealous, the final product appropriately has the last word. A disappointing, self-indulgent stab at Hollywood painted as an investigation into filmmaking, Full Frontal has neither the bite nor the freshness that Soderbergh's debut demonstrated. If anything, this flashy experiment is more reminiscent of the shallow, self-righteous whining that categorized the grueling Hurly-burly than the moving theatrics that propelled sex, lies and videotape. Shot on film and digital video, Full Frontal follows a group of Los Angeles natives throughout the course of a single day as their lives intertwine and overlap. Friends, relatives, lovers and co-workers finally converge at the birthday party of Hollywood producer, Gus (David Duchovny). The cast includes, among others, Julia Roberts playing a Julia Roberts-like actress named Francesca who is playing a character named Catherine in a film within the film, David Hyde Pierce as a nebbishy, insecure Niles Crane-like magazine writer named Carl; Catherine Keener as Pierce's uber-bitchy and unhappy wife, Lee; and Blair Underwood as a philandering moviestar named Calvin. Structured around the film that Roberts and Underwood are making (which is, incidentally, about making a film), Full Frontal begins within the narrative of its internal fiction. The studio vehicle is purportedly a trite romance about a reporter named Catherine (Roberts) who is doing a story on an up-and-coming Black actor named Nicholas (Underwood). For seemingly uncompelling reasons, Soderbergh chooses to shoot the film within the film on film stock and the reality section of the movie on digital video. The clash of the two mediums is more annoying than anything else and does little more than provide a logical point of differentiation between the story and the story within the story. The ceaselessly talky narratives, which finally parallel one another, creak along at a sluggish pace. Aside from a selection of hilarious scenes in which Keener's HR Manager takes sadistic pleasure in firing a string of employees, Full Frontal offers up a collection of lifeless characters wandering through a vaguely reminiscent Hollywood narrative. Mostly what Soderbergh delivers is an onslaught of mindless cameos and in-jokes about the off-screen careers of his stars. Brad Pitt appears briefly to shoot a scene; Terrence Stamp wanders through the background of a few scenes as if he's stumbled out of a frame of The Limey and landed in Soderbergh's latest creation by accident. Julia Roberts picks up a hot young lighting guy at a party as if her recent real-life hubby, cameraman Daniel Moder, was given a non-screen persona. Miramax head Harvey Weinstein appears at the wrap party alongside Soderbergh. Taken together the effect is more obnoxious than funny or interesting; Robert Altman jammed more biting humor and intelligent satire into five minutes of The Player than Soderbergh gets into his entire film. Certainly there are more effective and enjoyable ways to drive home the notion that films are built on artifice than by producing an artificial film.
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