You've been [April] fooled: some flicks with twists

The spaghetti harvest is coming in early this year!

I have grown to hate M. Night Shyamalan over the years. This is mostly due to a widely-respected rule within my circle of friends that the mention of his name stipulates you must finish half of your beverage (because most of his recent movies are half-assed); the mention of Spielberg, on the other hand, you finish your drink (in honor of the guy that brought us Jaws, not so much 1941 or War of the Worlds). Aside from that, though, Shyamalan's career has been built on "the twist ending", even though he's shied away from that in favor of the boring (Lady in the Water) or ridiculous (The Happening) as of late. A good twist can make a movie, like The Sixth Sense, or destroy it, like The Village. When wielded without purpose, the twist is a terrible thing, hence, my growing hate for Shyamalan (drink!) as he's proved it's one of the only tricks in his bag.

A well-planned surprise ending, though, can be a great cinematic treat. With no further ado, some movies (with spoilers) that could, or at least try to, make you believe Taco Bell bought the Liberty Bell.

The Usual Suspects

SYNOPSIS: Bryan Singer's directorial splash follows a grizzled Customs agent (Chazz Palminteri) trying to piece together what happened at a disastrous drug deal where there weren't any drugs. The last man standing (Kevin Spacey) is apparently too stupid to see through his fallen compatriots' bullshit.

YOU'VE BEEN FOOLED: After convincing you it was actually the former crooked cop (Gabriel Byrne), Singer shows us we've been played by a rather clever and not-at-all-crippled Spacey, who is elusive criminal mastermind Keyser Soze.

SIDE NOTES: This was basically the only decent movie Stephen Baldwin was ever a part of - he followed this up with Bio Dome. Comedian Kevin Pollack made one of his occasional forays into the world of drama, and Benicio Del Toro helped kick-start his career with his barely-comprehensible accent. The first time I saw this, around the time I was 15, I pegged Spacey in the first ten minutes because Singer tried so hard to prove he wasn't the guy (the limp, the line about his pee, the cigarette lighter) in the first few scenes of the movie, but he did convince me it was Byrne in the end.

QUALITY OF THE FOOL: Damn good - it's a modern classic for a reason.

The Maltese Falcon

SYNOPSIS: Humphrey Bogart plays detective Sam Spade, a private eye that gets wrapped up in the quest for a priceless statue in John Huston's 1941 classic.

YOU'VE BEEN FOOLED: The statue is a fake - all was for naught.

SIDE NOTES: The film is chock-full of those classic Hollywood lines that make writers such as yours truly wet their pants. At the end, when a cop asks Spade what the worthless statue is, he wryly replies in that heavenly Bogart rasp, "The stuff dreams are made of."

QUALITY OF THE FOOL: In all fairness, it's not so much a twist as an ironic ending, but a fine one at that. It's the quintessential Bogart hard-boiled detective flick.

Primal Fear

SYNOPSIS: A defense attorney (Richard Gere) defends an altar boy (Ed Norton) who killed an archbishop after being sexually abused.

YOU'VE BEEN FOOLED: Norton claims to have split personalities, the dominant one committed the act, and he walks. But he was faking having split personalities!

SIDE NOTES: This flick was the one to put Norton on the map - his performance is pretty good.

QUALITY OF THE FOOL: So-so. The split personalities, when revealed, is a shocker, and the bigger reveal that he's faking is a big one too - the problem I have with it is it basically makes the movie, thematically, about nothing. It feels like a twist for the sake of having a twist (see: The Village).

The Village

SYNOPSIS: There's monsters in the woods! Ron Howard's daughter is blind! Lots of long takes from stationary cameras!

YOU'VE BEEN FOOLED: Not only are the monsters a rouse made by the town elders, it's modern fucking day.

SIDE NOTES: M. Night Shyamalan cameos as a park ranger, which after this flick I'd rather see him do than direct more movies.

QUALITY OF THE FOOL: Seriously - this movie had so much potential. The twist was beyond frustrating for me, because it negates everything inherently interesting about the world we thought we were seeing. It's pathetically self-serving, tacky, and not at all surprising that it marked Shyamalan's fall from revered director to cinematic punchline.

Gone Baby Gone

SYNOPSIS: Casey Affleck is a private eye in the rough part of Boston looking for a missing girl, and the local police aren't too keen on his getting involved.

YOU'VE BEEN FOOLED: Not only are the cops in on everything, but Ben Affleck proves to be a very effective director.

SIDE NOTES: Did you know that Casey Affleck and Ben Affleck are brothers? It's true!

QUALITY OF THE FOOL: Pretty good. The movie is engaging and the final twist is so bizarre I didn't see it coming. A lot of people let this one slip by in 2007, but it's definitely worth a look.

OTHER TWISTS OF NOTE:

- The Informant!, the true story of the biggest corporate whistle-blower in US history, has a delightfully unreliable narrator.

- Matchstick Men, one of the only good movies Nic Cage did in the past decade (the other was Adaptation), follows an OCD conman getting conned.

- "Reno 911!" had two great cliffhangers in its run: the first season finale, where everyone inadvertently shoots each other, turns out to be a dream Garcia is having about Kenny Rogers; the season five finale, wherein unnamed deputies die in an accident involving a 9/11 float and a taco stand, is glossed over almost entirely the following season opener.

- Chinatown, a seedy detective flick where Jack Nicholson puts on his Humphrey Bogart hat, was completely ruined for me by the worst film professor I ever had.

- Twelve Monkeys, the stranger sci-fi adventure Bruce Willis did in the 90's, has a lot to do with time travel and Brad Pitt.

- Lady In The Water, because you paid $10 to see a terrible Shyamalan movie that doesn't have a twist.

Also, if you want some more movies ruined for you, check out last year's "100 Movie Spoilers In 5 Minutes" made by the fine Fine Brothers.

What's your favorite twist I didn't mention? Leave it in the comments or tweet it to @ihateyourfavmov.

"Signs": either audiences hate Hitchcockian filmmaking, or just September 11th

Critics, for the most part, enjoyed. Audiences, for the most part, hated it.

M. Night Shyamalan had a promising debut. I, of course, am talking about his 1998 opus "Wide Awake", starring Denis Leary, Rosie O'Donnell, and Julia Stiles. Haven't seen it? Neither have I.

And then came 1999, and, according to the DVD case, the "#1 thriller of all time!", "The Sixth Sense". Audiences loved the ghost story, the twist, the cameo by New Kid on the Block Donnie Wahlberg; critics and the entertainment community loved it as well. "The Sixth Sense" was nominated for six Oscars, and although it came up short against "American Beauty", the world seemed to be Shyamalan's oyster.

His 2000 followup, "Unbreakable", didn't wow critics and audiences (this one included), but likewise was considered a decent-enough thriller with a strange twist.

Then, after a two-year hiatus, came "Signs". Critics overall responded positively. Audiences, however, despised it.

"Signs" is the story of Graham (a yet-to-be-crazy Mel Gibson), a recently retired pastor and widower who has lost his faith. Helping him raise his children Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin's first, and amazing, major film performance) is his brother Merrill (a yet-to-be-crazy Joaquin Phoenix). The movie begins with Graham waking in a muted panic - he hears his children screaming. He and his brother find them in the corn fields outside their Bucks County, PA farmhouse. In the middle of the night, a massive series of crop circles has appeared. Although they originally suspect they're the victims of local pranksters (played hysterically in one scene by Stella and The State's Michael Showalter), it quickly seems as though the cause is far more, shall we pun, alien [/ducking chair].

From the very first frame, following the opening credits with James Newton Howard's delightfully harrowing Herrmann-esqe score (below), it is clear that this is a world where something is not right.

There is something on the tip of everyone's tongue, an underlying agitation and tension that nobody in the family directly addresses. Even when we discover about the recent tragic death of the family matriarch, and before the imminent alien invasion is apparent, that uneasiness remains. Even though we're spared any melodramatic speeches from Gibson, and more importantly, the children, about how much mom is missed, they all carry the trauma in how they try to act like everything is fine. Their family, obviously, is not fine, and it becomes all the more apparent that everything in the world is far from fine. Crop circles pop up world-wide, alien craft appear, and it seems like all humanity can do is wait for complete annihilation.

The most common complaints about "Signs" are fair. Audiences criticized the marketing campaign that made "Signs" seem like the next "Independence Day", when in fact the plot is so focused on the family we spend all but two scenes on the farm, and for the most part, we don't even see the alien invaders. When we do, they aren't much to behold, which is the other big complaint. The aliens have a run-of-the-mill anatomy and rendered in a fairly mundane CGI, and the first two sightings - on the roof next to the chimney, and the stray foot in the corn field - are so muted they almost can't be seen. When I first saw this in the theater, I wouldn't have known I should be startled had it not been for the music cue. Although not a common complaint, some critics didn't care for the overall theme of the movie, namely, Graham's grappling with faith and whether or not he believes in chance, coincidence, and fate; some critics felt it was too heavy-handed and predictable. Other critics, like Christopher Smith of the renowned Bangor Daily News, didn't care for Shyamalan's acting role in the film, which seems to be the main crux of his Spinal Tap-ian review, "crap circles".

The heavy-handedness of the theme of fate, faith, and chance is certainly debatable. There are several scenes of Gibson monologue, which, in my opinion, are well-enough written, directed, and performed. Shyamalan's role of Ray Reddy, who was inadvertantly responsible for the death, has a monolgue that's slightly overdone, but happens early enough that it doesn't have too much affect on the final act. If talk about faith versus chance versus fate happens to be your type of movie, I think you're in luck. If you'd rather see Gibson jump on an in-flight saucer and beat the alien to death with a garden hoe, you're out of luck.

The alien invasion scene in particular owes a lot to Hitchcock. Most of what is happening is hidden from view, instead, we're forced to stare at a wall or a flashlight for an agonizing time while we listen to indiscernible racket. Just like in any good suspense thriller, or in one of my all-time favorites ("Jaws"), "Signs" lets our imaginations do most of the heavy lifting for us. On a whim, I threw the DVD in over the long weekend, and wondered if audiences had grown too lazy to appreciate suspense that wasn't spoon-fed. If you don't have an active imagination, I'm pretty sure you won't be predisposed to liking most of the last third of the movie.

On further reflection, though, I wondered if the poor audience reception went beyond differing expectations or the need to see ID4/Saw-style gore. I began to wonder, unironically, if people hated this movie because of September 11th.

Yep, I just said that. Please allow me to explain before you assume I'm crazy.

The flashbacks wherein Graham talks to his wife for the last time were scheduled to shoot September 12th, 2001. This was the first day of filming for the movie "Signs".

A movie about questioning faith, reason, and chance was filmed in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Watching the film seven years after its release, the confusion and shock of those events is palpable, especially in those first scenes.

Given the subject matter, I then couldn't help but wonder: was the film too dark for audiences to really connect to less than a year after September 11th? Even though it earned almost $230 million at the domestic box office, most people I've talked to don't care for the movie. I just can't accept that some questionable CGI, slower pacing, and a few lines could make people hate what is, at the core, a suspenseful claustrophobic thriller that takes cues from cinema's most accomplished directors. Perhaps if the film came out two years earlier, or seven years later, audiences would have responded differently.

TOO MUCH: bad CGI, televisions and radio telling the characters what's going on, could have used fewer dramatic pauses

COULD HAVE USED MORE: nuanced dialogue in Shyamalan's scenes and Gibson's basement monologue

FILM SNOB NOTE: This was the last of Shyamalan's movies to be well-received by critics. His subsequent films, "The Village", "Lady In The Water", and "The Happening" were received with progressively negative reviews. Also, Mark Ruffalo was originally slated for Joaquin's role, but dropped out when a (benign) brain tumor was discovered. Cinematographer Tak Fujimoto replicates his "Silence of the Lambs" style of actors looking directly into the lens.

IHYFM RATING: 3.75 out of FIVE MEHS

IF YOU SAID THIS WAS YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE, I'D THINK: It's odd you didn't say "The Sixth Sense", but at least you didn't say "Lady In The Water".