Amherst Lane

The Lady in the Water-
I must let you know from the start that I am a fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s fims. For one reason or another I have liked all of his work. I know that a lot of viewers and critics give him a hard time, but I don’t let that get in the way enjoying what I think are interesting and well made movies.

The Lady in the Water is about a man name Cleveland Heep played by Paul Giamatti. He is a man that, after a major tragedy, feels that he has lost his meaning in life. Once a doctor, he is now the superintendent of an apartment building. He spends his days fixing sinks and killing bugs. On a small level he feels that the people of the apartment need him. Giamatti plays this type role extremely well. He is often cast as the lovable downtrodden character who we want to see in a happy ending. Bryce Dallas Howard’s character enters the story early on. Her entrance into the movie begins a chain of events that makes Cleveland feel that he once again has a place in life. Her character, named Story, is a Narf who’s is fated to find a special human. Once her character meets this person it will cause a ripple that will ultimately change the world. After this she will be allowed to return to her world. I won’t go into too much detail for those who have not seen this movie.
Just as Story’s name implies, this movie is about legends and myths. It is about returning the mundane world into something magical. But, it is mainly about bringing purpose to those that think they have none.

I truly enjoyed The Lady in the Water. It didn’t rock my world, but it was much better than I thought it was going to be. I will attribute a lot of the appeal of this movie to Paul Giamatti. I enjoy all of his work and his role as Cleveland Heep is no different. He brought a warmth to the character that is rare in Hollywood. His performance is believable and endearing, right down to Cleveland’s constant stuttering. M. Night spends an ample amount of time letting us get to know Cleveland, so that we care about him. This is actually true of all M. Night’s characters. If I could choose one strength of his (besides his amazing choice of cinematographers), it would be his focus on character development. He lets us know the character and peer into their lives in intimate and candid ways. I think the story in “Lady” is not one of his better scripts, but as usual I don’t care. I think that his stories are interesting and original, but they are definitely not the point of his movies. As with all good movies, the focus is on the characters. Whether or not you like his stories, if you ignore his characters you’re missing the point.-Tony Foster

A Scanner Darkly is an amazing new film directed by Richard Linklater. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick. It is amazingly almost exactly the same as the book. If I had to compare this film to anything it would be Fight Club just because it follows the book so well, but as Fight Club strayed from the book a few times, A Scanner Darkly sticks with the book. The only difference would be the ending. I am not giving anything away by saying the ending is just a tad more optimistic than the book.

A Scanner Darkly follows the story of Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves). He seems to be having problems with his job, something is effecting job performance. He begins receiving tests from a couple of scientists who are trying to determine his problems with a strange series of tests. The film also follows the story of James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson) and Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane), 3 junkies who spout philosophy and do drugs all day. The acting is superb. Keanu Reeves actually delivers a great performance and Robert Downey Jr. practically steals every scene. Even Winona Ryder as Donna Hawthorne is good and I normally hate her. I don’t want to explain to much of the story as it will give too much away.

The animation actually fits this film really well (I thought it would be a distraction). I don’t think they could have made these things called “scramble suits” in a regular film. Basically it’s a suit that someone wheres that spits an image of someone else up every second so that no one will know who is underneath. Richard Linklater did a really good job adapting the book and directing as well. I tend to ignore his films as they are heavily philosiphy laden and I tend to hate those type of films. It is a really well crafted film, I enjoyed it very much and recommend people go see this piece of work.

Rene A. Moncivais