From the desk of The Movie Snob:

The Village (C+). I really liked The Sixth Sense and Signs, and I kind of liked Unbreakable. This movie has to go in the kind-of-liked category. For a while, director M. Night Shyamalan successfully delivers his trademark spooky atmospherics and creepy goings-on, but I thought that the script was subpar and that the plot ultimately fell apart. Of course I won’t reveal any plot points here beyond the set-up: the titular Village is a pseudo-Amish community living in a little valley deep in the forest, circa 1899. But if this is America, is a strange alternate-universe kind of America, because the forest is home to mysterious and very unpleasant creatures of some sort. The village elders struck a truce with the creatures a long time ago, and they solemnly warn the young people that they cannot venture into the forest lest the creatures retaliate by coming into the Village. Ron Howard’s daughter delivers a nice performance as the blind daughter of the leading elder, and I thought there were some good scary parts, but the movie never came together for me.

I, Robot (B). I didn’t have high expectations for this flick, but I was pleasantly surprised. In the near future, which looks a lot like the future America depicted in Minority Report, robots have become ubiquitous household appliances. The big robot-manufacturing corporation is just about to unveil a revolutionary new line of even better, more humanlike robots when a leading robotics scientist commits suicide under mysterious circumstances. Or was he murdered by one of these new robots? It seems that the only one asking this question is Del Spooner (Will Smith), a robot-hating cop who plays by his own rules. I don’t think I quite followed all the twists and turns of the plot, but I didn’t find that necessary to enjoy the action sequences. If you want to kick back for a couple of hours and enjoy scene after scene of the Fresh Prince kicking metallic behind, this is the movie for you.