A View from Mars:

The Village (B+). Of M. Night Shyamalan's most recent body of works (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs) and my progressive enjoyment of each movie, this one lands somewhere between the first two for me. The setting of this movie takes place in a secluded village nestled among the creepy forest in which mythical creatures reside. The town plays itself like that of Amish country in the late 1800s, complete with elders, community suppers and the "village idiot." The cast is a superb bright spot with notable performances by Bryce Dallas Howard who plays the blind Ivy Walker, the youngest daughter of the lead elder(played by William Hurt), and Adrien Brody (Noah Percy) as the...well...the "village idiot." Joaquin Phoenix is solid as Lucious Hunt who is the only person not scared of what lies beyond. I won't get too much into the story for fear of revealing spoilers and if there is or isn't a twist ending which has become the classic staple to any M. Night film. I will note that you will be doing yourself a disservice if you focus too much on how it will all end as opposed to enjoying how you got there. This movie is not so much a scary thriller, although it does have it's tense moments, as it is a well crafted character story. It had some of the better filmed scenes in a movie that I've seen in a while. How people will react to this film is a tough call; if everybody liked The Sixth Sense and you either loved or hated Unbreakable, then I suppose The Village probably is closer in critical appeal to the latter rather than the former. Either way, I was overly satisfied and the reason my review just missed out on an A rating is because Night's bar has been set pretty high. This may not have been the homerun I expect from him, but a triple ain't so bad, and sometimes, a triple is harder to come by.