The Sixth Sense (1999)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Cast: Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams, Haley Joel Osment

Have I Seen It Before: I have a distinct feeling this is going to make up the majority of the review*. The film works—as so many of Shyamalan’s do—as a magic trick. The first time I saw the film, I could swear—and I mean swear, just as much as I swore that Beyond the Cabin in the Woods did an episode of Maximum Overdrive (1986) five years before we actually did one—there was a scene where Lynn (Collette) and and Crowe (Willis) have a conversation about Cole (Osment).

Has that scene—which would fundamentally undercut everything about the film that made it special—ever been in the film at any other point I’ve seen it? No. It was never there.

But as I watched the film the first time, my brain filled in the missing parts of the story. As such, the narrative sleight-of-hand that both branding and possibly compulsion have demanded from Shyamalan ever since worked like a charm here. I was looking exactly where the film wanted me to look at every single moment, so that when the boom is finally lowered, I was thoroughly fooled.

And so were you. Admit it.

Did I Like It: Judging a Shyamalan film but the success of its final reveal feels a bit reductive, if unavoidable. Unbreakable (2000) lives rent-free in my head because the magic still works, but I dismissed the entirety of The Village (2004) the moment I figured out the ending** and dismissed it as a kind of dumb. Here, the ending that we’re all dancing around is kind of beside the point. The reason this film made Shyamalan a household name is because the film that precedes it is filled with performers engaged with well-realized material, and bringing everything they can to characters we care about.

Maybe the ending of Shyamalan film never mattered, after all?

*Look at that. I was right.

**Which was about twenty minutes into the film, incidentally.

About a Boy (2002)

Director: Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz

Cast: Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. Every twenty years or so I go off the deep end of everything Nick Hornby, and this one ends up getting rolled up into the mix.

Did I Like It: There’s just something about Hornby’s novels—I did finish re-reading this one right before pressing play; like I said, deep end—where they are the opposite of most novels, and their cienmatic adaptation feels inevitable. High Fidelity (2000) can survive the indignity of being pulled from the UK to take place in Chicago, and still winds up being an exceptionally faithful, and strangely worthy adaptation of the source material. I tend to think of it as the Casino Royale (2006) syndrome. Try pitching making the original Bond movie, but excise Baccarat from the mix. Most purists would automatically turn their noses up and keep them there. Then, the film comes out, and it is a strangely faithful, and iminently loved adaptation.

Maybe British authors are just better at producing adaptable material.

Here, too, I’m struck by the fact that the book is not only begging to be made into a film, but begging to have Hugh Grant star as Will Freeman. The cadences of Will’s thoughts and speech are befuddled in the specifically Hugh Grant wavelength. Other British actors might have been able to do a commendable job in the role, but it wouldn’t appear to be such an easy, seemless performance.

The movie is certainly helped by the introduction of Hoult. Who knew he had a full-throated movie store living within him that was waiting for a growth spurt to be released? Here, he plays the awkward kid just past his cute phase with a similar ease. We should have known what he could do by his coming on the screen this self-assured.