7 Word Weekend Movie Review: The Town, Never Let Me Go and a Shyamalan's not the Devil

New Movie Releases Reviewed in 7 Words Each

Never Let Me Go (limited) - But I kind of really want to...

Alpha and Omega - Pouring this one out for Dennis Hopper.

Devil - The best looking Shyamalan films aren't his.

Easy A - Grade: D (see what I did there?)

Jack Goes Boating (limited) - Is it Oscar season already? Oh, yawn.

The Town - Affleck is always best when he's writing.

Did you like The Island but thought it had too happy of an ending? Then you'll love Never Let Me Go. Assuming that is that they keep the ending from the book. No I haven't read it. I had a long conversation with someone who described it in great detail while I sat there nodding my head and saying, "Really? Wow. You don't say? That sounds fascinating." The book was on TIME's 100 greatest books and I suppose I should have read it. Past a point though, I tend to get bored with dystopian books. The movie looks as bleak as the world it supposedly paints. Maybe if I actually liked Keira Knightley. 

The other horror shot for the weekend is Devil the new M. Night joint. I like the look of it. It's really only based on a short story Shyamalan wrote so his meddling hands won't interfere with what's a decent idea for a script. The screenplay is written by Brian Nelson who previously handled the adaptation of 30 Days of Night. I won't hold that against him though as the source material wasn't great to begin with. He also wrote Hard Candy which I thought was okay but overrated. 

On the directing side of things you have John Erick Dowdle who directed Quarantine, which was okay but certainly no [Rec]. For what it was I suppose the directing was, at the very least, perfunctory. He also directed The Poughkeepsie Tapes, which was... for lack of a better term, not great. At any rate he should have no problem with a camera pointing down into an elevator. 

Why bring up the less than thrilling credits of the movie makers? Because even with M. Night having crafted a few excellent movies, weighed against his current track record, I still have more hope for a Shyamalan movie that has more of a cursory involvement from him. Scorch. Pow. Actually, if you consider his last batch of movies (with the exception of The Last Airbender) he had some decent ideas. He just didn't execute them well. So maybe this is the best way for him to be involved in movies. Come up with ideas and let someone else handle it.

Course it could suck big time and this would all be a moot point.

For me, the best looking movie out of the bunch this weekend is The Town. I thought the last film Ben Affleck wrote and directed was great. Gone Baby Gone was a great (though very violent) crime thriller. It was dark, gritty and packed a good punch. Affleck's new film looks to be in the same vein. I won't see it in theater, but I think it'll be a must rent when it hits video.

Have a great weekend everyone!