Lady in the Water

M. Night Shyamalan writes and directs this self-proclaimed, grown-up "bedtime story" about an apartment building superintendent named Cleveland (Paul Giamatti) who discovers a magical sea-nymph named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard) who's been transported to this world and is living in the building's own ...more

A single brilliant achievement (The Sixth Sense) bought M. Night Shyamalan a career's worth of ill-advised jurisdiction over the content of his films. With Lady in the Water, such self-absorption finally became impossible to tolerate. That point might logically have been reached with The Village, the paean to bloated mysticism that preceded this one. Except Warner Brothers clearly didn't learn the lesson that caused the ugly separation between Disney and Shyamalan during pre-production, allowing ...more