Split

#StokerScore 8/10

I clicked Google images to find a movie poster to go with this review, as I always do, and was slightly thrown that the first images to come up were for the Croatian town or a yoga exercise because there was a time, relatively not that long ago either, when M. Night Shyamalan's name was a guarantee of a film's potential. 

Hitchcock was notoriously difficult to spot

He was "the man who does the twist ending", who does the Hitchcock thing of appearing in his own movies, all of this following a string of films that had twists towards the end of the film and small cameos played by the director. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village, I enjoyed all of them and I really enjoyed the range of actors that he encouraged into the movies too. Joaquin Phoenix was great alongside Mel Gibson in Signs, much better than when chewing scenery for Ridley Scott in Gladiator at any rate, Bruce Willis, Samuel L., William Hurt, and he was pretty good at getting performances out of kids, too. Haley Joel Osment, Spenser Treat Clark, Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin, to name just some (notice I don't mention Jaden Smith here)

Shyamalan could have got a good performance out of Jake 

Then the bubble burst, or the schtick got old, or the Midas touch left him because he made a series of dreadful movies topped off by the disaster that was the abysmal, diabolical, awfulness After Earth. Bang in the middle of his bad run he happened to produce a classic little horror in Devil, so maybe he's just better when not playing with big budgets? I guess time will tell because with Split he's back to a much more dialogue-driven, small budget affair. Gone too is the twist ending, well, to a certain extent but this is a spoiler free zone so all I'll say is that if you're over 30 you might just appreciate the end of this movie.

What's good? Well, the writing is getting better again and the performances, especially from James McAvoy and his psychiatrist played by Betty Buckley and reminiscent of Jenny O'Hara in Devil,  are excellent. The smaller scale in terms of the sets encourages you to focus on the actors, and there is a pervasive sense of pessimism that I always found in his earlier films running through this one too.

I just saw the....Last Airbender

I left the cinema having thoroughly enjoyed this, I thought it was sensitive towards mental illnesses, as much as it could be, especially showing the caring side of the psychiatrist and the greater acceptance of mental disorders. All in all it was a welcome return to form and I can't wait to see what M. Night has for us next...