Glass

This era calls for a strong stance against movies that divide the audience, and rather than beginning to accommodate such cases, it is easier to start laughing at them. Glass,  just like The Sixth Sense was in its time, is a film for patient viewers, but it doesn't suit today's trends too well. M. Night Shyamalan brings back that slow pacing and uniqueness, and while most of the running time promises a new generation of comic books, in the end, it brings the opposite, with an anti-comic-book whose finale kicks even the slightly sympathetic viewer directly in the tenders. With the help of perfectly used flashbacks, I have to admit that I simply wasn't prepared for some points, and although I don't think everything was planned like this twenty years ago, I would believe that what the creator carried in his head for years as a continuation of the Unbreakable relationship between David and Elijah should have looked just like this, and Kevin served as the ideal trigger for it. There is no room for digressions here, so I have to smirk at the complaints about the sequels or spin-offs we are now supposed to expect. They'll never come, and they shouldn't. Everything has been said, to the very last drop. And I'm giving it the highest rating, even though I'm not sure I can ever come back here again, and even though everything inside me was hurting when I left the cinema. (2019-01-24)

Mr. Shyamalan put a lot effort into this one. He works consistently with the dramatic potential of the three main characters and their deepening interactions, which bring them closer to one another in the same house. The story escalates and entertains by exploring and uncovering the essence of the brilliant theme (the magical idea of comic book heroes existing in real life) that he created 19 years ago and followed up on three years ago. As we’re accustomed to with him, he did it with abundant visual creativity and thematic references, while making two different points in the climax. But despite the fact that everything fits together in the first point and becomes conspiratorial in the right way, as well as original and bold when considering the viewer’s expectations, I’m not quite sure I wanted it that way. Not to mention the second point, which simply should not be there at all, because the movie absolutely doesn’t build up to it. (2019-01-20)

I understand where the director was going with all of this. Unfortunately, I don’t really get how he filmed it. While  Unbreakable is a fundamental movie of American cinema in my eyes, and Split set out to be the same, Glass connected the stories of all participants in a way that was not only unnecessary but it also spoiled my impression of the two previous films, which ended perfectly… and should have remained that way. But M. Night Shyamalan turned his superheroes into such strange figures that even though I still liked James McAvoy’s unrestrained acting, the movie as a whole made me really unhappy. It felt like a complete mess. But it’s still Shyamalan, so if you can endure the boring madhouse-like middle of the move, the finale can be quite intriguing from a screenwriting perspective. You certainly have to give him that. (2019-06-14)

M. Night Shyamalan goes back to his roots and disappoints badly. In everything. Glass is a film that will probably make you a little embarrassed for the filmmaker himself. It looks televisual, but above all it's all incredibly stupid and self-aware at the same time. The twists and turns are absurd, the pacing is awfully slow and any attempts at philosophising are inhumanly off, and the decent Bruce Willis and James McAvoy can't pull it up to average. Watching Glass is like watching M. Night Shyamalan destroy his own legacy for two hours. And it's not a pretty sight. (2019-01-16)

McAvoy and Willis are outstanding, as they finally have some good roles after a long time. Samuel L. Jackson doesn't take any chances, but he is surprisingly pushed into the background. Glass picks up nicely where we left off twenty years ago. Yes, times have changed since Unbreakable and maybe we don’t need another movie like that. But still it makes for a pleasant and down-to-earth contrast to today’s comic-book blockbusters. It works as it should, but it just lacks anything shocking after all of the X-Men movies. Even so, Shy offers solid and quite surprising twists. This had to have been an unpleasant surprise for those who have only seen Split, but not Unbreakable. They wouldn't be able to make heads or tails out of it. (2019-01-20)