A Look Back: The Sixth Sense
The Sixth Sense is a 1999 supernatural drama in which a troubled eight-year-old boy, Cole (a brilliant Haley Joel Osment) claims he can talk to the dead. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a child psychologist suffering from guilt after one of his former patients, Vincent (Donnie Wahlberg), visits him years later and shoots him, then takes his own life. In trying to help Cole, Malcolm sees possible redemption. Cole’s mother, Lynn (Toni Collette) struggles to cope with the pressures of being a single mother while things are going on around her that she doesn’t understand. The movie catapulted writer/director M. Night Shyamalan to fame and had everybody talking about its…
Shallow Foundations
Note: Although this blog references The Rise of Skywalker, at this point I still haven’t seen it. When you sit down to write a story, you create characters who’ll serve that story. They each have a unique function. Once that function is complete, the character is done. They exit the story. James Bond movies illustrate how characters function in self-contained stories. Bond’s boss, M, briefs Bond about his mission. Q will provide Bond with weapons and gadgets. Once M and Q have fulfilled their roles, their jobs are complete. In a few Bonds, M and Q might reappear, but usually never with any great depth, necessity, or regularity. There’ll be…