Signs Scores $60 Million

The summer of 2002 just keeps getting better and better. In comparison to the woeful blockbuster bellyflop of 2001, movies are coming out that not only gladden the hearts of Hollywood financiers, but also please the critics. And none has been more highly anticipated that the new M Night Shyamalan film, Signs. Starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix, Signs promises to resurrect the alien story as Shyamalan did with ghosts in The Sixth Sense. Certainly the box office on its opening weekend seems to bear this out, with the film garnering some $60 million in its first three days of release - that's the biggest ever opening for Mel and more than twice the amount Unbreakable made in the same period. And its definitely been a critic pleaser, with the New York Times praising it thus; 'Signs is a tribute to Shyamalan's gifts, which are such that we'll keep watching the skies for his next project. And if that weren't praise enough, uber-critic Roger Ebert calls it, ''the work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out of thin air.'