He goes by "Night," but it's hard to dispute his sunny disposition. Just a few minutes into a conversation with M. Night Shyamalan in a New York City hotel room yesterday, it was obvious to me that the director has managed to occupy such a unique niche in the Hollywood landscape because he's immediately likable. Of course, a little movie released in 1999 called The Sixth Sense didn't hurt, either.

After landing two Oscar nominations and international acclaim for his masterful ghost story, Shyamalan continued to market himself as a brand. Since then, the results have been mixed. Signs was an indisputable hit. Unbreakable has its supporters. Lady in the Water? Not so much. But that failure hasn't prevented the filmmaker from dealing with audacious material: His latest movie, The Happening, finds a married couple (Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel) thrust into a world where people inexplicably become suicidal after getting struck by an ominous, unseen toxin. Forces of evil usually remain unseen in Shyamalan's films, and The Happening is no exception to that rule. I spoke to the 37-year-old Philadelphia resident about the personal philosophies guiding his career choices, the polarized reactions to his work, and what the future will bring.

Over the years, we've seen several lists that attempt to name the top movie villains of all time. From Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) in Die Hard (my personal favorite) to Jack Nicholson's Joker, we could probably sit here, throw out a number of intimidating bad guys and debate all day long. But what about the least intimidating? Those baddies who were supposed to frighten us, but couldn't quite live up to their evil reputations?

Well, The Phat Phree has come up with a list of the 11 least intimidating movie villains of all time ... and I must say, they're pretty spot on ... except for two. Let's see, we have Mr. Glass (Samuel L. Jackson) in Unbreakable, Madison Lane (Demi Moore) in Charlie's Angels 2, Chucky in Child's Play (c'mon, it's a doll!), The Goblin King Jareth (David Bowie) in Labyrinth, Darth Vader (the Hayden Christensen version), Nuclear Man (Mark Pillow) in Superman IV and (perhaps their best pick) John Travolta in everything (Broken Arrow, Battlefield Earth, Face Off, The Punisher, Swordfish), among others. One of the villains I strongly disagree with is John Kreese (Martin Kove) in Karate Kid 1, 2 and 3. Talk about intimidating -- when I was growing up, that guy scared the crap out of me. I actually quit Karate lessons just so I didn't have to run into one of him down the line. Seriously.

Another bad pick (thrown in as an honorable mention) was Zod (Terrence Stamp) from Superman 2. No way! Zod was The Man! And certainly a very intimidating villain. Check out their list and let us know who should or shouldn't be on there. If you ask me, almost every Batman villain (Danny DeVito as The Penguin? Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze?) should've at least got a mention. What say you?

I consider myself a fan of M. Night Shyamalan's films, and it's not just because we're both Philly guys. Despite the popular backlash, I still think The Sixth Sense is a pretty darn good movie. I also feel that Unbreakable is borderline brilliant and that Signs works well enough, even if it doesn't exactly stand up to repeat viewings. I'm also of the opinion that The Village is an indulgent mess, and it's the first M. Night movie that I actively disliked. I've not yet seen Lady in the Water, so obviously I cannot even venture an opinion on the flick ... but I've spoken to a lot of film critics (Shyama-fans and non-fans alike) and they assure me it's pretty darn terrible. (It's currently wooing a 19% approval rate at Rotten Tomatoes, and neither Kim nor Ryan was all that thrilled with the flick.)

So I thought I'd transplant one of my recent geeky phone conversations into blog form and pose the following query: Is M. Night Shyamalan a fine filmmaker who's currently going through a rough spot in his career ... or is he a one-trick pony -- an emperor, as they say, with no clothes?

One of the most common opinions regarding the guy's last two films is a pretty logical one: That the filmmaker became so popular and so powerful so fast that now he's working in a virtual vacuum, a one-man filmmaking machine that's become insular, isolated, and beholden to no one -- and that includes the producers and studio execs who just might be able to contribute something important to the process. Or is M. Night a brilliant renegade of a big-budget filmmaker, a guy who tells the exact stories he wants to tell, and damn it all if the audiences and/or critics don't "get it"?

So what do you think? Are we dealing with a filmmaker who's "hit the wall," creatively-speaking? Did the guy only have two or three good movies in him? Or will he bounce back from the criticisms of The Village and Lady in the Water and deliver another movie that recaptures some of that Sixth Sense magic? And by "magic," I don't just mean the $293 million in domestic box office.