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Yes, it's campy. But those explosions. Sure, it's predictable. But those explosions. Indeed, it's silly. But those explosions. And did I mention the explosions? I can't think of any more amazing explosion in movie history than when the alien spaceship fires upon the Empire State Building, which is blasted into smithereens in an overwhelming nuclear inferno, followed by massive fireballs roaring through the streets of Manhattan, decimating everything in its path. But what makes this movie so stinkin' fun is the lead roles played by Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, and their one-liners throughout. Goldblum's best line comes when they're trying to escape the alien mother ship; he turns to Smith (piloting their craft) and says, "Must go faster. Must go faster"—a nod-and-a-wink to 1993's Jurassic Park, when Goldblum used the same line while trying to get away from an angry T-Rex. Smith's best line comes after he shoots down an alien spaceship in the desert, and then, after his own crash landing, he walks up to the enemy craft, opens the hatch, sees the hideous creature, punches it in the face, knocking it unconscious, and shouts, "Welcome to Earth!" (Trivia note: The original script called for him to say, "Now that's a close encounter.")

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Shyamalan had already wowed us with 1999's The Sixth Sense, stunning moviegoers with his incredibly creative surprise ending. While Signs doesn't end with quite such an astonishing twist, I love how he worked the true meaning of the title throughout the story. No, it wasn't the aliens' crop circles, the film's obvious "signs." It was the little, subtle things all along that ultimately added up to the happy ending for Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) and his family—Bo's paranoia about water contaminants, Morgan's asthmatic condition, Merrill's baseball glory days, and even Graham's wife's dying words, when she told her husband, among other things, to "see." See what? For Graham, who had turned his back on God and given up the priesthood after his wife's tragic death, it meant seeing the evidence—however subtle—of divine fingerprints all around him. In the end, Graham does indeed "see," yielding a cathartic conclusion that is simultaneously heartwarming and tear-jerking. On top of all that, Shyamalan pulls it off with Hitchcockian aplomb, starting with the opening credits and by taking us along for an incredibly suspenseful ride—all while refusing to show us the aliens for most of the movie. A terrific film on so many fronts.

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No respectable top 10 list of the best alien invasion movies would be complete without noting the worst of the lot. That distinction goes to 1953's Robot Monster, in which the alien, Ro-Man, is a guy in a gorilla suit. No joke. But there's more: He's wearing a diving helmet … spray-painted silver … with a TV antenna duct-taped to the back. Are you laughing yet? Ro-Man, who meanders around at about the pace you'd expect from a guy in a burdensome gorilla suit, is somehow a threat to the entire human race, even though he's the only one of his kind on our planet, and even though he apparently has no weapons. But we know he's one ba-a-a-d dude. Why? Because he lives in a cave. Oh, and because he communicates with his leader (who's in a spaceship) via a sophisticated communication device that looks suspiciously like an old radio sitting on a coffee table outside his cave. But it's obviously a sophisticated radio of the future. We know this, because it emits … bubbles. Yes, bubbles. Director Phil Tucker apparently only had a $20,000 budget for the movie, and it shows. Oh, how it shows.

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