Scorsese to shoot kids’ film in 3D; elsewhere, pigs fly
Apr 14
I knew there wasn’t something quite right about the universe this morning. Maybe it was the pitch of the cat’s meow as it woke me up before my alarm, maybe it’s because there’s been precisely zero interesting news all day, maybe it’s because it’s the cat’s birthday today, but ever since waking to the plaintive howling of said pet I’ve felt a little out of sorts.
I now know why.
It’s been rumoured that Martin Scorsese’s next film might happen to be Brian Selznick’s The Invention Of Hugo Cabret, a children’s book about about … children doing something, or whatever, but today it’s finally been confirmed. I never really paid attention to the project partly because it’s an adaptation of a children’s book but mostly because — well just look at the title: it doesn’t make sense. Is Hugo Cabret the object that is to be invented? Is Hugo Cabret the mechanical man mentioned in the synopsis? If it’s Hugo Cabret that’s doing the inventing, there needs to be an apostrophe and an s at the end of that sentence, to demonstrate ownership, otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Who is Hugo Cabret and who is inventing him? What a grammatical mystery! Time for a quick synopsis, I think:
ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, AND THIEF, twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and the owner of a small toy booth in the train station, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message all come together…in The Invention of Hugo Cabret.
This 526-page book is told in both words and pictures. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things. Each picture (there are nearly three hundred pages of pictures!) takes up an entire double page spread, and the story moves forward because you turn the pages to see the next moment unfold in front of you.
Hey, that sounds pretty neat, though it doesn’t help with the invention / inventor dilemma of the title’s ambiguous grammar. However: “There are nearly three hundred pages of pictures!” so I guess it can’t be all bad.
So anyway, Martin Scorsese, he of the classical style of filmmaking, is planning to shoot Hugo Cabret in 3D. He’s recently expressed his support of the format, but complained that movies like Precious should be shot in 3D, not just big dumb blockbusters. In that I agree with him — if anyone wants 3D to stick around longer than a few years, they need to make good movies in the format, not spectacle movies. There hasn’t been a single 3D film yet released that has warranted its third-dimensional status, so I’m still sceptical about the format.
This news is bad for a couple of reasons. Scorsese has a very particular shooting style, and utilising the digital 3D format will kill a lot of the colour, contrast and lighting he tends to use to help his frame ‘pop.’ 3D cameras are large and bulky and not very mobile, so Scorsese’s style will be hampered by physical restrictions (no Copacabana-style tracking shot, for instance). And being that the source book is aimed at the 9 – 12 year-old demographic, the movie will probably be marketed as such as well, deterring adults from seeing the movie and thus preventing a potentially good 3D movie from getting its hooks into the brains of those that matter — those with the money.
I’m not against 3D on principle, it’s just that it’s failed to produce any movies worth the additional price and eyestrain brought on by the format. Additionally, I’m not big on kids’ films, even if they’re headlined by the name “Martin Scorsese,” and even if the cast does include the likes of Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kingsley, and Chloe Moretz (from Kick-Ass), as does The Invention Of Hugo Cabret. It’ll definitely be interesting to see what Scorsese does with the format, and the genre, but until we at least get a trailer or poster or something, colour me suspicious about this whole affair.
The Invention Of Hugo Cabret starts shooting in London in June 2010; expect the finished film to hit screens on the 9th of December, 2011
While you’re here, as a quick follow-up to yesterday’s 3D TV article, Samsung have relased an amusing viral ad that appears to satirise the 3D industry in general. At least, I hope it’s meant to be satirical, otherwise it’s eye-rollingly stupid. See for yourself:
Alfonso Cuaron making 3D space thriller with Robert Downey Jr: yes please
Mar 17
Mexican movie virtuoso Alfonso Cuaron has lined up his next project: Gravity, a thriller set on a remote space station. Originally Angelina Jolie was in talks to play the lead role (as well that character’s daughter, or something), which would have guaranteed Cuaron the moolah he’d need to pull off what sounds like an effects-heavy studio job; when Jolie pulled out, the financial future of the project seemed doubtful. But now we hear (from slashfilm) that none other than Hollywood hot potato Robert Downey, Jr. is on board to replace Jolie. Fans of cinema rejoice!
For those who haven’t seen Cuaron’s Children Of Men, do yourself a favour and rectify that gross oversight. Even if you don’t dig the politics and social sci-fi trappings of the film, you can at least appreciate the white-knuckle action scenes, the electric performances and the uniqueness of the shooting style. If you haven’t seen Children, though, Cuaron directed the third (and best) of the Harry Potter flicks, and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the one where the quality of the performances suddenly improved dramatically over the previous entries. For a Potter film, Prisoner was pretty dark, with moody, classical cinematography and a few neat visual motifs sprinkled throughout.
Anyway, my faith in Alfonso Cuaron is pretty solid, so I’m not even annoyed that Gravity is going to be shot in 3D. Up until now I’ve been pretty sceptical of all this 3D jazz, but with folk like Martin Scorsese and Alfonso Cuaron angling to shoot their small, character-driven films in the format, it’ll be a less bitter pill to swallow. I have a sneaking suspicion that Cuaron’s swooping yet restrained shooting style will come across very well in 3D, if 3D cameras allow you to swoop and move with the kind of precision and grace he’s known for. Plus Downey, Jr.’s big puppy-dog eyes in 3D will prove a major selling point for many people.
For those disappointed by Avatar (come on, I know you’re out there), maybe Gravity will prove to be the intelligent, mature sci-fi action flick in 3D we always wanted.
Gravity starts shooting in (northern hemisphere) summer 2010, wrapping before Robert Downey, Jr. is due to begin shooting Sherlock Holmes 2 in autumn.
Summer review round-up: the good, the bad and the ugly
Mar 01
Way back in the beginning of December, in our first week of existence, I posted a list of the five most anticipated films of the summer. Now that it is officially autumn (even if the weather obstinately refuses to accept this incontravertible truth), it’s the perfect time to look back over the past three months and put the summer releases in perspective. There were a few surprises, some hits and some misses, and more than the usual number of disappointments.
First of all I’ll deal with the aforelinked list. Here movies I was looking forward to the most:
Sherlock Holmes: 83/100
Holmes turned out to be better than expected. Downey, Jr’s ludic performance combined with Guy Ritchie’s gritty direction made for a fun, fresh and interesting reboot of the old super-sleuth franchise.
The Lovely Bones: 18/100
Peter Jackson’s saggy, bloated, boring fantasy was mired in CGI quicksand, lacked any engaging characters, and failed to entertain for its lengthy 150-minute running time. Here’s hoping that Tintin doesn’t also suck.
Shutter Island: 27/100
Martin Scorsese manages to achieve the impossible and make a terrible film out of an interesting premise. The cast is great, the locations are fun, and the direction is snappy and engaging– but the plot is none of these, hamstringing the film beyond any reasonable semblance of entertainment.
Avatar: 48/100
Eye-popping visual effects can’t help a mind-bogglingly asinine story, nor can competent action scenes undo hours of misanthropic preachery. The movie is too long by half, a bit too silly for its own good, and far too blue. Oh, and it failed to sell the premise of 3D, too.
It’s Complicated: 52/100
It’s Complicated was indeed on my list of summer movies, but it was filed under “Top 5 summer movies that will almost certainly suck.” Irony kicked down the door, waltzed into the room and force-fed us all humble pie when the Meryl Streep / Steve Martin / Alec Baldwin rom-com got a better score than nearly all of the movies that were supposed to be good. Oh dear. Sure, 52/100 is nothing to be proud of, but I’d rather watch a mediocre movie than a downright awful one.
The Hurt Locker: 80/100
If The Hurt Locker had had a solid release date at the time of writing, it surely would have made an appearance in the above article. As it stands, Hurt Locker is in my mind the best of the season, by a long way. I only caught it last night, but even on the last day of summer it’s still summer, so it counts. Contrary to Captain Howdy’s review of the flick, I didn’t find the script overly American in its discussion of warfare and the nature of humanity in the (typical of us) throes of violence and destruction; to me it was just a movie that pursues that most noble of enterprises in attempting to grapple that slippery thing somewhere in our skulls that apparently accounts for our bizarre cultural identity and unpredictable and oftentimes silly behaviour. The Hurt Locker was a wrenching, personal discussion of who we are framed with some of the most brutal, white-knuckle rollercoaster action scenes I’ve ever endured in a cinema, and for that it gets top nod from me: I’d give it 93/100, putting it right at the top of the two-dozen-odd movies of the past three months. If The Hurt Locker doesn’t win every single award at the Oscars, I will cry for days.
As you can see, I was wrong on nearly every count. This goes to show just how treacherous and misleading film advertising and critical hype can be, not to mention how terrible my skills at predetermination must be, but bear in mind that The Lovely Bones, Shutter Island, and Avatar should have been good — great directors were in charge of all three, and early trailers were promising – but they faltered on the home stretch and flopped lifeless and dull into cinemas.
Now that we’ve got the article recap out of the way, here’s a rundown of the films of the season, from worst to best (or at least the ones we managed to review):
New Moon: 01/100
Paranormal Activity: 12/100
The Lovely Bones: 18/100
Shutter Island: 27/100
Up In The Air: 28/100
The Wolf Man: 37/100
From Paris With Love: 39/100
Where The Wild Things Are: 46/100
Avatar: 48/100
Julie & Julia: (average)
It’s Complicated: 52/100
Bran Nue Dae: 55/100
2012: 62/100
The Road: 63/100
The Princess And The Frog: 70/100
Zombieland: 78/100
The Hurt Locker: 80/100
Sherlock Holmes: 83/100
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs: 84/100
Of course this list doesn’t include all of the other many, varied reviews we’ve been ransacking our DVD collections to write, or the hefty number of news article’s we’ve produced over the weeks.
So, three months in, how is our driving? We are vaguely aware of a regular audience of sorts that pops up to check out our posts, and we would very much like to hear from you. Do you enjoy current reviews, do you like chuckling at the hilarious witticisms we scribe while revealing new trailers or posters, or do you prefer the random old movies we dredge out to give a reel good inspection? Any and all feedback is appreciated, even if it boils down to “you are an idiot” or “my crippled blind dog with alzheimer’s can write better reviews than you.” As much as we love the sound of our own voices, we love the sound of our own voices yelling back at people in heated argument even better, so let fly your opinions and comments! What were your favourite movies of the past three months, summer or winter, depending on where you live? Were you disappointed by something you were sure would be awesome, or pleasantly surprised by something you thought would be awful? Let us know!
BAFTA awards snub AVATAR, earn my respect
Feb 23
Ah, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts: Britain’s answer to the Academy Awards. I don’t think I know any people who speak of the BAFTAs (or the Golden Globes, for that matter) when comparing the calibre and critical worth of films; it’s always the Oscars that everyone talks about ten years after the fact. But the Oscars are weird and unpredictable, especially when it comes to Best Picture and Best Director, where the Academy feels obliged to honour a director because he “deserves it after all these years,” not necessarily because his latest movie is the best of the year (see Scorsese’s 2006 win for The Departed). I don’t know how the BAFTAs are decided, but the results make sense to me, so I’m starting to warm up to these weird little golden faces.
The fact that Avatar was even nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for the BAFTAs made me roll my eyes; it’s like these awards are obliged to recognise James Cameron regardless of what he’s putting out, since the mammoth awards haul he pulled in for Titanic back in the day. Sure it’s nice that dull period dramas and depressing character studies aren’t dominating the awards this year, but it makes you wonder if academies like BAFTA aren’t just bowing to public demand rather than recognising genuine critical worth.
But what’s this? The results of the BAFTAs rolled around on my birthday, and Britain’s gift to me was to snub Cameron’s juggernaut jungle-smurf epic in favour of the taut and brutal war flick The Hurt Locker. Thanks, mate, this definitely beats the socks you sent me last year! I don’t know how the BAFTA awards are decided, but it seems like there are seem free-thinking people on the panel, that’s for sure.
The Hurt Locker snatched Best Picture from Avatar and Up In The Air (thank god), while Best Director was given to Kathryn Bigelow over James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino (for his Inglorious Basterds). I hope Bigelow’s sex wasn’t an important criterion to the panel of judges — it would be condescending to give it to her just because she made a good movie despite being a woman (like that’s some kind of artistic handicap). Sure the industry is dominated by men, and it’s great to see a lady show the blokes how it’s done, but I’d prefer the woman to be honoured for her work, not for the fact that she’s “up there” with the men.
The winning streak didn’t end there, though. The Hurt Locker also waltzed away with Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound, going against Avatar and District 9 in all three categories. Inglourious Basterds was also in the running for Cinematography and Editing, but Quentin Tarantino’s latest love-it-or-hate-it love letter to film didn’t go home empty handed: Christoph Waltz nabbed Best Supporting Actor for his charming / chilling portrayal of Nazi nutjob Hans Landa, a role for which he truly deserves such recognition.
A little focus was put on the British industry, too. A movie called “Fish Tank” won Outsanding British Film, but I’d never heard of the flick till I read the BAFTAs results. An Education was all over the nominations, and won Best Lead Actress for Carey Mulligan’s performance in the film. Duncan Jones won Outsanding Debut By A British Writer, Director Or Producer for his brilliant Moon. I reckon Moon should have been up there in the Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and at the very least Best Lead Actor categories, especially as Avatar and District 9 got noms in these directions. Sam Rockwell’s performance(s) in Moon is brilliant and integral to the film as a whole, indicative of the genius involved at all levels — script, direction and production. But I guess the movie was too indie, too “genre” to be recognised in such a way.
Avatar didn’t leave without its candy: Best Production Design and Best Special Visual Effects are probably the two awards Avatar most deserves. The fact that Avatar was even in the running for Best Cinematography bugs me a little, though. Sure the tech is new and boundaries were pushed, but the movie’s 90% cartoon; you may as well nominate Up and The Fantastic Mr Fox if you’re going to play that game. Up In The Air got the Best Adapted Screenplay gong, which is a shame, because the writers will now be encouraged to rest on their laurels and continue to put out flabby, faux-sophisticated scripts, rather than pushing themselves in new, challenging directions.
So anyway, those are my rambling thoughts on the BAFTAs. I think, by and large, the awards have been delivered to the right doorsteps. I wish Moon and District 9 had gotten some wins, but I’m glad something serious but fun won the big gongs. This also gets my hopes up for the Oscars. I really hope Avatar doesn’t sweep them like it did the Globes, and if the yanks’ Academy is anything like the poms’, we might actually see some justice come March 7.
What are your thoughts? Reckon Avatar should’ve got the gongs over The Hurt Locker? Has anyone even seen An Education or Precious? Can you vouch for their quality? We’d love to hear what you think!
Full list of categories, with winners in orange:
BEST FILM
- Avatar
- An Education
- The Hurt Locker
- Precious
- Up in the Air
LEADING ACTOR
- Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
- George Clooney (Up in the Air)
- Colin Firth (A Single Man)
- Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)
- Andy Serkis (Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll)
LEADING ACTRESS
- Carey Mulligan (An Education)
- Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones)
- Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)
- Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)
- Audrey Tautou (Coco Before Chanel)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
- Alec Baldwin (It’s Complicated)
- Christian McKay (Me and Orson Welles)
- Alfred Molina (An Education)
- Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)
- Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
- Anne-Marie Duff (Nowhere Boy)
- Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)
- Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)
- Mo’Nique (Precious)
- Kristin Scott Thomas (Nowhere Boy)
OUTSANDING BRITISH FILM
- An Education
- Fish Tank
- In the Loop
- Moon
- Nowhere Boy
OUTSANDING DEBUT BY A BRITISH WRITER, DIRECTOR OR PRODUCER
- Lucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock, David Pearson (directors, producers – Mugabe And The White African)
- Eran Creevy (writer/director – Shifty)
- Stuart Hazeldine (writer/director – Exam)
- Duncan Jones (director – Moon)
- Sam Taylor-Wood (director – Nowhere Boy)
DIRECTOR
- James Cameron (Avatar)
- Neill Blomkamp (District 9)
- Lone Scherfig (An Education)
- Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
- Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
- The Hangover (Jon Lucas, Scott Moore)
- The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)
- Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
- A Serious Man (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)
- Up (Bob Peterson, Pete Docter)
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
- District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell)
- An Education (Nick Hornby)
- In the Loop (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche)
- Precious (Geoffrey Fletcher)
- Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner)
FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
- Broken Embraces
- Coco Before Chanel
- Let the Right One In
- A Prophet
- The White Ribbon
ANIMATED FILM
- Coraline
- Fantastic Mr Fox
- Up
MUSIC
- Avatar (James Horner)
- Crazy Heart (T-Bone Burnett, Stephen Bruton)
- Fantastic Mr Fox (Alexandre Desplat)
- Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (Chaz Jankel)
- Up (Michael Giacchino)
CINEMATOGRAPHY
- Avatar
- District 9
- The Hurt Locker
- Inglourious Basterds
- The Road
EDITING
- Avatar
- District 9
- The Hurt Locker
- Inglourious Basterds
- Up in the Air
PRODUCTION DESIGN
- Avatar
- District 9
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
- Inglourious Basterds
COSTUME DESIGN
- Bright Star
- Coco Before Chanel
- An Education
- A Single Man
- The Young Victoria
SOUND
- Avatar
- District 9
- The Hurt Locker
- Star Trek
- Up
SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
- Avatar
- District 9
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- The Hurt Locker
- Star Trek
MAKEUP & HAIR
- Coco Before Chanel
- An Education
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
- Nine
- The Young Victoria
SHORT ANIMATION
- The Gruffalo
- The Happy Duckling
- Mother of Many
SHORT FILM
- 14
- I Do Air
- Jade
- Mixtape
- Off Season
THE ORANGE RISING STAR AWARD (voted for by the public)
- Jesse Eisenberg
- Nicholas Hoult
- Carey Mulligan
- Tahar Rahim
- Kristen Stewart
SHUTTER ISLAND review: let me off the island
Feb 19
Shutter Island is a strange movie, but not in the way it intends to be: it’s strange because it’s bad. Martin Scorsese isn’t the critical and commercial king he is today because he makes movies that suck. But he’s managed the impossible here — he’s made a bad film. ”But the trailer is awesome,” you say, tears running down your trembling face in denial. Well, the trailer is not only violently spoilerific, it’s a tad misleading. For example, if you’re expecting, as implied in the trailer, an unpredictable, thrilling, mind-bending journey into the realm between sanity and bat-shit banananess, you’re going to be sorely let down. If, perhaps, you’re expecting a tightly-wound detective story wrapped around crazy criminal antics, you’re also going to be severely disappointed by the film’s total failure to be in any way ‘tight’ or compelling. And if you’re expecting brutal scenes of gut-wrenching violence or moral ambiguity, you’re going to snooze your way through this film from start to finish. I guess if you’ve never seen a single movie before in your entire life, Shutter Island might blow your mind, but that’s praise as faint as it comes.
The plot is, as I said, laid bare, bald and naked in the trailer. Leonardo DiCaprio plays federal marshal (precisely what marshalling do these folk do — do they marshal herds of sheep, or armies, or justice, or what?) Ted Daniels, who is sent to investigate a mysterious patient breakout at an obviously-dodgy mental asylum situated somewhere in the stormy waters off Boston. All is not as it seems (surprise!), Ted might be crazier than he thought (no way!), there appears to be some federal-level conspiracy going on (really?), and worst of all, the asylum seems to be dredging up some of Ted’s disturbing memories of World War 2 (hmm). The trailer promises a twist, and if you’ve ever seen something like Fight Club or The Sixth Sense or even Hide And Seek you’ll smell the twist coming a mile away and be hideously disappointed when the curiously anticlimactic “revelation” scene rolls by with little to no fanfare. You’re probably thinking “aha! But Scorsese is a genius, he’ll take the twist and put a double-twist on it!” Well you’re wrong again, chump, and I wish you’d stop assuming things about movies you’ve obviously never seen. Let me take over.
The film starts off on a boat. Right off the bat Scorsese appears to be trying to make the audience feel ill at ease by making nearly every single cut in the scene noticeable. They’re all jarring, and ostensibly deliberately so. People standing in slightly different places, facing different angles when you cut from the wide to the close — it’s so frequent and sloppy that it couldn’t have happened by accident on a Scorsese set. So we’re left with the uneasy conclusion that he wants to jar us, to make us irritated and aware of the stitched-together nature of film. There are so many other ways to make an audience uneasy, to nudge and cajole and disturb them through canted angles, sinister performances, mismatched colours — anything – but to violate one of the most important, basic functions of films is super annoying. Well, it was annoying to this humble cinephile, and it doesn’t let up after the opening scene.
Needless to say, the cinematography and music are gorgeous. Scorsese’s eyes and ears appear to be functioning quite well despite the apparent failure of his common sense and drive of purpose. The island, once we get to it, is suitably brooding and sinister and violent in its own way. The score is borderline irritating, but manages to ride that thin line between mysterious, ominous, and ridiculous. Performances are all fundamentally fine as well; Ben Kingsley in particularly is a treat as Shutter Island’s head psychologist. He’s restrained, polite and remarkably charismatic in the role, and brings a sense of nobility and dignity to the potentially silly proceedings.
And silly the proceedings are. You get the distinct impression that everything in the first hour of the film is just one big red herring, and then you find out everything in the second hour is also nothing but a red herring (by which time you’re both annoyed and bored), and then the last ten-minute segment turns around, wiping a tear of laughter from its eye, and cries “you idiot, the first two hours were for nothing! Ha ha, oh wow, you are stupid for believing any of that.” I don’t understand how screenwriters still get a kick out of destroying every single scene they’ve meticulously built over the past two hours by throwing in bullshit revelations like “and then he woke up — it was all a dream!” or “and then John realised he was the demons” or “it turns out this primary character is just a figment of the protagonist’s imagination.” When a story betrays you like that, it sucks. And you know Shutter Island is probably going to do this from the outset, but you find yourself hoping the whole time that those last ten minutes will lead to another ten-minute segment where the twist gets re-twisted, or un-twisted, or somehow broken and bent in an unpredictable manner. Alas, Shutter Island ends exactly where you’d expect it to, and doesn’t provide any original or stimulating food for thought.
Another peculiar aspect of the film is how self-contained it is. It doesn’t speak to the times (the 1950s setting is seemingly arbitrary beyond aesthetic and technological expedience), it doesn’t tackle big, compelling themes (flashbacks that deal with the holocaust are somehow out of place and dull — how can you possibly fail to make the holocaust compelling?), and manages to make the most horrific crimes seem mundane and trivial (the drowning of children by a deluded wife appears to have been inspired by the real-life case of Andrea Yates — the wikipedia article on the actual murders is more compelling than the entire two hours of Shutter Island). The plot is pedestrian and the narrative muddled, but having something bigger to latch onto could have helped an audience through the lapses in coherence or fun, but we get no such breath of fresh air.
When I say the narrative is “muddled,” it’s deliberately so, ping-ponging back and forth between Ted’s investigation and some wacky dreams he gets on a disturbingly regular basis. The dreams are important and symbolically interesting, but they kind of kill the pace of the investigation plot. They’re vital come the “revelation” scene at the end, but before you know precisely what’s going on they’re just pretty and a tad boring.
Shutter Island is a strange, odd beast, simultaneously familiar and hard to come to terms with. The least predictable thing about it is that it is 100% predictable from start to finish. There are no flashes of wit or scenes of tension or portrayals of madness — just a lumbering, second-gear plot that takes its time on the long, bumpy road to nowhere. I find it hard to recommend to anyone besides hardcore DiCaprio or Scorsese fans, who will see it anyway “just because.” But the most mysterious thing about the whole affair is how such an esteemed, talented and experienced director as Martin Scorsese could drop the ball in such a spectacularly dull fashion, but that seems to be something of a trend lately. First Spielberg with Indiana Jones 4, then Peter Jackson with The Lovely Bones, and James Cameron with Avatar – add Shutter Island to the fast-growing list of duds spun out by otherwise brilliant men.
Shutter Island score
27/100
OPINIONS COUNT