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Post by ronnierocketago on Feb 26, 2010 4:29:58 GMT
SHUTTER ISLAND (2010) - ****
Like AVATAR, I may or may not come back eventually with a full-length rant so here is a mini-bitching.
My snap reaction was that this was minor Scorsese, but him having fun playing with a genre sandbox he obviously liked to indulge in, and a good if not necessarily unique one. Kinda like Polanski's FRANTIC you know?
But thinking back more and more, I actually enjoyed it more. Maybe not in the upper-tier of Scorsese's filmography, but as a thriller it's better constructed, more tight, better acted, more winded up than most such genre offerings we get these days. But shit I liked this more than Scorsese's last few movies where he was too busy trying to win that elusive Oscar or paying the bills by doing gangster movies.
Yes you have your plot holes and logic gaps in such a movie heavily inspired by those 50s/60s thrillers (I felt Robert Wise's THE HAUNTING's heavy presence here) but unlike most contemporary thrillers with such inevitable twist endings, the ending in SHUTTER ISLAND is not the whole movie. The ending is only part of the movie. There is a point to it. Or Scorsese isn't resting on the shock of said reveal, which if you ask me is the problem with most modern thrillers.
In spite of all that, this in a way sorta reminded me of USUAL SUSPECTS and SIXTH SENSE, ironic since those two good movies (which despite pop culture aren't only about the ending) didn't mean to influence a whole decade-plus worth of hacks, who missed the fucking point.
In short, Leo DiCaprio should have known the trouble he was getting into when the asylum's police force consists of Buffalo Bill and the killer from ZODIAC.
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Post by Mike Sullivan on Feb 26, 2010 7:35:37 GMT
Scorsese creates atmosphere. With Ballhaus' cinematograph and that errie classical score with folks like Liggetti and Brian Eno contribution, he really creates a damned great thriller. But you can tell that Scorsese really is paying tribute to Hitchcock mainly but old Hollywood in general. anyone pick up the color pallate during the flashback at the end? Isn't it reminescent of "Leave Her To Heaven?"
DiCaprio gives a great performance. Scorsese is combining genre sensibilities with deep charecter study. This film talks a great load about modern society; the efficiency we've developed in designing apparatus to kill. Teddy Daniels suffers from memories of liberating Dachau. I'm still trying to see what Lehane and Scorsese were trying to say; the corrolation between sanity and insanity as seen in society?
Whatever. This movie works on many levels.
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Post by ronnierocketago on Feb 26, 2010 14:59:14 GMT
Mike - For the memories, Spoiler I think its more guilt bleeding subconciously over to other memories.
And the VERTIGO influence was the most obvious of the Hitchcock stuff, no?
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jrod
Ghost writer
Posts: 970
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Post by jrod on Feb 28, 2010 7:17:15 GMT
Spoilers throughout this post.
I cant really tie myself down to any rating of this one. When you get the big twist ending you have to go back through and piece a lot of things together. Given this, there are several scenes that I rethink and love and several that are much less than they were in the moment. For one of the good moments, I think that the scene where Ruffalo doesnt know how to take off his gun near the beginning is hilarious. The deputy gave him a "dont fuck this up look".
questions: was the scene where Kingsley's character actually gets out a chart to explain the twist supposed to be funny? Or was it just a catch the viewers up moment...?
is the whole climb down the vertical cliff and discover a lady in a cave thing just the main character's dream? Surely they wouldnt let him stay out overnight and risk his life on that climb
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Capo
Administrator
Posts: 7,847
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Post by Capo on Mar 22, 2010 14:03:38 GMT
I liked this overall.
It's far too long and bloated, especially considering the economical narratives of the films to which he's consciously indebted here - this clocks in at double the length of some of those films, and isn't the better for it.
With this in mind, it's an interesting but ultimately superficial treatment of trauma and its relevant associations - guilt, memory, loss, the act of witnessing as a way of providing the trauma victim's active testimony, his following through of a fabricated memory, with a grounded reality.
There's much potential for profundity here - modernism, the Holocaust, the interrelated nature of these as a part of a traumatic 20th century - but it settles for the rather inexplicable failure of an individual marriage due to a deranged wife (unless I missed something). Again, unless I missed something: the references to 1950s America - the HUAC, communism, social paranoia and a political upheaval - were just false fodder with no further significance by the end of the film.
DiCaprio's solid as always but required to act out a scenario that doesn't quite ring true at the end - absorbing the absolute horror of his children's murders minutes before he himself murders his wife. Didn't fully work for me; I found it too shocking an event, in itself, for Scorsese's otherwise superficiality to pull it off. When he rushes into the water to fetch their bodies to land, I recalled the opening scene of Roeg's Don't Look Now; the comparison is unfavourable to Shutter Island.
It's visually sumptuous; the seascapes behind foregrounded actors - lit a kind of twilit yellow against the blue backdrop - were nothing short of arresting. The opening as a result is gripping; the genre music was hilarious - intentionally, I thought.
Most of the dream sequences felt like limp imitations of Lynch; Scorsese seeing if he can make a film in a certain style, like he did in New York New York (the classical Hollywood musical made in a much-changed 1970s industry).
The storytelling's mostly strong, though, in spite of its glaring weaknesses here and there. Ruffalo might be underused - I'm a big fan - but Elias Koteas's cameo was a pleasant surprise. The film seems prone to the same flawed approach as Scorsese's other recent films - packing your film, for seemingly no other reason than that you have the directorial power to do so, with known names.
You've got odd, rather arbitrary casting choices as a result; people in general seem underused or there only for Scorsese's post-adolescent (post-critical success) wish-fulfillment - Max von Sydow and Ben Kingsley come immediately to mind. With Ray Winstone in a bit part in The Departed, I suspect Scorsese's a fan of Sexy Beast (possibly the best 'gangster film' since GoodFellas); I suspect and hope also that Scorsese - or his casting director - is a fan of Zodiac, considering the performers involved here...
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