director: Martin Scorsese
starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams
Scorsese’s billing on any movie typically renders it a must-see, though Shutter Island doesn’t seem like his typical fare. The film, based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, has a story more akin to a Saturday afternoon pulp detective matinee (does that reference make sense?) than an epic tale of multiple characters and events over the course of a decade or so (see: GoodFellas, Gangs of New York, etc.). The story itself is entertaining, sure, but it ain’t exactly Bill Shakespeare. All that said, Scorsese’s “must-see” billing is the product of his deft directorial style and ability to portray characters meaningfully enough to make you care and invest yourself in their dealings, and such is the case with Shutter Island. This while managing to tell a story that keeps the characters and audience off-balance throughout — everything feels a bit “off” during the precedings, and along with the nature of the story, imparts a sense of foreboding and increasingly unbearable tension up until the film’s climax. You’re never truly at ease watching Shutter Island, and that’s a good thing.
DiCaprio’s as good as ever, but I’ve never found him “right” for any of his roles, perhaps other than Catch Me If You Can. I think my main problem with him stems from him looking more like a teenage kid than an adult. His characters have often suffered from that lack of “adult-ness,” despite his abundant talents in the acting department. He’s good enough to make you forget it most of the time, but it sticks out anytime I see him in a film. He manages to bring off Teddy Daniels’ descent into madness (or perhaps ascent into sanity) convincingly.
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director: James Cameron
starring: Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldana, Sigourney Weaver, Michelle Rodriguez, Stephen Lang, Giovanni Ribisi, Joel Moore
Director James Cameron’s long-awaited and heavily-hyped return to the big screen finally arrives in a dizzying tour-de-force of special effects and storytelling mastery. While the script doesn’t quite live up to the visuals, Avatar is a singular moviegoing experience – one that will serve as a milestone in film experience history. The film does indeed live up to the hype on a visual level. In fact, it succeeds on such a scale as to almost completely overwhelm the comparatively lightweight script and cliched characters, flaws that might stick in your mind after you’ve come down from the high of the in-theater experience.
On more than one occasion, I found myself comparing Avatar to Cameron’s 1986 masterpiece (as far as I’m concerned), Aliens. In fact, I tend to compare quite a few movies to Aliens each year (one example), likely because its original formula has been copied so many times since, with varying degrees of success. And while a story featuring a tribe of blue-skinned aliens trying to protect some sacred trees doesn’t quite echo “space marines fighting against a horde of terrifying, slimy aliens,” the key points are all worth comparing.
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director: McG
starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anton Yelchin, Moon Bloodgood, Common, Helena Bonham Carter, Michael Ironside
Let’s start with a quote from Terminator Salvation director “McG.” (Dare I devote a paragraph to the kind of douchenozzle that would use such a name in a professional capacity? Nah, too easy. I think you can all just assume his douche-like nature based on that nom de plume.):
McG (born Joseph McGinty Nichol, though known by his nickname since childhood) said if he was going to take on another sequel in the internationally successful “Terminator” franchise, then he had better have a good reason to do it.
“Action for action’s sake just becomes noisy. You’ve got to have great characters. You’ve got to have a great story,” he said. “We wanted it to be very compelling and we did it in a way that is great.” [CNN]
What a load of crap.
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director: J.J. Abrams
starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Bruce Greenwood, Leonard Nimoy, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, John Cho
This is not your father’s Star Trek. Then again, it kind of is. Director-producer J.J. Abrams’ “reboot” of the venerable sci-fi franchise succeeds on many levels while managing to engage the hip, young audience of today’s 20-somethings while keeping those that’ve grown up with the franchise more than happy. The “reboot” term might be something of a misnomer, but that requires I delve into the plot a bit, which would be bad form in the introductory paragraph of a review you shouldn’t continue reading until you see the flick. Go check it out; I’ll wait. See you back here later. (And see it in IMAX while you can – it’s only on the really big screen for the next two weeks.) Suffice it to say the flick works, and as so few films can claim these days, it’s worth your 14 bucks.
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director: Gavin Hood
starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Will I. Am, Lynn Collins, Taylor Kitsch, Ryan Reynolds
Well, it’s not as bad as I was expecting. Since Bryan Singer left the franchise after X-Men 2, and certain cocaine addict and partyboy Brett Ratner took over, I haven’t had a lot of faith in future films, quality-wise. X-Men 3 was a spectacular, big budget turd with a few enjoyable scenes here and there, a far cry from the more “thoughtful” X1 and X2 (yeah, I know they’re comic book movies, so “thoughtfulness” must be calculated in an entirely different context than, say, Schindler’s List or Citizen Kane). So my hopes for the eventual, “perfect” X-Men movie were dashed by 20th Century Fox and it’s money-first mentality, and the director best-known for the eighteen Rush Hour movies. The success of the more serious approach to the Batman franchise was apparently lost on them.
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Scorsese’s billing on any movie typically renders it a must-see, though Shutter Island doesn’t seem like his typical fare. The film, based on the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane, has a story more akin to a Saturday afternoon pulp detective matinee (does that reference make sense?) than an epic tale of multiple characters and events over the course of a decade or so (see: GoodFellas, Gangs of New York, etc.). The story itself is entertaining, sure, but it ain’t exactly Bill Shakespeare. All that said, Scorsese’s “must-see” billing is the product of his deft directorial style and ability to portray characters meaningfully enough to make you care and invest yourself in their dealings, and such is the case with Shutter Island. This while managing to tell a story that keeps the characters and audience off-balance throughout — everything feels a bit “off” during the precedings, and along with the nature of the story, imparts a sense of foreboding and increasingly unbearable tension up until the film’s climax. You’re never truly at ease watching Shutter Island, and that’s a good thing.
