Shutter Island (4 out of 5)

The boat rolls out of a fog so dense that it renders everything a brilliant white. It might as well be sailing straight out of 50s film noir. Aboard it U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels vomits violently in the washroom. This is a man who has not repented for the sins of his past and carries that burden atop his every move. As an agent he looks the part: tan suit, sharp hat; the whole nine. As played by Leonardo DiCaprio he’s a seasoned professional: been too many places to be much surprised anymore and seen too many things to much care, and yet he carries hidden secrets in the way he holds his shoulders and hangs his head. To him, this new case at the state run mental hospital for the criminally insane will be an in-and-out job but his partner Chuck knows better, “If these guys only heard voices and chased butterflies they wouldn’t need us.”

The men are escorted to an entrance gate, surrounded by looming brick walls and guarded by emotionless men with big guns. They are instructed to hand over their weapons because, as a state run facility, it is the law that the guards carry rank over the cops. They’ll play by their rules or not play at all. While a storm brews outside they are lead to Dr. Cawley, the man in charge. He is played by Ben Kingsley which means he is proper, well-spoken and pristinely mannered, while also managing to give the feeling of always holding something back. It doesn’t help that his colleague at the institution is played by Max von Sydow who has made a career out of always holding back deep secrets that give off ominous tones.

That’s the set-up to Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, the director’s first excursion back into thriller territory since Cape Fear and his first into classic horror and film noir. Two Boston cops are sent to the isolated institution in order to track down an escaped patient that no one will admit to having seen escape or know exactly how she went about it. “It’s as if she just evaporated through the walls,” assesses Cawley, and he may be right; there seems to be a lot of spirits haunting the walls of Shudder Island, or at least the pain of their memories. The girl in question us Rachel, who drowned her three children and still, according to Dr. Cawley, has no idea what she has done or that she is even in an institution.

The grounds are divided into three buildings, a ward for the men, a ward for the women and Ward C, which used to be an old Civil War post and houses the most dangerous criminals. No one is allowed access to Ward C without the accompaniment of both Cowley and the warden.

As the investigation progresses Teddy is attacked by migraines and visions of his wife who was killed in a fire and to his days during World War II in which he saw dozens of men slaughtered without mercy in a concentration camp. As the investigation progresses and Teddy gets closer to uncovering the truth his inner demons take him closer and closer to the physiological breaking point. What about the institution that triggers these dark feelings in Teddy is one of its many secrets, of which I dare not continue to hint at.

This is a brilliant set-up for Martin Scorsese to evoke that golden period of classic horror and film noir, which consisted of wounded men carrying their emotional baggage around on their shoulders, drifting from one job to the next, always searching for some sort of inner redemption that is just out of reach. Here Scorsese once again proves himself the master of tones and moods, of implying more by showing less. Shutter Island is, if nothing more, a brilliant exercise in set design, lighting, costumes and editing. Every frame is meticulously constructed to convey the sinister undercurrents that could lie around every dark, damp corridor of the wards. Consider the way Scorsese slowly tracks the camera through desolate spaces in ominous point-of-view shots, how high angles reveal labyrinth mazes of unending stairs and corridors or how the camera cranes up from close-ups to reveal imminent danger lurking in the background. Not to mention Ward C, when Teddy finally gets there. It’s a virtual hell-on-earth that will go down as one of the great horror sequences of its time.

As a thriller, the first two thirds of Shutter Island are riveting and we eagerly anticipate what new tricks Scorsese has up his sleeve. And then, as most thrillers tend to do, the film loses touch in an effort to ceaselessly explain itself (a verbal description in the third act is followed by a flashback that visually depicts the exact same thing) and we’re left with another case of the explanation being much less than the buildup, leaving the sinking realization that the material has no intention of rising to the occasion that Scorsese and his actors have set for it, leaving Scorsese trying to pull rabbits out of empty hats.

And yet Scorsese’s brilliance as a filmmaker still stands outside of the story and keeps the wheels spinning. The filmmaker’s mastery of his craft oozes into every perfectly constructed shot and the film thus, even when stalling, feels like a work of art to be hung on the wall and pondered over the delicacy of its creation. As the greatest living filmmaker working in America, Shutter Island will not be remembered as Martin Scrosese’s best film. In lesser hands it wouldn’t even pass as a tolerable thriller and yet even as its plot crumbles down around it, as an evocation of a classic, long forgotten genre and all its moods, textures and surfaces, it is just about a perfect stylistic exercise.

On Vacation

It's Reading Week, or March Break, or Spring Break. Whatever you want to call it, I'm on it. Unfortunately, Reading Week means less in a post-graduate college degree program than it did in University, so I'm up to the eyeballs in projects that I have to get done. The moral of the story is that posts will be limited this week (though I'm seeing Shutter Island tomorrow so expect that review soon). I'll continue to log on and make comments on interesting things I find on other people's pages, just don't expect anything huge from this page this week.

Revisiting Donnie Darko

The first time I saw Donnie Darko was when it first came out on VHS. A couple of DVD's were around at that time but the technology was just emerging and certainly too expensive for my family to invest in at that point, which was fine was me and I am generally not well receptive to change. I had no idea what the movie was at the time other than that I had seen a preview for it on some other VHS' I had recently rented and thought it looked alright. That of course was the sweet summer between grade 10 and 11 when I would watch anything that had a cool enough video box regardless of whether it was released theatrically or straight-to-video. I had already gotten into writing reviews at this time and had made the decision that one day I would be a professional critic (I think my original review still exists on IMDB somewhere, spelling mistakes and all).

What played before me, at the time, I considered an act of absolute brilliance. Of course, back then, when you're young and think you know something about something, Donnie Darko was just the thing I needed to floor my mind. Here I was, 16 or somewhere there around, working the film out over and over in my head, connecting the dots, making huge, brilliant discoveries about life and love and fear and death. I thought I had seen a masterpiece.

Soon after I got a DVD player and slowly started collecting them (up until that point owning a movie had seemed a strange concept to me because they were expensive and you could just rent it whenever you needed to see it). Donnie Darko was one of my first purchases. I intended to watch it over and over and over again in my lifetime.

I just watched Donnie Darko for the second time tonight, Saturday February 27, 2010. I watched it because I want to sell off some DVDs and thought it might be one of them. Over the span on those years I've grown. I now hold a major in Film Studies, I've had reviews published and presented at a prestigious film conference, I've even gotten an e mail from Roger Ebert complimenting my writing, and, most importantly, I've watched some of the greatest films ever made.

Needless to say I don't feel the same about Donnie Darko. One of us apparently hasn't aged well. I can admire the craft of it's making, the professionalism of it's performances, but now I've learned that ideas are not what makes a film great or not, it's how it goes about presenting them (Roger Ebert once said, "It's not what a film is about that makes it good or not. It's how it's about it."), and an over-emphasis on film style doesn't impress me nearly as much as it once did.

In reality, Donnie Darko is one of those stepping stone pictures. Like Fight Club, The Boondock Saints or The Usual Suspects, to name a few, young people discover them and latch on to them because they are like nothing they have ever seen before. Every independent thinking, individualistic teenager wants to have something that they can hold above everyone else; something that speaks to them in volumes that their brainless colleagues could never comprehend, until they grow up, see more movies, better movies and finally realize that those films are no more than empty-headed and empty-hearted excursions into style, with shallow philosophies that serve only themselves, not the stories.

That was Donnie Darko to me. I'm glad I got out of that stage. Some people never do. I think Kevin Smith said it best on one of his Evening With... DVDs when he made that comment that not even writer/director Richard Kelly knows what Donnie Darko is about. The comment was in jest but that basically sums it up. Kelly has no overarching approach to this material. He has no one specific thing he is trying to say, so he says them all and hopes maybe one or two stick.

I know, I know there's all this contradictory imagery that shows the duality of the human psyche, and I get that, but so what? Does that automatically make the movie good? What does it have to do with time travel? By the time the movie rolls around into it's third act and starts looping back upon time and upon itself and we are treated to a conclusion that is more ironic than anything, you finally see what Kelly's point was: to try to hold this thing together for just under 2 hours. That he does it is commendable. But it still doesn't make the movie a success.

To put imagery in a movie and assume it speaks for itself isn't enough. The golden rule of style is that form must equal function. You cannot separate the story from the style. As Godard once said, they create each other. That's the mistake Donnie Darko makes: it doesn't provide an adequate story to back up it's symbolism. I can see why a lot of kids would connect with Donnie Darko. He's a depressed, dissatisfied youth, wandering through life just trying to find something meaningful. I obviously connected with that once upon a time myself. Now though, his journey just seems in vein because Kelly doesn't allow him to find that meaning. At the end, Darko isn't a kid on the verge of grand epiphany, he's just some character in some minor, hip indie flick that goes through the motions of being some character in some minor, hip indie flick, and that's about it really.

P.S.- It's also strange, all these years later, to see that Seth Rogen actually had a small part in this film (that's him in the back row). The part is so small I don't even think his character is ever given a name, but it was his first film role after starring in Judd Apatow's cult TV show Freaks and Geeks

Update- I found that original Donnie Darko review on IMDB and, despite how embarrassingly amateur and nonsensical it is (I clearly have no idea what I am talking about), have decided to post it in all of it's original, unedited glory:

What would happen if M. Night Shyamalan had let sam Ramai direct The Sixth Sense? You would probably get something like Donnie Darko. This film is so psycholigically complex I don't even know where to begin. The film is simply brilliant in that it has so many different issues weaven together to create on huge ball of irony, that one finds blinking may take your eyes off the screen for much to long. From the very beginning you get the feeling that this film has more to it than meets the eye. At first glance one may write it off as a modern day attempt at Poltergiest. After veiwing the trailer you may even want to consider it a brainless slasher movie but nothing could be further from the truth.

What we have here is the tale of a teenager who's name is Donnie Darko. But Donnie isn't your average teen, see he finds himself drawn at night to a myseterious force named Frank. Frank is a bunny who teels Donnie that in 28 days , on Halloween, the world will end. We also have Donnie's girlfreidn who had to move away because her step-father stabbed her mom in the chest four times and seems to be living a life of torment and personal angst all fueled by fear. Fear is a hard topic in the movie, infact I would say that that one world "fear" us the basis for everything to come.

We also have Jim Cunningham, a motivational speaker that teaches that fear and love are the two strongest emotions that a human has and learn to live your life in the love spectrum of life and avoid the fear. Then we have Grandma Death, an old lady who may just be the most important piece of this huge puzzel. She stands in the middle of the road all day, occasionlly walking to her mailbox to always be greeted by nothing inside. One day after Donnie's father almost runs her over she wispers in his ear "Everyone dies alone." Donnie later finds out that in the past she was a teacher and wrote a book on time travel (but to understand that without giving away the plot you must see the film).

This comment comes up at Donnie's therepy and along with stories of Frank the bunny his shrink believes that Donnie is afraid to connect with reality due to a great fear of what may come from it. It pains me to say this but the climax of the matches, if not surpasses that of The Sixth Sense as everything finally starts to make sense. This will not only leave you wide-eyed, it will probably take your breathe away as well. The acting is all top notch including as cast of Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swazey and the gripping Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie in his most mature role yet.

The love/fear topic is present throughout the entire film and you can look for hidden signs of this scattered all over the film. One example of this is the billing of Evil Dead and The Last Temptation of Christ as a double feature at the theater. The film is horrifying and edgy without becoming cliched or unoriginal, making it not on;t the best, if you will, horror movie I've seen since The Sixth Sense, it is hands down the best movie of the year so far.

Word on the Street

Last Friday I stole an idea from Mad Hatter where, instead of writing something original on Friday I just posted links to other people's interesting stuff. But then I didn't do it just quite right and Hatter scolded me for linking to too much news and not enough original blog posts. So this week I thought I'd give it another go and include more blogs this time.

Everyone is blogging about the Oscars. So much so that I've stopped reading all the full posts and just skim the ones that have some degree of appeal. Regardless, Nathaniel R at The Film Experience seems to be providing the most frequent coverage.

Speaking of The Film Experience, Robert has sparked a comments debate about whether or not Christopher Nolan's Memento is a masterpiece or not. (I weigh in on that debate somewhere in there).

The Mad Hatter gives his own tribute to Roger Ebert after the Esquire profile on Ebert earlier this week. To reply to something in his comments section: a large majority of the Siskel and Ebert back issues can be found on the At The Movies website. Be warned though, once you start watching one, you're going to want to watch them all.

Tom Clift puts in his two cents regarding the new Nightmare on Elm Street reboot trailer.

Kid in the Front Row started his own Facebook fan page.

Andrew at Encore's World of Film and TV continued counting down his favourite performances of the decade. Can't say I agree with his number 13 choice, but hey, he's still got 12 more to name.

Everyone is doing podcasts. Here I am, the new kid on the block, who is so technologically incompetent that I can barely even get pictures on my site properly and everyone is putting these things on theirs. Consider me jealous. Piper of Lazy Eye Apocalypse is doing one about the Oscars, Mad Hatter did one where he named his top five Martin Scorsese's movies, among other things, and Big Mike did his first one about the Oscars as well over at Big Mike's Movie Blog.

One more Oscar post from Sebastian from Detailed Criticisms who is none too pleased that Zac Efron and Taylor Lautner are going to be presenters.

/Film is saying that Michael Bay will start shooting big action sequences for Tranformers 3 in Chicago and Moscow. It is still to be revealed where the other 10 minutes of the film will be shot. (Sorry, I couldn't help it).

There's pictures of Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis from John Landis' Buck and Hare. I've read it. It's funny and also not funny, but in a good way.

To anyone else, if you thought you wrote something great and I missed it, drop me a line or scold me in the comments section and maybe I'll catch you the next time around. It was nothing personal. Really.

Valentine's Day (2.5 out of 5)

Jean-Luc Godard once said that the best way to criticise a film is to make another one. Consider Valentine’s Day anti-criticism. If Love Actually was like a greatest hits collection of all the warmest, funniest, wittiest, most tender moments in romantic comedy than Valentine’s Day is the collection of the boring radio singles you can’t endure anymore that seem to already be on every other album you own. It’s the pathetic record label cash grab: there’s nothing new, there’s nothing inspired, and there’s no other reason to buy it unless the thought of throwing money away to hear the same old songs for the hundred and one millionth time is compelling to you.

Valentine’s Day is thus a bloated collection of big stars enacting cheesy scenes from bad movies you’ve already seen countless times over. They’re the same songs, all in one convenient place, in a different order. When you think about it in those terms, that basically sums up the aesthetic ark of director Gary Marshall’s career: to disguise mediocre fluff as grand entertainment with the help of big stars.

That’s essentially the approach to Valentine’s Day, which takes place over the course of a 24 hour period on February 14, and features not a single scene without, if not a big star, than a recognizable face. Some of them fall in love, some out, some with other people than they should, and some with other people that they shouldn’t, and the wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round. Most of them, the adults anyway, will end up making a pit stop at an I Hate Valentine’s Day party before racing off into the arms of true love after all. That’s the difference between Britain’s romantic comedy and America’s: the British approach romance with a polite detachment, as if they must remember to bow to love before letting it in for dinner. American films are more bitter, cynical and shallow; as if love is something to be dealt with before a grand revelation that leads straight to the cheesy, improbable happy endings.

Maybe I should describe the actors. Florist Ashton Kutcher (surprisingly likable) proposes to his girlfriend Jessica Alba, using a line dear ol’ dad taught him (“If you find a girl who seems too good for you, propose.”). He’s best friends with elementary school teacher Jennifer Garner who is with doctor boyfriend Patrick Dempsey, who may still have a wife in San Francisco. Kutcher and Garner have the sweetest relationship as the two dolts who everyone else but they realizes are meant for each other. Working for Kutcher is George Lopez, doing his obligatory gee-wiz I’m an immigrant shtick. Then there’s Topher Grace (who should rightfully be a star by now) going out with Anne Hatheway who, in the most unfortunate instance of a great actress forced to do embarrassing things, moonlights as a phone sex girl while also holding a job as a secretary for Queen Latifa. Julia Roberts is on a plane with Bradley Cooper. Emma Roberts plans to lose her virginity in a sequence not nearly as awkward and sweet as the same kind of one she played in the underrated Lymelife, while her shallow, moronic friend Taylor Swift, shows off her muscle-bound boyfriend Taylor Lautner, whose talent seems to evaporate in the presence of a shirt. Jamie Fox is a newsman, Jessica Biel is an agent, and Shirley MacLaine is a wife with a secret.

The stories are so many and cut in such a way that there is hardly enough time to grow to care about a single one of them. Dempsey, for example, disappears for so long that by the time he swings around for a second appearance it feels like we’re already on to next week’s episode and need a refresher. Because the film is thus too busy to create a full story for the viewer to actually care about, what it ultimately offers is a mere reminder of all the much better films, romantic or otherwise, that all of these actors have starred in before. Garner in Juno, Kutcher in The Guardian, Latifa in Last Holiday, Cooper in the Hangover, Grace in Mona Lisa Smile, MacLaine in Terms of Endearment, Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married, Roberts in Notting Hill, Biel and Alba in…well nothing really. I guess their careers have jumped the shark. That’s a term that refers to the moment when you know something will, forever after, be downhill from there. It’s named after an episode of Happy Days, a show that Gary Marshall created. Go figure.

A couple weeks ago I happened to watch Taylor Hackford’s An Officer and a Gentleman, a great romantic melodrama with Richard Gere and Debra Winger. There was a great film that cast big stars as strong characters that are forced to encounter serious obstacles on their way to finding love and deciding whether or not they were worth overcoming in the long run. They were real people with real problems. Conversely, Valentine’s Day is a film that typecasts big stars into movie-type roles as people who deal with relationships that feel as though they were dreamed up in the office of some under ambitious screenwriter who needed a convenient way to connect her long, boring, uninspired story together. Unlike An Officer and a Gentle, who’s melodrama feels not like a film but an event, this one feels like someone has pushed autopilot, just on a grander scale.

The Celebrity Connection: Eliza Dushku

I've done this twice now, where I've found photographic evidence that leads me to believe that certain celebrities are just other celebrities is disguise. First it was Michael Bay, then it was Lady Gaga and now it's happened again. So I've decided to give this a name. I'm calling it the Celebrity Connection, as you may have been able to decipher from the title of this post. I feel that it is my duty to unmask the truth behind the identities of all celebrities, one by one, especially on days when there is nothing better to write about.

This brings me to the matter at hand. Eliza Dushku (Bring it On, Wrong Turn,) has another movie that no one will care about going direct-to-DVD. She should team up with Mischa Barton for her next movie. There's no point after all, of deriving two movies their chances of theatrical distribution. The movie is called Open Graves and IMDB tells me that it is about a bunch of surfers who discover a game that kills someone every time it is played. That kind of sounds halfway like the plot of Richard Kelly's The Box except, ya know, stupider. So anyway, I see a picture of Dushku from the movie and it hit me:

Could Eliza Dushku be Brandon Lee in disguise? You Decide.

Treadmills Are Dangerous!

I went to see Valentine's Day today with my girlfriend (review coming soon) and there was a scene with Jessica Biel on a treadmill, which got my thinking about this video that someone sent me the other day. It's certainly funnier than anything in Valentine's Day.



Good thing he took his bling off first.