Shutter Island was directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio (because they’re in love), Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, and John Carroll Lynch. There’s much more to the cast, but those are just the few that I actually care about. It takes place at a mental facility for the criminally insane on a remote island in 1954. Leonardo plays as Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshall investigating a missing patient with his partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo).

Even Mark Ruffalo thinks Leo's prop tie is the sex

Shutter Island begins with Teddy getting seasick on a ferry on its way to the island. This involves lots of dry heaving and the feeling that this guy may actually blow chucks on screen. He soon meets his partner, Chuck, and lands on the Island itself. It could be my seasonal, deep obsession with Lost, but I half expected John Locke to greet them. With a knife.

If you’ve been anywhere outside of a hole for the last year, then you already know that the film is a thriller, shrouded in mystery. Per contra, this is not a horror film with chainsaw wielding psychopaths running around in dank, gloomy, mental wards, as the many witless patrons that I shared a theater with imagined it would be. For most of the film, Teddy has flashbacks of a Nazi death camp from WWII as well as hallucinations of his deceased wife, which is mentioned at the beginning. All this happens continuously throughout the film. At some points you’re not sure if he’s hallucinating again, or if what he’s experiencing is actually real.

The story evolves at a few key moments taking the film in a new direction, but without leaving the original plot in the dust. Also, the pace of the film continues steadily without taking a break on random, non-essentials. There are occasional moments where something is alluded to, but nothing follows through. This is rare, but is still something that feels overlooked, and not purposeful. Almost every dream sequence has a small clue that connotes what is really happening in the story, howbeit, this is not something you pick up on unless you already know what is unfolding.

You did what to your husband?

I’ve done my best to not give out any spoilers this time. The subtleties that are creatively woven throughout the film come together very well at the big reveal, even up until the last line. If I were to talk about it anymore, I would unfortunately begin to give away the plot line, cause you to go insane, and have you end up in some creepy mental ward on a remote island. I won’t say this is an amazing film, but I will say that its a great one. It’s highly enjoyable and not easily forgettable.

• See in theaters? Yes
• Rent? Fo shizzle
• Buy? The fact that Martin Scorsese directed this is reason enough.

*Bonus: I forgot to mention, the score is simple and yet perfectly creepy. You’d be surprised at how a foghorn blowing every other second never actually gets annoying.

Let me start off by saying this: The Wolfman was not a bad movie… It was a terrible movie.

The Wolfman was directed by Joe Johnston who is also responsible for such films as Hidalgo and Jurassic Park III, and will soon be responsible for the Captain America film adaptation (which if he ruins, I will personally murder him with a dull pocket knife.) It stars Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, Anthony Hopkins and the always awesome Hugo Weaving. Its a remake of of the slightly cheesy, yet surprisingly intense 1941 original. It scored a 32% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is about right.

Roar!

The film starts off rather quickly, having a man gored by the beast right away. Soon, Del Toro’s character, Lawrence Talbot, is involved and that’s when it goes down hill. The cinematography at first is beautiful; gloom and despair surround the small village in a fog and darkness that you would expect to find a mythical, bloodthirsty monster. However, before long, you realize that the story sucks and you just stop caring about all the fog. I understand that making a monster seem real and frightening by todays standards is not an easy feat to pull off. We’ve been desensitized by the horrors that humans can commit to the point that nothing actually scares us anymore. The Wolfman does have a few moments that make you jump, but those moments are anticipated and only catch you off guard if you’re too busy yawning or picking your nose. Since CGI is now all the rage, they decided to incorporate as much as they could, even when the scene did not require anything computer generated. In the scene where Lawrence is bitten by the beast, he is speaking with some morons at a Gypsy camp when some of the local townsfolk decide to roll in and blame the recent attacks on the Gypsy’s trick bear… the bear that looks like a cartoon because its all CGI. Apparently a real bear is hard to come by in Hollywood. The film continues to venture into awfulness from then on. For most of the movie, Del Toro appears as if he just doesn’t give a crap, and possibly is loaded up on quaaludes. Hugo Weaving provides the only scripted comedy, Emily Blunt continues to be hot and British and Anthony Hopkins is, well, himself. Terrible dialogue is delivered so often, that when there is a moment you should be taking seriously, you end up snorting to hold in the giggles.

Spoiler: Do not continue to read if you still care enough to waste your money on this.

Anthony Hopkins, who plays as Lawrence’s Father, is the original wolfman who bit Lawrence at the beginning as well as tore half the townsfolk limb from bloody limb. Lawrence figures this out and takes a month to walk from London back to his village while everyone else take a day or two. He arrives just minuets before the full moon hits and they are able to have a quick, witless conversation before they both turn into wolfmen. This is where is goes from bad to freaking ridiculous. After they both turn, the budget for CG dropped considerably. It’s as if they wasted what they had left on the stupid bear in the Gypsy camp. However, despite the terrible digitalization of them both, they begin to duke it out… WWE style. It was all I could do not commentate loudly in the theater and yell out “Pile Driver!” and “From the top ropes!”. They brawled for a few minutes like Godzilla and King Kong before Lawrence wised up and threw his idiot dad into the fire. He then went Mortal Kombat on him and knocked his head clean off with one fell swipe of the paw. FINISHING MOVE! Oh, and the decapitated head morphed back into a CG, burned, Anthony Hopkins that chomped for a few seconds before finally stopping.

More stupid crap happens, including Hugo Weaving’s character getting bit by Del Toro’s wolfman and Del Toro escaping into the woods, while an ignorant Emily Blunt followed him. He attacks her and as he’s about to take a bite outta dat, she shoots him with a silver bullet. So much for your plan to save the beast, eh Emily? Del Toro barfs on his acting career one more time and performs a death scene that can only be paralleled by a 1920′s western.

And credits.

I was actually excited for this film some months back, back when Oscar season was beginning and I thought every film was incredible, a time before I remembered that January and February is when movies that someone took a dump on get released. I remember reading about it over 2 years ago, and thinking that this would be fantastic.

Scary Mofo

I loved the original one when I was a kid, it scared the crap out of me. Of course, when Abbot and Costello met the wolfman, I thought it was the greatest thing since bread. Not even sliced. Just bread in general.

I feel that the Rotten Tomatoes T-meter is accurate. 32% fits. It has a few elements that make you want to keep watching it, but the overall experience is just awful. However, if you want to just have fun and see some over the top de-limbing gore, then go for it.

Watch in theaters? No

Rent? Yes

Buy? No… Not unless you own a snuggie. Then you already have no taste and should probably be banished to an island with all the Twilight fans.

As an avid patron of the cinema and intransigent critic of filmmaking, I do not attend films and movies for only the sake of entertainment, but feel that it is my duty to immerse myself in the story that is unfolding onscreen. There are many genres and styles of film that I find imaginative, real, creative and intriguing. Granted, there are many films/movies that I enjoy simply because they are entertaining, as we all do. Anchorman may never cease to be my favorite comedy, and I heartily enjoy Die Hard, and I must admit I will always have a guilty pleasure for Milo and Otis (I grew up on it).

Needless to say, I have broad range of taste in film and like to expand my horizons whenever I can. My Netflix queue is constantly growing, and with each film I scratch off the list, 3 more take its place. Some say that its a waste to spend so much time in front of the TV, and I wholeheartedly agree. But… is that time better spent in a book or in front of the computer? Yes and no. Like I said earlier, I don’t watch films for the sake of taking up time. I watch them to learn, to watch how other filmmakers tell a story, to try and understand what is trying to be told. I look at it the same as reading a book. What is the mystery? How is the dialogue enriching it? How is it unfolding? A film is just a visual representation of someone’s story to begin with, so how is this visual representation best telling that story?

Granted, there are scores of god-awful excuses for film that make their way to the screen every year, many of those making gratuitous amounts of money, but there are also unseen and unnoticed gems that get produced, often independently, that are incredible works of art. Ink and Primer for example. Both had a minimal budget and were produced completely independent of any studio interference. While Primer gained respect from various film festivals, such as SXSW, Ink’s only popularity came from fans that found out about it through the filmmakers tweets and what little news they got from a Colorado art theater. Both are incredible stories that most moviegoers, even avid ones, don’t know about.

My point here is this: Story is apart of life. Film is just a visual story being told through someone else’s vision. Some are great story tellers, and some should be sentenced to watch their own films on loop for eternity. Either way, whether you enjoy film like I do, or whether you see it purely as entertainment, take a moment and think about the story that’s being told.

Four days after seeing the awesomeness that is J.J. Abrams new film, Star Trek, Nathan and I finally did a review. Something we swore we would do the next day prior to seeing it again. Point being, we did one so stop whining.

My apologies for the audio, we recorded it on the Flip and another device, but we sucked at doing it right.