Movies We've Just Watched discussion
Mystery and Suspense
>
SHUTTER ISLAND

That said, what's it say about a thriller when you wish the plot twist/secret was never part of the movie? If Scorsese + Lehane just went with the full-bore nuttiness of the protagonist's delusions, I'd be on board!
It's also approximately 45 minutes too long, as are most Hollywood productions these days. (Academy voters tend to vote for films at least 130 minutes long.)
One bit I really liked was Max von Sydow's first scene, when he says, "I'm very impressed by your defense mechanisms." Not sure why, but I thought it was a great little comic moment, and remember LOLing at it. Must have been MVS's delivery.

i had no idea max was in it! man, how old is he at this point? the guy has been in movies since 1949...

I didn't know Max was still around either!

Remember that the time period of this movie was the early to mid 50's - so Leo would have been old enough to have fought in WWII and witnessed the holocaust.



right...i'll try to stay focused on his outstanding work with bergman.
:)


i'd prefer to leave the planet holding the memory of his performance in seventh seal, the virgin spring, or even hour of the wolf.



sorry for my pretentious post! i love low brow along with high brow cinema. i just forget sometimes. but i really love those max performances in those films i mentioned. it wouldn't be quite so bad if i could point to a few american filmmakers who could rival bergman - every time i think about it, i just get dark and cranky...as i did above.

!!!
just for the sake of conversation, can you think of an american film maker who takes on the social problems that bergman wrestled with in as artful a manner, or who worked with a team of actors of that caliber? i'm not provoking or anything - i'm interested in your opinion (or anyone who wants to address that question). in short, who do you think of as being one of the really great american directors, in terms of so called "serious" cinema ... directors who are not concerned with entertainment, but deal with film as an art form that can transform society.

Gotta love the Ming.
I am not quite sure what ppl are saying about MINORITY REPORT- I haven't seen it since it was in theatres, but I remember liking it esp. for a Spielberg joint.

Some cool FX, though. I remember being deeply disappointed by the film, which I had high hopes for as Spielberg's first after the remarkable A.I., which it turns out I had completely misunderstood as a statement that Spielberg was finally going to put childish things behind him and grow the fuck up as an artist. I was younger and less cynical then.
So, Philip. I think there are serious issues on display in the films of a lot of filmmakers. The works of good old solid Alfred Hitchcock, for example, constitute as clear a statement of what should not happen between people as anything in Bergman, and manage to be vastly entertaining without resorting to the overt philosophising monologues that can mar Bergman's work.
But that may not be what you mean. Just to clarify, what social issues are you asking about?


i suppose there are a lot of film makers that have handled a few of those issues, but bergman seemed to handle all of them at one time or another, and i'm not listing all of the stuff i'm thinking about...there's too many things to list here.



i'd like to read the discussion about Sayles. can you tell me what thread it was in? thanks Phillip.



having said that, if you can list five films that you enjoy, i could recommend somethings that might interest you.

1~Avatar
2~Sherlock Holmes
3~Alice in Wonderland
4~Wolfman

i liked a good bit of the recent sherlock holmes film, but i wasn't so keen on the ending and how big and bombastic it all became. i liked the quieter more psychological side of the film - the character development stuff that showed us interesting sides of holmes that we haven't seen before, and his relationship with watson was different than in the other films - that was a nice change.
if you're a robert downey junior fan, zodiac was one of the best thrillers i've seen in the past decade - lots of good acting and a gripping story. there's one pretty grizzly moment, but apart from that it's all well orchestrated tension.
with the recent holmes film i'm reminded of V for Vendetta - similar style - lots of action, some nice psychological material to thicken the character development, some socially relevant subtext and a few good performances, especially by my girl natalie portman.
i'm also a fan of brazil, the terry gilliam film - but that's certainly not new. and i liked the imaginarium of doctor parnassus - which is good fantasy material, and it seems like you're a fan of the genre. there really isn't any substitute for baron von munchausen, that is essential viewing - but again, that's certainly not a new film.
i would say the recent bond films with daniel craig are also in this ballpark - guy ritchie (director) said he was making a bond film with this recent holmes effort - not a gothic basil rathbone thriller.
as far as wolfman - which i haven't seen - most horror fans love the howling - that came out long ago but i think it holds up well - as does american werewolf in london. i'm not such a fan of cgi, or i'd recommend the underworld - lycan series - which a lot of people liked - do you know those films? i liked the first one, but wasn't crazy about the sequel. for my money the best horror film of the last decade was let the right one in - but i've already raved about it on these threads since it came out, so i'm sure you've heard of it. i also liked [REC:] quite a lot, but would avoid quarantine - the american remake.
did you see cloverfield? i was so ready to hate it and never check it out, but a friend i respect recommended it and i liked it a lot more than i thought i would. it worked well for me that it didn't have any actors i recognized.
there are a few other films i'm forgetting - so again, give me a day or so and i'll recommend some more stuff.



but - if you don't mind taking a chance, here's a couple of my favourite newish movies - i guess i'd call them dramas.
Broken Embraces (subtitled)
Away we Go
A Serious Man
An Education

thanks Phillip - i don't tend to visit the Cult Classics thread. but maybe i should. i would never have guessed that Sayles' movies would be considered cult material. i thought it was all Night of the Living Dead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. ;)

i was thinking about a film called the fall. have you seen it? it came out a few years ago. based on some of the movies you like, i think you might really enjoy this one. here's a link to a description, etc.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460791/





but is it worth it... or I should wait till it shows on t.v screens???

If you want to see a good misleading and thought evoking film try:
Blow Up
Jacob's Ladder
Memento
Sleuth
They Might Be Giants
Total Recall
The Wild Bunch

I liked the eerie tone and Hitchcockian elements. I liked Di Caprio's and Kingsley's performances.
It was quite a twisted story and you had to pay attention, but I like twisty mysteries.

I liked the eerie tone and Hitchcockian elements. I liked Di Caprio's and Ki..."
HI Julie. I agree, I also liked Shutter Island. It's one of those movies that you actually have to think, everything isn't predictable...

Alas, Martin Scorsese doesn't know from "woo hoo!" SHUTTER ISLAND is the latest and possibly the weakest (but probably not the last) of the BIG SURPRISE films, like THE SIXTH SENSE, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, MEMENTO, etc. I'm not bragging when I say that I saw it coming before the movie even started, simply by thinking about the fact that there is in fact a big surprise. I remember thinking, "Oh, man, it can't be THAT, can it?" And when it came to the Big Reveal, I started to think that there had to be more to it, right, there just had to be, Scorsese couldn't be settling for that tired old gimmick, really, could he, that couldn't be it?
And goddamn it to hell, it was.
Folks, M. Night Shyamalan himself would have passed on this script for being just too too too fucking obvious. And Scorsese himself doesn't help matters. Never the subtlest of directors, he just goes full-throttle here -- every scene is heavily underlined for maximum importance, and vast stretches of dialogue seem to be marked with an asterisk somehow: Ben Kingsley virtually holds up a sign saying IMPORTANT CLUE every time he speaks. It would work as a sort of affectionate parody of high gothic whodunit stuff, but Scorsese never seems to be in on the joke.
There's just nothing animating the movie, no fun, no idea that Scorsese was having us all on, a la Hitchcock's assertion that PSYCHO was a "fun picture." There's nothing in SHUTTER ISLAND to even approach that glorious little moment in PSYCHO, for example, where Anthony Perkins says, "My mother.. what's the phrase? She's not herself today." There's just no room for that kind of thing in Scorsese's solemn and increasingly joyless universe.
Solemn and joyless can have their appeal, of course. What finally makes SHUTTER ISLAND such an ordeal is the extreme heavy handedness with which Scorsese works overtime to add some perceived SERIOUSNESS to the rather silly contraption of a story. Flashbacks of the liberation of Dachau, no less, are liberally sprinkled throughout the film. There's some nattering about violence being part of the human condition, and a mention of God supplying a moral order. All it really ends up doing is highlighting the real silliness of the goings-on, and not in a good way.
OK, so there are good points. A flashback to Dachau contains a memorable scene about the horrors of war that seems to act as a rebuke to the grinning gleeful savagery of Tarantino's BASTERDS. The film is gorgeously mounted, the cinematography etc. are all perfection. The acting is mostly beyond reproach, with Michelle Williams and Mark Ruffalo turning in particularly fine work. Leonardo DiCaprio does his very best, but I have to say that I found his eternal golden youthfulness to be a major drawback in believing that he is supposed to have witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand. I'm hoping someone somewhere will explain the cameo from the great Elias Koteas, who appears all too briefly wearing what looks like Robert De Niro's Frankenstein Monster makeup. Is that Scorsese's idea of an inside joke or something?
It has to be said that SHUTTER ISLAND boasts the single coolest contemporary classical soundtrack since Kubrick's THE SHINING, from which Scorsese lifts at least one memorable cue. The soundtrack album is essential owning. If only the movie itself were even remotely essential viewing.