Probably She’s Out of My League’s biggest flaw is that it’s not actually a Judd Apatow movie. It has the requisite heart and humor [ranging from subtle to coarse, but going mostly with coarse] and a premise that, as far-fetched as it might seem, really isn’t [trust me on this one – I’ve been where Kirk is here, just not as overtly humiliatingly].

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The reason clichés become clichés is that they are rooted in truth. In Brooklyn’s Finest, director Antoine Fuqua [Training Day] and screenwriter Michael C. Mann attempt to see through the clichés to the truth that lies beneath. They are only partially successful.

The film follows three cops – about to be retired Eddie [Richard Gere], overwhelmed family man Sal [Ethan Hawke] and undercover cop Tango [Don Cheadle] – through a few very pressure packed days in the worst part of the most crime ridden precinct in Brooklyn.

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Tim Burton and Alice in Wonderland are such a natural combination that it’s a wonder that he hasn’t tried to make an Alice film years ago. Now that he has, it’s likely that it will draw mixed reviews because everyone has a different idea of what a Burton Alice would look like – not too mention the possibility that he’d make a sequel to the Lewis Carroll novels.

Well, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is as odd and vaguely sinister as any Burton fan could ask for. It also pushes the bounds of its PG rating as far as it can. I can see it producing nightmares in younger children and especially sensitive adults. From where I sit, this is a Good Thing. Alice in Wonderland should be a bit darker and more twisted than other classic tales – that aren’t Grimm’s Fairy Tales, at least.

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I’ll admit I’ve never been a big fan of Leonardo DiCaprio, I think he’s a strong actor and certainly has that “It” factor but I’m always slightly disappointed by the movies he makes. This is due to the fact that he always picks “self important” films that strive to be great but always seem to fall short for one reason or another. Maybe it’s me, but he comes across as a tad arrogant. Examples of just above good, but not great movies “Titanic,” “Aviator,” “Gangs of New York,” “Blood Diamond” all movies that are marketed as the 2nd coming but fell short – and I can never put my finger on why.  His latest Shutter Island is a soul crushing bore that I desperately wanted to walk out on, but it’s a Leonardo and Martin Scorsese production so I thought it would get better.

I sat there for an hour thinking, “Why don’t I like this movie?” “Surely, something important is going to happen… any minute now.”  But no, Shutter Island is relentless is it’s incessant talking.  I get that it’s a procedural and a mystery, but come on; I don’t need a million conversations about a missing patient, or have 20 philosophical discussions with Ben Kingsley about the pros and cons of Psychotherapy vs. Psychotropic Drugs, I got the point the first couple of times, let’s move on. This is a movie that knows what it wants to be, but doesn’t have the story to back up the tone and mood it’s going for.

My feet told me to walk out, but my brain kept saying relax, it’s a slow build up but the pay off will be worth it. There is a twist at the end but by the time they got to it, I could care less and part of me was thinking this better not be a double twist or I’ll be really upset, then once the movie ended, I was annoyed that they didn’t do the double twist. I left the theater going what did I just waste 2 hours watching?

I liked Leonardo as the conflicted WWII Vet Marshall Teddy Daniels. He’s determined to find out what happened to a patient who seemed to have vanished out of thin air. I hated how Scorsese used music in this movie. There wasn’t much, but what was used was overbearing. The opening few minutes where Teddy and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner are talking is punched up by this blaring orchestral brass horn (I think) that is supposed to let us know this Island is Evil with a capitol E. It occasionally comes back during some later conversations as if to say, “wake up and pay attention, this is important.”

The trailers led me to believe that this would be a supernatural, ghost story but it turned out to be about crazy people in a dank isolated Psych Ward for the Criminally Insane.  The minute I saw the Island I started to think how cool this movie would have been if it was called Arkham Asylum and not Shutter Island because this facility is exactly how I always imagined Batman’s home for people like the Joker to look. The only way this movie became tolerable to me was I started picturing Bruce Wayne doing the investigating and how cool it would be if that was the Batmobile and not some 1950s police car, or if Leonardo as Bruce Wayne threw some smoke grenades into the Prison riot.

Shutter Island is really all about Director Martin Scorsese and not about the story. It’s about the tone and pacing he sets. If you like movies that are slow, dark, and is striving for a sense of foreboding then this movie is for you. Me, I desperately wanted to walk out.

Final Grade D

EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally Posted 02.20.2010

In many reviews, I have castigated directors and writers for that matter] of failing to make a successful thriller/horror/noir film because they went into it with one tone – usually grey. There are precious few breaks in the bleakness of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and yet I never felt bored by its unremittingly ominous tone. Maybe that’s because Scorsese is a master storyteller and has the ability to produce subtle tonal changes – even in a film that does not rely on subtlety in any normal sense.

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Damn you Christopher Columbus! You sucked me into the world magic and kid lit with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, now that I’m over my obsession with this series, you return once again with another kid lit movie that I’ve never heard of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Sure it’s a blatant and weak rip off of Harry Potter, but Columbus has an eye for this material. While Director David Yates clearly hates magic and managed to suck all the magic out of the Potter films, Columbus loves and revels in it. He showed it in the first few HP films and it’s on display here.

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Christopher Columbus clearly learned a lesson from working on the first Harry Potter films – a film doesn’t need to be slavishly adapted from a book to be successful. The Lightning Thief may be almost two hours long, but it mostly zips right along. Not only are entire subplots from the book eliminated, but several characters have been cut, too.

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After a couple postponements and a complete makeover in the editing room, The Wolfman finally reached screens this weekend. Not worth the wait.

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In baseball terms, Pierre Morel’s [Transporter 3, District B13] best pitch is the high, hard heater – the shoulder high fastball. His movies tend to start off with a bit of scene-setting and then shift into high gear for the rest of the ride. So it is with From Paris With Love – a movie filled with shootings, stabbings and stuff getting blowed up real good. If Joe Bob Briggs was still doing regular reviews, he’d give this three explosions out of five.

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Crazy Heart is the story of a burnt out country & western singer who drinks too much, sleeps around and hasn’t written a new song in many years – and how love redeems him without making life all that much easier. Bad Blake is the burnt out C&W star and Jean Craddock [Maggie Gyllenhaal] is the reporter and single mom whose request for an interview leads to much more than either of them expect.

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