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
Between your grammatical errors (it's "due", not "do") and your wishing that you were watching a Batman film and how "cool" it would have been if this had been about "Arkham Asylum", I take it you are rather young (at least I hope you are). It sounds like you spent most of the film thinking about how much you were going to hate it. I give your review a D.
This is the shittiest review i have ever read. Way to use grammar correctly and to give any sort of credit to anyone involved in making the film. I agree with you that the music totally took away from the story, but you need to learn how to write about your misgivings cohesively and thoughtfully.
Maybe you should have just walked out? It would have spared us all the lame review.
Learn to write?
Not review a movie you can't review.
In any case it sums up what i thought about this movie. It was extremely boring, the story was a tad interesting but the movie really failed at creating any suspense ever. It just couldn't hold my interest but I also thought hmm maybe something worth it would come later. The longer the movie dragged on I stopped caring if there was something and so did the three people I heard snoring in the theater.
Michelle Alexandria should be committed to Shutter Island. Everybody else in the world thought this was a wonderful movie including my husband and I.
You get points for being funny 🙂
This movie is complete waste of time for everyone…
Zero…
This review is spot on, and points out the faults in this boring, ill-paced, pretentious film. The flashbacks to WW2 were a montage of cliches, and the lame plot had several notable inconsistencies.
It would have been cool if you'd called your essay "My Little Opinion"
Are you retarded? Just what do you think a REVIEW is??
Surely you are trying to bait me with your idiot comment, you do understand a Review is My Opinion? I hope you do, please tell me you do!
good review, tell it like it is! MS hasn't made a good movie in 20 years. the most overrated director in decades. he even stole the idea of an island from a TV show, sheesh! Kubrick set trends, Scorcese copies them.
He "stole" the idea from a book, entitled Shutter Island.
I agree this movie had me looking at my watch and I had to cringe at what was on the screen many times. Marty make another "Taxi Driver" or "Goodfellas" please! Work with Deniro again Leonardo is not a great actor. Sorry.
Michelle, don't you mean "I couldn't care less" (about the payoff at the end of the movie)? "I could care less" should actually have the opposite meaning.
I think you could argue either meaning. Most people say could care less, but if you want to be technical couldn't is correct.
No you can't actually argue either meaning. Could and couldn't are opposite words and apply completely opposite meaning in that sentence. A large portion of people lazily using the wrong version does not validate it.
I agree with your opinion of he movie but you really need to bone up on your writing and grammar and stop defending incorrect usage. Doing that makes you sounds stupid which you are not. Make people respect you by being the best you can be at what you do.
Good review. Shutter Island is awful, let's face it. Anyone who claims to like this film has to be lying to themselves. The blame lies squarely with Scorcese. It's just a dreadful movie. Absolutely pointless.
You sound young and arrogant, with little patience to sit down and enjoy a good film. Maybe there wasn't enough explosions or CGI robots for you.
I only began to read this review because I was drawn by the use of "Arkham Asylum" on Rottentomatoes. So, okay, you got me. Unfortunately, the review I found disappointed me. Generally, I agree with your opinions, but your grammar and professionalism need desperate work. You're writing for EclipseMagazine, for crying out loud.
Your first paragraph was acceptable, but the review suffered after that.
You wrote:
"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."
First of all, your second clause does not have a subject. Secondly, the sentence should be punctuated with a semicolon after "Psychotropic Drugs." Instead, you used a comma, and you did it again shortly later when that also should have been either a period or a semicolon.
"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."
What your brain, "said," should have been in quotations, and you should have placed a comma after, "build up."
"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'm not sure what to do with this first sentence. Comma abuse is not your friend. Okay, to start, you should have inserted a comma between "end" and "but," and then should have written, "I could not have cared less." (You forgot, "not," and did not write in the past participle) Then, you again forgot to put in quotations what you were thinking (you should do so whenever you're switching between description and inner monologue), and after this quoted material you should have again ended the sentence. Cut, "then" and just say, "Once the movie ended, I was annoyed they did not opt for the slightly less conventional double twist." This not only reduces the comma abuses, but it sounds less superficial and extemporaneous. Then, in your final sentence, you again should have quoted the portion you were thinking to yourself. Also, "2" should be "two." You should use numerical format when you're referring to double-or-more digit numbers only, or when you have used several numbers in the paragraph.
Your fourth paragraph was not bad, as you managed to sound a bit more clever and humorous than in the rest, but you switched topics abruptly from DiCaprio to Scorsese. I'll leave the grammatical flaws alone, here, because most of them were recognizably intentional (unlike the others I have chosen to critique).
The fifth paragraph's biggest problem is Batman saturation. Now sure, I have also drawn the same similarities you have between this movie's setting and Arkham Asylum, but you simply spent too much time on it. Even though I share your sentiments, even I would argue that you sound somewhat immature talking about it for a such a substantial portion of your review. As well on another note, you may want to find other inherent criticisms to make besides how much this movie bored you. If you find yourself incessantly bored with Shutter Island, then you are going to have a miserably boring extended career also as a film critic in general … many, many quality movies are as, "boring," as Shutter Island.
Your final paragraph:
"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."
That first sentence might as well be stricken, because the same could be said of any movie on the face of earth in relation to its director. As for the last sentence, the last two items in your list are essentially the same thing. Finally, after you used a plural subject, you continued to write, "are," early in the sentence, making the later, "is," which you also wrote, both grammatically inconsistent with the subject and also redundant.
And as a side note, if you're going to write sassy retorts to everyone who complains about your review (which is the obnoxiously unoriginal norm these days, so I guess I cannot fault you for that), do not make the same grammatical mistakes you made in your review when doing so. Furthermore, think of something clever or even putatively witty to say now and then. I've heard these kinds of lame comebacks from kids shopping at Build-a-Bear. In essence, add a modicum of maturity, and the requisite professionalism that comes with it, to your work.
Normally, I would not take the time to write all of this, but you're writing for what appears to be a somewhat significant online publication. You need to appreciate that fact.
Usually when people can't argue the merits they resort to the tired "Your grammar sucks," comment which generally pisses me off. I will give you props for citing specific examples – even though all of your examples are based on personal opinion – could and couldn't care less is a subjective thing, my harping on Batman is only two sentences, etc.. Here's the thing though – I don't care if my grammar isn't technically perfect. I'm not trying to write a college essay. And I'm sorry but I'm not going to start worrying about whether my "Sassy Retorts" are "grammatically correct."
this review is by someone who likes bad movies. Or what he saw completely went over his head. He proves this when he first saw the trailer and wrote "led me to believe that this would be a supernatural, ghost story". I remember when i first saw the trailer. I never once thought it would be a ghost movie. I would love to explain in detail why you were left behind on this one but there simply is no point. I'm sure you enjoyed transformers and iron man is the best movie ever. I'm also sure you thought they were aliens at the end of A.I. too(dont worry i didnt think you'd get that one anyway).
Thanks for the reply, but since when are grammar issues a matter of opinion? You and I both know there are some definite authorities on grammar in the English language, so I'm going to assume on your behalf that you were referring to the substantive comments (Such as the ones about Batman … even though you also listed the could/could not distinction which is a grammatical matter … and by the way, the correct phrase is: "could not" … "could" is NOT equivalent in contrast to how you have now twice argued. You can confirm this with about any professor. If you respond and claim you don't care about the rules of the English language, then I fear you doom yourself to a life of journalistic anonymity.)
I said at the outset I was going to write about grammar and professionalism and that I generally agreed with your opinions. Therefore, I was in no way unable to argue the merits. I granted you the merits, outright in fact. For the record, that's different from an inability to argue them.
Yes, you only mentioned Batman in two sentences, but they were long sentences and comprised about 15% of the total review based on word count. And besides, you probably didn't need to mention him at all. You should have just said that the island reminded you of Arkham Asylum and continued, leaving the allusion for the more clever or at least more nerdy readers. Honestly think to yourself, "Who cares if I was imagining that Leonardo DiCaprio was Batman?" This is just a matter of discretion.
No, you're not trying to write a college essay. But, honestly, you would help yourself profoundly to try. It's really not hard. And besides, whatever standard to which you're holding yourself really should be raised to SOME degree, even if it is not a collegiate one. Like I said, you are writing for a significant domain, so writing like this is unacceptable. I know it is easy to just rattle off several quick insults to readers who I think have a genuine reason to complain (and really, none of them have even approached the level of, "flaming you," yet), but why would you not just try to improve your writing and show more discretion in your disclosed reasoning? Such things could help, tremendously.
My opinion is that you're a better writer than this article shows. I imagine EclipseMagazine would not associate with you if you were not. And again, I agree with nearly all of your opinions in general, but this article seems like it was really, really rushed. The first half is not nearly as sloppy as the second half, for instance. Instead of taking the mantle of the sarcastic, defiant blogger (who is a dime a dozen these days), try to show a little maturity and professionalism. Such are the tools of longevity.
I do freely admit I generally write rambling reviews for movies that I don't have a strong opinion on. This is one of them. I would think you would hate my comment about the music, that sentence I actually rewrote 4 times. 🙂 Again my reviews aren't meant to be grammatically correct or perfect, these are stream of consciousness pieces, if you can't accept that, then I can't help you.
Awesome review Michelle. People who saw this just admire it because it's a Scorsese film with DiCaprio in the lead role so of course they will jump on the band wagon and will light up their torch sticks for anyone who disliked the picture. I for one did not like the film and was constantly restless waiting for anything interesting to happen. When the credits role I felt Scorsese laughed behind my back and took away my hard earned money and 2 and a half dreadful hours of my time. Yeah thanks a lot.
I just happened to read this review… Judging by what you say I can easily guess you are around 15-18 years old, and a TDK fankid. I winder why Rotten Tomatoes counts this type of crap as "reviews".
This review makes me scared of the generation that is a mere 10 years younger than mine. I guess that the kids that are now 8 years old will have spent virtually their entire life in front of a facebook kind of thing and will make today's 18 year olds look like scientists.