MacCready wrote:minstrel wrote:Shutter Island
Had you seen that at the cinema? I'd be interested in knowing what you thought of it, and if those thoughts are buried somewhere in the clogged bowels of TPZ I just am too frakking lazy to dig like an over-caffeinated beagle to get at it. Been a savage week.
I watched Shutter Island last night. I can't say I liked it very much. It was well-directed, I think, and the cinematography was excellent (though I'm not too good a judge of that), and I was very impressed with Leonardo DiCaprio's performance. But there were two major problems I had with it: First, it's a mind-fuck movie, and I hate mind-fuck movies. By that I mean movies in which for significant stretches of time you don't know whether you're watching the real narrative or someone's dream sequence. It's tough to make a good mind-fuck movie for the same reason it's tough to make a good time-travel movie: the nature of the gimmick makes almost anything possible, so it's too easy to get VERY lazy with the storytelling. If nothing really HAS to make sense, then why bother having it make sense at all? Just dazzle the viewer with some cool-looking imagery and call it a day. I hate movies like that.
Second, I spotted the twist very, very early. I'm usually not too good at that, maybe because I'm usually a fairly passive viewer and I'm not usually looking for a twist. But this time, even though I wasn't looking for a twist, I saw it coming a mile away. That took some of the drama out of the second half of the movie for me.
Also, while I thought most of the visuals were very good, Scorsese fell a little too much in love with shots of long, dark, empty corridors leading to Creepsville. Okay, I get it, that way lies Creepsville. I just wish he'd gotten a bit more creative with that stuff.
I enjoyed it well enough, but I doubt I'm going to watch it again. I should have rented it instead of buying it, I think.