Posts tagged Patricia Clarkson
“Shutter Island” Disappointment City
Feb 25th
Disappointment City
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SHUTTER ISLAND is the fourth collaboration between director Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio and to say that it is a disappointment would be an understatement.
The film contains too many elements from previous films that appear to be obvious rip-offs, it wants to be surprising and shocking but instead is just confusing, and the ending is so bad that it makes you want to get up and leave, except that the audience is already doing that.
In addition, there are too many scenes that are nothing more than just exposition designed to fill in the holes for the audience.
DiCaprio plays U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels, the time is 1954, and the place is Ashecliffe Hospital on Shutter Island, an institution for the criminally insane on one of the islands in Boston Harbor.
Daniels is there with his brand-new partner, Chuck Aule, played by Mark Ruffalo, and they are investigating the disappearance of a female patient, Rachel Solando, who is there because she killed her three children, but believes that they are still alive.
As he starts his investigation, Daniels remarks that the inmates appear as if they are all on edge, and he is told, “Right now, Marshall, we all are.”
He is also corrected that the people there are patients, not inmates, by Dr. Cawley, played by Ben Kingsley.
The island is 11 miles from the nearest land, the dock is the only way off or on the island, Rachel has no shoes, and it is as if she evaporated from a locked cell with bars on the window.
And then there is a storm coming up that will turn into a hurricane.
If all this weren’t enough for Daniels to deal with, he starts to have flashbacks to his experience in World War II when he helped liberate a concentration camp, and he also begins to have dreams and visions of his dead wife, Dolores.
Daniels has an ulterior motive for requesting this case, because he suspects that the man who killed his wife is also a patient in the asylum.
Watching this movie can lead you to these conclusions: Scorsese does surrealism, Scorsese does melodramatics, Scorsese doesn’t do shock or suspense, Scorsese doesn’t do surprise endings, Scorsese does do overindulgence–no, make that self-overindulgence–and finally Scorsese doesn’t do Hitchcock.
SHUTTER ISLAND is Disappointment City.
Shutter Island – Movie Trailer
Feb 24th
Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio team up for a fourth time for this adaptation of Shutter Island, a novel by Dennis Lehane (Mystic River). The film opens in 1954 as World War II veteran and current federal marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), ferry to Shutter Island, a water-bound mental hospital housing the criminally insane. They have been asked to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient admitted to the asylum after she murdered her three children. As Teddy quizzes Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the head of the institution, he begins to suspect that the authorities in charge might not be giving him the whole truth, and that a terrible fate may befall all the patients in the spooky Ward C — a unit devoted to the most heinous of the hospital’s inmates. Complicating matters further, Teddy has a secret of his own — the arsonist who murdered his wife is incarcerated on Shutter Island. Driven to confront his wife’s killer, and stranded on the island because of a hurricane, Teddy must unravel the secrets of the eerie place before succumbing to his own madness. Max von Sydow, Emily Mortimer, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, and Jackie Earle Haley round out the supporting cast.
“Whatever Works” Predictable, but Very Good
Jul 16th
Predictable, but Very Good
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
WHATEVER WORKS is the latest Woody Allen film, and it is pure Woody Allen, even though he doesn’t appear in it, himself.
Woody wrote and directed the film, but the part that he usually plays is taken by Larry David, and he does an admirable job of speaking the lines that you can recognize as being pure Woody Allen.
In fact, Woody wrote this back in 1977 for Zero Mostel, but when that renowned actor died that year, the screenplay was put on the shelf.
Woody has
updated it to the present day, of course, but you can also tell that some of the material that would have been daring over 30 years ago is now rather commonplace.
David plays Boris Yellnikoff, a grumpy curmudgeon if ever there was one, and the film begins in New York City with Boris and three of his buddies talking at a sidewalk coffee shop.
Actually, Boris is doing all the talking and then he breaks the “fourth wall” of the movie screen and starts talking directly to us, the audience. He says, “This is not the feel-good movie of the year. So if you’re one of those idiots who needs to feel good, go get yourself a foot massage.”
Boris walks with a limp, and a flashback to his life with his former wife, Jessica, shows the event that caused it. Boris says that on paper, they were ideal, but life isn’t on paper.
That night when Boris is about to enter his building, he is solicited by a young runaway woman who begs him for something to eat. She is from Mississippi, her name is Melody St. Ann Celestine, and she is played by Evan Rachel Wood.
Boris feels what little bit of pity or sympathy he is capable of, and he invites Melody up to his apartment, but says that she can stay for only two minutes and that’s it.
Well, for all his bluster, Boris relents and lets Melody stay for a couple of nights, which turns into much longer. And then their relationship changes, too, although Boris tells his buddies that he just wants her out.
The film takes a left turn when Melody’s mother shows up looking for her and then a right turn when her father does, too.
WHATEVER WORKS is predictable, but very good.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
