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Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese takes us back to the paranoid Cold War era in Shutter Island, based on the best-seller by Mystic River’s Dennis Lehane. (Please be advised that this review may contain some spoilers.) This psychological thriller, set in Massachusetts in 1954, follows U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) as they venture to Shutter Island, home of the fortress-like mental institution Ashecliffe Hospital, to investigate the inexplicable disappearance of a patient named Rachel Solondo. To make matters worse, a hurricane has trapped the two cops on this godforsaken rock for the time being.
As they try to determine how Rachel escaped and her current whereabouts, Teddy and Chuck are stonewalled by the warden (Ted Levine) and the hospital’s urbane but shifty administrator, Dr. Cawley (Sir Ben Kingsley), who is championing a (then) revolutionary new method for treating the criminally insane. The deeper Teddy digs into the mystery of Rachel’s disappearance and what is really going on at Ashecliffe, the more he himself grows disturbed. Teddy becomes haunted by memories of his late wife (Michelle Williams) and of the atrocities he witnessed as a G.I. during World War II. Has Teddy been exposed to something sinister on Shutter Island that’s causing this breakdown, or has Ashecliffe simply unleashed demons that were already within him?
I started reading Lehane’s novel a few months ago, but stopped about a quarter of the way through for two reasons. First, I guess I didn’t really want to spoil the movie for myself after all, and, secondly, I had a hunch that I’d figured out where the story was going and what its big twist was going to be. After watching the movie — and then reading the end of the novel — it turns out my hunch was right on target. It’s tough to find a thriller truly suspenseful when you’ve figured out its big twist within the first act (or from just watching the trailers). Anyone who has seen enough psychological thrillers, or for that matter almost any given episode of The Twilight Zone, will be able to figure out Shutter Island just as easily. But that doesn’t mean you still won’t be entertained.
Rather than being able to enjoy Shutter Island as a psychodrama as it was meant to be, I instead appreciated its style, atmosphere, production values, direction and the lead performance by Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s a B-movie made by A-listers, with Scorsese fashioning his most Hollywood movie since Cape Fear (and maybe even more so than that film). Shutter Island is a great filmmaking exercise for Scorsese to make the type of pulpy, overwrought genre B-movies he grew up watching. It plays like an old Hammer horror film (Vincent Price could have played either the Kingsley or von Sydow roles back in the day), and at other times like the German Expressionist classics (such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) that reportedly influenced Scorsese in making this film. It’s also an homage to Shock Corridor, a film made by one of his idols, Sam Fuller. While it’s fun to see Scorsese having fun, it’s also a lot of effort spent on a shell game where you know which shell the nut is hidden under the entire time.
Check out the Shutter Island movie clips
DiCaprio just gets better with each film, especially the ones he makes with Scorsese. As they did in The Aviator and The Departed, Scorsese and DiCaprio have created another protagonist perpetually on the verge of losing his grip as they intensify the pressure on his psyche until the stress finally causes a climactic rupture. There are layers to DiCaprio’s performance that should be more evident upon subsequent viewings, but he is, along with Christian Bale, one of the few young actors who can bring depth, complexity and subtlety to obsessed, often unhinged characters.
The rest of the cast is solid. Ruffalo is tasked with perhaps the most challenging role in the film, while the reading of Kingsley’s character is entirely dependent on the reliability of the protagonist’s questionable perspective. I don’t want to say more about their roles than that, suffice to say their performances become increasingly critical as the narrative draws to a close. Michelle Williams’ role is a small but pivotal one. Jackie Earle Haley has one gripping scene with DiCaprio that further showcases why he’s become such an in-demand (and deservedly celebrated) supporting actor these last few years. It’s also nice to see Max von Sydow appear in a Scorsese film, albeit in a rather one-note role. Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson and Elias Koteas also have small but showy roles.
From the opening shot, Scorsese creates an atmosphere of gloom and uncertainty that permeates the entire film. He transports us to a frightening, alien world populated by untrustworthy and dangerous people. You’ll feel like you’re really inside a 1950s asylum in Shutter Island, and that sense of authenticity and ominousness – thanks to Lehane’s research as well as the cinematography, production design, costumes, score and sound design – keeps us invested in the protagonist and his plight even when the film bogs down about midway through.
Shutter Island is a well-acted, handsomely made, old-fashioned haunted house movie that’s nevertheless marred by the same elements — plot holes, red herrings, familiar genre tropes and an overall reliance on heavy-handed trickery — that have undone so many other thrillers from lesser filmmakers. Scorsese’s virtuoso craftsmanship here may be both the best and ironically the worst thing about Shutter Island, but he has unquestionably made it a far more intriguing incarceration than it otherwise could have been. A mixed bag from Martin Scorsese is still better than most other filmmakers’ best efforts.
Shutter Island arrives in theaters across North America this, Friday. The suspense thriller reteams Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese.
Synopsis: The film, based on the novel “Shutter Island” by Dennis Lehane, is an atmospheric psychological thriller set in a 1950s asylum for the criminally insane. It’s 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Shutter Island’s Ashecliffe Hospital. He’d been gunning for an assignment on the island for reasons of his own — but before long he wonders whether he hasn’t been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister.
Teddy’s code-breaking skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals “escape” in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues proliferate, Teddy begins to doubt everything — his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow; Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Leonardo DiCaprio is looking and sounding a bit helpless this morning, and it’s not his fault.
He’s anxious to talk about “Shutter Island”, the eerie new thriller which marks his fourth outing with director Martin Scorsese, but he has this problem. A big problem.
A reporter has just complimented him for bringing clarity to his complex performance as a troubled young U.S. Marshal plunged into an unfathomable mystery on a spooky island off the Massachusetts coast. But as the DiCaprio struggles to talk about how he created that performance, he suddenly breaks off.
“It’s very difficult for me to publicize this film,” he says apologetically.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to be here, in this hotel ballroom, discussing an excruciatingly difficult acting assignment and the rich creative rewards it brought him. It’s the nature of the material which dictates caution.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo star in “Shutter Island”
This film adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s labyrinthine novel coils and uncoils in various unexpected directions and reaches a shocker of a climax. DiCaprio’s difficulty is simple. He doesn’t want to give anything away because of “the sheer nature of what goes on in the movie.” He must choose his words carefully.
He’s wearing a loose blue pullover and dark slacks. His hair is unfashionably slicked back. DiCaprio is now 35, but there’s still an element of the eternal schoolboy in his demeanour. He can still look like the kid from “Titanic” – a factor which prompted some critics to complain recently that he seemed too young to be believable as a thirtysomething husband coping with a collapsing marriage in “Revolutionary Road“.
He continues to fight that image and one of his allies in that battle is Scorsese who considers DiCaprio perhaps the finest young actor of his generation. The two have now worked together four times – “Gangs Of New York”, “ The Departed“, “The Aviator” (in which DiCaprio delivered a riveting portrayal of Howard Hughes) and now “Shutter Island”, which opens Feb. 19.
Laeta Kalogridis’s screenplay for this new film intrigued DiCaprio. For him, it evoked “some of the great detective genres of the past” – indeed, at Scorsese’s bidding the actor revisited classic thrillers like “Vertigo” and “Out Of The Past” – but it soon became clear that other elements were at play as well.
“At first glance, it was very much a genre thriller piece with twists and turns that worked on lots of different layers. But … once we started to unravel who this man was and his past and what he was going through and the nature of what was going on at Shutter Island, it took us to places that there’s no way we could have foreseen.”
Paramount had originally planned to release Shutter Island in the fall, and some critics who saw the film early believe that had the release date not been changed, DiCaprio would have been the actor to beat in this winter’s Oscar sweepstakes. Set in 1954, we first meet DiCaprio, an obsessive U.S. Marshal, en route with his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) to a hospital for the criminally insane, located on an isolated island, to investigate the disappearance of a dangerous multiple murderess from a locked room.
The story, which unfolds solely through the eyes of DiCaprio’s cop, exudes an atmosphere that suggests nothing is quite what it seems, especially given the enigmatic conduct of the institution’s head, played by Ben Kingsley. His criminal investigation, which covers four increasingly ominous days and climaxes in the midst of a Force 5 hurricane, keeps turning up new mysteries and spawning new fears. DiCaprio’s character, emotionally ravaged by the tragedies in his life, finds his investigation is forcing him to confront his own personal demons.
DiCaprio says everyone involved with the production – including Scorsese and the cast – were driven into unexpected, new territory in making this film.
“It got darker and darker and more emotionally intense than we ever expected,” he says. “And that, I think, was the real surprise for us in making this movie.”
Scenes which seemed straightforward in the script assumed new shapes and dimensions once actors started working on them. DiCaprio found himself approaching such scenes with caution: ” … until you’re actually there doing them, there’s really no way to understand it.”
For DiCaprio this was the “best type of movie” to do. “I think we were all surprised at the end of the day. We felt surprised at the depth of the material. It is a thriller in a lot of ways – you know with a surprise ending – and very much of a genre piece, but at the end of the day, it is what Martin Scorsese does best, and that is portraying something about humanity and human nature and who we are as people. That’s what makes it different from being a normal genre piece – to me anyway.”
“Shutter Island” is very much a reflection of its era. Cold War paranoia, the traumatic aftermath of the Second World War atrocities, conspiracy theories, the treatment of the mentally ill – all these facets add to the film’s texture. DiCaprio believes the project had an unexpected psychological impact on everyone. He certainly won’t easily forget the experience of actually filming in an abandoned mental hospital or what he heard from mental illness consultants who were on hand as resource people.
“Mental illness … we were around it every day. We were around the dilapidated walls of an old mental institution. We actually had somebody there guiding us through the history of mental illness – the past ways of treating it, the different ways of treating it. There was a tremendous amount of research done on the entrapments of mental illness and the suffering that people needed to go through.”
And always, there was the challenge of his own emotionally troubled character.
“It was like a giant jig-saw puzzle, the more we started to unearth and peel back the onion of who this guy was and what happened to him in the past and to try to understand why he would be so obsessed with this particular case.”
And again, he emphasizes that once everyone was deeply involved in filming, the challenges didn’t become easier.
“We realized we had to push certain boundaries that we didn’t think we needed to, and there were a few weeks there that I have to say were some of the most hard-core filming experiences I’ve ever had.
“It was like reliving trauma in a way. It was pretty intense. I don’t say that stuff very often because – you know – it always sounds superficial when you talk about it in reference to moviemaking … but it really went to places that, in unearthing who this man was, I didn’t think it would get to.”
Release date: Friday July 16, 2010 Genre: Action, Sci-Fi Director: Christopher Nolan Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Screenplay: Christopher Nolan Producer(s): Emma Thomas Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine Official Site:inceptionmovie.warnerbros.com Rating:Not yet rated Available film art:Inception movie posters
Synopsis The film is describe as a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within the architecture of the mind from “Dark Knight” director Christopher Nolan. Nolan wrote the original screenplay and hopes to shoot the sci-fi action film in the summer for a release during summer 2010.
Release date: Friday February 19, 2010 Genre: Thriller, Drama Director: Martin Scorsese Studio: Paramount Pictures Screenplay: Laeta Kalogridis Producer(s): Martin Scorsese, Arnold Messer, Mike Medavoy, Brad Fischer Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Max von Sydow Official Site:shutterisland.com Rating:This Film Has Not Yet Been Rated Available film art: Shutter Island movie posters
Synopsis It’s 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Shutter Island’s Ashecliffe Hospital. He’d been gunning for an assignment on the island for reasons of his own—but before long he wonders whether he hasn’t been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister.
Teddy’s code-breaking skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals “escape” in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues proliferate, Teddy begins to doubt everything—his memory, his partner, even his own sanity.
Based on the novel “Shutter Island” by Dennis Lehane.
Leonard Dicaprio’s production company Appian Way is set to produce Fleming, a biopic of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company Appian Way will produce Fleming, a biopic of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, along with Andrew Lazar (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind). The Titanic star may also portray the late author.
“It’s going to be very different from the Bond films,” Lazar informed The Los Angeles Times. “There are a lot of different ways to crack biopics, but we’re not trying to emulate a Bond movie … The idea that this guy’s life informed the James Bond character is pretty fascinating.”
The paper added, “During the writers’ strike, DiCaprio showed interest in Fleming and his world, but he’s looking to take the script in a different direction with a new writer.”
British screenwriter Damian Stevenson penned the original script, which Warner Bros. bought in 2005. Variety reported at the time that “Fleming tells the story of how the author’s own experiences with womanizing and spying shaped his signature secret agent creation. Born into a privileged English family, Fleming began as a comparative underachiever until a stint as a journalist covering the Soviet Union led him to begin spying on that country for the Foreign Office. Fleming was the mastermind of numerous clever spying schemes, some deemed too outlandish to use. He dreamed of becoming a daring secret agent and adapted his own womanizing feats and the stories he heard to craft the Bond novels. He unveiled 007 in Casino Royale in 1953.”
Derek Jacobi plays Claudius, fourth Emperor of Rome
Leonardo DiCaprio may be starring in the upcoming big screen adaptaion of I Claudius. I can’t wait for this one. Read on:
Robert Graves’ epic historical novel I, Claudius — which was previously turned into an Emmy-winning 1976 BBC miniseries — will make the leap to the big-screen courtesy of producers Scott Rudin and Alison Owen, the duo behind the forthcoming film adaptation of The Other Boleyn Girl.
According to Variety, Leonardo DiCaprio is mulling the project and may become attached to star. William Monahan, who won an Oscar for the DiCaprio starrer The Departed, is expected to sign on to pen the screenplay adaptation, although neither he nor DiCaprio have inked deals yet.
The trade says that, while Rudin hasn’t yet set up I, Claudius at a studio, it will probably go to Disney since the producer already has a deal there. Several studios reportedly bid for the screen rights to the tome, with Rudin ultimately sealing a $2 million deal for them.
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Synopsis: Set against the backdrop of civil war and chaos in 1990’s Sierra Leone, Blood Diamond is the story of Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) – a South African mercenary – and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) – a Mende fisherman. Both men are African, but their histories as different as any can be, until their fates become joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond that can transform their lives. While in prison for smuggling, Archer learns that Solomon – who was taken from his family and forced to work in the diamond fields – has found and hidden the extraordinary rough stone. With the help of Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist whose idealism is tempered by a deepening connection with Archer, the two men embark on a trek through rebel territory, a journey that could save Solomon’s family and give Archer the second chance he thought he would never have. Set against the backdrop of civil war and chaos in 1990’s Sierra Leone, Blood Diamond is the story of Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) – a South African mercenary – and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) – a Mende fisherman. Both men are African, but their histories as different as any can be, until their fates become joined in a common quest to recover a rare pink diamond that can transform their lives. While in prison for smuggling, Archer learns that Solomon – who was taken from his family and forced to work in the diamond fields – has found and hidden the extraordinary rough stone. With the help of Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly), an American journalist whose idealism is tempered by a deepening connection with Archer, the two men embark on a trek through rebel territory, a journey that could save Solomon’s family and give Archer the second chance he thought he would never have.
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, Djimon Hounsou, Chris Astoyan, Stephen Collins, Arnold Vosloo; Directed by: Edward Zwick
Scorsese delivers another cinematic masterpiece with his latest film, The Departed. Beware potential spoiler here. Read on:
There’s a strong impulse to embrace Martin Scorsese’s latest movie The Departed just because it revisits territory that he practically mapped himself. The director’s recent ventures into period pieces and biopics have felt more like experiments or digressions; this, on the otherhand, rings truer to the oeuvre that established him as a singular cinematic voice. That said, there’s a big part of that vision that feels uncontainable, as if Scorsese can’t quite be pegged no matter how many times he returns to the same well.
All of which is why The Departed is at once a crowning achievement in crime cinema, and a slight letdown for a career iconoclast: Scorsese has produced another masterpiece more on par with previous works like Casino and Cape Fear than Goodfellas or Raging Bull. In other words, the director follows two personal projects with a more conventional but no less engaging piece of populist entertainment — in so doing restoring his well-earned reputation as both an earner and artist, but failing to genuinely expand his creative accomplishments beyond those he already achieved.
Based on the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, The Departed stars Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator) and Matt Damon (Syriana) as a cop and a crook who infiltrate each other’s organizations at the behest of their scenery-chewing superiors. For DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan, it’s Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), a police Captain and Sergeant respectively who want to harness the young man’s conflicted impulse to do good; meanwhile, Damon’s Colin Sullivan answers to Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), an 800-lb. gorilla of a mob boss who owns the streets of Boston much to the consternation of the cops.
There’s a strong impulse to embrace Martin Scorsese’s latest movie The Departed just because it revisits territory that he practically mapped himself. The director’s recent ventures into period pieces and biopics have felt more like experiments or digressions; this, on the otherhand, rings truer to the oeuvre that established him as a singular cinematic voice. That said, there’s a big part of that vision that feels uncontainable, as if Scorsese can’t quite be pegged no matter how many times he returns to the same well.
All of which is why The Departed is at once a crowning achievement in crime cinema, and a slight letdown for a career iconoclast: Scorsese has produced another masterpiece more on par with previous works like Casino and Cape Fear than Goodfellas or Raging Bull. In other words, the director follows two personal projects with a more conventional but no less engaging piece of populist entertainment — in so doing restoring his well-earned reputation as both an earner and artist, but failing to genuinely expand his creative accomplishments beyond those he already achieved.
Based on the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, The Departed stars Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator) and Matt Damon (Syriana) as a cop and a crook who infiltrate each other’s organizations at the behest of their scenery-chewing superiors. For DiCaprio’s Billy Costigan, it’s Queenan (Martin Sheen) and Dignam (Mark Wahlberg), a police Captain and Sergeant respectively who want to harness the young man’s conflicted impulse to do good; meanwhile, Damon’s Colin Sullivan answers to Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), an 800-lb. gorilla of a mob boss who owns the streets of Boston much to the consternation of the cops.
Click on the link below to read the entire review:
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