Vintage

There is something wonderfully frightening about films dealing with possible mind control and dual realities.  In some sense, you never can quite make out heads from tails.  It is like living in the world of the Matrix.  Are you really living in reality or merely plugged into the Matrix?  There have been all sorts of plays on this false versus so-called real reality and Shutter Island is next in line.

Directed by Martin Scorsese and staring Leonardo DiCaprio as U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels, Shutter Island is a 2010 American psychological thriller film based on Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel of the same name. Daniels is investigating the psychiatric facility on Shutter Island, where we soon learn he suspects all sorts of inhumane Nazi-style mind experiments are taking place.  It is a quest for truth and the truth might make us all insane when all the cards are flipped over and we learn the truth of Shutter Island.

Shutter Island is a superb psycho-thriller. In an era where vampires should wear panties it is refreshing to see a good hard-ass thriller done the right way.  The film is nearly flawless in its presentation of mood and atmosphere.  It is like we are watching a haunted house movie only this movie is really dealing with psychiatric wards.  The criminally insane are presented with distorted yet somehow real mental disturbances and physical appearances creating a creepy world that is both One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nets and Shawshank Redemption. 

DiCaprio is an A-list talent who can actually act.  He is on the money.  From his quick piercing "defense mechanisms" to his shaking hands.  At the drop of a dime, he looks ready to attack someone yet conveys with convincing authority the aura of an accomplished lawman.

The supporting cast is perfectly imagined.  Ben Kingsley is Dr. John Crawley, a seemingly morose yet intelligent and weird doctor-type who runs the programs at Shutter Island.  Mark Ruffalo is U.S. Marshal Chuck Aule. 

As the film opens, Aule is assigned to Daniels as his new partner.  It is through Aule, that we soon learn of Daniels' ulterior reason for taking the assignment at Shutter Island.  

Daniels is convinced that the arsonist that set his house on fire, thus killing his wife, was eventually housed and locked away at Shutter Island.  Through another ex-institutionalized patent, he comes to believe that Nazi style experiments are being conducted in the light house at Shutter Island.  Well, in a way he is right - the controversial treatment of the lobotomy, which was in its full hey day in the after math of World War II, was a treatment that took place in the Light House.  In case you don't know, a lobotomy is "cure' where they drill into your head and scrape away at your brain until you are healed.  Many claim it simply created mindless drooling vegetables and the practice soon gave way to psychotherapy drugs.  

As Daniels begins to learn and suspect more and more on his quest for the truth at Shutter Island, it just may be that the truth is more horrifying than he could possibly imagine.  Slowly and quite unsettling, Daniels begins to resemble many of the very patients that are institutionalized on the Island.  He begins to doubt his partner.  He begins to doubt his own reality.  We begin to wonder too. 

The only thing that seems absolutely certain is one thing: this film is an Ace.  

The only thing I really liked about She’s Out of My League is that it is filmed in Pittsburgh (my home sweet home) and makes the city look pretty darn nice.  Unfortunately, this movie sucked.

She's Out of My League is a 2010 American romantic comedy film directed by Jim Field Smith and written by Sean Anders and John Morris. The film stars Jay Baruchel and Alice Eve.

Kirk Kettner (Jay Baruchel) is a hopeless dork working as a TSA guard at Pittsburgh International Airport.  All of his friends that work there are hopeless nerds too.   This film really makes out the TSA to be nothing but a collection of aviation failures.  In the 40-Year-Old Virgin, all the employees of the electronics store, which was sort of like Best Buy, at least had some semblance of dignity.  It was not like that movie portrayed all people working at retail stores as abject failures and losers.  This movie sort of does that with the TSA.  They throw the TSA under the, eh, airplane, I guess.

Ghosts of Mars is a mishmash of many movie genres: ghost, horror, zombie, martial arts, action, sci-fi, and thriller.  Did I miss anything?  It should be noted that the weakest of the genres mentioned would be a ghost flick.   Ghosts of Mars is no haunted house blanket grabber. It is more of space snore.  Yes, there is the word “ghosts” in the title and you do see some “mist” that passes for ghosts at points, but ghosts in this film serve more or less as a convenient hitching post to tether a Martian martial arts zombie extravaganza featuring a hot blonde (Natasha Henstridge) and popular gangsta rap artist (Ice Cube) in a good cop, bad cop action romp.  

Some have said this is the nadir of Director John Carpenter’s vast body of work.  I won’t protest.  Then again, it just might be cleverly hammy.  After all, it takes great skill—believe it or not—to deliberately make a classic, so-called, B-movie.  Just repeat the name of this film, “Ghosts of Mars.”  Can you really take it seriously?  Could John Carpenter not have smiled when he was writing this script with co-writer Larry Sulkis?  Still, we have to compare this film to the overall body of Carpenter’s work and well, if Ghosts of Mars is not his worst film, I am not sure what is.  

The story takes place in the latter part of the 22nd Century.  We find ourselves on a Mars that has been semi-colonized.  Unlike Los Angeles, Mars has breathable air and humans can walk about it without special protective suits.  I didn’t see any Walmarts, so maybe the future is not all that bad.  

Women run the planet Mars in the future.  We learn this through an onscreen overview of life on the red planet which tells us that the form of government is “matriarchal.” This really has no significance insofar as the plot is concerned.  I was curious how this came to be?  Did Oprah Winfrey buy Mars in the 21st Century?  The movie never explains.