Shutter Island - Lehane + Scorsese + DiCaprio = Solid

Shutter Island is just a good movie, simple as that. It's not great and its definitely not The Departed but I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has seen this movie and that wouldn't recommend you watch it. They may not rant and rave, but they'll definitely suggest it. At least that's what I'm going to tell myself, because that's what I'm doing right now.

Shutter Island is based on a Dennis Lehane novel by the same name. For those of you who don't know Lehane, see Mystic River, see Gone Baby Gone. Yeah, he wrote those. The movie is directed by Martin Scorsese. If you don't know who that guy is I have two words for you. "You suck." It stars Leonardo DiCaprio who is in probably every scene and is supported brilliantly by Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) and Mark Ruffalo (Blindness, Reservation Road). There's also a who's who of other supporting actors including Max Von Sydow (Minority Report), Michelle Williams (Dawson's Creek), and Emily Mortimer (Math Point) just to name a few.

Shutter Island takes place in 1954 on Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) are assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient, a murderess name Rachel. From the beginning, things on Shutter Island are not as they should be. It appears the hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister seem to have a very sinister twisted plot brewing. Teddy's shrewd investigating 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 multiply, plot twists happen, things begin to not make sense, and the audience, along with Teddy, begins to doubt everything they've seen, believed, and thought. The movie makes you question what you've believed and what you've thought the whole time.

Now, I had pretty high expectations going into this one. I mean, Scorsese and DiCaprio set the bar pretty high with The Departed, and while I know every movie those dudes make isn't going to be that awesome, I couldn't help but hope this one would be too. While it wasn't The Departed, it was a thoroughly engrossing movie all the same. The movie kept you watching, kept you thinking, and most of all kept you guessing. Leo delivers one of his best performances and for what its worth, I felt like he carried the entire film. I think anyone, even if they don't recommend it like I pretend people will, will at least tell you Leo did an awesome job. There a few really awesome plot twists, however, I just did what I hate. When a movie is billed as having a plot twist, I tend to spend the whole time trying to figure it out, and lose what the movie is really meant to do.

I recommend this one. It would be a solid rental any day of the week. It's creepy, tense, well acted, visually stimulating, and just good entertainment. Some movies, the ones that give your mind, body, or heart a workout, make you feel like you've accomplished something by watching it, Shutter Island does just that. Watch it, and enjoy.

The Wolfman - Made me jump a bit, but overall...eh

So I kind of got dragged to this one basically because the trailer told me this movie was going to kind of suck. And for once the trailer was right. It did kind of suck. I'm not going to say I hated it or that it totally sucked, because there were some really creepy scenes (mostly involving a Hannibal Lecter-esque performance by Anthony Hopkins) and I actually jumped a couple of times. And really, when you are going to a scary movie and that happens, you really can't say the movie totally sucked.

The Wolfman stars Benicio Del Toro as Lawrence Talbot, an actor who was born into English nobility but spent most of his life away from home in America. When Talbot's brother goes missing, he is summoned back home by his brother's fiance' Gwen (Emily Blunt) to help find him. Talbot soon discovers that his brother was killed by a vicious creature. In the process of the search for this creature (SPOILER: (not) its a werewolf), Talbot is bitten and soon becomes a werewolf himself. His search leads him to a evil discovery involving his father (Anthony Hopkins).

This movie was very atmospheric and if it didn't have a bunch of CGI werewolves running around it would have been quite creepy, but alas its a movie about werewolves and thus you have to make them CGI nowadays. Emily Blunt was quite mesmerizing as the damsel in distress/eye candy cum heroine in this one. And Anthony Hopkins channeled his inner psycho once again to totally creep me out in just about every scene he's in. I've never really gotten on the whole Benicio Del Toro bandwagon, and so I didn't really think he was all that good in this. He wasn't bad mind you, but nothing to write home about either.

There were a couple of times when a werewolf would jump out of no where and I would jump and a couple of times when a werewolf would rip an arm or a head off and I would cringe, but these moments were not enough to carry this movie as much of a scary one. I know it was shooting more for a dramatic thriller centered around a supernatural subject, but it just fell a bit flat. I didn't really connect with any of the characters and thus didn't really feel anything in some of the more poignant points in the film. Also, I felt that the CGI was pretty weak and that really took a lot away from this very moody, creepy flick.

I honestly can't tell you to even rent this one when it comes out, maybe if its a dark, and stormy night and its on HBO and you've seen everything else on TV. Then, maybe you should watch it, but otherwise I think you are going to find yourself unsatisfied.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant - had potential but fell very short

Cirque du Freak was trying to make a run at being the next Harry Potter or Twilight. In fact its kind of a cross between the two, except not a phenomenon and not really all that good. It is based on a series of novels by Darren Shan, which coincidentally is the main character's name as well. You could tell by the ending of this one that it was made with the hopes of having sequels, but if the sequels are anything like the first, it ain't going to fly.

Cirque du Freak is a supernatural story about a traveling "freak show" equipped with a tall man, a monkey girl, a snake boy, a man with 2 stomachs and a woman who can regenerate her limbs, and a vampire just to name a few. The show led John C. Reilly (Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, yeah Jesus in a tuxedo t-shirt guy) comes to the normal suburban town where our hero Darren lives. Long story short, through a series of unfortunate events, Darren must become a vampire and must learn to fight in order to fight the bad vampire's who are coming into town. Good guys sort of win, but the bad guys won't give up, watch the next one to find out what happens next.

This movie could have been pretty cool. The freaks in the movie are all very intriguing and of course the whole vampire thing is huge now, but for some reason, it just felt flat. The movie has a very impressive cast which was one reason I'm not saying this movie was just straight up bad.

This movie stars John C. Reilly, Salma Hayek as the Bearded Lady, Patrick Fugit (Almost Famous), Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai), Orlando Jones, and Willem Dafoe. Pretty good cast which makes me wonder what the script looked like to get these folks on bored.

This is a good mindless fantasy movie, but it isn't incredibly entertaining. It was kind of a boring movie surrounded by cool things to look at. If this one is one TV, you'd probably be okay watching it, but I wouldn't really rent this one if I were you.

The Time Traveler's Wife - if not for the actors, horrible

This review may have a few spoilers, so if you are really wanting to see this movie, you might want to hold off on reading this one. The first words out of my mouth when the credits starting rolling were, "Man! That was really sad." Not to spoil anything for you, but it was. It was actually more than that. It was a load of crap. Don't misunderstand me, I don't only like movies with happy endings. Some of the best movies don't have happy endings, instead they have "real" endings. But this movie is based on a totally unbelievable premise so a "real" ending is out of the picture.

The Time Traveler's Wife is a love story about Henry and Clare (Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams). Henry has a disorder which causes him to travel through time at random times and times of high stress. During one of his time travels he meets a young Clare. They form a friendship until one day Clare meets the present day Henry. They fall in love and get married, but Henry's time traveling causes a strain on their relationship because he is gone without any warning, sometime for days and weeks. This is a story of unconditional, lifelong love as Clare loves Henry although he leaves her all the time.

I admit, its a sweet premise. But the Henry's leaving and coming kind of get tedious and repetitive. You go through this emotional roller coaster with these two people and then the ending just straight up pisses you off.

If I didn't have a bit of man crush on Eric Bana ever since Black Hawk Down and if I didn't fall in love with Rachel McAdams in EVERY movie she plays in, I probably would have hated this movie. But, alas, I really like both actors so seeing them in it made the movie at least tolerable. The thing with watching romances is they kind of make your life feel a little enriched, a little better after you watch them, or at least they are supposed to. This one left me frustrated and wishing I'd opted for whatever other movie I had sitting there at the time. Maybe I'm being too much of a guy, but I just didn't like this one. Girls its still pretty sappy and the actor's do a good job of playing in love, but I still don't think you'll be thrilled about this one. It might be good for a decent snuggle session, but I imagine there are better chick flicks than this one out right now.

The Informant - okay, I guess

Man, talk about disappointed! Granted it was my own fault because I went in expecting to see my new favorite movie. The Informant was incredibly disappointing to me. That's not to say that it doesn't have it moments, and that artistically it's not an incredibly well done movie, it just means that it really, as a whole, isn't that good. Matt Damon does a really good job, and he definitely has some really funny lines, but the trailer had all the funny lines in it, and even made some line that weren't funny in the movie seem funny.

The Informant is based on a true story that is kind of a mixture of A Beautiful Mind and The Insider but, not nearly as good as either one. The Informant is the tale of Mark Whitacre (played by Matt Damon), an Ivy League Ph.D. who was a rising star at Archer Daniels Midland in the early 1990s. Damon's character becomes whistle blower on the company's price fixing tactics and became the highest-ranked executive to ever turn whistle blower in US history. He secretly gathers hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes over several years to present to the FBI which became one of the largest price fixing cases in history. In this a dark comedy, Whitacre's good deed begins to dovetail when his own major infractions come to light and we learn that our quirky hero is actually struggling with severe bipolar disorder.

This movie is cleverly told from the point of view of Whitacre, but since our hero has bipolar disorder, we never really know whether what he is telling us is the truth or not. Basically, you spend the whole movie wondering whether Whitacre is lying or telling the truth, and what his motivations are for either. This starts to get very tedious. Normally, when the audience is purposefully mislead by our narrator, it is to get to a big, shocking reveal which doesn't really happen here. We just kind of find out that our guy is kind of a liar.

Matt Damon, for my money, did a great job in this role. His performance is really what makes the movie watchable and a times unwatchable (which is kind of the point). He gained a lot of weight for this role so his normally thin frame is nice and frumpy. He also rocks a great '90s stache for most of the movie. When the movie starts out, Damon's Whitacre is a very friendly, likable albeit nerdy guy. By the end, you kind of want to punch his damn lights out. But once again, that's the point.

What can I say other that this one certainly didn't live up to it's hype. Director Steven Soderbergh has made some really good movies (See Ocean's movies). And he's certainly a good technical filmmaker, but this one just fell flat. I'm not saying this movie was terrible, I'm just saying it wasn't very attention holding. I've discovered that I have a pretty easy gauge on which to judge as to whether I am bored with a movie or whether it's just not all that exciting (and believe me, there's a difference). When I find myself playing online Scrabble or beginning a crossword puzzle while watching a movie...I'm bored. I believe I did both during this one. The only people I would feel okay about recommending this movie to are Matt Damon fanatics or people with bipolar disorder. I'm just saying.

Adam - a surprisingly good, off-beat romance

Sometimes you watch a movie and just really feel an appreciation for good acting. You see a film and you think, "You know, if this movie didn't have good actors in it, it would go from a really good film to a really bad one." Adam is one of those movies. This isn't to say that Adam is a badly written film. Some movies lend themselves more to the action, or problem that drives the film rather than the performances so they can get by with lesser performances and still create an entertaining movie. Some are so built around the characters in them that you have to have great acting or the movie just doesn't work. Adam definitely survives and thrives on the performances by its stars Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne.

This is an incredibly heartfelt romantic comedy-ish drama, Hugh Dancy (The Jane Austen Book Club, Arthur, Confessions of a Shopaholic) stars as Adam, a handsome but strange man with Asperger's Syndrome who has all his life led a sheltered existence. He then meets his new neighbor, Beth played by Rose Byrne ("Damages," 28 Weeks Later, Knowing, Troy), a beautiful, cosmopolitan young woman who pulls him into the outside world, with funny, touching and entirely unexpected results. Their unlikely relationship reveals just how two people from different realities can find an extraordinary connection.

Both of the actors in this movie are extremely likable. You just want to reach out and hug both of them. Hugh Dancy is especially good in this. I know a person with Asperger's Syndrome or autism in general isn't a "retard" and I'm not trying to be insensitive but in the words of Robert Downey, Jr. "You never go full retard." Dancy took his advice. He played the character incredibly well. He was a full functioning member of society with his own personality, he just had a difficulty in social interactions. He plays an incredibly kind hearted, sheltered young man, and you find yourself just wanting all good things for him.

I'm basically totally in love with Rose Byrne too. She played Brad Pitt's girl friend/prisoner in Troy for those of you who was wondering who she is. She's hot in the girl next door kind of way. Once again, you find yourself just wanting her to be happy.

This movie has several very touching moments. The kindness of both of the characters is really heartwarming. I'm normally not crazy about straight up romances because some times I feel they just get too sappy and cringe as if I were watching an episode of this season's Bachelor. This movie avoided that. Yes it's a romance, so there are going to be sappy moments, but not cringe inducing sappy. It's very real. The end is a bit different than what you are used to, but it is real and still finds a way to leave you feeling happy.

I recommend this to anyone who wants to feel your heart warmed a bit. It's not incredibly long, the actors are all good in it, and you get to see a different movie than some of the mainstream crap out there. Girls, Hugh Dancy is handsome. Guys, Rose Byrne is beautiful. If nothing else watch it for that.

Law Abiding Citizen - Not exactly biblical, but pretty good nonetheless

Law Abiding Citizen can best be described as a clever little revenge thriller. As far as thrillers go, this one was pretty entertaining. I've said it before but I think that thrillers are the hardest films to make because the filmmaker has to keep the tension and/or action going basically throughout the entire movie. And a good thriller usually has some sort of twist or surprise that hopefully totally bakes the viewer's noodle. While this one doesn't totally bake your noodle, it does keep the tension going and has some really cool little action scenes.

What makes this movie good are the two performances by it's stars Gerard Butler and Jamie Foxx. Gerard Butler is a grieving father and husband, who decides to take the justice system into his own hands after the the District Attorney (Jamie Foxx) makes a deal with the man who killed his wife and child in front of his own eyes. Jamie Foxx plays an ambitious, successful District Attorney who believes in the justice system but also believes that a little is better than trying to get a lot and come away with nothing. This belief is the crux of the whole problem that drives the story. After Butler begins to take matters into his own hands so to speak, he allows himself to be arrested and imprisoned, however the people involved in the case involving his wife and child's murders continue to die. It becomes Foxx's job to keep people alive and figure out how these people keep dying. Does Butler have an accomplice? Is he that good to set things up before he goes to jail? Why does he do the things he does? These are all the problems that make this one a good, entertaining thrill ride.

The interesting thing about this movie is the flip flopping allegiances that the view feels throughout the film. During different parts of the movie you hate Foxx's character and totally empathize with Butler's, then you think Butler is the man and Foxx is a total prick, then you think Butler is a whack job and Foxx is the man. You never really feel like you know who the good guy is and who the bad guy is. Both are flawed characters, but that's what makes it so watchable.

My only criticism of the movie is that the ending is a little too easy, a little too clean. I liked how it ended but for such a smart film, I thought it kind of got dumbed down in the end.

I recommend this one to anyone who likes a good thriller. It's much different than the conventional mold of thriller. It's not mind blowing or heart attack inducing good, but you won't want your 2 hours back after its over. If I had to give it a grade, I'd probably give it a B-, if that even means anything to any of you.