Shutter Island

Preamble, preamble, preamble. Point being- Shutter Island.

Shutter Island (2010)

I've been looking forward to Shutter Island ever since I saw the trailer. Thing is, thanks to its delayed release from the end of last year to now, I forgot all about it until very recently. I mean, the elements for a decent cinema experience are all there. We have DiCaprio, who is fast becoming one of my favourite actors, and Martin Scorsese at the helm. At the very least I expected a solid film. However, I was both surprised and pleased at what it turned out to be.

"Don't you get it? You're a rat in a maze."

Based on the hugely successful novel of the same name, the film follows two U.S. Marshalls, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) travel to the downright creepy place of Shutter Island- home of an asylum for the criminally insane- overseen by Dr. John Cawley (Sir Ben Kingsley), to investigate the seemingly impossible escape of an patient. However, when rumours of sinister experiments start circulating, the two Marshalls get more embroiled in the dark goings-on. I haven't read the book, but if the film is anything to judge it by, it's well worth the read. The story is gripping from the off and continues to be until the end with very few lulls inbetween. The leads are all great too, with Lord Sir Duke Benjamin Kingsley Esquire, putting in an especially memorable performance.

In terms of tone, Shutter Island is a B movie writ large. The film plays out as a cross between a Hitchcockian thriller and Scorsese's own remake of Cape Fear. Whilst I have no problem with B movie referencing, I do have a problem with some of the elements of it. For instance, the first time we see the eponymous island, there is a ridiculous portentous track playing that may as well have been Scorsese flashing up on screen and saying "Look, just fear this fucking island, okay? Bad shit is about to go down." before cutting back to DiCaprio's annoyingly good-looking face. Yes, ridiculously over-the-top themes are hallmark for B movies (remember Bernard Herrmann's Cape Fear theme? That will be forever burned into my brain...) but these days I actually find it a bit embarrassing. Especially as these films are not B movies, considering they were made for considerably more than pocket change.

Visually, the film is feckin' stunning with some fantastic camera work to gape at. Daniels' dream sequences are especially amazing and genuinely something to behold, rather than to just passively watch. It's clear that Scorsese is relishing having more creative freedom than his usual output allows. Some of the angles are also very Hitchcockian. The one real problem I had with Shutter Island was that things were resolved a bit too neatly for my liking. Throughout the film, we as the audience, are perpetually having the rug pulled out from under us. However, most of the pressing questions are neatly answered in the last half hour, leaving very little to the imagination. To Scorsese's credit, the film does recover some of its mystique later on, but I wanted to be completely foxed, rather than merely baffled.

"We gotta get off this rock, Chuck."

Shutter Island is a truly great film. It's tense mind-fuckery at its very best. Go. See. Now.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

I think I've been treating myself too much lately. I've been watching too many good films. The danger of doing this is that after a while, you fool yourself into thinking that most films are decent or at least serve some kind of artistic purpose. Praise Satan then, for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra to metaphorically cock-slap me round the face and remind me to stop being so fucking naïve.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (2009)

When I was a kid, I watched a lot of shit on T.V. Most of the cartoons I watched were basically 20 minute adverts for overpriced toys. From what I gather (thankfully the G.I. Joe phenomenon bypassed the U.K.) G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero was an '80s cartoon based on a toyline about an elite force of solidiers who all had codenames like "Blowtorch", "Ace" and "Rimjob". 30 years later, we now have feature-length adverts for plastic toss. It's nice to know society has moved so far in two decades (!) So, if you're still with me, this film is the movie adaptation of the cartoon which was based on the comic which drew inspiration from the toyline. Sounds like an Oscar winning formula to me!

"Technically, G.I. Joe does not exist, but if it did, it'd be comprised of the top men and women from the top military units in the world, the alpha dogs. When all else fails, we don't."

In the not-too-distant future, U.S. Army grunts Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) are tasked with couriering “nanomite”-filled warheads, when they’re ambushed by mysterious baddies armed with supercool hi-tech weaponry — one of them Duke’s ex, Ana (Sienna Miller) — and saved by mysterious goodies with more supercool hi-tech weaponry. Turns out these goodies are G.I. Joe- an elite super-badass team who are each sold seperately. The plot is absolutely farcical. It's unbelievably stupid and nothing long-suffering audiences haven't seen a hojillion times before. If I think about it any more, my brain genuinely starts to hurt. The ridiculous thing is, despite the offensively simple plot, director Stephen Sommers manages to over-complicate things with needless flashbacks, resulting in a turgid mess of a film. To be fair to the actors, no one person sticks out as bad. Everyone manages to play their hackneyed roles straight-faced, churning out the godawful script with professionalism.

As I've said time and time again, I really don't mind brainless boomfests. Fellow Hasbro stablemate Transformers wasn't ever going to win any awards for acting or its script, but at least it was fun. G.I. Joe isn't fun. I kept expecting it to become fun, but the action sequences left me cold. Part of the reason for this was that they are heavily reliant on CGI. There is no weight to anything. The visual effects are genuinely impressive, but the overall impression it leaves is a cutscene in a shit video game.

"Knowing is half the battle."

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra doesn't just embrace cliché, it makes sweet, sweet love to it and asks it to go steady. Every single supposed twist is signposted so clearly early on, I could have stopped watching 20 minutes in and been able to accurately predict what was going to happen. The inevitable counter-argument to this is the ol' "kids' movie" point. Yes, it is for kids, but there are much better films out there that are this kind of thing but better- the aforementioned Transformers for one. All this film wants to do is sell toys. That is it. It doesn't entertain, it just peddles its horrible wares. Whilst watching the film, I was painfully aware that every vehicle and every character dicking about on screen had an action figure counterpart. At least television adverts are fairly short and less depressing. Avoid.