Shutter Island

Review’s here.

Egads. Watched this one with my girlfriend–a rare treat; normally the job requires me to go see Alvin and the Chipmunks or Fool’s Gold or Twilight by my apparently pathetic and lonesome self–which helped me work out my response to this challenging movie. I was somewhat frustrated in my expectations by the ending, but she was downright angry. Even so, she thought it was great. I did too, for lots of reasons, especially Scorsese’s vivid and haunting dream sequences, but I may not have given Shutter Island the benefit of the doubt without our long post-movie conversation where we worked through our strong emotional reactions to it.

I noted in my review it’s going to piss a lot of people off. I don’t think that’s an unfair response, either. But me, I was pretty blown away.

SPOILER ALERT

Also: only seen it once, but the exposition-heavy opening scene makes infinitely more sense from an artistic perspective once you understand Leo’s character is trying to convince himself of the truth of what he’s saying as much as he is Ruffalo. Forgot/unable to explore it in the review, but this is a pretty well-written script, too.

Also, I’ve heard some people call it predictable (though they liked it anyway), but I don’t think it telegraphed its ending at all, really–it made sense in retrospect, and you knew something funny was going on, but not what. Then again, I am a credulous movie-goer.