Coffee Break with Liz and Kate

Shutter Island – Movie Reviews by Kate
Reel Reviews for real people

Rating: R for disturbing violent content language and some nudity

Genre: Drama

Starring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Mark Ruffalo

Director: Martin Scorsese

Plot: From Oscar®-winning director Martin Scorsese, “Shutter Island” is the story of two U.S. marshals, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), who are summoned to a remote and barren island off the coast of Massachusetts to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a murderess from the island’s fortress-like hospital for the criminally insane. –© Paramount

Running Time: 2:18

Kate says – 3 1/2 stars “Shutter Island is so much more than I expected it to be. From the very opening scene, one can feel the foreboding, haunting suspense which slowly builds and unfolds. This movie feels like watching a good old Hitchcock flick. The cinematography is beautiful and moody and sinister. The story is full of twists and turns. As you drive home from the theater your mind will likely start to spin as it all sinks in. Knowing what I know now, this one may warrant a second viewing.”

Ebert says – 3 1/2 stars “Shutter Island” starts working on us with the first musical notes under the Paramount logo’s mountain, even before the film starts. They’re ominous and doomy. So is the film. This is Martin Scorsese’s evocation of the delicious shuddering fear we feel when horror movies are about something and don’t release all the tension with action scenes.” (read full review)

Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune) says – 2 stars “Scorsese has earned the right to show off on any stage he pleases. But not even supporting players as deft as Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley and Emily Mortimer can make this more than classy, well-acted junk.” (read full review)

Lou Lumenik (New York Post) – 3 stars “With an Oscar on his mantelpiece, Martin Scorsese takes a breather from prestige pictures with “Shutter Island,” an exquisitely crafted potboiler offering up 2¼ hours of thrills, chills and Leonardo DiCaprio freaking out in a nuthouse during a hurricane.”  (read full review)

Rex Reed (New York Observer) says – 2 1/2 stars “Dense, ridiculously overplotted and painfully overlong, this gruesome thriller set in a fogbound insane asylum is incomprehensible and fatally flawed, but having said all of that, I will also say this: It never seems anything less than the work of a skillful film buff. Mr. Scorsese may be a smart aleck, but he’s a professional smart aleck.” (read full review)

Eric Snider says – “B” “Scorsese’s technical proficiency and overall mastery of the cinematic language are virtually unrivaled, even when, as here, the project is “only” a goose-bumpy B-movie…Scorsese sinks his teeth into the spookiness of it all, clearly relishing the chance to do genre work:” (read full review)

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