Shutter Island

When was the last time you had to wait until the final sentence of a film to understand all the details? When was the last time you went to a genre movie – or what looked like one in spooky trailers – and realized the director had fulfilled that promise and meditated on his favorite topic? Shutter Island does just that. more

There's a purpose to all this madness--though to talk about the primary reason the film succeeds would be giving the game away--but it should be appreciated first as a vivid, waking nightmare. more

Martin Scorsese has created a divinely dark and devious brain tease of a movie in the best noir tradition with its smarter than you'd think cops, their tougher than you'd imagine cases to crack and enough nods to the classic genre for an all-night parlor game. more

Not since "Raging Bull" has Mr. Scorsese so brazenly married brutality to beauty. Not since "Kundun" has one of his films felt so aspirational. more

DiCaprio, in his most haunting and emotionally complex performance yet, is the vessel Scorsese uses to lead us through the film's laby­rinth. more

The film's primary effect is on the senses. Everything is brought together into a disturbing foreshadow of dreadful secrets. more

Atmospheric, absorbing and completely in the control of the man who made it -- unlike, especially, "Bringing Out the Dead," which it sometimes resembles. more

DiCaprio delivers a startling prettyboy-to-tough nut makeover – but he has to play it close to his chest here for the storyline to play out. Once you get past the trickery, Shutter Island offers sumptuous, enthralling, shivery gothic filmmaking with a hardboiled heart and a sly line in asylum humour. If a pot is being boiled, at least it's an intricately-decorated pot on a spectacular fire. more

It's not a great movie so much as it is great moviemaking. It's basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached. more

Even when it's clear Scorsese has decided to employ fakery and allow it to be obvious, it's done with elegance and beauty. more