‘Scorsese tries hand at thriller genre once again and wins’

We meet Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), in the very opening moments of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island. They are two federal marshals from Boston assigned to a missing persons case. But this is not a routine investigation. This one involves a mental asylum and a dangerous patient who we’re told mysteriously vanished from her room overnight. Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the chief psychologist at the asylum, is as puzzled as the marshals. The rooms are small and well guarded with the windows barred. “It’s as if she evaporated, straight through the walls,” notes Dr. Cawley. And for a second, his hypothesis, however implausible and ghostly, seems like a possibility. It seems like a possibility because the asylum is an uncanny place. We’re told it houses some of the most dangerous patients – most of them murderers. To top it off, virtually everyone in the hospital, from the guards to the doctors, seem suspicious.

Scorsese, over the years, has showed no signs of slowing down. He knows how to make great pictures and there isn’t another director who understands the language of film better than he does. Here, Scorsese channels Hitchcock though the film is a little more graphic than anything Hitchcock ever directed. But the mood is there. We have characters who are intelligent on the surface but bothered on the inside. Their inner-demons, fears, and flaws interfere with their daily existence. Hitchcock was interested in those of kind of characters and Scorsese deals with such personae in Shutter Island. Teddy is a great example. He suffers from intense delusions. He dreams about his wife. He is haunted by a little girl and his past as a soldier.

DiCaprio is outstanding in this role. He showed great depth in Scorsese’s The Aviator and The Departed. Here, he surpasses those performances. For two hours, he plays a character whose job depends on questions and answers. He speaks with doctors, patients, and guards. He confers with his partner. Along the way, he transforms. He develops ticks and becomes paranoid, and we have no trouble believing this transformation because of DiCaprio’s exhilarating performance. The supporting cast is equally winning. Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, and Max Von Sydow are perfectly cast in roles that require actors with suspicious faces.

As the film advances, Teddy becomes more drawn to the case. He’s determined to expose the truth, to find not just the missing patient but to settle a personal score with another dangerous patient, and to escape the island with or without his partner. Teddy risks his life, climbs down rocky mountains, enters dangerous parts of the asylum, meets characters who may or may not be telling him the truth (who can you really trust in a mental asylum?), and he jeopardizes his sanity in the process. When we reach the finale, Scorsese doesn’t waste any time trying to shock viewers. The ending is quite surprising and it works only if you admire surprise endings. Shutter Island is the kind of movie that makes sense through reflection. There are many clues that surface throughout but they only become apparent to us when we go back looking for them. Pay close attention to the dialogue and the images. Many details are meant to be interpreted upon a literal level especially when one of the patients says to Teddy, “Don’t you get it? You’re a rat in a maze.”

‘The Butler Brothers are creative again’

Following their ABC trilogy came their “The Notorious Newman Brothers”, a mockumentary centered on the life of two clumsy wiseguys. It was a film that lacked the spirit of previous Substance Productions films. It wasn’t original nor was it funny. But here are the Butler brothers with a new idea: a web series called “Larry and Burt’s Gut Rot.” Episode 1 aired on the worldwide web just a little over a week ago. The series focuses on two central characters: a pizza delivery man with little manners and another guy who is desperately trying to deal with the frustrations of a recent break-up. The characters are imperfect but we accept them because they feel very real. This is one of the Butler Brothers’ strongest qualities as writers. We feel as though we know these characters because we’ve all, at some time or another, have had to deal with a broken heart or that strange deliveryman who shows up at our door.

The Butler Brothers are back in full form. There “The Notorious Newman Brothers” went for cheap laughs and did very little to entice viewers visually. However, this time around, the humor works and the laughs keep coming. But the biggest surprise rests in the visual style of the series. At one point, a thought cloud surfaces and then it disappears. What’s special about this scene is the way the cloud disappears. It’s a small detail, a neat little editing trick, but adds to the creativity and fun. Then there is the commercial for a fictitious restaurant named “Upper Crust”, a commercial that features one of the show’s central characters (zany creativity reminiscent of The Sarah Silverman Program).

“Larry and Burt’s Gut Rot” contains all the elements we expect to see in a Butler Brothers production: humor, crudeness, and a dose of realism. The Butler Brothers have a good idea between their hands and one can only hope they’ll continue to build on that concept. The actors are terrific and the direction, simply perfect. One thing is certain: the Butler Brothers are driving on the right side of the road again with “The Notorious Newman Brothers” in their rear-view mirror, fading in the distance. It’ll be interesting to see where they go with this.

Feel free to watch Episode 1 of “Larry & Burt’s Gut Rot” on YouTube at the following URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESsprRAqL68&feature=youtu.be