Take about a thousand B-movie tropes and effects and have them played by good actors, directed by a good director, and you get an enjoyable, though sometimes baffling (for the wrong reasons: that is, Is Martin Scorsese really going to take the plots of "A Beautiful Mind" and "Fight Club" and turn them into a thriller, without the biography and the grit? Yes. Yes, he is.). Still I could deal with Shutter Island. Even enjoy it.
9? Well, like Avatar, the writer and director believes that you don't need a new story (see The Matrix, Toy Story, Children of Men, V for Vendetta, etc.), you don't even need new visuals (see Return of the Jedi, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, etc.), all you need is competent execution of the visuals, using CGI, and you'll make a movie. And you know what, he's right. It is a movie. But the best thing about it, besides the visuals, is that it's only 70 minutes long.
2 comments:
Your analysis sounds so cynical, I want to disagree wth it... Alas I have no point to argue. I enjoyed your post
Hey Keith,
It's cool that I have no idea who you are, and that you've read my belchings on these movies.
To be fair, I didn't take enough time to review these two movies thoroughly. My experience while watching them was positive, but when I sat down to write something about them I realized that there was really not much to say about them, except how much they were like other, better, movies I'd seen. Certainly there's lots of room for creative replication and building on - influence and re-imaginings are great. Really, I don't think Scorsese, in Shutter Island, aspires to do much more than pay homage, a la much of Tarantino's stuff. The thing about Tarantino's work, though, is that while you're watching him riff off of many sources, it is also clear that he's building his own, unique piece of work. Tarantino uses the sources to make more than a collage, or pastiche. He makes something new as well. It really did seem to me that these two movies were, at best, very well-executed versions of films that have gone before, and they didn't add much that was new, other than technical panache. For younger, newer viewers they will be great, and feel new, just like the kid who hears Cohen's "Hallelujah" while watching Shrek experiences it as a fresh song. I don't think though, that there's any harm in pointing out that there's source material, and that the source might be as good, even better.
If you can show me how these two films do something new, I'd love to hear it!
Anyway, thanks for reading!
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