With Robert DeNiro as his muse, Scorsese crafted cinematic classics like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas. With DiCaprio, he’s delivered the abstruse and turgid train wrecks Gangs Of New York, The Aviator, and now, Shutter Island. Simultaneously noisy and tiresome, the film expends so much energy trying to conceal its central gimmick that it spirals out of control. And without any real point of focus, all the sturm und drang dissipates like a whisper in a hurricane.

From the opening frames, where a ferry slowly drifts out of an impossibly opaque fog bank, the film announces its agenda to deliberately withhold the bigger picture. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing the film decides to withhold, because the rest of the film is overstuffed with a collection of thrown-together noir movie cliches.

Leonardo DiCaprio scrunches his face into knots to play Teddy Daniels, a man who constantly insists that he is a United States Marshall. He arrives on Shutter Island with a brand new partner to investigate the escape of a prisoner while, naturally, a hurricane is bearing down on the island. The hospital is run by the mysterious Dr. Cawling, played by the shaven head of Ben Kingsley. When Max Von Sydow shows up as a German doctor, the alarm bells of suspicion turn into red flags of absurdity. Von Sydow couldn’t appear benevolent if he walked onscreen carrying a bouquet of roses, surrounded by animated bluebirds.

The escaped prisoner plot line quickly takes a back seat to implications of nefarious conspiracies, personal vengeance, and Nazi-science experiment surgeries. The facility on Shutter Island isn’t the only one with a hidden agenda. Teddy, it turns out, believes the man who killed his wife has been hidden away in the bowels of the hospital, and he’s on an unofficial mission to find him. It also comes as no surprise to learn that Teddy is a haunted man, plagued by visions of his dead wife and his experiences in World War II. As the investigation plods onward, Teddy devolves into a hospital orderly, an inmate, and a fugitive.

Unfortunately, the trailer tips off almost all of the plot, and every scene carries the scent of suspicion. Misdirection hangs in the air like a thick fog, and nothing that we can actually see is engaging on its own, semi-obscured terms. The mysterious flashbacks are inexplicably psychedelic, and the powers-that-be on the island are improbably obscure. As the incongruities mount, that sense of withholding becomes fatally distracting. When Teddy has a crucial confrontation with a prisoner, you can’t help but wonder which cliché will ultimately explain everything. Is it the Jacob’s Ladder purgatory? The Angel Heart descent into hell? The sinister conspiracy that ensnares Teddy a la Arlington Road?

The problem with Shutter Island is that it violates the trust between the audience and the storyteller. Movies that have a successful twist have to operate on two levels. With or without knowledge of the bigger picture, every scene has to make sense both ways. For all the logistical nonsense of Fight Club and solemn misdirection of The Sixth Sense, the first two acts of both films are comprehensible and emotionally engaging on their own. By the time the narrative is stood sideways, it’s an enhancement, not a relief. On Shutter Island, the director is part of the subterfuge. The mystery doesn’t come from the telling, it comes from the certainty that the filmmakers are withholding some crucial parts of the story.

Scorsese’s hallmark has always been intense realism, so the opportunity to squander an epic budget on psychedelic elements must have been attractive. It’s hard to imagine another film that would allow him to stage the graphic concentration camp shootout that is one of the best executed (pun intended) visuals in the film. The pretentious and CGI heavy images of fire and water homage European surrealism, and the extended flashback that caps Teddy’s story feels like it could have been lifted from an unseen Bergman work.

All that firepower is wasted on a film that perversely decrescendos instead of climaxing. Whatever cinema-historical references Scorsese set out to homage are best left uncelebrated. Perhaps an upcoming filmmaker working on a tight budget could have made a smart, claustrophobic thriller out of this material. Sadly, Scorsese and his unchecked ambitions have little to offer beyond unnecessary obscurity.

Jack Bauer, at the start of season 1

Consider this – Jack Bauer has served CTU under five different presidents: the guy before David Palmer, David Palmer, Wayne Palmer, Charles Logan, and Alison Taylor.  He’s faked his own death, gotten hooked on heroin, and served time in a Chinese prison.

From ESPN’s loquacious Gregg Easterbrook, one of his loyal readers has pulled together this Bauer timeline:

I noted that on “24,” Jack Bauer saves critical minutes by traveling during commercials. Kevin Woods of Santa Rosa, Calif., provides further details on time dilation in the series: “In the first season, in 2001, Jack was a highly successful federal agent with a 15-year-old daughter. Although Jack’ age was never stated, he had to be at least 40. He was a college graduate who had received his master’s in criminology, then joined the U.S. Army, reaching the rank of captain in the prestigious Delta Squad. After the Army, he worked for Los Angeles SWAT team, then joined the CIA in its clandestine wing. After this, he was recruited to the CTU, the mysterious agency where Jack toils when the series begins. Jack had to be 40 when the series began.

“Let’s assume 43. Here is where the time line gets tough. Season 2 was 18 months after season 1, making Jack 44-45. Season 3 was three years after season 2, making Jack about 47-48. Season 4 was 18 months after season 3, making Jack about 50. Season 5 was 18 months after season 4, making Jack about 52. Season 6 was 20 months after season 5, making Jack about 54. 24-Redemption, a two-hour movie that supposedly tied things together, was four years after season 6, making Jack about 58. Season 7, happening shortly after Redemption, still has Jack at around 58. Season 8, looks to be two-three years after season 8, because Jack's grand-daughter is seen having conversations with him, making Jack around 60 years [old]. He's quite spry for 60! Also, add up the years and it is now 2014 in the series. Maybe that explains all the CTU super-technology that does not seem to exist in our reality.”

That's after 20 years of living right.

Now Mr. Woods of Santa Rosa is playing a little loose with the rounding up, and not knowing Jack Bauer’s birthday it’s tough to be precise. However, even with tightening up the estimates, Jack Bauer is 58 years old. May we all be so healthy on the edge of 60.

via Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings were brought down by Favre’s fatal flaw – ESPN.

Just look at the parking lot, Larry. Just look at that parking lot.

25 Imaginative Illustrations Inspired By Film // WellMedicated.

Note that Justin Reed, the resident artist from the dawn of Good Is The New Bad, is represented here with 3 of his finer pieces.

Many of the remaining works are just as clever. The Highlander novelization is a personal favorite.

We Got That B-Roll

Thanks to Netflix and the New York Times, now you know some of the answers. Behold a breakdown of 2009 rentals by zip code:

A Peek Into Netflix Queues – NYTimes.com.

If you ever wondered how safe your personal data is on the internet, here’s a scary object lesson. Sure, it’s anonymized. And even scarier is the conformity among neighborhoods. Play around with the sliders to see which neighborhoods are renting what. The first, biggest, and most embarrassing surprise is the frequency with which everyone in America seems to be renting the terminally tedious Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.

Looking at the patterns of Los Angeles rentals, for amusement check out the rental patterns for two Tyler Perry films – The Family That Preys and Madea Goes To Jail. Guess how frequently the residents of Malibu and Beverly Hills requested them?

Even cooler, and more telling (though only in ways that the ACLU would shit kittens over any meaningful attempt to draw conclusions from), is to drag the slider across the top 10-15 movies in an ersatz time-lapse. Watch the rental patterns – not just the intensity, but the areas where people are renting.

First, just about everybody in the Southland is renting The Shiteous Case Of Benjamin Buttass as their top pick, except for about half of the city of Los Angeles, and the good people of Lynwood.

For the international readers who might not be familiar with the birthplace of Weird Al Yankovic, Lynwood is right next to the more frequently name-checked ‘hoods like Compton and South Gate. And rightly or wrongly, it also has the same reputation as a gang-choked, poverty stricken hellhole. (Though you wouldn’t know it from the optimistically stock-photographed dead-end link called: Lynwoodwatch.com)

Say what you will about poor people, but if being rich means watching The Tedious Case Of Benjamin Suckass one more time, you can sign me up for foodstamps. I hope that it’s Netflix popularity is due to an early 2009 DVD release date, and that it’s gaudy rental numbers are a function of time as well as popularity. But since it was such a god-awful movie, I’ll keep taking my shots at it where ever possible.

Next up is Changeling, Clint Eastwood’s saga about a distraught woman in 1930’s Los Angeles. Nearly the same distribution pattern as Three Hour Boring Suckfest That Shall No Longer Be Named, and again the people of Lynwood lead the Southland in their cineastic wisdom.

Slumdog Millionaire, your 2009 Oscar winner for Best Picture hits a heck of a dropoff. The art film ennui spreads from Lynwood into Compton, South Gate, Inglewood, and El Monte.

Seven Pounds flips the numbers around a lot. But nowhere near as much as Eagle Eye. It’s a popularity inversion almost as severe as the Tyler Perry movies. Flip back and forth between Eagle Eye and Darren Aaronofsky’s tiresome The Wrestler. Holy socio-economic profiling, Batman, but the stereotypical lower-class neighborhoods apparently don’t give a shit about self-indulgent meditations on aging, but they do buy into the idea that the government is watching their every move! In the same vein, the people who love Eagle Eye also love Alex Proyas’ fatalistic supernatural melodrama Knowing. Is it for Nicholas Cage? Or for the paranoid ruminations of the inescapability of fate? You decide!

You can probably guess the rental map for biopic of gay rights activist Harvey Milk looks like. But why all the diffuse, widespread love for The Proposal with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant?

I might be the only person in 90041 with Transporter 3 on the queue, and I’m beyond delighted that Indiana Jones Buys Steven Spielberg A Fifth Summer House was rented by nearly nobody.

The most peculiar anomaly is 90747 – a subset of Carson, which shares almost nothing in common with Netflix’s top 25. Keep an eye on this trapezoid of dissidents as you pull through the maps. Who the hell are these people, and why are there so many kiddy flicks on their top 10?

The best film of the year that you didn’t hear about (and should have) is Duncan Jones’ sci-fi flick Moon.

There were better films released in 2009 than Moon, but most of those were obscure foreign films that you weren’t going to see anyway, even if every reputable critic in America wrote you a personal letter explaining why you should see it. Those films probably had war-torn orphans, three hour running times, and deep things to say about the ethereal nature of the human soul. So let’s simplify things and pretend those other movies really don’t count for this award. (Really, they don’t. I didn’t see any pretentious three hour foreign films that were any better than Moon, anyway. And since this is my blog, we go by my rules. If you want to nominate something else, feel free to list it in the comments.)

Moon is a tidy little package, clocking in at what feels like a brief 100 minutes. It’s a simple story, free of pretentions, and yet it has plenty to say about the ethereal nature of the soul.

The story is simple. Sam (excellently played by Sam Rockwell) is working alone on the far side of the moon. He’s in the tail end of a three year gig, operating a mining facility. He’s alone except for GERTY, the wise and omnipresent robot who controls the facility. Then he has an accident and he’s rescued by… himself.

Each man believes the other to be the clone, and the argument over who is who -and more importantly, who gets to go home at the end of the tour – unfolds in ways both straightforward and surprising.

Steeped in the production design of classic science fiction movies of the 1970’s, the film deliberately evokes 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, and Alien. What’s delightful about Moon is that every time it teeters on the edge of becoming a predictable genre flick, it gently curves into new and surprising territory. The biggest spoiler for the film is not the identity of Sam’s rescuer, but the knowledge that it’s not a slasher flick, nor a predictable horror flick. The second half of the film is coyly suspenseful, building tension with strong, concise storytelling. There are no aliens leaping out of the dark. The omnipresent robot (slyly voiced by Kevin Spacey) doesn’t turn out to be malignant technology run amok. There’s no labored twists, just smooth storytelling. And every time you have the story figured out, writer/director Duncan Jones finds a nuance that keeps you thinking and a left turn to keep you engaged.

Sam Rockwell handles the dual role with a deceptive ease, and since he’s the only person onscreen for 97% of the film, it’s easy to overlook what a nuanced performance he gives. He’s always had a slacker’s ease on screen, acting as if he was a half-second behind the rest of the world. Watching him embody that age-old dilemma of “What would happen if I met myself at a party? What if I thought I was an asshole?”, that slight delay speaks volumes. Watching Sam try to figure himself out is some of the most effective on-screen philosophizing as you’ll find this year.

The effects work is satisfyingly tactile. Shot for about the same budget as The Hurt Locker, Moon unfolds in a world every bit as tactile. Unlike the tiresomely digital cartoons of Avatar, the questions about human nature have an immediacy to them and a quiet depth that will have you thinking about them long after the story has unfolded. In space, sometimes a contemplative whisper is more effective than a scream.

Moon is now available on DVD and via Netflix. Go put it in your queue. You’ll be glad you did.

Disorientation.