Shutter Island
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring Ben Kingsley, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams
Rated R
Release date: February 19, 2010

What makes a movie great? Is it meeting the expectation of greatness? Can a movie be viewed solely on its own merit anymore without comparing it to something else you saw that you liked better or worse, or is that what watching and understanding movies is all about? I thought about that a lot after seeing Shutter Island.

It is in our nature to view a movie not only on its own merit but comparatively against like sources. Martin Scorsese has made a lot of brilliant movies but is it fair to always compare each new one to the classics he has already made? His latest film will make you rethink that process. It is the type of film that will make you forget his stable of gangster movies that most people would try to define him by. If you have ever wondered what a Scorsese horror film would look like, Shutter Island is the answer.

The movie opens as two U.S. Marshals, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), arrive on Shutter Island. They have been invited to Ashecliffe Hospital to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient at the facility. Their arrival doesn’t seem to be met with much enthusiasm. The staff is less than cooperative, the hospital’s chief psychiatrist Dr. John Crawley (Sir Ben Kingsley) offers feigned assistance and right away the case seems steeped in impossibility. She was locked in her room, no one saw her leave, and there are no signs of exit. Not to mention they are on an island in the middle of a hurricane.

Fantastic Mr. Fox
Directed by Wes Anderson
Voiced by George Clooney, Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Wallace Wolodarsky, Eric Anderson, Michael Gambon, Owen Wilson, Jarvis Cocker
Release date: November 25, 2009

My relationship with the movies of Wes Anderson can best be described as strained, to say the least. I have a sympathetic ear for the dysfunction he makes his characters wallow in each movie, but aren’t they all really just singing the same song?; that a family, no matter how damaged and quirky, can get through anything as long as they stick together? He has a definitive style, but more and more I get the impression that he is really telling a variation of the same story and trying to hide it by out-weirding the last one. Considering it to be my loudest objection to his movies, I find it curious that one of the biggest compliments I can give Fantastic Mr. Fox is that it feels like a Wes Anderson movie.

The children’s novel by Roald Dahl that the movie is based on is pretty straightforward. Mr. Fox steals chickens, turkeys, and cider from three wealthy nearby farmers. The farmers band together to try to ambush and kill him. He escapes with his family but ends up trapped and starving. After a spell he hatches a plan to create an underground safe haven and steal from them again out from under their noses while they wait for him to emerge.

A Christmas Carol
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman
Rated PG
Release date: November 6, 2009

It happens every year, almost without fail. Christmas day comes around and as I am tearing through my presents there is always that one gift. You know the one where the person giving it to you is so excited they hold it back so you have to open it last so they can make a big spectacle of it. Usually the bigger deal they make, the more I dread it. Not because I am ungrateful, but my appreciation hardly ever matches their excitement. Then there’s that whole awkward exchange where they think you don’t like it and you tell them you do but they don’t buy it because they were super excited but you weren’t as excited and”¦ ugh. Robert Zemeckis‘ adaptation of the Charles Dickens story, A Christmas Carol is that present. So impatient is he to show off his gift to us that he’s overlooked the fact that it’s little more than a big turd in fancy wrapping.

The story is the same as it’s been for the past 165 years. On Christmas Eve night, Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future during which time he experiences a moment of clarity and eventual redemption. As a story Zemeckis plays it by the book (literally), but as a movie, this thing is all over the place.

The Box
Director Richard Kelly
Starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella
Rated PG-13
Release date: November 6, 2009 (wide)

Richard Kelly‘s third film, The Box, is based on the short story Button, Button by Richard Matheson which later became a segment on an episode of The Twilight Zone. If you know nothing about the movies that Kelly has written and directed then you watched The Box because it has Cameron Diaz in it and you thought it looked interesting you will have the same reaction to it even if you’re already familiar with his movies and knew what you were getting in to. If you are part of the latter group, you know that reaction because you’ve been here before.

Living in fairly affluent Virginia suburb in 1976, Arthur (James Marsden) and Norma Lewis (Diaz) appear to be living the American dream. They have a nice house, good jobs, their son seems well behaved, and they even have a pre-midlife crisis Corvette. All is well in the house of Lewis, but things are starting to unravel behind the scenes. Norma finds out the discount program her job offers for their son’s private school tuition will be discontinued. The same day, Arthur finds out that he has been rejected from the astronaut program; something we get the impression everyone thought was a foregone conclusion.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Season 5, EP 1-4
Starring Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, Glenn Howerton, Kaitlin Olson, Danny De Vito
FX Network

On the eve of the fifth season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I am sitting here wondering how this show can still be on the air. I am not talking about the blatant irreverence. The question comes more from the curiosity behind how a show like this can survive as long as it has without becoming monotonous and boring. At its heart it is the very definition of a one-trick pony.

If you tried to tell someone who hasn’t seen the show what it was about, it wouldn’t sound like much. It’s a group of underachievers who run a dive bar in south Philly who try to scheme their way into their vision of success. What they are trying to succeed at differs with each episode but it usually comes from a part of their brain that is poorly lit and with little thought of consequence. The truth is they are unsuccessful at just about everything they are involved in, business, relationships, sobriety; pretty much life in general. The only people that seem oblivious to their limitations are each other. You can gussy it up all you want, but at its core that is pretty much what you have. They don’t tell jokes, they don’t have extravagant thematic elements or running storylines, it just is what it is. We are four years into the sport of watching these characters flail around their little fishbowl and there is only one reason anyone in their right mind would still watch it — it’s still funny.