The Revenant (2015)

Alejandro G. Inarritu’s “The Revenant” is grueling, beautiful, and blood-soaked ugly. It is the tale of survival and revenge with Leonardo DiCaprio as famed tracker Hugh Glass, returning from near-death to find those who abandoned him for dead after a bear attack in 1820s America. My gut instinct: “Revenant” is far too long and far too a “Look at Me!” performance by DiCaprio with his artist/director as cheerleader. But laying in bed hours later I clicked on “Revenant” as far more than the straight flick of one angry man killing another that I expected. Wanted. It’s a spiritual war of man, nature, and an America I’ll never know. Inarritu uses dreams and hallucinations within dreams, tied to shaky reality. None more stunning than a ruined stone church, images of Christ barely intact, that may or may not exist. Glass is a haunted man, and Tom Hardy as Fitzgerald -- the man who leaves Glass for dead, and kills the latter’s Pawnee son -– is also that. Glass says he “ain’t afraid to die,” he’s done it already, but so has Fitzgerald. It’s damn long and peculiar, but “Revenant” is a brutal, exhilarating tale of base nature, man and animal. B+

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Forget “Great Gatsby” comparisons. Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street” is the greatest black comedy satire since “Natural Born Killers.” Trade phones for guns, gold watches for scalps. This crazy F.U. gem is being crucified as overlong and obnoxious, a pointless drug- and sex-smeared stain of debauchery focusing on Wall Street brokers who strikes it rich fleecing common Americans on shit investments. People, that is the point. Scorsese playfully crashes and flames his epic movie as often as real-life Wall Street scum bag Jordan Belfort (a never more alive Leonardo DiCarpio) crashes and flames yachts and cars, snorts coke, screws whores, and rallies his team to make more money. I cheered. This is America. Scorsese, writer Terence Winter, and DiCaprio are daring us to hate this movie. Our hate is misplaced. They are revealing the strings of the soulless puppet masters who run our banks, buy our congressmen, and control our 401K futures. More so: Our nation’s wealth and the whole stock market is the ultimate con we all buy into. Again and again. Refocus your anger. Best character: Jonah Hill -- gold! -- as a fat Alfred E. Neuman geek who drives Belfort’s scam. Mad men. A

The Great Gatsby (1974 and 2013)

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel “The Great Gatsby” has spawned roughly six filmed versions. I have seen only two, and it seems a movie version that equals the book is far and forever out of grasp. That is a reference to the book, which if you have not read is a shame. Because I’m skipping the plot re-hash. Read the book.

The 1974 version comes with high pedigree: Francis Ford Coppola has his name on the screenplay, and the top-line stars are Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, both at career highs, as the deeply unknowable titular character and the possibly soulless Daisy, she the woman of his desires/obsessions/ past. Sam Waterston is our hero/narrator, Nick. Redford as the make-you-swoon Gatsby? Cannot go wrong, right? “Well, of course you can.” This is a dud. My wife loves it. I don’t. The book zings with jazz and satire, hidden meanings, the notion that on your third read you catch new-to-you symbolism and connections. Never has an attack on excess come off as empty. Redford -– great actor -– is stiff and wrong as Gatsby, with Farrow over-acting the hysterics. Director Jack Clayton nails the look of the era of loud jazz, loose morals, and great wealth -– Gatsby’s house is the Rosecliff House in Newport, Rhode Island, and my wife and I have been there -– but it trudges along slow and empty. That moment at the end comes not as tragic and sickeningly ironic, but just tepid as … pool water. Dig, though, Scott Wilson as a wronged man. C

Baz Luhrmann’s version is all excess, an ironic eyebrow raiser as the novel attacks the very notion of flash and glitter as suffocating. Recall the absinth kicks of “Moulin Rouge!”? This “Gatsby” is all about that, in 3D. We open with narrator Nick (Tobey Maguire) as a novelist/patient inside a sanitarium, a wrecked shell encouraged to write of the incident that derailed his life: His dealings with mysterious Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), waif cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and her husband (Joel Edgerton). Yes, McGuire is playing Nick as Fitzgerald. How quaint. Luhrmann smartly mines deeper, fuller emotions, and DiCaprio nails the role of a delusional man who drops the term “old sport!,” but has no idea what it means, and does not know his life’s goal is a dead end. In a flip from the ’74 version, it is Maguire who is miscast, giving a “Spider-Man”-era wide-eyed, gawky performance that looks ridiculous on a man his age. The hip-hop fueled parties staged by Luhrmann drown satire, while the visual barrage of Nick’s written words floating in air reminded me of the quiet of reading a book. There is no quiet here. Only noise. C+

Django Unchained (2012)

In his near-three-hour blaxploitation spaghetti western homage/ripoff “Django Unchained,” Quentin Tarantino serves up a blood-soaked raw piece of pulp fiction that makes “Inglorious Basterds” and its Nazi history redux seem Disney fluffy. He tackles slavery in the 1850s America and shows it in all its vile, morally offensive code, and does not blink -– a black man is ripped apart by dogs as whites standby cackling, and the “N” word is used as verb, noun, adjective, and an exclamation. I winched, blanched, and shut my eyes at the violence, and the images of African-Americans forced into chains and depraved medieval torture equipment. 

Vulgar and soul-killer upsetting? Yes. On purpose. How can it not be, how can any examination -- even fictional and heightened -- of slavery not make anyone with half a soul cringe, and look away in horror. Shame. But, hell, I say “Gone with the Wind” is far more offensive to the core because it shows slave-ripe America as some kind of utopian Candy Land. It was all good. The South was happy. I hate that film. Tarantino must as well. He fires on all cylinders, his anger at America’s past strong. Conservatives hate this film because it dares show America -– of 150 years ago -- as a moral cesspool no better than Nazi Germany. Leftists such as Spike Lee hate it because they didn't think of this film, cathartic in twisted ways, first. Thank God for Abraham Lincoln, and go see “Lincoln.” These films would make a wild double bill. 

Speaking of Candy Land, Candieland is the name of a Mississippi plantation run by a ruthless land owner (Leonadro DiCaprio) where Django –- a freed slave turned bounty hunter played by Jamie Foxx -– and his killer mentor (Christoph Waltz) seek to free the former’s wife. That’s the gist and final hour of this epic that is bloody brilliant in a dozen ways, a long overdue F.U. to Southern Whites, and their modern GOP apologists who use patriotism as a weapon of hate. 

There’s so much more to the plot, but I would exhaust myself spilling every detail. Cinema master that he is, Tarantino cannot justify the 2 hour 45 minutes running time. He takes a dig at the pre-KKK as the idiot cowards they were and are, but the scene is overlong and kills an otherwise tense encounter between the racists and our heroes. More scenes throughout play overlong or repeat themselves over and over again.

Further, his main characters are not strong enough, nor his plot strands or dialogue. No one here reaches the deep well of Waltz’s Nazi in “Basterds,” or Samuel L. Jackson’s hit man in “Pulp Fiction.” Except for Django’s rebirth as a killer throwing hate and bullets back in the faces of his oppressors, no one else moves an inch forward or backward. We get two over-the-top bloody shoot-outs in the same room split apart by a half-hour in which Tarantino drags his ass around as a slave trader with an Australian accent worse than I could ever mimic. 

In “Basterds,” Tarantino staged a key scene around a dinner and ratcheted the tension so tight, just as my heart was about to explode, his mayhem onscreen exploded. Here, during the big dinner scene, the air lets out, the talk drags on for 20 minutes, then the carnage hits. Then more talk. Then more carnage. Then more talk. Tarantino seems to have written a screenplay in which no idea was bad, and he could not depart with a page. 

So many grand ideas go unrealized. For the first time, I second-guessed Tarantino’s leadership as the Cinema God. See: DiCaprio’s sick twist prince -– and by gosh, he is damn good as a hothead-maniac -– runs a slave gladiator camp. He enjoys watching men of color kill each other in forced do-or-die sport, and his character demands a certain … repayment. Yes, he dies. But that death is cheap, quick, and with no deep wit.

But the real disappointment for me is Kerry Washington as the wife of Django. Great actress. Wonderful. But she is given nothing to do but react -- scream, run, serve, faint, and stand still when a gun is at her head -– after a lengthy buildup that promises a bad ass woman of fire. I wanted to her bash in skulls with the wine picture she is forced to carry, scream and tear apart people. Tarantino bares her body and scars, but not her inner-raging soul, and damn hardy, I know Broomhilda (her name) has one. I hardly believed this character came from the same mind that wrote “Jackie Brown” and “Basterds.” Or the “Kill Bill” series. Tarantino loves women in the best way.

I’m being far too negative. This is not a bad movie. It screams genius, daring, red-faced anger for great lengths. The acting is aces all around (Foxx is deadly cool, and Waltz is clearly relishing every line and twist of his beard), and Samuel L. Jackson re-creates the entire character of the “house slave” as a villain named Stephen. He’s no -– get that name, step n’ fetch it character -– but the true brute force behind Candie’s world. Watch him stand tall at the end.

Tarantino spends so much time making homage to spaghetti-western troupes and bringing in cameos (Johan Hill, Bruce Dern), I wished he focused more on Jackson’s traitor of all traitors, a bent-back man who is a far better power player and con man than Waltz’s bounty hunter. I would have watched another our of Jackson and Foxx going at each other. And sat in fear and awe. Nonetheless, this is near-unshakable film, and Tarantino knows it. Genius? Classic? Must own? No to all three. But unshakable, for sure.

After taking on fantasy Jewish revenge on Hitler, and now putting an African-American in a saddle with guns blasting racist Southerners, one has to wonder where QT will go next: A grindhouse take on Jesus? Or back to gangster-types? Tarantino still remains the most-surprising American filmmaker of our time. Whatever he does next, I’ll be there, eyes wide open. B

J. Edgar (2011)

John Edgar Hoover was one of our nation’s most powerful guardians, who created the FBI, championed fingerprinting as a form of identification, and launched the very notion of criminal forensics. He remains the Holy Trinity of U.S. law enforcement. He did great things. He also was a control freak who drove his patriotic cop zeal so far up the flagpole, it turned from love of country to illegal and immoral bludgeon tactics not out of place in the Communist Russia that Hoover so loathed. His hunch or mood was law, the law be damned. He did terrible things. He kept files on and blackmailed presidents, Hollywood stars and corporate tycoons. How the hell can a movie about him be boring?!? This is it.

“J. Edgar,” the latest cinematic effort from Clint Eastwood, is a dead-eyed, soulless, filmed in shit-colored browns biopic unworthy of the man in the title. Directed by Eastwood and written by Dustin Lance Black – a gay leftist who penned “Milk” – this film should explode off the screen, polarize, and burn our conceptions. Recall “Nixon” or “Malcolm X.” They had balls. No balls here. Tackling Hoover is a tall order. No film could ever get it all. I could not do it. That anyone could try is surely of respect. But no love.

Black goes bust from the start as old Hoover is dictating the narrative of his life to various underlings, for a book of some sort, spilling his secrets… Wait, what? Hoover spill secrets? No. Worse, the agents question Hoover’s accuracy. Bullshit. No one questioned him. Still worse, the story jumps timelines throughout, Hoover at 70 at 19 at 35 at Gate 6F, and the edits kill all momentum. The scene of JFK’s assassination carries the impact of a burned pizza. As does the Lindbergh baby murder. That case is sliced and diced throughout the film. All the history and fascinating crime talk sinks. More bullshit: When Leonardo DiCaprio as Hoover dons a dress as his dead mother – yes, we go there – it’s a cheap potshot of a rumor long disproved. And also hilarious, a contender for worse scene of the year. No joke.

And, yes, the film eyes Hoover’s debated sexuality, and as much as “J” tries to tackle the homosexuality slant as tippy-toes as possible, it’s undone by Armie Hammer (“Social Network”) who plays Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s confidant and reported lover as a wide-eyed swish. A cruel word, but it fits. It is not all bad. Black writes some beautiful bits about the absolute forbidden gay life of the time, a period all of our GOP presidential candidates long to bring back, and tells of a boy Hoover knew who committed suicide because he was bullied. As a gay. Judi Dench is Hoover's Bible-thumper bigot mom who says better dead than queer. Great performance, her psychologically whipping her boy because he dislikes girls. But, damn, does he have to dress like her? Is that not counter-productive, for gays, for Black? Such stereotype?

DiCaprio plays Hoover with all the Oscar Nomination power he can muster, and for that I never forgot I was watching a performance. (Dig Penn as Harvey Milk. Effortless.) DiCaprio is a fine actor -- he is -- but he does not have the gravitas, the sheer power that Hoover must have exulted, the fear factor. Not here. That said, Leo nails one scene where he declares his love for Tolson to himself. No sex, though, as Hoover is too repressed, or is it Eastwood? Whatever. Does not matter. When our two stars play old, they toddle around like drama majors doing “Odd Couple,” each smothered in terrible makeup. All the drama, gay and straight, seeps away.

It all ends with Hoover dead and the files – the thousands of files Hoover kept – shredded. There is no substance to right now, the sheer horror of what a guy like Hoover could do with cell phones and the Internet. (Hey, with Gingrich as president, we may find out.) Eastwood, Black and DiCaprio would be better if the screenplay were shredded. Hoover, too. Check out the 1950s Hoover/Hollywood propaganda flick “The FBI Story.” It’s so hilariously opportunistic and blindly in love with Hoover’s ego, and the America is God, I consider it a comedy classic. It tells more about J. Edgar than “J. Edgar.” Our nation, too. Always right. Eastwood -- a favorite of my life and forever, no matter his faults -- is just sagging of late. C

Gangs of New York (2002)

I’ve re-watched “Gangs of New York” several times recently, and still come to the same conclusion I felt in 2002: It’s a powder keg film at its opening with Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson swinging axes and blades as 1840s rival gang leaders in New York’s Five Points, the sector of race, religion and pride ran over. Bill “The Butcher” Cutting – that’s Day Lewis – stands unbowed as Neeson’s Priest falls dead. I was slack-jawed then and now at the onscreen carnage. Yet, the film’s remainder never balances or even gels, making for a fascinating disappointment from director Martin Scorsese. The story dissolves in an odd (and literal) telegraphed narration as the Priest’s grown son (Leonardo DiCaprio) seeks vengeance against Cutting. A climatic riot/gang fight/naval attack is so spastic, we require text to pinpoint what’s going on. Too much. Not enough. It’s a tremendous telling of democratic America’s terrible, blood-soaked birth that Tea Party folks refuse to believe. (They actually think this nation began with freedom for all and biblical values, and want to go back.) It’s just not a satisfying film, feeling sliced even at 160 minutes. Day-Lewis is volcano, spewing a violent code of “honor” shocking in its depravity. DiCaprio wilts in his presence. B-

Body of Lies (2008)

“Body of Lies” is a horrible title. But it sure beats “Generic, Unconvincing Middle Easy Spy Movie.” The name it deserves.

Ridley Scott’s thriller starts off with a bang – a busted group of Islamic Jihadists blow themselves up inside a block of English row houses without so much as a shrug. The scene shocks. Then we jump to hot, dangerous Iraq where super CIA spy Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) is digging and running to nail a second cell of Jihadists. The mission goes to hell, and Roger is wounded. That’s the first half hour. I liked it.

Then the show falls apart. Roger is sent to Jordan by his boss (Russell Crowe) to bust another cell. The job goes to shit and injured again, Roger starts digging on a local nurse. Because that’s what white-as-rice American spies do in the hostile Middle East, date Muslim women in public and play grab hands, as to not get noticed. Everyone notices. Dogs even perk their ears. DiCaprio, sporting a beard that looks like arm pit hair, can’t push this slop to credibility. He’s too eager to please, and why is a war-scarred spy all gaga over a woman? And why does she believe his flimsy cover story? Because the script demands that the hero be compromised. No other reason.

Roger isn’t even actually a character, a person to root for. He’s an ideal – the young, pragmatic, justice-seeking American who wants to vanquish evil, but with utmost care for the innocent. Crowe also plays a symbol – the fat, pretentions, know-it-all American who doesn’t care if he’s right or wrong, and can’t tell the difference because he’s busy driving the minivan. Crowe is good, but his character is white noise. Debates about war far flat: Good guys want the war to end, but the bad guys don’t. Deep.

Scott’s best playing card is the might of tech-savvy U.S. surveillance, and the way terrorists stay out of sight by staying off the grid, all hand-written messages, bicycles and 1,000-B.C. hideouts. This is perfect entertainment for 2000. An unlikely dud from Scott. Bag this “Body.” C

Inception (2010)

Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is not for every movie-goer. It is a brain-expanding, mind-blowing trip so far down the hole of human consciousness it makes “Alice in Wonderland” and “The Matrix” seem quaint. This is a film for cinema lovers such as myself who obsessed over “LOST” because it wasn’t easy just entertainment, it required handing ourselves over body and soul to a unique visionary’s imagination, a story, and becoming part of a puzzle. This isn’t a film to ask, “What’s it about?” The question is: “What do you think it’s about?” As with "LOST" or David Lynch's best works, the answers are wide, complex and likely unanswerable.

As director and screenwriter, Nolan returns to the themes of his earliest films: “Following,” “Memento” and “Insomnia.” The plot is hung around a very basic genre concept – here, the haunted criminal on one final job – and turns the box inside out, and upside down. The mystery here lies in the seeker, the film’s protagonist, not in whatever crime he is trying solve, undo or commit. Even “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” were warm ups to this game. Nolan asks the audience with “Inception,” What makes us us? Our memories, our past sins, or our dreams? All those together? Can a person’s dreams become so solidly entrenched in his or her mind, they become as real as the memories of schoolyard games and or one’s wedding? Take over his life? Swallow him whole?

Leonardo DiCaprio is Dominick Cobb, a thief who breaks into people’s minds as they dream while sedated, and sets out to trick or force their subconscious into letting loose vital secrets, data and ideas. He works for and against multi-billion dollar corporations, apparently for the highest bidder. Among his team are Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra”) as a planner and Lukas Haas (“Witness”) as a dream architect, with Tom Hardy (“Bronson”) as a “forger” and weapons man.

The film opens with Dom and his crew targeting a wealthy Japanese business man (Ken Watanabe), who quickly turns the tables on the crew. The corker: He hires the group to usurp a rival up-and-coming tycoon (Cillian Murphy). The plan is not to steal an idea, but covertly plant one. Hence, inception. This is all just the set-up. The payoff cannot be described.

As with “Memento,” there is no central villain. The hero’s mind is a scrambled mess, and that is enough of an obstacle to overcome. Dom’s wife is dead, and he is self-exiled from America, where his young children live with his former in-laws. Nolan slowly pulls back the layers of Dom as his own memory-warped dreams smash into the custom-designed dreams of his targets. His wife (Marion Cottilard) appears, alternately seductive, desperate and completely unstable. When a train appears to crash out-of-control through L.A. traffic, it is only a hint of what’s going on inside Dom’s head, where his grip on reality is tenuous at best. Ellen Page (“Juno”) playa an alternate architect, who knows Dom’s troubles.

With the freedom of the unlimited dream-state imagination, Nolan creates cities that fold onto themselves as if they were paper boxes, entire buildings move and twist and tumble as the dreamer’s body is thrown about a moving car. Thankfully, he avoids the crappy, acid-sucking ruin of the dream-heavy "What Dreams May Come." In the movie’s tour-de-force action sequence, Gordon-Levitt fights several gunmen in a hotel hallway where the rules of gravity do not exist. Nolan also plays with time, knowing that the sleeping brain’s timer does not adhere to real, defined time. The further one sinks into dream states of subconscious -– three, four, five levels down -- time crawls. Minutes are decades, and can drive a man -– or a woman -– mad.

With “Memento,” Nolan shattered the rules on how a story can be presented, creating a murder mystery told backward and then sideways, from the perspective of a man with no apparent short-term memory. He shatters the rules again here, picking up on the unfulfilled promise of “The Matrix,” by making the characters on screen, and the audience as well, not only question the “reality” on screen but that of our own existence.

Hanz Zimmer’s buzzing, thumping score and the ironic use of Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” as a major plot device further breaks down the walls of reality on screen. Cottilard won a best Actress Oscar for playing Piaf in a French-language film. As well, a mysterious series of numbers – 528491 – take on the importance of those hatch numbers in “LOST.” As with that now-gone show, Nolan does not see the need to provide answers. Let the puzzle lay unsolved. DiCaprio’s most recent role in “Shutter Island” adds a weird layer as we grapple with trusting our protagonist in the first place.

All of this is mixed in with massive decaying cities, mind games and a snow-bound action sequence worthy of 1970s-era James Bond. With a sharp edge that is constantly off balance. Multiple viewings, I think, are required. The very final image will be debated among hardcore movie fans (nerds?) for years. The kicker isn’t the image itself, though. It’s the idea of the image. Love it or hate, or don’t get it, Nolan uses “Inception” to burrow deep inside our own heads. The movie isn’t about inception, it is an Inception. I've seen in three times, and still am awed. A

Shutter Island (2010)

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. Proceed carefully.

Before "Shutter Island" began, an Old Spice commercial played on screen. It had some stud mocking average guys, telling women in the audience, "Look at me. Now look at your man. Look back at me. Now look back at your man." The gist of the commercial: Guy on screen is cool, suave and built. Flabby guy in the seat (that'd be me) next to the lady (Jenn!) is not. But, if I used Old Spice I could be like that.

Why am I talking about this goofy commercial in a film review? Hold on.

"Shutter Island" has been sold as the shocker film of 2010, a mind-twisting masterpiece from Martin Scorsese, starring his Gen X muse, Leonardo DiCaprio. The ads proclaim, "Did you guess the ending?" Umm, yeah, I did. Right away, actually. Then I had 2 hours 15 minutes to kill in my theater seat. And I wasn’t happy about it.

See, DiCaprio plays Teddy, a U.S. marshal who looks like he just stumbled off the red-eye flight from L.A. to Boston, having slept wrapped in a laundry sack in the luggage berth. His tie looks like a wet, dead goose around his neck, and his hat is crap. He looks homeless. As the 1954-set film opens, Teddy is on a ferry and meets his out-of-the-blue new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo). The men are on their way to Shutter Island, a water-locked New England asylum for the criminally insane, to investigate the apparent escape of a child murderess. The men briefly discuss the case. Then Chuck calls Teddy "boss." Boss. And I knew the whole film. In three minutes.

Why? (OK, I'm getting to my Old Spice point now.)

Ladies, gents, Look at Ruffalo. Look at DiCaprio. Look back at Ruffalo. Now look back at DiCaprio. Now look at me. In what reality would Ruffalo ever call DiCaprio "boss"? Other than by sarcasm or to make DiCaprio think he's the "boss." See, Ruffalo's Chuck is cool, suave and built, with a tie so sharp it could slice bread. Ruffalo's Chuck is older, dapper, shines wisdom and could own Leo's Teddy. Teddy is not Chuck’s boss. Not by a mile. And Chuck would never call Teddy such.

A lot of critics and movie fans love "Shutter" because it's directed by SCORSESE and stars DICAPRIO, that is, the greatest living American film director and the best American actor of Generation X. Not me. This film, all moods and rain and pounding, dread-filled music, is a disappointment. Even with the Hitchcock themes and Euro-horror nods and rogues gallery of former movie villains and serial killers as red-herring co-stars (Ben Kingsley, Max Von Sydow, Jackie Earle Haley, John Carroll Lynch and Ted Levine among them) the movie fails to provide goose bumps.

As I said, Teddy and Chuck are out to find a deranged female patient who mysteriously vanished from her high-security cell. The men attempt to solve the how, where and why, as the creepy nice higher-ups who run the rock island (Von Sydow and Kingsley) do everything they can to hinder the case. Meanwhile, touchy, twitchy Teddy is having nightmares about his dead wife (Michele Williams) and his WWII Army days when he helped liberate a Nazi death camp. Not ironically, Teddy knows two things: His dead wife's killer is on the island and the goons running the place are doing brain experiments, because they’re Nazis. Or Commies. (I can’t recall). Teddy knows people know things, and he wants to save the day and be the hero. The boss. See?

Scorsese is a brilliant director, and he places scenes in dark, dank, cave-like cells with panache, and the nightmare sequences have this crazy feel that’s just left of a Dali painting come to life. The full cast is marvelous, with awesome people like Levine ("The Silence of the Lambs") showing up to steal the film.

So it's not all bad. This all would be mostly passable, even with me knowing the big shocker secret.

But "Shutter" also is a cumbersome, heavy-handed ride filled with loooong scenes of people talking about this guy they met who knows this other guy who knows a secret. At one point, Kingsley goes all Glenn Beck-drooling mad and whips out a freakin' diagram (!) for Teddy (that is, us) explaining names. At that point, I didn’t care. And I don't care if Internet bloggers point out a last-minute, blink-and-you-miss-it shocker. So there. (I imagine reading the Dennis Lehane novel that inspired this film is infinitely more interesting, or so I hope.)

If this were an M. Night Shyamalan film with Bruce Willis, I'd be OK. My expectations would be lower. But Scorsese, he of "Goodfellas" and "Cape Fear," and DiCaprio, with Scorsese's "Gangs of New York" and "Aviator" behind him? Sorry. "Shutter" is a massive letdown. Not even Old Spice can make this flabby bird into a stud. (See how I wrapped around to that left-field beginning?) C

Revolutionary Road (2008)

"Revolutionary Road" aims to be a soul-splitting film about the miserable marriage of a couple (Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet) in 1950s suburban America. He's a salesman who longs for a new, exciting career, but still enjoys screwing the office girls during lunch breaks. She's the wife/mother trapped at home and longing for her sacrificed acting career and a life in exciting Paris. They have two children, and an unplanned third pregnancy instigates a long-brewing fight.

It's a good film for the most part, with director Sam Mendes serving up a beautiful recreation of an America that shimmered on the outside but reeked from within. The film nails the plight of most women in pre-1960s America: When they got married, they gave up living and only existed to serve. Men had choice in their married life with a career. It might not be perfect, but it still was a choice.

The film falls apart with its display of domestic warfare. As Winslet and DiCaprio tear each other apart emotionally and physically, for hours at a time, even during an entire day and night, the children are never around. It's explained the tykes are at a party or the babysitter's ... and it reads false at every turn.

If Mendes, screenwriter Justin Haythe and our two leads wanted to really serve a harrowing tale of a hellish family life, then they needed those children to witness every mental-torture fight of this marriage. It's a huge contrived hole meant to win or give the leads sympathy, and anyone who grew up watching his parents consistently go at it can smell this falsehood a mile away. The film rattles the brain, but it draws no blood. It should cut deep, not slight. B-