My first very important point to make about Shutter Island is that I liked it.  I found it effectively creepy and in switching back and forth between thriller and horror genres, it kept me very unsure about where it was headed and engaged to find out.

Like Dana Stevens, Leo does always leave me feeling a little empty inside, like an appetizer trying to be a main course (or a chihuahua trying to be a pit bull as my friend Simon Cowell would say). But Scorsese even in his dotage handles a scene more surely than a dozen other directors combined.

Things to recommend this film: First, there has never been a bad film about a prison island made in history. Birdman of Alcatraz, Escape from Alcatraz, Papillion come to mind.  Masterpieces all.  It also contains unnerving spooky music, Jackie Earle Haley, World War 2 flashbacks and one of the wetter movie hurricanes I’ve seen in some time.  Leo also has to climb over a rock covered with rats at one point, but I won’t give away too much of that.  So what’s not to like?

The bigger point about this film is that before it came out there were rumors that it was “a mess” and almost unreleasable. To which I say, Shutter Island may not be your cup of tea, but in an industry where Transformer 2 was the second highest grossing film of last year, you dare to call this – or anything a mess?   Do you call 2012 unreleasable, you person who started these rumors?

Shutter Island is a haunting and effective piece of inspired filmmaking unlike pretty much everything else released by Hollywood for the last few years.  Those people who were trashing it need to come over to my house so I can punch them in the face, is my basic point about this film.

I thank you for your consideration