movie review: Shutter Island

All I had to do was watch the trailer to figure out the "twist" of this film. Usually I'm good at watching movies and not supposing what's going to happen next; letting the story play itself out for me. In fact, I think that's why I liked The Village so much. Anyway, with Shutter Island, I had the plot sketched out from the start and as I watched all of the details just fell into place. All of the main character's encounters were obviously scripted and thought-out addresses from caregivers attempting to help an insane person. Each exchange of dialogue seemed to be a necessary stopping point on his road to discovering the truth. In that regard, the movie was pretty well done. Instead of wondering what would happen next, I thought about how it would happen. But, as I said, the story was all kinds of predictable.

When I got back from giving my friend a ride home from work on Friday night, my roommate was putting together a dinner to take to his girlfriend's. I secretly applauded his romanticism and put on a couple records while browsing the internet. He toiled in the kitchen while I shopped Craiglist to find an HTC Eris. My long standing resistance to smart phones has finally cracked, and the potential to tweet, email and surf the web from anywhere has put me in the market. I didn't want something as clunky as a Droid X or Incredible, and after a little research I decided the Eris would be right up my street. Of course, I went to the Verizon store and found out that it had been discontinued. Not wanting to buy an over-priced refurbished one, I've turned to the internet in hopes of finding a good deal.

Once my roommate had left and I had the house to myself, I put on the Charlie Brown Halloween special, "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"; my milestone for welcoming the Halloween season. Viewing the episode as more of a piece of art, I marveled at the painted backgrounds. That, and the music that plays when Snoopy, pretending to be a World War I flying ace, makes his way "across the French countryside" are a sentimental thing to me. Moments of multimedia that will always have a place in my mind.

Shutter Island, for me, was just part of a relaxing Friday night of solitude with the remains of a bag of homemade Chex mix. At the end of a long week, sometimes you just want to crash in front of the television and think about how bad that green screened computer-generated ocean backdrop looks.