"Trash Humpers", de Harmony Korine (Village Voice)

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By J. Hoberman

Harmony Korine, aging enfant terrible and self-proclaimed "most American" of American indies, finds his level and brings it home to Nashville with the gloriously desultory slap in the face of public taste, Trash Humpers.

Korine has proposed the film as a VHS tape found in a ditch. Most simply described, this quasi-underground, midnight-friendly, faux-primitive "artifact" documents a trio of fake geriatric bohos, outfitted in thrift-store finery with faces frozen by transparent wrinkle masks, engaging in all manner of antisocial behavior—smashing TV sets, torturing dolls, pouring dish soap on a stack of pancakes, and, most frequently, lasciviously grinding their groins against back-alley garbage bins. Often performed in wheelchairs, these activities are interspersed with the trio's idiot cackles, singsong slogans ("Make it, make it—don't fake it"), and doggerel chants about "three little devils [who] jumped over the wall, chopped off their heads, and murdered them all."

Acting badly merges with bad acting, especially after Trash Humpers turns into a succession of vaudeville acts: Guest performers, including the filmmaker, entertain the three desiccated devils by using sock puppets to stage the story of the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, or holding forth on the advantages to life without a head. The opposite of Korine's relatively posh, celeb-impersonator snooze, Mr. Lonely, Trash Humpers suggests a cretinous remake of John Water's Pink Flamingos or perhaps a musical created by the brain-eaters from the original Night of the Living Dead—and, like Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures, compounds its sins by pulverizing the rules of "normal" filmmaking. The cruddy video image, already oscillating between smudgy black-and-white and unstable color, is further degraded by bar rolls, drop out, skewed tracking, and stray "play" commands—and then perversely exalted by being transferred to 35mm.

A spectacle to be watched in a wino stupor (even if it did have its local premiere at the last New York Film Festival), Trash Humpers is funny from the get-go; the joke expires after 20 minutes, around the time that three hookers, having already been rhythmically spanked, serenade the three devils with a toneless version of "Silent Night." The movie, however, continues for another hour of inane nursery rhymes, mock splatter interludes, documentary dog-teasing, and, signaling Trash Humpers' direction, a succession of unfunny "hate" jokes programmatically sans punch line. It lasts too long, if not long enough to send the viewer muttering into the street.

Sign of the times: Trash Humpers is all about free expression, but Korine's transgressions seem a lot less expansive and liberating than Waters or Smith's did back during the invention of identity politics. Flaming Creatures and Pink Flamingos bracketed the existence of a counterculture; Trash Humpers appears long after that counterculture's demise, in a context where the exercise of freedom itself has become a crabbed and paltry act. (Would that the Tea Party scolds really were flaming tea-baggers!) Rather than self-actualizing, libidinal ecstasy, Trash Humpers projects a cranky resignation to the world as it is; still, it's picturesque.

The outskirts of Nashville might as well be the ruins of a vast mental hospital, with former inmates wandering through its deserted dumps and dead-end streets. As bucolic as the image of a discarded toilet reposing in a field of weeds, Trash Humpers revels in the melancholy beauty of random photographic reproduction—a pair of pink stretch pants illuminating the debris in an overgrown shed or, lit from within, the blue awning that adorns a featureless concrete slab. It's ultimately less a celebration of impulse behavior than a celebration of the parodic impulse to record.

jhoberman@villagevoice.com

"The Ghost Writer", de Roman Polanski (críticas)

THE NEW YORK TIMES By Manohla Dargis

The darkly brooding sky that hangs over much of “The Ghost Writer,” the latest from Roman Polanski, suggests that all is grim and gray and perhaps even for naught. But this high-grade pulp entertainment is too delectably amusing and self-amused, and far too aware of its own outrageous conceits to sustain such a dolorous verdict. The world has gone mad of course — this is a Polanski film — so all we can do is puzzle through the madness, dodging the traps with our ironic detachment and tongue lightly in cheek.

The Ghost of the title, never named in the film, is played by Ewan McGregor at his ingénue best. A writer for hire — his oeuvre is summed up by the vulgar wit of his latest effort, about a magician, “I Came, I Sawed, I Conquered” — the Ghost is tapped for cleanup duties. The initial ghostwriter behind the unfinished memoirs of a former British prime minister, Adam Lang (a superb Pierce Brosnan), has washed up dead on an American beach. The publisher wants a completed book and presumptive best seller, and Lang, an increasingly divisive figure at home and abroad, needs the kind of tidying up that such a media event might provide. The Ghost, an agreeable, convenient blank slate (no family, no history), seems the man for the job.

And what nasty work it proves to be! Based on the novel “The Ghost” by Robert Harris, who shares screenwriting credit with Mr. Polanski, the film opens under a menacing cloak of darkness that rarely rises. An abandoned car in the first shot leads to the first ghostwriter’s beached body being lashed by ocean waters in Martha’s Vineyard, a macabre setup that in turn leads to the Ghost receiving a thrashing in London, as he’s insulted (by an editor who thinks he’s wrong for the job); bullied (by the publisher who wants a fast turnaround); and punched (by a mugger who snatches a manuscript, mistaking it for Lang’s). By the time the Ghost meets Lang, who’s holed up at Martha’s Vineyard, he is as jumpy as the rest of us. (The film was largely shot in Germany.)

Mr. Polanski is a master of menace and, working with a striking wintry palette that at times veers into the near-monochromatic — the blacks are strong and inky, the churning ocean the color of lead — he creates a wholly believable world rich in strange contradictions and ominous implications. Among the most initially confusing is Lang, a professional charmer whose beaming smiles, with their sinister undercurrent, and fits of rage convey depths that the Ghost soon begins to plumb, an endeavor that takes the shape of an investigation. This amateur sleuthing leads to unsurprising trouble, including with Lang’s wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams), a brainy beauty whose relationship with her husband holds its own secrets and is transparently meant to invoke that between Cherie Booth and Tony Blair.

The parallels with Mr. Blair and Lang spice up the story, especially as references to Iraq, torture and the Central Intelligence Agency are folded into the mix and placard-waving protesters gather outside Lang’s hideaway. Fingers are pointed, though sometimes it seems not only at Lang but also at Mr. Polanski, who is under house arrest in Switzerland awaiting word on whether he will be sent back to Los Angeles to face sentencing for having had sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. Certainly the shots of Lang’s detractors, with their furiously distorted faces and accusatory placards (“guilty,” “wanted”), gives the film an extra-cinematic tang, though as with so much here, it’s also evident that Mr. Polanski is having his fun.

And he’s delivering this pulpy fun at such a high level that “The Ghost Writer” is irresistible, no matter how obvious the twists. Everything — including Alexandre Desplat’s score, with its mocking, light notes and urgent rhythms suggestive of Bernard Herrmann — works to sustain a mood, establish an atmosphere and confirm an authorial intelligence that distinguishes this film from the chaff. Unlike many modern Hollywood and Hollywood-style thrillers, which seek to wrest tension from a frenzy of cutting and a confusion of camera angles, Mr. Polanski creates suspense inside the frame through dynamic angles and through the discrete, choreographed movements of the camera and actors. He makes especially effective use of the enormous windows in Lang’s house through which the sky and ocean beckon and threaten.

It’s easy to speculate that Mr. Polanski was attracted to the theme of rewriting one’s life history. Reading a work of art through the lens of biography is seductive, particularly when an artist ventures into the explicitly personal, as he did in “The Pianist,” his 2002 film about a musician who, like him, survived the Holocaust. But such interpretations can flatten poetry into prose and also serve as strategies to neuter artists, whose works of imagination are “revealed” as nothing more than banal facts. This isn’t to deny the personal in art, only an insistence on the elusiveness of creation. Mr. Polanski’s ventures into the horrific in films like “Repulsion” might have something to do with his history, but they are also a matter of affinities, inspirations, attitudes, competencies, tastes, pleasures.

In this respect “The Ghost Writer” seems to be as much about Mr. Polanski’s life as, well, that of Tony Blair, which only means that there are amusing points of convergence. Tracing the lines between fact and fiction makes for a dandy parlor game, one that Mr. Polanski obviously wants us to play, at least for a while, because such resonances have their rewards. They thicken the texture of the work, even if they don’t define it. Such thickening might seem especially critical with material as thin as “The Ghost Writer,” but these are the tools of a director working with every element at his disposal, including a colorful miscellany of emoting, popping, memorable faces (notably those of Kim Cattrall, Tom Wilkinson, Eli Wallach and David Rintoul).

It would be easy to overstate the appeal of “The Ghost Writer” just as, I imagine, it will be easy for some to dismiss it. But the pleasures of a well-directed movie should never be underestimated. The image of Mr. Brosnan abruptly leaning toward the camera like a man possessed is worth a dozen Oscar-nominated performances. And the way, when Lang chats with the Ghost — his arms and legs open, a drink in hand, as if he were hitting on a woman — shows how an actor and his director can sum up an entire personality with a single pose. Mr. Polanski’s work with his performers is consistently subtle even when the performances seem anything but, which is true of this very fine film from welcome start to finish.

“The Ghost Writer” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Adult words and deeds.

THE GHOST WRITER

Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles.

Directed by Roman Polanski; written by Mr. Polanski and Robert Harris, based on the novel by Mr. Harris; director of photography, Pawel Edelman; edited by Herve de Luze; production designer, Albrecht Konrad; music by Alexandre Desplat; produced by Mr. Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde and Timothy Burrill; released by Summit Entertainment. Running time: 2 hours.

WITH: Ewan McGregor (the Ghost), Kim Cattrall (Amelia Bly), Olivia Williams (Ruth Lang), Pierce Brosnan (Adam Lang), Timothy Hutton (Sidney Kroll), Tom Wilkinson (Paul Emmett), Robert Pugh (Richard Rycart), James Belushi (John Maddox), David Rintoul (Stranger) and Eli Wallach (Old Man).

VILLAGE VOICE By Nicolas Rapold

It's hard not to picture Polanski under house arrest in Gstaad editing his diverting new thriller, in which a former British prime minister dodges extradition while having his memoirs rewritten. Then again, when your life is like a mash-up of the History Channel's entire catalog of shock programming, autobiography will probably influence your fictions, and Polanski seems inspired as he maintains implausible momentum with a cloudy premise. Ewan McGregor diffidently plays the so-called ghost to exiled politician Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), living in cushioned seclusion off the gray New England coast. The writer is hacking through the bombast left by his (dead) predecessor when Lang's past war-on-terrorism overstepping raises Blair-style static. Saved by often delightfully bitchy British dialogue, the movie sees McGregor's (arbitrarily written) semi-naif stumbling onto conspiracies and dueling with Lang's wife and mistress (Olivia Williams and Kim Cattrall, both sharp). What actually happens is less important than the barest glimmers of that old Polanski magic: ambient paranoia (aided by the Cul-de-Sac–y land's-end setting) and uneven power struggles (one involving a very crafty Tom Wilkinson as an old Lang associate). The wrap-up is one strange, ah-fuggit mess, on top of Google-powered plot moves, but Polanski's work therapy could have been a lot worse.

"Shutter Island", de Martin Scorsese (críticas)

LOS ANGELES TIMES By Betsy Sharkey

February 19, 2010

In "Shutter Island," director Martin Scorsese has created a divinely dark and devious brain tease of a movie in the best noir tradition with its smarter than you'd think cops, their tougher than you'd imagine cases to crack and enough nods to the classic genre for an all-night parlor game.

It's 1954, the heart of the Cold War, with a conspiracy theory around every corner, when Leonardo DiCaprio's U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, played by Mark Ruffalo, are dispatched to an asylum for the criminally insane to investigate a dicey disappearance. One of the facility's most notorious patients, a young mother who drowned her three children, has somehow vanished from a room monitored 24 hours a day, its door bolted from the outside.

But there are deeper mysteries here, and Scorsese has a lot more on his mind than one crazy inmate on the loose. The A-bomb threat is ever present, memories of Nazi death camps linger and rumors of questionable scientific experiments by the asylum's doctors are circulating. Though the more central question, gathering force like the coming hurricane, is the very nature of sanity and insanity.

Bit by bit, the filmmakers begin to shift all that trouble onto Teddy's shoulders, already weighed down, we've been told, by the death of his wife and the knowledge that her killer is an inmate at the asylum.

But Teddy's problems are never too much for Scorsese and DiCaprio, who in their fourth collaboration have developed an ease evident in every scene. Here the actor slips so deeply inside Teddy's skin that it allows his anxiety to creep under ours, while the director makes the most of that naked vulnerability, moving the camera in so close we can see the look in his eye, and that is unsettling indeed.

All the action takes place on a remote island off the Eastern Seaboard where Ashecliffe Hospital sits, with the sinister look of things serving to ratchet up the sense of jeopardy. Dante Ferretti, in his seventh film with Scorsese, sets the stage with his production design, the asylum itself a looming Gothic architectural throwback that never looks less than intimidating. There is a carefully orchestrated soundtrack from another of the director's pals, singer-songwriter Robbie Robertson, literally coming in with a crescendo every time you feel the urge to whisper, "Cue ominous music."

Between the psychopaths, the psychiatrists and the skeletons in Teddy's closet, the line between reality and delusion, sanity and insanity, soon begins to blur. It is here that the film really begins playing around with the psyche, both Teddy's and ours, though the agenda is laid out from director of photography Robert Richardson's first images of Teddy reeling from seasickness in the claustrophobic latrine of the prison ferry on the ride over -- tortured eyes looking back at us from the mirror as he splashes water onto his face.

Water is an image Scorsese returns to again and again -- the ocean that isolates the island, the relentless hurricane that rages down, the drowned children of the missing inmate. Peril, rather than life-sustaining, seems to be the relevant allegory here, so you soon start worrying when anyone turns up wet.

Using noir's narrative style, often to brilliant effect, it is pure pleasure to watch as Teddy parries with his partner, the hospital staff led by Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the inmates or the security detail, with John Carroll Lynch particularly good as the brick wall of Deputy Warden McPherson. It's probably never better than in a confrontation with the shadow king of Ashecliffe Hospital, Max von Sydow's Dr. Naehring, Teddy throwing down hypotheses suggesting his guilt like a gauntlet, Dr. Naehring deflecting each one with bemused irony.

In its own way, Laeta Kalogridis' screenplay, which is based on the Dennis Lehane bestselling novel, turns into Teddy's most formidable adversary -- never letting him rest as obstacles are thrown in his path and paranoia rises with every step he takes.

We're pulled deep into a maze so complex it threatens to cloud the story, beginning with Teddy's tortured memories of his wife, Delores (Michelle Williams), and the migraines that plague him, to say nothing of his World War II soldiering days, including the liberation of Dachau and the horrors that implies. When the missing patient (Emily Mortimer as the younger Rachel, Patricia Clarkson the elder) mysteriously turns up, Teddy's gut tells him a lot of questions remain. As if by design, the hurricane finally blows in, cutting off access to the mainland and creating a dark and stormy night filled with scary sounds, ideal conditions for sleuthing around all those off-limits areas that any decent insane asylum has. While it's clear Scorsese is having great fun tightening the screws at every turn, some of the psychological tension that should have the crackle and shock of electricity in a thriller like this is lost in the crowd.

There is always a sense that Teddy's running out of time, and for a while we don't know exactly why. Once we do, Scorsese sets about tidying things up a bit too fast, like a college professor who knows he's got to let the class out, so let's just get through this, shall we.

Whether it's a rushed dénouement or a tendency to overindulge in delusions, the flaws are never enough to do permanent damage to the film. Ultimately, Scorsese has given us a new noir classic, though watching Di- Caprio's Teddy twist in the wind while his mind unravels would be satisfying enough.

betsy.sharkey@latimes.com

THE NEW YORK TIMES By A. O. SCOTT

“Shutter Island” takes place off the coast of Massachusetts in 1954. I’m sorry, that should be OFF THE COAST OF MASSACHUSETTS! IN 1954! since every detail and incident in the movie, however minor, is subjected to frantic, almost demented (and not always unenjoyable) amplification. The wail of strangled cellos accompanies shots of the titular island, a sinister, rain-lashed outcropping that is home to a mental hospital for the CRIMINALLY INSANE! The color scheme is lurid, and the camera movements telegraph anxiety. Nothing is as it seems. Something TERRIBLE is afoot.

Sadly, that something turns out to be the movie itself, directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted by Laeta Kalogridis from a peculiar contraption of a thriller by Dennis Lehane. Like Shutter Island in the opening scenes, the full dimensions of the catastrophe come into view only gradually. At first everything is fine, or at least not quite right in a way that seems agreeably intriguing. Mr. Scorsese uses his considerable formal dexterity — his intimate, comprehensive understanding of how sound and image work together to create meanings and moods — to conjure a tingly atmosphere of uncertainty and dread.

The vessel of these anxieties is Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Teddy Daniels, a United States marshal taking a ferry ride out to the island to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Mr. DiCaprio, having grown perhaps overly fond of his accent from “The Departed,” brings it along for the ride, and it spreads through the movie like a contagious disease. Teddy’s partner (pahtnah), Chuck Aule, played by Mark (Mahk) Ruffalo, is supposed to be from the Pacific Northwest but he seems to have left all his R’s back in Seattle. Michelle Williams pops up in smudgy, color-drenched memories and hallucinations as Teddy’s dead wife, Dolores, her intonations as thick and clammy as chowder.

Those dialect-coached Boston inflections predominate in “Shutter Island,” but are not the only voices heard on the grounds of the asylum, where the patients perambulate like zombies and the orderlies lurk like vengeful specters. Ben Kingsley is Dr. Cawley, the psychiatrist in charge, with silky upper-crust menace in his voice and a diabolical little beard on his chin. Max von Sydow spouts Freudianisms in insinuating Germanic tones that remind Teddy — and of course not only Teddy — of Nazis, an association that helps to induce gratuitous flashbacks of corpses stacked outside death-camp barracks.

Those images emanate from Teddy’s troubled mind, the status of which is one of the movie’s chief mysteries. There are many others besides. Intimations of conspiracy, supernaturalism, cold war shenanigans and a whole lot more float around in the atmosphere, which is convulsed by operatically bad weather and the energetic furrowing of Mr. DiCaprio’s brow. As he interviews patients and staff members, trying to figure out how a woman named Rachel Solando could have vanished, barefoot, from her cell, Teddy is plagued by headaches, bad dreams and paranoia. Everyone he talks to seems to be harboring a secret, but what can it be?

Is there some kind of espionage-related psychological experimentation going on? Is it connected in some way to grisly medical research undertaken during the Third Reich? Are Dr. Cawley’s methods, which he claims are a humane advance over the cruelty and superstition of the past, really a form of madness in their own right? And what about the strange coincidence that Shutter Island apparently houses the firebug who caused Dolores’s death?

All of these riddles send out tendrils of implication that end up strangling the movie, the plot of which does not so much thicken as clog and coagulate. Mr. Scorsese, ever resourceful, draws on the influence of Alfred Hitchcock, the master of carefully orchestrated psychological confusion, and also nods in the direction of Mario Bava, the Italian horror maestro whose gothic fantasias routinely assert the triumph of sensation over sense. Mr. Scorsese’s camera sense effectively fills every scene with creepiness, but sustained, gripping suspense seems beyond his grasp.

And the movie’s central dramatic problem — the unstable boundary between the reality of Shutter Island and Teddy’s perception of it — becomes less interesting as the story lurches along. You begin to suspect almost immediately that a lot of narrative misdirection is at work here, as MacGuffins and red herrings spawn and swarm. But just when the puzzle should accelerate, the picture slows down, pushing poor Teddy into a series of encounters with excellent actors (Emily Mortimer, Jackie Earle Haley, Patricia Clarkson) who provide painstaking exposition of matters that the audience already suspects are completely irrelevant.

Mr. Scorsese in effect forces you to study the threads on the rug he is preparing, with lugubrious deliberateness, to pull out from under you. As the final revelations approach, the stakes diminish precipitously, and the sense that the whole movie has been a strained and pointless contrivance starts to take hold.

There are, of course, those who will resist this conclusion, in part out of loyalty to Mr. Scorsese, a director to whom otherwise hard-headed critics are inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt. But in this case the equivocation, the uncertainty, seems to come from the filmmaker himself, who seems to have been unable to locate what it is in this movie he cares about, beyond any particular, local formal concern. He has, in the past, used characters whose grasp of reality was shaky — or who stubbornly lived in realities of their own making — as vehicles for psychological exploration and even social criticism. But both Teddy’s mind and the world of Shutter Island are closed, airless systems, illuminated with flashes of virtuosity but with no particular heat, conviction or purpose.

“Shutter Island” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Blood, swearing, cigarettes.

SHUTTER ISLAND

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Martin Scorsese; written by Laeta Kalogridis, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane; director of photography, Robert Richardson; edited by Thelma Schoonmaker; production designer, Dante Ferretti; produced by Mr. Scorsese, Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer and Bradley J. Fischer; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 18 minutes.

WITH: Leonardo DiCaprio (Teddy Daniels), Mark Ruffalo (Chuck Aule), Ben Kingsley (Dr. Cawley), Michelle Williams (Dolores), Emily Mortimer (Rachel Solando), Patricia Clarkson (Rachel Solando), Jackie Earle Haley (George Noyce) and Max von Sydow (Dr. Naehring).

VILLAGE VOICE
By Nick Pinkerton

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island, a florid art shocker that Paramount welcomed into the world with the strained enthusiasm of a mutant baby's parents, begins with U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leo DiCaprio) seasick, head in the toilet. The film is his prolonged purging, with Daniels coughing up chunks of his backstory in flashback and dream. Now topside, he joins his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), and their destination looms into view: an ominous hunk of rock in Boston Harbor that houses Ashecliffe Asylum, where they've been assigned to find a missing inmate.

Pounded eighth notes by Krzysztof Penderecki score a gathering-storm approach that anticlimaxes at a tidy, ecclesiastical-looking brick campus. They're shown the grounds by progressive chief physician Dr. Cawley (Sir Ben Kingsley), who manages to seem both a natty, patrician liberal, circa 1954, and a bit of a satyr, with his Anton LaVey bald head/goatee combo and ironic twinkle—an ambiguous balance Kingsley keeps seesawing throughout. They also meet Cawley's colleague, Herr Doktor Naehring (Max von Sydow)—and Daniels, an ex-GI who witnessed the liberation of Dachau, takes an immediate dislike to the German.

As Daniels and Aule begin to investigate, there's a sense that their presence is an inside joke with the staff, that they're being given rehearsed misinformation. Daniels reveals that he'd heard sinister rumors about Ashecliffe long before this assignment, and not even a pretense of cooperation and normalcy can outlast their first hurricane-force dark-and-stormy-night on the island, when they trade their soaked civvies for orderly uniforms. (The film is elemental, whipped with fire, ash, snow, paper, bracken, and torrents of rain.)

As the outline of a conspiracy comes into view, Daniels's digging brings on strobing headaches, hallucinations, and a shrinking list of trustworthies that ultimately includes only his dead wife, dolorous Dolores, visiting him as a beyond-the-grave Technicolor prophet (Michelle Williams, not quite right for "ethereal"; it doesn't help that she's upstaged by Emily Mortimer's psychopath, who takes only one scene opposite DiCaprio to establish an immediate and spellbinding intimacy). As for DiCaprio, well, he'll never step onscreen and immediately suggest a liver-and-onions Greatest Generation Ralph Meeker he-man—Ted Levine's warden almost eats him at one point—but he has made suffering a specialty, and does so with an abandon that is frightening.

Production design maestro Dante Ferretti's island is a rugged symbolist mythscape, pocketed with hidden places: soothsayers' sea caves, Ward C, a squat Civil War–era fort where the most violent offenders are kept in a Goya madhouse, and, beyond it, the ultimate locked door—to the lighthouse! Scorsese's return to his Roger Corman AIP roots is an object lesson in the proximity of high and low culture—Shutter Island is lousy with modernist references, soundtracked by avant-garde 20th-century composers, pretentious in the best Pulp-y tradition.

138 minutes is dangerously epic for a talky thriller, but you forget the time and even whether the plot makes sense—and if you don't notice, it doesn't matter. Since more attention has gone into filigreeing details into each scene than worrying about the way they'll fit together, the rattletrap engages you moment-to-moment, even as the overall pacing stops and lurches alarmingly.

Though the film takes place entirely out-to-sea, the mainland isn't left behind—it's concentrated here into a midcentury chamber of manmade horrors. Loonies praise their island as a safe haven from news "about atolls, about A-bombs." There are rumors suggesting the House Committee on Un-American Activities (!) is dabbling in brainwashing experiments. Daniels flashes back repeatedly to Dachau: a camp Kapo choking in his own blood; a firing line tracking shot popping with squibs like a string of firecrackers; piled corpses frozen into a horrible sculpture. No violence is unsuitable for aestheticization; at one point in the film's web of visions, the perpetrator of a triple filicide points proudly to her handiwork and says, "See, aren't they beautiful?"—and DP Robert Richardson's image concurs.

Scorsese is as famous a movie lover as a moviemaker. This is manifest in his too-much-discussed homages, but also in his understanding of how his characters have themselves been shaped by entertainment, how they model themselves as actors in the American drama—Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy, or Bill the Butcher addressing his public with Edwin Forrest brio at a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Gangs of New York. (The announced Scorsese project, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, dealing with our nation's premier self-publicist ham, has enormous potential.) Without revealing too much of an ending that everyone will soon insist on telling you their opinion of, Shutter Island, deep in its camp gothic trappings, seems to me a flea-pit occult history, with Daniels's headspace a confusion of "Hideous Secrets of the Nazi Horror Cult" schlock, hard-ass Mickey Spillane machismo, Cold War psychic confusion, and the post-traumatic bad dreams of ex-servicemen.

In his documentary Personal Journey, Scorsese spoke of the '50s as a time "when the subtext became as important as the apparent subject matter, or even more important"—and in Shutter Island, his most distinctly '50s movie, he replays the trash culture of the era as the manifestation of an anguished subconscious.

Village Voice - Year-End Film Poll — 2009 (Resumen de resultados)

Best Films of 2009

1. The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow
(356 points, 54 mentions)
Bigelow's you-are-there Iraq War drama immerses the viewer in the front-line existence of a U.S. bomb squad in Baghdad. It's an experiential war movie—and a full-throttle body-shock, too.

2. Summer Hours
Olivier Assayas
(239 points, 40 mentions)
Old money meets a new world as bourgeois siblings struggle to divide their mother's estate and Assayas ponders the value of family and France in the age of relentless globalization.

3. A Serious Man
Joel and Ethan Coen
(229 points, 34 mentions)
Larry Gopnik, schlub extraordinaire, absorbs humiliations of all kind—financial, professional, personal, rabbinical—to learn that life is really about . . . just kidding! Life isn't about anything, God sucks, and the Coens are brutal in this blackest of black comedies.

4. Inglourious Basterds
Quentin Tarantino
(214 points, 36 mentions)
All hail Quentin Tarantino's smashingly entertaining World War II romp about a dirty half-dozen American grunts trying to bring an end to the Third Reich. Jews and Nazis may battle it out to a fiery finish, but it is cinema that emerges triumphant.

5. 35 Shots of Rum
Claire Denis
(189 points, 32 mentions)
Denis's quiet, poignant father-daughter drama shows the beauty and strength of familial bonds, and the equally strong force of personal, individual desire.

6. The Headless Woman
Lucrecia Martel
(183 points, 28 mentions)
Though structured around Vero, a middle-aged peroxide blond who hits something (a dog?) with her car, Martel's willfully disorienting head-scratcher's true subject is the self-satisfied stagnation of the privileged elite, whom the film eviscerates without mercy.

7. Police, Adjective
Corneliu Porumboiu
(171 points, 28 mentions)
A slow-burn absurdist triumph, Police begins as a police procedural but winds up an exhilarating verbal ping-pong match about conscience, personal morality, and the true meanings of words.

8. Fantastic Mr. Fox
Wes Anderson
(163 points, 29 mentions)
Asking existential questions through the whisker'd mouth of a reckless, self-absorbed, corduroy-clad fox (George Clooney), Wes Anderson's stop-motion animation wonder is, in the end, deeply human.

9. Two Lovers
James Gray
(137 points, 20 mentions)
An explosion of emotions, Gray's Brighton Beach–set melodrama gives Joaquin Phoenix every Jewish boy's impossible situation: marry the parents-approved, nice Jewish girl (Vinessa Shaw) or shtup the crazy shiksa next door (Gwyneth Paltrow).

10. Up
Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
(120 points, 21 mentions)
The latest Pixar insta-classic, Up takes off as widower Carl turns his home into a high-flying house-balloon and floats up, up, and away to see the world. Turns out, he is not alone—and his journey for personal wish fulfillment becomes something even more essential.

BEST ACTOR

Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker
(60 points, 27 mentions)
Beneath his blustery macho surface, Renner's Staff Sergeant William James may be the movie's most intricately wired explosive device. Bomb-detonator wins the war for best actor, at least.

Runners-up:

Nicolas Cage, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (33 points, 19 mentions)
Colin Firth, A Single Man (32 points, 13 mentions)
Joaquin Phoenix, Two Lovers (29 points, 12 mentions)
Tom Hardy, Bronson (28 points, 12 mentions)

BEST ACTRESS

Tilda Swinton, Julia
(66 points, 25 mentions)
As the titular desperate woman—a leggy, vodka-guzzling tart in false eyelashes and cheap sequined gowns—Swinton devours her role, then spits it back up, dances giddily upon it, and twirls it in the air.

Runners-up

Charlotte Gainsbourg, Antichrist (57 points, 25 mentions)
Carey Mulligan, An Education (42 points, 23 mentions)
Catalina Saavedra, The Maid (41 points, 19 mentions)
Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia (32 points, 18 mentions)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
(92 points, 35 mentions)
As the loquacious Nazi Hans Landa, Waltz is not only the movie's villain, but also its master of revels. A cheerfully sadistic SS Colonel you can root for!

Runners-up:

Christian McKay, Me and Orson Welles (34 points, 17 mentions)
Woody Harrelson, The Messenger (30 points, 15 mentions)
Paul Schneider, Bright Star (23 points, 12 mentions)
Vlad Ivanov, Police, Adjective (22 points, 9 mentions)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Mo'Nique, Precious
(69 points, 29 mentions)
A force of nature, Mo'Nique transforms an ostensibly one-note monster—Precious's welfare mom—into a complex portrait of a psychologically damaged woman.

Runners-up:

Vera Farmiga, Up in the Air (45 points, 20 mentions)
Mélanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds (32 points, 14 mentions)
Samantha Morton, The Messenger (31 points, 17 mentions)
Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air (26 points, 14 mentions)

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Anvil! The Story of Anvil
(12 points)
Sacha Gervasi's phenomenal rockumentary follows the now-fiftysomething "demigods of Canadian metal" through a disastrous European tour and the recording of their 13th album—and waning shot at fame.

Runners-up:

Of Time and the City (10 points)
The Beaches of Agnès (9 points)
The Cove (8 points)
La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet;
Tyson (7 points)

BEST FIRST FEATURE

The Messenger
(8 points)
The directorial debut of Oren Moverman (who wrote Todd Haynes's I'm Not There) is a moving and nuanced drama about a pair of casualty notification officers, bearing awful news while coping with their own traumas.

Runners-up:

Afterschool (7 points)
In the Loop; A Single Man; Tulpan (6 points)

BEST UNDISTRIBUTED FILM

To Die Like a Man
(24 points, 11 mentions)

A fabulously sad fable about a Fado-singing, pooch-pampering trannie growing old, Portuguese filmmaker João Pedro Rodrigues's To Die Like a Man, which premiered at this past Cannes and then came stateside to the New York Film Festival, is also a piece of lyrical, playful, unpredictable filmmaking.

Runners-up:

Trash Humpers (16 points, 7 mentions)
Enter the Void (12 points, 7 mentions)

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

Precious
(6 points)
Starring our top pick for supporting actress, Precious—about an overweight, neglected, and abused teen mother—is apparently an acquired taste.

Runners-up:

Inglourious Basterds; The Lovely Bones; Nine; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (4 points)
Whatever Works (3 points)

BEST FILM OF THE DECADE
Mulholland Drive (10 points)
Comic, sexy, surreal, self-reflexive, thrilling, and ludicrous by turns, David Lynch's 2001 exploration of the Hollywood dream factory is a voluptuous phantasmagoria with a two-part structure that suggests Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. reversed so that the dream comes first.

Runners-up:

The 25th Hour; In the Mood for Love (5 points)
La Commune; Yi Yi; Zodiac (4 points)

L.A. Weekly/Village Voice Media contributors: Robert Abele, Melissa Anderson, David Ehrenstein, F.X. Feeney, Scott Foundas, Lance Goldenberg, Tim Grierson, Aaron Hillis, J. Hoberman, Brian Miller, Adam Nayman, Michelle Orange, Nick Pinkerton, Nicolas Rapold, Vadim Rizov, Ella Taylor, Luke Y. Thompson, Chuck Wilson

Participants from Other Organizations: Sam Adams (Philadelphia City Paper), Jason Anderson (Eye Weekly), David Ansen (Newsweek), Michael Atkinson (Zero For Conduct), Sean Axmaker (Parallax View), Sheila Benson (Parallax View), Donna Bowman (freelance), Peter Brunette (The Hollywood Reporter), Jeannette Catsoulis (Reverse Shot), Justin Chang (Variety), Tom Charity (CNN.com), Daryl Chin (Documents on Art & Cinema), Richard Corliss (Time), Mike D'Angelo (Las Vegas Weekly), David D'Arcy (Screen International), Peter Debruge (Variety), Bilge Ebiri (New York), Jim Emerson (RogerEbert.com), Steve Erickson (Gay City News/Baltimore City Paper), David Fear (Time Out New York), Cynthia Fuchs (PopMatters), Ed Gonzalez (Slant), Larry Gross (Film Comment/Movie City News), Andrew Grant (Like Anna Karina's Sweater), Eugene Hernandez (indieWIRE), Logan Hill (New York), Christoph Huber (Die Presse, Vienna), J.R. Jones (Chicago Reader), Kent Jones (Film Comment), Christopher Kelly (Fort Worth Star-Telegram), Ben Kenigsberg (Time Out Chicago), Glenn Kenny (Some Came Running), Peter Keough (The Boston Phoenix), Robert Koehler (Variety), Eric Kohn (indieWIRE), Dan Kois (NYmag.com), Michael Koresky (Reverse Shot), Nathan Lee (NPR), Diego Lerer (Clarin, Buenos Aires), Karina Longworth (Spout.com), Philip Lopate (Film Comment), Todd McCarthy (Variety), Patrick Z. McGavin (Screen International), Kristi Mitsuda (Reverse Shot), Wesley Morris (The Boston Globe), Rob Nelson (Variety), Mark Olsen (Film Comment), Gerald Peary (The Boston Phoenix), Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune), Keith Phipps (The Onion), Richard Porton (Cineaste), John Powers (Vogue), James Quandt (Cinematheque Ontario), Nathan Rabin (The Onion), Berenice Reynaud (REDCAT), Carrie Rickey (Philadelphia Inquirer), Jonathan Rosenbaum (JonathanRosenbaum.com), Joshua Rothkopf (Time Out New York), Nick Schager (Slant), Andrew Schenker (Slant), Choire Sicha (The Awl), Chuck Stephens (freelance), David Sterritt (DavidSterritt.com), Amy Taubin (Film Comment), Charles Taylor (freelance), N.P. Thompson (Movies Into Film), Scott Tobias (The Onion), Martin Tsai (The Bitter Critic), Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times), Keith Uhlich (Time Out New York), Bill White (Seattle Post- Intelligencer), Matthew Wilder (Collider.com), Stephanie Zacharek (Salon). Disagree? Contribute to our Readers' Poll. We'll publish the results in the January 13, 2010 issue of The Voice and, of course, online.

Best Actor (Village Voice poll)

ACTOR	VOTES	MENTIONS
Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker	60	27
Nicolas Cage, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans	33	19
Colin Firth, A Single Man	32	13
Joaquin Phoenix, Two Lovers	29	12
Tom Hardy, Bronson	28	12
Matt Damon, The Informant!	24	14
Michael Stuhlbarg, A Serious Man	22	10
Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart	21	9
Issei Ogata, The Sun	18	8
Toni Servillo, Il Divo	17	9
Alex Descas, 35 Shots of Rum	14	6
Sam Rockwell, Moon	14	6
Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds	13	7
George Clooney, Up in the Air	12	6
Patton Oswalt, Big Fan	10	6
Michael Sheen, The Damned United	10	4
Souleymane Sy Savane, Goodbye Solo	10	6
Christian McKay, Me and Orson Welles	10	4
Johannes Krisch, Revanche	9	4
Sharlto Copley, District 9	8	4
George Clooney, Fantastic Mr. Fox	6	5
Charles Berling, Summer Hours	6	2
Mark Duplass, Humpday	6	3
Robin Williams, World's Greatest Dad	5	3
Johnny Depp, Public Enemies	5	3
Sacha Baron Cohen, Bruno	5	2
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, (500) Days of Summer	5	4
Denis Lavant, Tokyo!	4	2
Peter Capaldi, In the Loop	4	2
Hal Holbrook, That Evening Sun	4	2
Nieves Cabrera, Liverpool	3	1
Stephen McHattie, Pontypool	3	2
Liam Neeson, Five Minutes of Heaven	3	1
Song Kang-ho, Thirst	3	2
Ben Foster, The Messenger	3	1
Adam Sandler, Funny People	3	2
Michael Shannon, My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done	3	2
Morgan Freeman, Invictus	3	2
Demetri Martin, Taking Woodstock	3	1
Teruyuki Kagawa, Tokyo Sonata	3	1
Robert Downey Jr., The Soloist	2	1
Joshua Leonard, Humpday	2	1
Daniel Day-Lewis, Nine	2	1
Larry David, Whatever Works	2	1
Michael Shannon, The Missing Person	2	1
Jung-woo Ha, My Dear Enemy	2	1
Robert Downey Jr., Sherlock Holmes	2	2
Algenis Perez Soto, Sugar	2	1
Ben Whishaw, Bright Star	2	2
Alden Ehrenreich, Tetro	2	1
Hilmi Sozer, Jerichow	2	1
Baard Owe, O'Horten	2	1
Clive Owen, Duplicity	2	1
Alfredo Castro, Tony Manero	1	1
Viggo Mortensen, The Road	1	1
Christopher Plummer, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus	1	1
Paul Giamatti, Cold Souls	1	1
Diego Luna, Rudo Y Cursi	1	1
Jim Carrey, A Christmas Carol	1	1
Anthony Mackie, The Hurt Locker	1	1
Peter Sarsgaard, An Education	1	1
Brad Pitt, Inglourious Basterds	1	1
Chris Pine, Star Trek	1	1
Mads Mikkelsen, Flame and Citron	1	1
Dragos Bucur, Police, Adjective	1	1
Horacio Camandule, Gigante	1	1
Vincent Gallo, Tetro	1	1

Village Voice Poll - Critics List

Cliqueen en cada uno para saber que votamos: Robert Abele

Sam Adams

Jason Anderson

Melissa Anderson

David Ansen

Michael Atkinson

Sean Axmaker

Sheila Benson

Donna Bowman

Peter Brunette

Jeannette Catsoulis

Justin Chang

Tom Charity

Godfrey Cheshire

Daryl Chin

Richard Corliss

Mike D'Angelo

David D'Arcy

Peter Debruge

Bilge Ebiri

David Ehrenstein

David Ehrenstein

Jim Emerson

Steve Erickson

David Fear

F.X. Feeney

Scott Foundas

Cynthia Fuchs

Lance Goldenberg

Ed Gonzalez

Andrew Grant

Tim Grierson

Larry Gross

Eugene Hernandez

Logan Hill

Aaron Hillis

J. Hoberman

Christoph Huber

J.R. Jones

Kent Jones

Christopher Kelly

Ben Kenigsberg

Glenn Kenny

Peter Keough

Laura Kern

Robert Koehler

Eric Kohn

Dan Kois

Michael Koresky

Nathan Lee

Diego Lerer

Karina Longworth

Phillip Lopate

Todd McCarthy

Patrick Z. McGavin

Brian Miller

Kristi Mitsuda

Wesley Morris

Adam Nayman

Rob Nelson

Mark Olsen

Michelle Orange

Michael Phillips

Keith Phipps

Nick Pinkerton

Richard Porton

John Powers

James Quandt

Nathan Rabin

Nicolas Rapold

Berenice Reynaud

Carrie Rickey

Vadim Rizov

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Joshua Rothkopf

Nick Schager

Andrew Schenker

Choire Sicha

Chuck Stephens

David Sterritt

Amy Taubin

Charles Taylor

Luke Y. Thompson

N.P. Thompson

Scott Tobias

Martin Tsai

Kenneth Turan

Keith Uhlich

Bill White

Matthew Wilder

Chuck Wilson

Stephanie Zacharek

gerald peary

ella taylor

Best Undistributed Film in U.S. - 2009 (Village Voice Poll)

To Die Like a Man	24	11
Trash Humpers	16	7
Enter the Void	12	7
Like You Know It All	12	6
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno	10	4
White Material	10	7
Ne Change Rien	9	6
Life During Wartime	8	4
Easier with Practice	7	3
Face	7	4
Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench	6	3
Soul Kitchen	6	3
Don't Let Me Drown	6	2
Extraordinary Stories	6	2
Ghost Town	6	4
Eccentricities of a Blond-Hair Girl	6	3
The Time That Remains	5	3
The Anchorage	5	2
Everything Strange and New	5	2
Love Exposure	4	2
How to Fold a Flag	4	2
Carcasses	4	2
Sweet Rush	4	2
The Milk of Sorrow	4	2
The Shaft	3	1
Min Ye	3	2
Videocracy	3	2
Camino	3	1
Americana	3	1
Morphine	3	1
Birdwatchers	3	1
Contact High	3	1
The Revenant	3	1
The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights	3	1
The Clone Returns Home	3	1
Independencia	3	1
Helsinki Forever	3	1
Vegas: Based on a True Story	3	1
Eden is West	3	1
Pandora's Box	3	2
These Encounters of Theirs	3	1
Garapa	3	1
With a Little Help from Myself	3	1
Historias extraordinarias	3	1
Applause	3	1
Air Doll	2	1
Ruhr	2	1
Fish Story	2	1
Last Conversation	2	1
Breathless	2	1
The Hole	2	1
Sergio	2	1
TimeCrimes	2	1
Pink	2	1
October Country	2	1
Woman Without Piano	2	1
Bellamy	2	1
Lowlands	2	1
It Felt Like a Kiss	2	1
Four Nights with Anna	2	1
Disco and Atomic War	2	1
Donne-Moi La Main	2	1
Cropsey	2	1
Henri George Clouzot's Inferno	2	1
Vincere!	2	1
Modus Operandi	2	1
Lunch Break	2	1
Severe Clear	2	1
La religieuse portugaise	2	1
Rachel	2	1
The Best Worst Movie	2	1
The Mountain, The River, and The Road	2	1
Sorry, Thanks	2	1
Daniel & Ana	2	1
La Pivellina	2	1
Spooner	2	1
The Red Race	2	1
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits	2	1
At the End of Daybreak	2	1
Making the Boys	2	2
My Neighbor, My Killer	2	1
Villalobos	2	1
Katalin Varga	2	1
Pandora's Box	2	1
Huacho	1	1
Agrarian Utopia	1	1
Kisses	1	1
Sexykiller	1	1
Men on the Bridge	1	1
A Lake	1	1
She, a Chinese	1	1
For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism	1	1
To the Sea	1	1
Kinatay	1	1
Winnebago Man	1	1
Paper Soldier	1	1
The Human Centipede	1	1
LIfe During Wartime	1	1
The Sicilian Girl	1	1
The Joneses	1	1
Prodigal Sons	1	1
Three Blind Mice	1	1
Sleep Furiously	1	1
Kill Daddy Goodnight	1	1
Weaving Girl	1	1
The Unloved	1	1
A Brand New Life	1	1
Moscow	1	1
The Sky Crawlers	1	1
Shirin	1	1
Northless	1	1
Eccentrities of a Blonde-Hair Girl	1	1