Pop Culture Blog Post: What's the Matter Marty?

Seeing a movie early (and posting your review early) is a kind of nerve-racking process. After all, going out their before everyone else makes you particularly vulnerable, especially in this day in age where critical dissention is not encouraged or even evaluated much; instead it's all about the aggregated critical consensus as posted on Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic. Critical individualism (at atmosphere that bred greats like Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael) has been replaced by the hive mind.

So it was kind of a shock to see the collective shoulder shrug given to Martin Scorsese's wild, emotionally resonant new movie "Shutter Island." I went gaga over it (you can read my review for The Playlist here - at the time I posted my review there were only three reviews up at Metacritic) but most, including A.O. Scott at The New York Times (review here) and Dana Stevens at Slate (review here), two of my favorite critics, have given it the seesawing hand of indifference and disappointment.

Ever the voice of reason, Glenn Kenny, formerly of Premiere Magazine, wrote an impassioned and deeply personal review of the movie on his blog (here). Read it, and let the discussion rage on. At the very least, a lot of people are going to be talking about this movie, which is never a bad thing.

Also, critical revisionism seems to come back around fairly quickly. When Terrence Malick's "The New World" opened in 2004, nobody really gave a shit. But when everyone was releasing their Top Films of the Decade lists, it was invariably on there (Time Out New York's extensive critics poll had it in the top 10). I have this great book called "The Critics Were Wrong" that collects reviews that, at the time, panned films that everyone now considers truly great, important works.

So "Shutter Island's" time will come. It's just not now.