Tag Archives: Blood Diamond

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On The Couch #35: Shutter Island

In honor of Halloween, all of October’s On The Couch movies are going be creepy, kooky and all-together spooky. This is going to be hard work for me, as I’ve never really been a fan of horror movies; I’ll take a good comedy over a good horror movie any time, mainly because comedies don’t give me nightmares. But a theme’s a theme, so away we go…

Shutter Island isn’t a horror movie, but it has a lot of the traits of a modern horror movie (creepy children, unsteady camera work) while avoiding the most common pitfall among modern horror movies (bad screenwriting). Shutter Island is written very well, and like The Usual Suspects, benefits from multiple viewings (or in my case, the two featurettes included on the Blu-Ray that serve the same purpose as watching the movie again, but for a quarter of the time required).

If we didn’t finish watching Shutter Island at 1 AM, I would have been very tempted to immediately start it up again from the beginning, and really, what’s a better compliment than that?

Back to creepy children for a minute. Is there any horror movie cliché that still manages to frighten more than a ghost-like child who says something ominous is a high pitched voice? I don’t care how much this horror film trope has been overused, creepy children still freak me out. I saw a very pale kid with blue lips asleep on his mother’s lap on the subway a few weeks ago and I was convinced he was either going to a.) dart straight up and say something ominous right before plunging our subway car into the depths of hell or b.) try to eat the other passengers, zombie-style. Either way, I was scared. Mothers of New York City: leave the horror effects to Hollywood! Feed your kids some fruits and vegetables so that they’ll stop looking like they’re demonically possessed or like flesh-hungry zombies.

Creepy old people with stringy hair are almost as freaky as creepy kids.

Leonardo DiCaprio shows in Shutter Island why he is now my favorite actor. Because of the movies I’ve seen him in this year: Shutter Island, Blood Diamond and Inception, I’m willing to give Leonardo DiCaprio a free pass for his next few movies. I won’t need any marketing other than his name, the title and the release date and I’m there.

Shutter Island has a really slow build. Julie, Bryan and I got together to watch it on Friday and not all of us made it through the whole movie awake. The problem with falling asleep during the slower parts of Shutter Island though is that once Shutter Island pays off, it pays off big and quickly, with a lot happening in a very small amount of time, which makes explaining what happened to your sleepy companion a bit difficult. Thank goodness for the featurette in the special features, which can double as cliff notes for anyone who takes a side trip to Slumber Island.

Slumber Island: Not a creepy kid in sight.
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On The Couch #24: Blood Diamond

It’s movies like Blood Diamond that remind me how grateful I am that I live in America. My neighborhood isn’t a war zone. There are no armed rebels driving down my street. The closest thing I saw to a conflict this weekend was this note taped to someone’s car as I was walking to brunch:

While Blood Diamond makes me glad to live in America, it really drives home the point that America and other western countries are a major driving force in the bloodshed that stems from the mining and exporting of diamonds with our obsession for big shiny rocks to put on little dainty fingers. The filmmakers never get too heavy handed about it, which I think helps get the message across. Watching the movie, I was too caught up in it as a thriller to feel I was being preached to.

After watching this movies, I’m surprised that there isn’t a backlash against diamonds like there is with fur. No one is dipping women’s hands in red paint and yelling “Diamonds are murder!”

When I told my cousin that The Departed was the movie that made me like Leonardo DiCaprio, he said that Blood Diamond was the movie that did that for him. When I said I never saw Blood Diamond, he insisted that I see it. Since his last pick was the great The Lives of Others, I quickly added Blood Diamond to my queue.

I’m glad I did. It really is a great thriller. The movie is 2 ½ hours long, but it’s a fast 2 ½ hours. And DiCaprio is awesome. I’m really excited for Inception to open up in a couple of weeks.

I wonder how many people after seeing this movie go out of their way to buy a certified diamond. I’d like to think it made that kind of impact on me, but I haven’t purchased any diamond since seeing it, so I make for a lousy case study. I would think Blood Diamond makes an impact on everyone who sees it. But I’m interested in knowing how long that impact lasts. After some time has passed, does the conflict seem much further removed than the immediacy of the dollar sign in front of your face? I’m not judging; I’m just curious. As always, feel free to leave comments below.