Third Year

Well I'm technically not a third year until September 27th, but today was the last day of classes for our second year so... close enough, I'd say. It's been a pretty mute final term, but it's only those three weeks so that's to be expected. It's not a good system, the 11/12/3 format, it should be 9/8/8, but I think I'm repeating myself by saying that.

Anyway, with the second year done, I look back and think of all the things I've achieved. It isn't actually all that much in terms of actual output, other than a whole bunch of Word files. But the sheer fun I've had doing it is worth that. It's just such a great experiance being here, with the people I'm with and the work I get to do for it all.

It's going to be a dark, dark day when I have to leave university and enter the real world and find a real job. That's going to be one of the worst days of my life.

In other new, politics sucks. Hung Parliment is... well, we all saw it coming because nobody can agree on anything anymore. The Lib Dem revolution failed to occur.

So... SHUTTER ISLAND.

This was the only film I went to see in the cinema during the month of March, to which I feel I let myself down a little. Have made up for it by seeing at least 3 a month since then. Now, I'd seen the trailers for this film in the cinema for about 18 months to 2 years before this film came out, it had a long gestation period where I don't know what they were doing, but it's Scorsese, so it's worth the wait.

All in all, I didn't enjoy this film overmuch. It's screwed up, certainly, it's tense, it's actually creepy, there's excellent use of pretty much everything, including the actors, the sets, the lights the sound... everything. Except the script. There was a scene at the end, the one in the Lighthouse (you'll know it when you see it), that kinda takes it all away and flushes it down the toilet. Kinda. Ish.

I can't say anymore without going into serious spoiler territory, which is something I don't really like to do. But let's just say that the classy Scorsese style directing and excellent performances from Ruffalo, Kingsley and DiCaprio could well have been served better by a slightly hammier script for that scene. It was all quite blase and laid back.

It shouldn't have been.

I'm only complaining about the one scene, of course. That scene does the movie no service, almost as if to say "well... you'd probably already figured it out, so we won't keep the pretence up any longer, here it is".

But other than that, this movie is picture perfect. It's cold, it's chilling, it's moody, it's got great actors and great crew, it's everything you'll ever really want apart from that one, tiny little niggling scene.

See it for the technical brilliance, but don't be surprised if you feel a little cheated when you leave or turn it off, because it did short-change you a little. We all saw it coming, but at least try and make us believe you didn't know it?

Next time: Clash of the Titans.