Email here for additions & corrections.

Ishtar
(May, 1987)
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (OOP)
(Ross, 1976)
The Devils
(Russell, 1974)
The Pirates of Penzance
(Papp/Leach, 1983)
The Fortune
(Nichols, 1975)
-30-
(Webb, 1959)
Betrayal
(Jones, 1983)
Play It As It Lays
(Perry, 1972)
The Outfit
(Flynn, 1973)
Alex in Wonderland
(Mazursky, 1969)
The Legend of Lylah Clare
(Aldrich, 1968)
In The Cool of the Day
(Stevens, 1963)
That Cold Day in the Park
(Altman, 1969)
Thumb Trippin'
(Masters, 1972)
Midas Run
(Kjellin, 1969)
At Long Last Love
(Bogdanovich, 1973)
Brewster McCloud
(Altman, 1972)
Outcast of the Islands
(Reed, 1951)

Reader Submissions
1930's-1950's
The Moon's Our Home
(Seiter, 1936)
Sh! The Octopus
(McGann, 1937)
The Mating Season
(Leisen, 1951)
Bad for Each Other
(Rapper, 1953)
The Phenix City Story
(Karlson, 1955)
Run of the Arrow
(Fuller, 1956)
House of Secrets
(Green, 1956)
Saint Joan
(Preminger, 1957)
Macabre
(Castle, 1958)
The Fiend Who Walked the West
(G. Douglas, 1958
Five Gates to Hell
(Clavell, 1959)
1960's
Key Witness
(Karlson, 1960)
Summer and Smoke
(Glenville, 1961)
The Chapman Report
(Cukor,1962)
Bachelor Flat
(Tashlin, 1962) [on Hulu]
The L Shaped Room
(Forbes, 1963)
The Chalk Garden
(Neame, 1964)
A Thousand Clowns
(Coe, 1965)
You're a Big Boy Now
(Coppola, 1966)
The Whisperers
(Forbes, 1967)
Dark of the Sun
(Cardiff, 1968)
Skidoo
(Preminger, 1968)
Last Summer
(Perry, 1969)
The Comic
(C. Reiner, 1969)
1970-1974
The Revolutionary
(Williams, 1970)
The Landlord
(Ashby, 1970)
Diary of a Mad Housewife
(Perry, 1970)
Tropic of Cancer
(Strick, 1970)
I Never Sang for My Father
(Cates, 1970)
Sometimes a Great Notion
(Newman, 1971)
Marriage of a Young Stockbroker
(Turman, 1971)
The Music Lovers
(Russell, 1971)
Drive, He Said
(Nicholson, 1971)
The Steagle
(Sylbert, 1971)
The Last Movie
(Hopper, 1971)
Made For Each Other
(Bean, 1971)
The Day the Clown Cried
(Lewis, 1972)
Hickey & Boggs (OOP)
(Culp, 1972)
The Carey Treatment
(Edwards, 1972)
Pete 'n' Tillie
(Ritt, 1972)
Slither
(Zieff, 1973)
Man on a Swing
(Perry, 1974)
Open Season
(Collinson, 1974)
The Tamarind Seed
(Edwards, 1974)
Law and Disorder
(Passer, 1974)
Homebodies
(Yust, 1974)
Stardust
(Apted, 1974)
Celine and Julie Go Boating
(Rivette, 1974)
1975-1979
Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins
(Richards, 1975
At Long Last Love
(Bogdanovich, 1975)
Hearts of the West
(Zieff, 1975)
Welcome to L.A.
(Rudolph, 1976)
W.C. Fields and Me
(Hiller, 1976)
Citizens Band
(Demme, 1977)
Twilight's Last Gleaming
(Aldrich, 1977)
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
(Brooks, 1977)
Girlfriends
(Weill, 1978)
Movie Movie
(Donen, 1978)
The Medusa Touch
(Gold, 1978)
American Hot Wax
(Mutrux, 1978)
Hot Stuff
(DeLuise, 1979)
Scavenger Hunt
(Schultz , 1979)
Players
(Harvey, 1979)
Rich Kids
(Young, 1979)
Nightwing
(Hiller, 1979)
Screams of a Winter's Night
(Wilson, 1979
When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?
(Katselas, 1979
1980's
Resurrection
(Petrie, 1980)
The Awakening
(Newell, 1980)
Simon
(Brickman, 1980)
God's Angry Man
(Herzog, 1980)
Fast-Walking
(Harris, 1982)
Twice Upon a Time
(Korty & Swenson, 1983)
Trouble in Mind
(Rudolph, 1985)
When the Wind Blows
(Murikami, 1986)
Housekeeping
(Forsyth, 1987)
The Glass Menagerie
(Newman, 1987)
Patty Hearst
(Schrader, 1988)
Drowning by Numbers
(Greenaway, 1988)
Haunted Summer
(Passer, 1988)
The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years
(Spheeris, 1988)
1990's
Old Times
(Curtis, 1991)
Prospero's Books
(Greenaway, 1991)
City of Hope
(Sayles, 1991)
The Baby of Macon
(Greenaway, 1993)
King of the Hill
(Soderbergh, 1993)
Dadetown
(Hexter, 1995)
SubUrbia
(Linklater, 1997)

Upcoming

January 8

Bitch Slap

Waiting for Armageddon

Wonderful World

Youth in Revolt

January 15

January 22

Drool

Extraordinary Measures

The Girl on the Train

Shutter Island Pushback

email this story
read comments (26)
post a comment

Paramount has yanked Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island out of its long-scheduled 10.2 opening and bumped it into early 2010. The moody insane-asylum thriller with Leonardo DiCaprio, which was heavily ballyhooed with billboard ads at the Cannes Film Festival, will now open on 2.19.10. This despite a report that it's gotten excellent test scores (high 80s to low 90s). So what happened?

I think Paramount just decided that Shutter Island isn't a fall (i.e., awards-potential) film and decided to punt. Shutter Island has always looked impressively dark and foreboding to anyone who's seen the trailer, but are grand guignol films that rely on a big third-act twist generally regarded by Academy types and award-dispensing critics as award-friendly? (The trailer for Shutter Island' strongly hints that the third-act turn is in the realm of Alan Parker's Angel Heart )

I think it just looks like a cool movie to get off on. Award-level movies are generally about universal themes that touch us all on some level. I've never gotten the feeling that Shutter Island is about anything more than a good psychological creep-out.

Nikki Finke has reported that the studio "told the filmmakers it doesn't have the financing in 2009 to spend the $50 to $60 million necessary to market a big awards pic like this."

Finke was also told that the sluggish economy and DVD revenues were a factor in the decision. "Given where the DVD business is in 2009, our only hope is the economy and the retail business rebounds in 2010 because the hardest hit segment has been movies that play to an older adult audience," a studio source told her. Another reason, she was told, is that DiCaprio wasn't going to be available to promote the pic internationally.

"So the studio settled on the release date of February 19th because 'that's when The Silence Of The Lambs came out' back in '91 and it won the Oscar,'" Finke's source confides.

Of course, Silence of the Lambs wasn't a hit just because it had a great serial-killer in Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter but because it had a great heroine (Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling) whom audiences fell for big-time. It was her sympathetic character plus her relationship with Lecter that made Jonathan Demme's film work as well as it did.

Shutter Island bilboard at end of Carlton pier during last May's Cannes Film Festival.

Won't Happen Again<< previous | next >>Let Me In, Wee-yoo

Posted by Jeffrey Wells on August 21, 2009 at 11:00 AM

comment #1

Travis Crabtree says ...

"The moody insane-asylum thriller with Leonardo DiCaprio, which was heavily ballyhooed with billboard ads at the Cannes Film Festival , will now open on 2.19.10."

Uh oh.

Posted by Travis Crabtree at August 21, 2009 11:53 AM

comment #2

byanyother says ...

They didn't need that kind of money to market it, it's Scorsese after all.

Posted by byanyother at August 21, 2009 11:54 AM

comment #3

Bilge says ...

Paramount should use some of its TRANSFORMERS 2 blood money to help them market it.

Posted by Bilge at August 21, 2009 11:58 AM

comment #4

Sean says ...

ANGEL HEART isn't a bad inference to make, but heaving read the book, SHUTTER ISLAND has the potential to be a social issues flick a la CHANGELING (with an additional layer of commentary with extra present-day resonance). That's not something taht you can say about ANGEL HEART or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

Posted by Sean at August 21, 2009 12:01 PM

comment #5

Gogocrank says ...

What are the odds the studio is just hoping people forget they predicted the lame third-act twist months in advance? Or that they're trying to figure out a way to market to the many handfuls of people not perceptive enough to have already figured it out based on the trailer?

Posted by Gogocrank at August 21, 2009 12:03 PM

comment #6

Craig Kennedy says ...

"I've never gotten the feeling that Shutter Island is about anything more than a good psychological creep-out."

Yeah, but was Departed much more than a fun genre flick? That worked out pretty well as far as Oscar was concerned.

Posted by Craig Kennedy at August 21, 2009 12:16 PM

comment #7

anonymous2 says ...

Nikki's source needs to get a new job.

"Given where the DVD business is in 2009, our only hope is the economy and the retail business rebounds in 2010 because the hardest hit segment has been movies that play to an older adult audience,"

Don't hold your breath. DVD sales are going to continue dwindle.

This movie is not going to win any awards. It's foolish to think so just because Scorcese's directing.

But I'm really bummed about this move. I was really looking forward to the October release and didn't see anything coming out the same time that would compete with it, at least in its demographics.

Posted by anonymous2 at August 21, 2009 12:18 PM

comment #8

DeafBrownTrashPunk says ...

TURN OFF THE ITALICS!!!

Posted by DeafBrownTrashPunk at August 21, 2009 12:21 PM

comment #9

btwnproductions says ...

I wonder if the promotional financing bind also affected the moves of THE WOLFMAN and THE GREEN ZONE?

Posted by btwnproductions at August 21, 2009 12:32 PM

comment #10

115thDreamer says ...

The book just wasn't that good, and the 3rd act twist is more M. Night than Alan Parker, and I don't mean that as a compliment. I know Scorcese has spun gold out of straight genre material in the past, but I'm just not that psyched about this one.....I just can't see how it's going to "pop" like, say, "Cape Fear" did.

Posted by 115thDreamer at August 21, 2009 1:13 PM

comment #11

Sean says ...

I'm not an easy lay as far as story structure goes, and I thought Lehane's book was fantastic. I mean, OK, stories about CVBHF SENHQ always require a really deft touch, but having the missing inmate FGNAQ VA SBE GUR JVSR UR XVYYRQ NSGRE FUR XVYYRQ GURVE XVQF VA N CBFGCNEGHZ ZNQARFF and who Leo XVYYRQ VA UVF BJA ENTR, CNEGYL SEBZ UVF THVYG NOBHG CBBU-CBBUVAT URE QRFVER SBE CFLPUVNGEVP URYC and who now finds himself BA GUR PHFC BS "QRFGEHPGVIR" CULFVPNY NAQ CUNEZNPBYBTVPNY GERNGZRAGF ORPNHFR AB GENQVGVBANY GURENCL, RIRA GUVF UHTR SENHQ, VFA'G JBEXVAT for him ... for me, that had huge emotional toll. Clearly to me that was Lehane's real motive in writing the book -- not just to create a potboiler -- and I thought he sold the hell out of it. I've listened to the audiobook twice and it tore me up more the second time.

(ROT13.com for deciphering.)

Posted by Sean at August 21, 2009 1:42 PM

comment #12

jse33 says ...

The last movie that starred Leo that opened in February was....The Beach.

The mega stars like Leo, Will Smith, Tom Hanks, etc. never have films open in February, which is usually considered a dumping ground. It's a strange month to bump to.

Posted by jse33 at August 21, 2009 2:23 PM

comment #13

Terry McCarty says ...

Bilge wrote:
Paramount should use some of its TRANSFORMERS 2 blood money to help them market it.

Second that, and add G.Il. JOE blood money to the above.

Posted by Terry McCarty at August 21, 2009 3:27 PM

comment #14

austin111 says ...

Well, I'm looking forward to something opening in February that is really good for a change, myself. I think a creepy mystery flick opening in the winter is just the ticket. I can wait.

Posted by austin111 at August 21, 2009 4:12 PM

comment #15

azmoviegoer says ...

Does this mean my local AMC can now finally stop showing this trailer before literally every movie I've gone to over the last month? Please ! God help me if they continue to show this every week between now and it's new opening date with all the movies I'm planning to see this fall. I'll be about ready for a place like Shutter Island if that happens. Please make it stop.

Posted by azmoviegoer at August 21, 2009 7:15 PM

comment #16

thatmovieguy says ...

"Silence of the Lambs" did not open Feb. 19, 1991. It opened nationwide on Valentine's Day. I remember that vividly because Orion had screened the picture months earlier and it freaked out everybody. When I told one of my friends who had attended an early screening that "Lambs" was opening on Valentine's Day, he was sure I was kidding, especially since it was a Thursday, a very odd day to release a movie outside of the Christmas season.

Posted by thatmovieguy at August 21, 2009 8:35 PM

comment #17

DeeZee says ...

"it doesn't have the financing in 2009 to spend the $50 to $60 million necessary to market a big awards pic like this."

But it can blow money on that G.I. Joe bomb?

"because the hardest hit segment has been movies that play to an older adult audience"

Um, didn't their last movie together end up being successful playing to an older adult audience?

Posted by DeeZee at August 22, 2009 1:03 AM

comment #18

moviemaniac2002 says ...

The book's twist has been employed in well over a dozen movies in the last 15 years...it's old, it's tired...and it has become as dreary and annoying as the "bathroom mirror" schtick in horror films...I'm exhausted just thinking about all the
"double-back" editing Scorcese will have to display just to prove to the audience he played fair with them....
But who knows...maybe, just maybe, Scorsece can repeat Demme's "Lambs" feat...and turn horror-cheese into an award-worthy contender....he certainly has deeper material to work with, since Lehane's finale has a kind of Greek Tragedy heft to it.....but I can still envision audiences groaning when the plot's 'magic trick' is
pulled.....been there...seen that....

Posted by moviemaniac2002 at August 22, 2009 10:22 PM

comment #19