In his brutal pan of Martin Scorsese‘s Shutter Island, N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott writes that “there are, of course, those who will resist this conclusion, in part out of loyalty to Scorsese, a director to whom otherwise hard-headed critics are inclined to extend the benefit of the doubt.”
In a thread following a 2.15 riff called “Rally Round,” I wrote that “Scorsese occupies a hallowed place in the hearts of the older, brainier, more thoughtful critics, and that it’s usually in keeping with the character of this crowd to cut Marty some slack whenever a new Scorsese film comes out. [Many of them] very much wanted to like Shutter Island when they sat down in their screening-room seats. And then they saw it. And then they found a way to sing praises.”
