Scarface - as school play?

Elementary school renditions of R-Rated films aren't exactly a dime dozen, which is why this rendition of elementary school kids performing the 1983 crime epic Scarface is utterly priceless.

But of course the retelling of the Al Pacino flick for the kiddies substitutes popcorn for cocaine, and the "F" word is censored by the word fudge, which frankly would make me hungry. But while I was watching this I was laughing beyond belief, yet I was horrified at the same time. What kind of rightminded adult would let these kids perform Scarface? The kids brandish guns, talk about cocaine, and infidelity. Now THAT'S some family entertainment!

2010 NCAA Tournament: The Movie

No doubt about it, inprobable upsets, breathtaking comebacks and shocking buzzer beaters are what make great sports films. There have been a handful of those in the NCAA Tournament this year - and we haven't even reached the final four yet. Personally, (and because of this) I think this years NCAA Tournament would make a killer movie. Who would have thought that Kansas would end up losing in the second round - and to Northern Iowa nonetheless? Who would have even imagined that Syracuse, Ohio, and Kentucky would lose and not even reach the Final Four? Hardly anyone, which resulted in millions of broken brackets that were tossed in the trash in the very first week of the tournament.

Shutter Island: Scorsese's Second B Movie?

In 1991, Scorsese crafted a tense, sadistic thriller called Cape Fear, which tells the story of Sam Bowden, a former pubic defender whose family is threatened by a convicted rapist who wants revenge for having been wrongly accused. The film, which garnered two Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, was far different than anything Scorsese had ever done before. It was pulpy, over the top, unabashedly commercial in it's appeal, and gleefully manipulative towards it's audience.

Enter Scorsese' Shutter Island, an adaption of Dennis Lehane's widely successful novel. Shutter Island stars Leonardo DiCaprio (a Scorsese favorite for the past decade) and Mark Ruffalo as U.S Marshalls assigned to investigate the escape of a mental patient at Shutter Island, a hospitl/prison for the criminally insane. After this introduction, every other scene seems like an acid trip, going back and forth between DeCaprio's involvement as a soldier seeing Holocaust concentration camps firsthand, and his dealing with his failing marriage.

Although Martin Scorsese's intentions are to create another tense thriller like Cape Fear that delves deep into the psychosis, this film is an utter mess from the very start. From the over the top art direction and the ludicrously ear splitting score, Scorsese has never been so desperate to mold two things togther, a throwback of a 40's film noir and a modern psychological thriller. It just dosen't work. This is a kind of film that purely relies on a twist ending - which most people will figure out long before the credits roll.