Shutter Island (2010)

US marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is sent to a Boston Harbour island. With his companion (Mark Ruffalo), he is looking into the disappearance of a patient from the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane. But he’s quickly swept into a deeper mystery about what’s really going on at the asylum. 

Directed by Martin Scorsese, this is a genuinely terrifying psychological thriller. Leonardo DiCaprio is superb as a complicated character making a horrible discovery. 

It’s closer in tone to Cape Fear than anything else I’ve seen by Scorsese. What seems to be a noirish thriller acquires extra depths as it becomes stranger and even more disturbing. It’s difficult to say any more without giving away the big twist. 

The superb cast also includes Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams and Max von Sydow.

Deception (2008)

Thriller. 

Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor) is a dull, socially withdrawn accountant who befriends Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman), a charismatic lawyer. Bose introduces McQuarry to “The List”, a secret club for people who crave the excitements of “intimacy without intricacy”. But it turns out that McQuarry is being scammed, and soon finds himself a murder suspect. Meanwhile, he falls for a mysterious woman (Michelle Williams) who goes missing. 

It’s tense and keeps you guessing. There’s a distinct Hitchcock influence to the plot, especially in the way we see McQuarry learn that everything he thought he knew was just an illusion devised to trick him. 

The three leads are all strong and McGregor performs better than usual, with more presence and a more believable character. The only thing that doesn’t quite convince is his character transformation. He’s too easily turned into a different kind of person for the final part of the story, which makes the ending seem a little silly. It’s also a shame that the plot thread about the investigating detective (Lisa Gay Hamilton) isn’t better developed.

The Greatest Showman (2017)

This film is so different to anything I have seen before. Superficially it’s a musical biopic of the circus impresario P.T. Barnum. However it’s not really about the story at all, and there’s very little dialogue. It’s built around the songs and the spectacular choreography and lighting. It doesn’t look “realistic” and it doesn’t even try to. Instead it presents a kind of hyper reality in which the colours are more colourful and the lights are brighter and deeper. There is a fairly heavy-handed message about embracing diversity, and in that sense this film could only have been made now. With these themes there’s no way it could have been produced even 10 years ago. 

The songs are strong and it’s visually remarkable. Plus, Hugh Jackman is likeable in the central role – even if his character is given an almost Jesus-like level of idealisation. Michelle Williams is less impressive as his wife, mainly because she isn’t fleshed out as a character. You could argue that it’s emotionally shallow, but penetrating psychological drama is not what this film is about. Instead, it’s a big, loud, fast-moving in-your-face spectacle.

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Heartbreaking drama about bereavement and grief. Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is mourning his brother when he learns he’s been named as the guardian of his 16-year-old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges). But Lee has his own grief he never came to terms with – his children died in a house fire as a result of his own actions and his wife Randi (Michelle Williams) subsequently left him.

Told in partial flashback and set in bleak Maine winter scenery, it’s a desperately sad story with no easy answers about anything.

The acting is uniformly superb and the music, from Albinoni to Bob Dylan, is perfectly chosen for each scene. It’s masterful in its emotionally harrowing realism, but it’s not something to watch if you are feeling fragile.