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THE RUNAWAYS A look at the formation of the influential all-girl rock band from the latter half of the 1970s, The Runaways needs a lot more Joan Jett, a lot less Cherie Currie. Always entertaining but never as penetrating as one would hope, this tinkers with historical accuracy (but not to a distracting degree) to show how five teenage girls, including Jett (played by Twilight's Kristen Stewart) and Currie (former screen moppet Dakota Fanning, suddenly 16), came together in the sun-soaked California of 1975 to create a band that would remain together for only a few years yet forge a path that would lead the way for other female musicians over the ensuing decades. The material available for a radical screen biopic is eye-popping -- here's a band that rubbed shoulders with the likes of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, for God's sake -- yet writer-director Floria Sigismondi keeps her focus small, preferring to present the story as a commonplace rise-and-fall odyssey. Even this approach would have worked had the spotlight been squarely on Jett, but instead it's Currie who receives the closest thing to a career trajectory. This makes sense considering that Sigismondi based her script on a book written by Currie (Neon Angel), but she should have chosen better source material: It's unfortunate (and probably a tad insulting) that instead of centering on the brainy woman who went on to become a trailblazer and rock icon in her own right, the picture chooses instead to follow the sexpot who fails rather than succeeds, predictably undone by the usual combo of drugs, exhaustion and incompatibility. The Runaways isn't bad -- it's got spirit and spunk -- but it fails to really punch across this vital period in rock history. Stewart and Fanning are both fine in their respective roles, although it's Revolutionary Road's Michael Shannon who -- ahem -- runs away with the film. As Kim Fowley, the oddball music maven who brings the band together, Shannon delivers a suitably prickly performance that doesn't shy away from exposing the character's sordidness or infuriating unpredictability. It's a captivating turn, and it best punches across the messy sense of anarchy that the rest of the picture desperately needs. **1/2
SHUTTER ISLAND Just how obvious is the big "twist" that concludes Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel? So obvious that some folks who haven't read the book are figuring it out simply by watching the trailer. But just how accomplished is the picture anyway? Enough that viewers will happily be led down the rabbit hole by a director with the ability to distract them with every technique at his disposal. Delivering yet another topnotch performance that might help him win some sort of lifetime achievement award before he even hits 40, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Teddy Daniels, a U.S. federal marshal who, with his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), travels to a mental asylum located on a remote island off the Massachusetts coastline. The year is 1954, and the lawmen are there to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. But although the head of the facility (Ben Kingsley) assures them that they'll have the full cooperation of the entire staff, it soon becomes apparent that everyone has something to hide, and Teddy must suss out the truth even while plagued by debilitating headaches, gruesome flashbacks to his World War II years, and disturbing hallucinations involving his deceased wife (Michelle Williams). Scorsese's in pulp fiction mode here (see also Cape Fear and The Departed), which essentially means that this is one of those pleasing instances when "B"-movie material is given the "A"-list treatment. The screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis is packed with so much intriguing incident that it's easy to not even notice the plotholes until post-movie reflection, and all the craftspeople who won Oscars for Scorsese's The Aviator are back on board, resulting in an immaculate presentation that fully engages the senses. And while the major plot pirouette will disappoint discerning viewers, it's followed by an ambiguous coda that insures all moviegoers will exit the Island with at least something to ponder. ***
