Has DiCaprio made a bad film?

I was watching Shutter Island the other day and I was sitting there trying to think of a Leonardo DiCaprio film I don't like. I mean this guy has stared in some seriously great films. He is an actor who seems to effortlessly produce brilliance on the screen. It's very rare you watch a film with DiCaprio in, I actually can't think of one, and don't find yourself at one point thinking; 'this guy can act!'

Let me start with Martin Scorsese's dark and harrowing Shutter Island. I love just about every minute of this film, from the uncomfortable soundtrack to the swooping shots of the island this film is magnificent. There are certain scenes that stay with you long after you have left the cinema and there are a number of scenes in Shutter Island that did just that. The concentration camp shooting is a brutal scene, the heart-breaking ending as the true story is unveiled (it was there where I said 'this guy can act' as he desperately clings to his kids in the lake) and the end quote from Teddy Daniels and the look DiCaprio gives Mark Ruffalo's Chuck Aule just makes me want to jump and whoop like a child.

"Which would be worse - to live a monster? Or to die as a good man?"

BRILLIANT!

I have already doffed my cap to Inception and I don't want to go in to the sheer genius of this film anymore - go check out my last post to see just how much I love Christopher Nolan's Inception.

You know the old saying 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'? It really does apply to Martin Scorsese working with DiCaprio. My next choice is The Departed, just about everything you could want in a film is here in this truly sublime movie. Just look at the cast - DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen...the list goes on! It is a heavyweight cast directed by THE heavyweight director of our time and when it ends it leaves you knocked out on the canvas after a sensational twist. Now I love a film with a twist, but one with a twist-twist! Now we are talking!! Just when you think this film is playing out a certain way boom Scorsese throws one hell of a curve-ball.

As if working with Scorsese isn't enough DiCaprio has also stared in Steven Spielberg's excellent cat-and-mouse-true-story Catch Me If You Can. I am one of the few people that isn't a fan of Tom Hanks (that is for another time so chill out everyone) - for me Tom Hanks plays Tom Hanks, except for a couple of films, but we are getting off subject - However, I have to say Hanks does make good films and while it is the best part of seven days long it is a film that you find yourself totally immersed in and I love the scene where Carl Hanratty first encounters Frank Abagnale Jr and how he effortlessly slips away.

There are many other great DiCaprio films and even if you didn't like Titanic, I bet you saw it at the cinema! DiCaprio just makes films that people go to see and he is usually superb in them. In Blood Diamond I spent the first half hour wondering if DiCaprio's South African accent was as bad as David Bowie's Russian one in The Prestige - then coming to my senses and realising it was actually spot on. Think of any film that DiCaprio has been in and tell me it is not good, you can't do it. A fine actor and one I feel is underrated.

Right I am off to get in line to wait for a ticket to see DiCaprio in Quentin Tarantino's next film Django Unchained - cause ladies and gentlemen, that combination cannot result in anything other than great cinema...