"Cop Out"

Let's see: There's a world-weary older white cop with a fast-talking, hyperactive black partner, and they're chasing down bad guys. The soundtrack is studded with old-school classics such as The System's "Don't Disturb This Groove," Run-DMC's "King of Rock" and the Beastie Boys' "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn."

And who's the man behind those squishy-sounding synthesizers driving the action? None other than Harold Faltermeyer, creator of the legendary "Axel F" theme from "Beverly Hills Cop." Why, he hasn't scored a movie since the days when Bruce Willis was starring in Seagram's Golden Wine Cooler commercials.

Yes, despite its contemporary setting, everything about "Cop Out" reeks of the early 1980s. But although director Kevin Smith would love to turn Willis and Tracy Morgan into Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, this is not "48 Hrs." -- although frequently "Cop Out" does feel like it's about 48 hours long.

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"Shutter Island"

“Seen any walking nightmares lately, marshal?” a woman asks deputy marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) late in director Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island." She’s a psychiatrist, although she might as well be a psychic: Daniels has been prowling around the creepy corridors of the Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and he’s witnessed enough scary sights to fill a month’s worth of bad dreams.

It’s 1954, and psychiatric hospitals are not far from the dismal days of ice baths, crudely administered electro-shock treatments and other atrocities. In Ashecliffe’s Ward C, patients are still stripped naked and locked up in filthy, dark cells where their bodies rot and their minds deteriorate. The conditions in Ashecliffe’s other buildings are slightly better, although nobody’s going to mistake it for a country-club prison.

Adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel, “Shutter” is a freak show with artsy pretensions.

Read the full review here.