Shutter Island does not measure up to Scorsese’s acknowledged directorial capacity. His flair for innovation and the uniqueness of his storytelling are better directed toward a simpler design, not the blockbuster horror epic with its altogether fatuous termination.
Shutter Island
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Shutter Island, Scorsese’s fourth film featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, recounts the unnerving [...]
It is arguable that women live in a “man’s world”. Women, it might also be argued, possess certain physical attributes of appeal to men that allow them considerable advantage under some circumstances. Such attributes coupled with certain behavioral subtleties often lay bare men’s weaknesses to a point where they seem compelled to act [...]
Filmmakers are confronted with the perennial challenge of intriguing their audience with new cinematic experiences – the challenge of innovation. When a traditional genre transcends time, it is often altered to slake this thirst for the new. Consequently, such an evolution has altered one of America’s most stylish genres of the 1940s, film noir. [...]
The debut of a number of distinctive personalities is one of the important features of film noir. Noir’s main character, for instance, may appropriately be labeled the noir loser. He is a handsome, middle-aged man who seems to blur the line between protagonist and antagonist. Billy Wilder has very explicitly introduced such personalities as [...]
A term that translates to ‘Black Film’ already sounds interesting. Add to that dramatic, highly stylized cinematography and hard-hitting, gritty writing, and the appeal of film noir is clear. The term is mostly attributed to works such as Double Indemnity, Scarlet Street, and The Maltese Falcon, all major works which helped popularize the genre after [...]
The ‘long take’, a film technique born in the middle of the 20th century, is often neglected by modern directors in favor of a more rapid-fire, MTV-inspired editing style. In fact, as the medium grows older, the average shot length (ASL) decreases; according to Swivel.com, the ASL of American films has dropped from 10.5 seconds [...]
