JOE QUEENAN: Because he started out as an actor, and very quickly became an actor that a large segment of the population positively adored, in the same way that they adored Jimmy Cagney and Cary Grant and both Hepburns, Eastwood has long benefited from a personal relationship with the American people that no other living director can even dream of. (In my lifetime, only Alfred Hitchcock, who came into everyone’s living room once a week to deliver his weird, deadpan introductions to his creepy TV series, has enjoyed this sort of ongoing, intimate rapport with the American people. But little […]
CINEMA: No Man Is An Island
SHUTTER ISLAND (2009, directed by Martin Scorsese, 138 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I’ve never heard anyone accuse Martin Scorsese of coasting, even his least successful films show stretches of inspiration that raise them above mere journeyman work. His latest, an adaptation of Dennis Lahane’s best-selling Shutter Island is a gorgeously-produced, well-acted film but is unlike nearly anything is Scorsese’s filmography: a predictable thriller’s whose biggest mystery is exactly what attracted Scorsese to it to begin with. Going deep into M.Night Shyamalan territory, Shutter Island is one of our most idiosyncratic director’s least personal films yet. Scorsese continues […]