Terrible Camera Work and Editing

I did not see Inferno (I considered doing so), but this sort of style plagues too many films nowadays. Especially early on, before he might settle down about halfway through, many a director seems intent on "creating" intensity through deliberately shaky camera work, constant (and needless) camera movements, and rapid-fire editing—despite the narrative usually not justifying such techniques. A couple of other recent examples are Ben-Hur (the 2016 remake) and the current Patriots Day. Both films are decent; without the cinematic "forcing" that especially occurs early on, they could have been better. For instance, one would expect such techniques for scenes involving the Boston Marathon bombing and the immediate aftermath in Patriots Day; instead, director Peter Berg uses them from the very start of the film and pretty much all through the first half. Indeed, the camera swerves around so much that you would think that the camera operator was drunk.

Even All Is Lost and Captain Phillips, very good films from late 2013, suffer from too much shaky camera work or gratuitous camera movements early on. Without that flaw, All Is Lost may have constituted a great movie. I thought that director Terrence Malik's The Tree of Life (2011) was another very good film, but he floated the camera around so much early on that I almost felt dizzy. Obviously, the choice proved intentional, and perhaps it was justifiable, but it also might have been overdone.