Topic Question
Added 2023-01-09 20:33:23 +0000 UTCName a movie director that you think is overrated any why.
Comments
Definitely christopher nolan. I'll explain why Momento sucks; how the script for The Dark Knight is trash (and his whole take on Batman, for that matter), as well as others (oh my motherfucking God The Prestige is so fucking stupid), later. Because I should be reading George Meredith right now.
Kurt Mendez
2023-01-10 06:07:51 +0000 UTCI agree that he's overrated, and perhaps pernicious. But U-turn is an excellent movie, with so many great actors in it. That is, if you're a fan of the utterly macabre.
Kurt Mendez
2023-01-10 05:53:29 +0000 UTCIt’s just a sad irony that the person who seems to be in the best position to do whatever he wants is the one who’s most constrained. But he only has himself to blame. No one made him pledge…what, four, five more sequels to Avatar? He overestimated the popularity of that movie. And he has an overinflated sense of worth for the franchise, that with its environmental message being seen by billions of people it’s going to…I suppose prevent climate change. I hope he gives the reins over to someone else after the third one, but I think he’ll ultimately be too much of a control freak to go through with it. As for Terminator, leave it alone. It’s been beaten too much into the ground at this point. And the actors who made the first two so popular (Arnold, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick) are too old now for action films. I want Cameron to take a swing at just one more original idea before the end of his career. We need those. What we don’t need are more franchises, especially ones that no one asked for to begin with.
Bennett Oliver
2023-01-10 03:23:35 +0000 UTCSpike Lee. Basically, I have the same feeling as Matt about Oliver Stone. Lee is an artful and talented activist. Ron Howard. I don’t know. He just comes across as the favorite janitor of Hollywood directors who gave him a ton of projects they didn’t want to do. That said, I love Rush. JJ Abrams. What are stories, but mystery boxes?
Gabriel Woodward
2023-01-10 03:03:57 +0000 UTCI’d amend, Spielberg post 90’s
Gabriel Woodward
2023-01-10 02:48:01 +0000 UTCDitto
Gabriel Woodward
2023-01-10 02:44:49 +0000 UTCWell on the bright side he has said that he wants to hand over the Avatar films to someone else at some point but of course he'll have to "train" them first. Will he actually do it remains to be seen but he does want to reboot the Terminator franchise himself which to me is just hilarious given how many times they've tried. After 13 years he definitely has some level of buyers remorse especially given his age but hes dug in too deep now. The Avatar films are guilty pleasures for me at this point. The first one is so derivative and unintentionally funny but clearly made with some level of skill and conviction that I can't help but admire it. Its a big campy B-movie made for nearly $250 million. The second one is in some ways better as a story but still has narrative issues especially involving character decisions as well as unintentionally funny moments. Also while its visually very beautiful and innovative with the special effects, the high frame rate really undercut it.
Stephen
2023-01-10 02:08:26 +0000 UTCspielberg. i don,t know why he is regarded as a master film maker. he understands what average americans want to see but he is more interested in character
anthony scully
2023-01-10 00:49:33 +0000 UTCi agree. natural born killers gives me a head ache, but i did not mind the editing on any given sunday
anthony scully
2023-01-10 00:43:53 +0000 UTCAre we at the point where we can write off James Cameron, now that he’s become fully committed to Avatarland? Maybe it’s a bit too much to call him overrated, but when he decides to quadruple down on his most mediocre creation, it might be time to start reassessing him. I am an avowed fan of Aliens, the Terminator movies, The Abyss, even Titanic, but his ego has now grown so huge that I can’t bear it anymore. He thinks he’s going to save the world by pumping out movies about blue people no one gives a shit about. Ffs, at least George Lucas didn’t have such delusions. But we’re going to have to resign ourselves to the fact that Cameron is not going to make any more good movies for the rest of his career. He’d rather play with and upgrade his expensive toys and try to top the CGI-ed spectacle of the movie before it. Which he’s very good at, I’ll give him that much. No one utilizes computer technology better than him to create a mesmerizing world in which to experience. It’s just too bad that his knack for story and character has completely atrophied. Granted, it wasn’t always his strongest suit to begin with, but at least it was there. Now I have to watch people who are three-dimensional by sight only. Maybe the argument can be made that just because he’s making bad decisions in the latter stage of his career doesn’t mean his legacy is tarnished. But it makes those films all the more painful to watch now because we’ll never see anything like them again. He’s going to make big expensive Saturday morning cartoons from here on out.
Bennett Oliver
2023-01-10 00:42:29 +0000 UTCI can’t say I’ve watched anything of his after Weekend, but I still love Breathless, Vivre sa vie, and Band of Outsiders. Contempt is overrated. In his early years, when he loved cinema and loved making it even more, he was great. There was no one else like him. He brought a freshness and a furious energy that was heretofore unseen in film, along with an intriguing view of modern youth and the world around them (and that’s not even getting into his experimentation and deconstructive approach). With Breathless alone, he really did reinvent movies. He took the verite approach, stylized it, and made it cool. It was probably the most revolutionary film to come along since Citizen Kane. And without him, there would be no Tarantino (who could be said to have made the Breathless of the ‘90s with Pulp Fiction), Wong Kar-wai, Harmony Korine, or Gaspar Noé, among others. They all took not so much from his style, because he didn’t have a consistent one, but were inspired by his energy and enthusiasm, and willingness to break rules. But yes, around the time of Pierrot le fou, he grew disenchanted towards cinema, and genre film in particular, and geared more towards politics, and he became more and more insufferable. It all went downhill from there. He wasn’t fun anymore. All he ever really knew about was cinema and the worlds within it. When it came to politics, he was pretentious and even childish. So yes, he did become a bore, as Bergman said. But for about four or five years, he was cool.
Bennett Oliver
2023-01-10 00:13:27 +0000 UTCGlad I’m not the only one who feels this way. Never have issues with his direction but his scripts often don’t feel developed enough to be considered masterpieces. I often find his films to be good but not great with a few exceptions like High and Low.
Stephen
2023-01-09 22:45:00 +0000 UTCHe’s not for everyone. As a fan of his work though, I do share your sentiment about Armageddon Time. It’s easily one of his worst scripts. Definitely Oscar-bait.
Stephen
2023-01-09 22:38:22 +0000 UTCI cannot connect with James Gray. He seems to be a favorite of critics, but all of his movies I’ve seen have left me cold: The Immigrant, Lost City of Z, Ad Astra, Armageddon Time. I probably like We Own the Night the best, and even that I’m not over the moon about. Armageddon Time seemed so perfunctory to me. He learned about racism as a boy, great. I would hope so. Anthony Hopkins really elevated his scenes, but the rest of it didn’t do much for me.
Jim Barnes
2023-01-09 22:02:44 +0000 UTCRobert Zemeckis movies generally feel soulless and gimmicky to me. Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future are good (and Contact is alright I guess), but all of his other films are either unnecessarily sappy or thoroughly uninteresting. He often gets praised for using cutting-edge vfx to strengthen his characters and stories, but I don’t see it.
Jared Angcanan
2023-01-09 21:47:22 +0000 UTCWes Anderson. His early works like “Rushmore” and “Bottle Rocket” worked for me because there was this balance of this post modern “movie mixtape” type of style with genuine humanity. But now his style has become bigger than him to the point where his films feel like caricatures of themselves where it just feels he throws any actor he can into these twee exercises in empty smoke and mirrors and accoutrements. It like I get it “the framing is super symmetrical” “ omg that actor said something with no emotion isn’t that ironic” shit is played out and I think it’s affected American Indy filmmaking for the worst.
jared Clarke
2023-01-09 21:27:21 +0000 UTCJean-Luc Godard. I admire some of his earlier work but I can never understand why he’s viewed as the god of cinema in so many circles. Especially as his career went on, his films became increasingly anti-narrative and his messaging became insufferable. Sitting through anything he’s made in the last 20 years I find an absolute chore. It also annoys me that so many cinephiles view him as infallible, or like not liking him makes you less cine-literate. Ingmar Bergman famously called him a total bore, and I tend to agree.
Jackson Littlewood
2023-01-09 21:09:41 +0000 UTCAkira Kurosawa. Though I can't deny the mastery of his work from a technical aspect, I always find the execution of his stories to be unfocused and poorly paced with scenes that unnecessarily drag on for longer than needed which pad the running time and detract from other parts that could've used more screen time. Trim most of his work by about 30-45 minutes each to tighten up the narratives and I would have next to no complaints about him.
Wolfman Brandon
2023-01-09 21:05:30 +0000 UTCI think Oliver Stone has a very obnoxious over-editing style. That and He likes to pick stories where the real life subject matter has a lot of grey areas and divided opinions: i.e. JFK, Snowden and Platoon but always tells his own beliefs on what he thinks is right or wrong. Even when it’s a film I like it still always feels like I’m being told one person’s opinion rather than a nuanced piece of real world history
Matt Silcock
2023-01-09 20:50:59 +0000 UTC
