I found Inception deeply incoherent. The scene I mentioned when I first raised his name was from that movie, IIRC – the one where a bunch of people are scaling an icy cliff, and it’s not clear whether we’re rooting for the scalers or the scalees.
Also, this Batman movies. I actually kind of liked the first, the second was carried by the brilliance of Heath Ledger, and the third made no fucking sense at all. I think it was in the second, early in the movie, when there was a scene with the Joker’s guys fighting the good guys, right after that first heist, and it wasn’t clear to me who was who or what was going one.
It’s been years since I’ve seen any of these films, sorry I can’t be more specific.
I don’t know exactly how much input he had to Alias, Lost, the ST films, Cloverfield and his book ‘S’…but he seems to have fun, fresh ideas. The world is definitely better off for having him in it.
In movie making, there can be 2 directors working with 2 separate crews. The credited director will helm the crew that shoots all of the dialogue, and the 2nd unit director (frequently a stuntman) oversees the action, stunt sequences, precision driving. Any big budget movie will have 2 units, so it’s a near certainty that Nolan directed none of the action sequences in any of his movies.
I always understood those combat scenes to be intentionally chaotic and confused, much like real combat is. The idea being that the way that it’s filmed is intentionally supposed to be confusing but exhilarating, so that you sort of experience a similar emotion to the protagonists in the story- chaotic, confused but adrenaline-charged, and then calming down if the scene changes, or continuing to be charged up, but less confused if it segues into a car chase or other suspenseful scene.
And I’d wonder why RR is on your list. A resume as diverse as Desperado, Planet Terror, Sin City, Spy Kids, The Faculty, the only good part of that 4 part film…
I’m not saying those are all Citizen Kane, and I left out a lot of not so good films, but surely there’s a lot of good in the films I listed.
He definitely has some good ones, and I love Sin City, but he also has Spy Kids 1-4 (trust me, after the 1st they were awful, and even the first was pretty bad), the adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, Shorts, Planet Terror (I see that ones actually got decent reviews so I guess that ones just personal), and Machete Kills. So basically the majority of his movies range from awful to pretty bad with a few standouts. He is by far the best director on that list though.
I have no real opinion either way regarding Robert Rodriguez, but you do realize that Planet Terror and Machete were specifically made as parody/homage to 70s B-movies?
Now, I said at the time (and still feel) that if you’re making an homage to bad movies, you end up intentionally making a bad movie, which is ludicrous, but… whatever. He succeeded, I guess.
I know. I’m actually a pretty big fan of 70’s B-movies. I thought that Planet Terror was a bad parody/homage to those movies. Machete was pretty good, which is why I didn’t include it. The sequel, Machete Kills, was awful.
Fucking Amen. I would say that guy was the Ed Wood of animation, but I can’t. As bad as they were, Ed Wood movies at least had some entertainment value.
“A notable exception to having more than one filming unit is director Christopher Nolan, who has avoided the use of a second unit in movies such as The Dark Knight or Inception, preferring instead to oversee every shot himself with cinematographer Wally Pfister.”