Yeah, well, what about Coccoon?
James Cameron.
<ding!> <ding!> <ding!>
Ladies & gentlemen, we have a winnnnnnaaah!
Cute and utterly dispensable. Like most of his films, it’s well cast, so rides a wave of good will based on our affinity with some likable performers. But nobody brings out more lazy performances from dependable actors than Howard–Russell Crowe in particular. Cocoon is also, like a lot of his films, brazenly sentimental. There’s often quite a bit of inherent drama and power in the stories he chooses, but he can’t help but milking every last drop in a way that I find insulting and tedious as a viewer.
Ron Howard learned a lot from watching Spielberg, is all I can say. That’s another guy who will manufacture and milk sentiment in his movies like there was a worldwide shortage.
Fortunately for us, they both do make okay movies most of the time, and once or twice have been brilliant. Okay, maybe 3 times for Steve.
You know what my favourite Ron Howard movie is?
Willow.
I’m not even kidding. Loved it as a kid, love it now.
How about **Michael Curtiz **? Sure, he’s got some acclaimed gems, directed Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood and James Cagney in Angels with dirty faces, but would have gone off in film history as just a competent studio man if it wasn’t for Casablanca.
The title immediately made me think of Lee Tamahori, who made several bad action movies (Die Another Day, XXX 2) and other derided crap like Next and The Edge, as his followup to the absolutely stunning indie drama Once Were Warriors.
You forgot Yankee Doodle Dandy, as fine a piece of High Hollywood Corn as ever made.
You decide:
I despise Joel Schumacher, his moves, and the ground he walks on… but **Falling Down **was pretty good.
Richard Kelly - Donnie Darko
Kurt Wimmer - Equilibrium
Ted Domme - Blow (unless you liked Martin Lawrence/Eddie Murphy in Life)
On Performance , it’s not so much Cammel was a mostly lacklustre director, as the OP seeks but more that he directed so few films anyway, whatever their quality.
Maybe it’s more obscure over in the States but here in the UK it’s considered a cult classic.
I would have argued in favor of Ron Howard’s movies, but find this refutation compelling.
I’m not entirely convinced it’s fair to say that just because his movies aren’t (nearly) as provocative or creative as Raging Bull, All the President’s Men or The Right Stuff they’re by definition middlebrow and personailty-free, but I’ll grant that his efforts clearly suffer by comparison.
Not at ALL. *Casablanca *may be the one that’s remained the most popular, but Curtiz is definitely considered one of the major directors of his era. His reputation as a director of action/adventure movies was–is!–nearly unparalleled.
Just a cherrypicking of my own favorites, taken from a list of 173 director credits (according to IMDB):
Captain Blood (1935)
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)
Kid Galahad (1937)
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
Dodge City (1939)
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
The Sea Hawk (1940)
The Sea Wolf (1941)
Mildred Pierce (1945)
***My Dream Is Yours *** (1949)
Flamingo Road (1949)
White Christmas (1954)
No, but it’s fair to say it the other way around–Ron Howard’s movies are middlebrow and personality free, and then point out other films as examples of how similar themes have been handled with far greater creativity and vitality.
I find Ron Howard’s films insultingly patronizing and dishonest; he’s more interested in comforting the audience, assuring them that everything is just fine the way it is, just go back to sleep, there there, than he is in honestly examining whatever subject he’s working with. All of his movies feel like they’re products of marketing committees, with an eye toward finding the lowest common denominator so that the greatest number of people can swallow it without even engaging their throat muscles; to slide down the throat without you hardly noticing. Obviously I’m hyperbolizing, but Ron Howard’s films make me think of the kind of Soviet propaganda films whose only purpose was to assure the masses that everything was just fine, go back to work. Only they’re propaganda for the modern American status quo. Shudder.
I’ll watch any Andrew Davis film. I think he’s one of today’s top 2 or 3 action directors. Plus, hello? Holes? Come on.
Davis made Segal watchable, and has even made a movie in which the combined suckitude of Kevin Costner and Ashton Fuckin Kutcher did not manage to ruin it.
I say Davis has very few holes (!) in his resume, chief among those being A Perfect Murder.
Very obscure in the States, but look at the subject matter: the film is pretty much a look at the changes and morphing that the UK’s various subcultures were undergoing during the late 1960s.
I know there was more than that to the plot, but that’s the overarching setting for the film, and I doubt US audiences at the time were able to connect much to it. Fast forward 20 or 30 or (gasp! how did this happen??) 40 years, and we’re now talking about things that aren’t even ancient history to most people, they are simply unknown.
It’s like trying to watch Blow-Up today, with an American audience. They just aren’t going to “get” a lot of the cultural stuff because it’s old and from a (similar but) different country.
Agreed. There is no comparison between The Right Stuff (one of my ten favorite films ever) and Apollo 13. (Not that Apollo 13’s a bad movie. Basically, Apollo 13 is to The Right Stuff as The Godfather is to Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels.)
Very affecting. But safe, and middlebrow.
Now you just sound dumb.