I count five pretty fucking great movies in that list: The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, and History of the World, Part I.
Tom Six. Other than The Human Centipede, what has he done?
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For what it’s worth, I don’t mind Young Frankenstein, and The Producers is something of a masterpiece, but I can’t really stand any of Brooks’s other movies. Judging by this, and by your incredulity that a serious film buff can like Jerry Lewis or have legitimate (albeit personal) reasons to prefer ***Kundun over Taxi Driver, it would appear that the concept of subjective taste is something that you’re not all that on board with, MTC. There are NO films that are objectively, universally great, to the extent that someone is INCORRECT for not liking them. That’s just not how it works. (Wanna hear my soapbox opera on why Schindler’s List ***sucks ass?)
I once told someone that I thought Deborah Winger was a terrible actor. She raised and eyebrow, and kind of condescendingly told me, in a very *explainy *voice, that Ms. Winger is “considered a very good actress.” If we can’t make up our own minds about such things, what can we?
Again, not so much. It’s been my experience, inside the vidstore and out, that most people who’ve heard of Nicholas Roeg are aware of Performance.
Again, gotta disagree. ***Blowup ***is much more than just a time-travelogue about a certain time and place. It still speaks to audiences, pretty strongly, about the kind of societal ennui that is still present in much of modern life. The costumes and parties are surface stuff; the heart of ***Blowup ***is timeless.
Spielberg is almost as big a hack as Howard. The last great movie he made was Jaws. Plus, the negative effect he’s had–he’s the spiritual godfather of such directors as Michael Bay, Howard of course, and James Cameron, not to mention second-tier hacks like Turtletaub and Schumacher–is incalculable. He’s taught American audiences to have short, shallow attention spans; to never look beyond the next explosion. I’m reminded of a remark Marilyn Manson once made about “any band with a number in its name.” He said “they’re actively hurting music.” Obviously some hyperbole there meant to be humorous, but I feel much the same about Spielberg.
Raiders of the Lost Ark wants to talk to you.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is the single film most responsible for the emptyheaded climax-every-few-minutes-or-it’s-boring template that most modern blockbusters adhere to. As passively entertaining as ***RotLA ***is, it’s Spielberg’s greatest crime against cinema. (Although applying that template to a story like Oskar Schindler’s is arguably a greater offense.) And of course ***Raiders ***IS entertaining, but “entertaining” is not the lone, single, *only *quality to judge a movie on. But post-Raiders, it has come to be. ***Raiders ***would be my first exhibit in Spielberg’s trial for crimes against humanity. (But admittedly it would be ***Hook ***that would make him eligible for the death penalty.)
Wow, thanks for that terrific insight. I know, in my experience, most people who have heard of Peter Kropotkin are aware that he was a Russian anarchist.
Unless someone is a really, really big fan of The Man Who Fell To Earth, I doubt most Americans would recognize the name.
Actually, you aren’t disagreeing with me at all. I didn’t say anything about the plot or social commentary in Blow-Up, just the cultural stuff. And IME most Americans under 50 have no idea what Mods were or what UK culture was like then. We can laugh at Monty Python because it’s absurd, but a lot of the finer points go right over Americans heads because it’s not our culture. Close, and always moving closer together, but back in the 1960s it was like we were different countries with an ocean between us or something.
Again, disagreeing. ***Walkabout? Don’t Look Now? The Witches? ***Roeg would go nowhere near the top half of my list of obscure directors. Obviously the key word here is “experience,” which yours is obviously different from mine. My experience, for oh say the last 20 years, is that Nicholas Roeg is one of the more recognizable “arthouse” directors’ names.
Still, I’d say the strongest aspects of ***Blowup ***are the universal ones. Ozu’s films went undistributed in the U.S. for the longest time because they were considered “too Japanese.” But the universal human truths he treated shine strongly through the cultural trappings and make his movies more gripping–even to an American audience–than those of almost any American director I can think of. (For another example of a silent film that has wide appeal, I Was Born But…’s story of two young brothers coming to grips with the knowledge that their father isn’t the god they always imagined him to be is one of the most powerful–and universal–family dramas [with fart jokes] I’ve ever seen.)
I’d argue that the single movie most responsible for the current movie template is Die Hard.
Kevin Smith. Clerks was a surprise hit and despite its flaws may be considered a gem. Chasing Amy and Dogma show signs of gem-dom. The rest, Mallrats, Zack & Miri Make a Porno, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks II, lacklustre. Cop Out - dreck.
Well, it’s certainly not short of imitators. But having come seven years later, I’d consider it an offspring of Raiders, not a template maker, IMO.
Raiders is not a good movie. It’s a fun movie. It’s a watchable movie. I’ve seen it so many times I have all the dialogue memorized and could probably recite it back, and Harrison Ford was unbelievably hot, but it was not a good movie.
When I saw the thread title, my first thought was Ron Howard. I agree with every criticism in this thread. I will say that I really enjoyed Frost/Nixon, but I think that had more to do with the acting than the directing. Generally, Howard’s films leave me with a sense of “meh” with occasional flashes of anger.
i’m blown away by the number of people who are suggesting that spielberg, cameron, and howard are nothing more than lucky hacks.
lucas, i can understand.
I didn’t nominate Lucas because, in my view, he’s a lackluster director with no gems. Ron Howard, on the other hand, can clearly make fine films (based on Splash, Parenthood, and Frost/Nixon) he just…doesn’t most of the time.
Lucky? No.
Smart? Dishonest? Manipulative? Yes.
Not to be overly provocative, but did Ed Wood have a gem? (Not counting when Johnny Depp was Ed Wood, of course.)
It’s possible to have an Ed Wood favorite–mine is Glen or Glenda–but they were all pretty terrible movies.
Fred McLeod Wilcox
Of all my favorite films, one of the few with a “lackluster” director is Forbidden Planet. Absolutely wonderful film, but what the heck else has he done? iMDB only lists 11 films he’s directed, I’ve only heard of Lassie Come Home. You could argue that FP was more the work of Irving Block and Cyril Hume, who have other notable SF films to their credit.
Edward L. Cahn – director of another 1950s movie great, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, which I feel certain that Dan O’Bannon, Walter Giler, Ridley Scott, and company strip-mined for Alien. Again, it’s the writer, Jerome Bixby, who really was responsible for the good SF. Cahn directed 125 films, according to the iMDB, including a few memorable ones – the Bixby-scripted Curse of the Faceless Man, the odd Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, and the neglected Invisible Invaders, from which I feel certain George Romero got the basic plot and the look for his classic Night of the Living Dead. Poor Cahn – directed two films that inspired cultural icons in Alien and Living dead, but generally unknown.
Christian Nyby – Completing the 1950s SF trifecta, Nyby’s first directing credit was the 1951 the Thing from Another World. Film histories invariably say that Howard Hawks was the real director, and there’s some on-set testimony to back that up, but I think Nyby ought to get more credit than he usually gets. Unfortunately, nothing else ever came close to this one. He directed some minor films and a [i[]lot of TV (including two episodes of the original Twilight Zone). But he’ll never escape the curse of being Howard Hawks’ cinematographer.