# Most Disappointing Film Directors **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 22, 2019, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128 "2019-10-22T11:50:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/21 "2019-10-23T23:17:30Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > I’m gonna toss myself under the bus, but let me first say, I don’t know shit about films, or how they are made, or what the actual fuck a director does, but… > > Scorsese. I just don’t like many of the films I’ve seen of his. > > I know, I know. It’s _ME_, not him. I dunno, I find a lot of his recent work really boring. I thought “The Departed” sucked, and I thought “Wolf of Wall Street” sucked worse. All his movies in the last twenty years, at least, are vastly too long. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/22 "2019-10-24T00:29:06Z")
Every Wes Anderson film I see starts off strong and hooks me on its premise and quirks and I’m interested to see where it goes… then, by the one hour mark, I’m sort of bored and just don’t care any more. So he counts as most disappointing to me because he gets getting my hopes up before they’re dashed yet again. ---
**Author:** ![Personal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Personal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Personal)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/23 "2019-10-24T00:34:59Z")
> [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](#): > > Woody Allen, even before all the scandals came out in the 1990s. > > Back in the mid-80s, I wasn’t a fan of his contemporary stuff. Fans insisted I would probably prefer his earlier “funny” stuff. With one exception, _Everything you wanted to know about sex…_, nope. _Sleeper, Bananas, Love and Death_ all left me cold. (Never saw _Take the Money and Run_, which I was told “that’s the best one”, but I’d already been disappointed too many times) I could see where the jokes were supposed to be, but they didn’t make me laugh. > > I think the one exception worked for me because there was no narrative, just a loosely connected bunch of short sketches, so nothing had the chance to go on too long, and I didn’t have to spend more than a few minutes with an unpleasant character. I dislike his pictures also. Whenever I’d watch one, I’d always wonder why the critics always went crazy over him. The films always seemed like a bunch of pseudo-intellectual verbose whiny trash. I see Annie Hall on a lot of best of lists, but I have yet to watch it. I doubt I ever will. ---
**Author:** ![SamuelA](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@SamuelA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamuelA)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/24 "2019-10-24T00:51:53Z")
Wachowski brothers. They made one good film, and promised in the ending a sequel where the rebellious hackers create a world without rules or controls. Then they failed to deliver on their straightforward premise in the sequels, despite having near-infinite resources. Ok, they also made Cloud Atlas and Sense8. Both were good though a bit art housey. And after such a string of duds I think they are finally fired? Hard to say, Hollywood gives a lot of second and third chances to famous people. (and ordinary people usually never get even a first chance) ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/25 "2019-10-24T00:53:11Z")
I will add that Werner Herzog is an amazing director, but he has also disappointed me tremendously sometimes. Ebert always pointed out that he tries really hard and sometimes fails really big time. Salt and Fire was an absolute snoozefest, as was My Son, My Son. He goes all in on movies, but he really is up and down at times. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/26 "2019-10-24T02:02:09Z")
Jean-Luc Goddard. Call me old-fashioned but I think a film has to have a point. ---
**Author:** ![LC\_Strawhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@LC\_Strawhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LC_Strawhouse)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/27 "2019-10-24T03:03:11Z")
Jonathan Demme, and Atom Egoyan. Some very bland and antiseptic looking movies, no matter how “edgy” the subject matter is. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/28 "2019-10-24T08:27:56Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > [my bold] > > That’s not like I remember the ending of Freaks. :eek:. > > I remember a diva mutilated into a duck creature presented as a…FREAK! If they’d stopped the movie there, I would have… I’m not sure “enjoyed” is the right word, but I sure would have respected it more. There might be multiple cuts of this film floating around. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/29 "2019-10-24T08:37:56Z")
Woody Allen, a big baseball fan, is a .300 hitter and will drop two bad movies for every good one. _Midnight in Paris_ and _Crimes and Misdemeanors_ were gems during otherwise dry spells. I’ve kind of avoided Lars von Trier. “Dogme 95” was an appealing-sounding premise–moreso now in the age of Marvel Superhero movies–but the ends to which it has been used just don’t appeal to me or to why I like movies. ---
**Author:** ![Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/59ef9b/32.png) [@Yorkshire\_Pudding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorkshire_Pudding)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/30 "2019-10-24T12:36:32Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Lars von Trier, as previously mentioned, by far. How anyone thinks his films are good, I’ll never understand. How he can get actresses to appear in them even more so. And he even got people to sign onto his Dogme thing. Oh, hell yeah. A Serious Film Enthusiast friend of mine was going to a screening of The Antichrist at the National Media Museum (UK) and asked if I wanted to come. My wife happened to want to go to see The Time Traveler’s Wife that same evening, and I sort of fancied that, but no, I was gushingly-enthused into von Trier. Hell’s teeth. Much as The Time Traveler’s Wife ultimately annoyed the hell out of me when I eventually saw it, dear sweet christ how I wish I’d gone with my wife. I’m still angry every time I’m reminded that anybody thinks his self-indulgent claptrap is even tolerable, let alone laudable. > [@](#): > > in a different way, M Night is the most “disappointing”, because almost none of his subsequent films are anywhere near as good as The Sixth Sense. And it is disappointing to not have more moviues like that. Yep. I thought “The Happening” as a title was an tremendous misnomer. OK, so if it was a teenager’s film & drama project I’d applaud it heartily…but from the man behind 6th Sense? Get lost. And The Village? Well, somehow I predicted the ending almost instantly - within minutes - and spent the entire movie thinking that what turned out to be the supposed ‘twist’ was simply the premise of what I was watching. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/31 "2019-10-24T13:02:44Z")
I saw the ‘twist’ of the Village in the trailer and was very confused by people calling it a twist. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2019, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128/32 "2019-10-25T20:51:24Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > If they’d stopped the movie there, I would have… I’m not sure “enjoyed” is the right word, but I sure would have respected it more. There might be multiple cuts of this film floating around. I’ve seen Freaks a long time ago on German TV and have the copy from [archive.org](http://archive.org) (it’s in the public domain), and it always ended like I posted, and that was a perfect ending. I remember having read that the movie has been recut many times, and the ending you saw sounds like company meddling. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-disappointing-film-directors/842128.md?page=1)