Skald’s legions of infernal cinephiles are hot on your tail and you duck into a cinema. Screen 1 is showing a film by Shyamalan; screen 2 one by Boll. Which screen do you choose as best defence?
Boll is worse. Shyamalan at least has some talent as a director.
I just rewatched Sixth Sense and still loved it. Gimme Shyamalan any day.
Boll is so much worse. Shyamalan did Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, those are both worthwhile movies (IMO, of course) that required at least some talent to make, even if everything else he’s done since is awful. Boll is just absolute shit with literally no redeeming qualities.
Shyamalan by a mile. I say that even while regarding The Happening as one of the worst films I have seen in the last five years. Whatever his other faults, Shyamalan has real talent as a director.
Boll doesn’t have any talent at all.
Coincidentally, I just watched Postal today, and while it wasn’t the greatest film I’ve ever seen, I thought it was better than The Happening.
The only way I’d choose to watch another Boll movie would be if the director himself was present with his boxing gloves ready.
I think you’re going to get a lot of answers of Boll and I agree – by a longshot.
I don’t know what happened to Shyalaman because everything fell apart for him after Unbrealable, but he at least has talent as a director and Sixth Sense is a great movie, whether you know the plot twist end or not.
Boll, on the other hand, hasn’t directed anything good EVER. I rented Bloodrayne years ago and I was amazed at how bad he made it. It was so unenterainingly bad that even the nude scene with Kristianna Loken was excruciatingly boring.
And on top of that, in a childish snit, he challenged movie critics to a fight if they didn’t like his movies. Like pounching doughy, pasty writers would defend his honor or something.
Shyamalan has real talent as a director even if it’s being squandered… not sure what happened after Unbreakable. Someone needs to handpick a good script and give it to him rather than allowing him to develop his own projects.
Boll is a fraud and nothing more.
Like everyone else in the thread, I think Shyamalan has a lot of talent that he’s just wasted on a few flops.
I still love Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense. Those two movies alone put him near the top on my list of favorite directors.
Can I just sit in the lobby and stare vacantly into the air for two hours?
Even Shyamalan’s BAD movies always have redeeming features. (I can’t speak for the Airbender movie, which apparently might not have.)
Shamalamadingdong sucks donkey balls, but Boll IS donkey balls. I’ll spend the two hours in the Men’s Room, staring at the tile.
Man, I can’t stand Shamalamadingdong (thanks silenus). Liked Sixth Sense, but I think perhaps with ZERO exceptions everything after has been worse than the last. I was hoping to be the first one here to pick Shamalamadingdong over Boll, but it turns out I haven’t seen any of Boll’s movies.
Oh please, Shyamalan made some stinkers, but Boll lacks even the most basic movie-making abilities.
All of M Night’s films have at least some redeeming qualities. In fact, even the bad ones aren’t bad per se - they are good films with some bad elements that ruin them despite their otherwise goodness. Except for The Happening, which is a bad movie, with some good elements that may or may not make it watchable.
Who is Boll? I notice few people can even bear to mention titles of any of his films.
Boll is worse, by an order of magnitude.
Shyamalan wants to make movies. These movies have gotten worse and worse over the years, but still - he’s a guy, with a vision. That vision makes him make shit movies, but at least he’s honest. He’s a guy with a flawed vision of cinema, but at least he’s trying.
Boll just cranks shit out to take advantage of German tax law.
I saw* In The Name Of The King*, and it was THE worst pile of herpes infested goat shit I have ever seen. If I had to pick a director to watch it’d definitely be Shylaman because he at least has the capacity to make good movies, even if he doesn’t have the ambition to do so.
Shyalaman is, like many have stated, a decent director. His problem stems from his writing. Yeah, the 6th Sense was good but you can’t recapture that lightning in a bottle again and again.
His best bet will be to direct other projects. I haven’t seen Airbender but I’m guessing it would have sucked with even Kurosawa or Hitchcock directing.
I was going to pick Boll, with the hope that his movie would be so bad it’s good, and then I remembered In The Name Of The King and I’ve seen video reviews of some of his others. They’re awful, but not bad enough to become entertaining again. I at least mostly like a couple of Shyamalan’s films, even if they do have flaws, so chances are there’d be something I would like.
What a terrible choice to make . . .