At least Nora Ephron doesn’t strap strobe lights onto Meg Ryan’s head every chance she gets.
For me, it’s a three way tie between Paul Verhoeven, Joel Shumaker and Roland Emmerich. As a tiebreaker, I will use personality/character…so Verhoeven “wins.”
I’m thinking this is pointless to argue with you since you’ve already made up your mind. First off, if you think Soderbergh sucks, what successful director do you think doesn’t?
Traffic: If you think this sucked then you just don’t like movies.
Ocean’s Eleven: This was a fun and well done movie, and shooting a film with that cast in a casino without it blowing up in your face is a real feat.
Oceans Twelve: Not great, suffered from sequelitis, but it wasn’t a flaming turd.
I agree that Solaris was bad, and Erin Brockovich was really overrated but at least in the case of the latter its al leats as much the fault of the script and story.
Sex, Lies and Videotape was great in it’s time, but hasn’t aged well.
Out Of Sight was a really fun movie, but I can accept that it’s not for everyone. Getting J-Lo to be hot and not annoying was a real feat though.
I’m not calling the guy the greatest thing since sliced bread, but his creds are legit and **Solaris[/b[ is the only turd in the list. Realy if you hated Ocean’s Eleven I don’t think there’s any chance we’d watch the same movies.
I didn’t know any of that when I saw Powder, and it still made me queasy because it’s terrible.
I think Roland Emmerich is a good choice. I’d be tempted to nominate McG and Brett Ratner.
My opinions:
Ocean’s Twelve - Fun romp, great cast
Solaris - Excellent
Ocean’s Eleven - Fun romp, great cast
Traffic - Excellent, great cast
Erin Brockovich - Good
The Limey - Brilliant
Out of Sight - Brilliant
Sex, Lies, and Videotape - Interesting, great cast
Gray’s Anatomy (1996) - Didn’t see
Full Frontal - Didn’t see
The Underneath - Didn’t see
King of the Hill - Didn’t see
Kafka - Didn’t see
Schizopolis - Didn’t see
Winston - Didn’t see
Yes - Didn’t see
So for me, he’d get a massive pass for Solaris, Traffic, The Limey and Out of Sight, four of the best movies of the last 10 years, IMO.
I didn’t like Michael Bay’s Armegeddon, but I liked The Rock. I haven’t seen Pearl Harbor or Bad Boys. The Island could have been fantastic if he’d kept it a science fiction story instead of turning it into a dumb action adventure flick (2 highway chases??). The story was interesting and the actors were very good. Too bad.
I can find movies I personally liked from most of the directors mentioned in this thread:
Ken Russell: Altered States, Crimes of Passion;
Nora Ephron: Sleepless In Seattle;
Paul Verhoeven: Robocop, Starship Troopers, Showgirls-yes, I’m one of those people;
David Lynch: I love everything he’s ever done;
Joel Schumacher: The Lost Boys, Falling Down, The Client, Tigerland, Phone Booth;
Jan de Bont: Speed;
George Lucas: American Graffiti, Star Wars;
Ivan Reitman: Meatballs, Stripes, Ghostbusters, Legal Eagles, Dave;
Chris Columbus: Adventures In Babysitting, Home Alone, the Harry Potter films, though I’m glad he stepped aside for Azkaban.
Alfred Hitchcock: The Birds, North By N…Oh hell, never mind. I really don’t belong in this thread.
All right, I can only take so much clog bashing. 
Actually, I mostly agree with you that De Bont’s directing attempts so far have been pretty unimpressive. But he gets a massive pass because of Speed, IMHO. That was a 100% good action flick as far as I’m concerned.
I was going to add a wiseass remark how Jan de Bont at least wasn’t responsible for the horrible sequal, Speed 2, but a quick glance at IMDB proved me wrong. Holy moly, he really directed that as well?? :eek:
And don’t forget the completely unnecessary Tomb Raider 2 (which I actually didn’t see but severely doubt was any good).
But don’t worry, though, I may detest De Bont, but I’m also one of THOSE people who think Verhoeven is a misunderstood genius and visionary. Unfortuantely, his reach sometimes exceeds his grasp so he’s had a few spectacular failures, but the quality and quantity of his good stuff far outweighs the bad.
He’s still an asshole, though.
The funny thing about him is that whenever he’s on Dutch TV, he speaks with an unbelievably exagerated American accent in his Dutch. So I figured, “OK, seems a little fake, but what the hell, he’s been living in LA so long, perhaps his English is fluent and his Dutch had to suffer”.
Imagine my surprise when I caught him on US television. His English/American accent is dreadful! So he’s a hack both ways, in that regard. Pompous ass. 
That’s what appeals to me about his movies. He clearly loves to fuck around with people which makes him an asshole in real life but also makes his movies audacious with deceptive outward appearances. There’s often a lot going on beneath the surface of his seemingly campy movies.
From the New York Times Magazine, December 2, 2005.
Does Mr Smithee have any defenders here? I haven’t seen many of his movies, but nothing there sticks out as something I should have seen.
It wasn’t bad, actually: much better than the turgid first instalment, and it actually went a long way to capturing the feel of the games. I’d even go out on a limb and say that it was the most successful game to movie transition so far - not that the competition is stiff, admittedly, but it was a good James Bond/Indiana Jones style popcorn action flick that did what it said on the tin.
Psst, it was kind of a joke; there’s no such person.
wow, 2 pages and not one mention of Gus Van Sant? His movies are PAINFULLY bad. I mean, he throws in shots of absolutely nothing that go on and on and on like a bad joke. His Kurt Cobain movie had the shot of a grassy side of a hill that was still going even after I got up to go to the bathroom and make a sandwich.
oh, and need I even mention the Psycho remake?
McG. Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle was one of the worst (if not the worst) movie I have ever seen. I see he is filming the Hot Wheels movie. He seems to be a good choice.
Well I guess I got the whoosh award for '05 all sewn up now. I’d like to thank the Academy…
Yes, but most of the others are easy to kill. You, on the other hand, keep coming back like the villain from an '80s teen slasher flick.
(I kid! I kid! Some of my best friends are villains from '80s teen slasher flicks!)
I’ve also got to disagree with Case Sensitive about the second Tomb Raider movie. This is a film where Angelina Jolie is standing on a fire escape, and protects herself from machinegun fire by ducking behind the wrough-iron hand railing of the escape! One of the stupidest movies I’ve ever seen. Although, to be fair, I’ve never seen the original.
(You could also argue that making a really stupid Tomb Raider movie is just being faithful to the source material, but that’s an entirely different discussion.)
I’d nominate M. Night Shyamalan and Tim Burton for the “most overrated” category, since I see them both as essentially one-trick ponies (Ed Wood was the one exception).
As far as Soderbergh, I thought Traffic sucked (and I do like movies, omniscient) - too preachy by half; it would have been about a million times better without the hackneyed Michael Douglas and his daughter storyline; the rest of his big Hollywood movies I can take or leave, but Schizopolis is one of my absolute favorite films, and completely sui generis.