Tarantino is definitely one of my favourite directors, but Death Proof was pretty much quality-free. Bizarre storyline, even more pointless violence than usual, and he seems to have forgotten to add an ending.
Spielberg - Hook. I’ve tried watching it twice, and never made it past 45 minutes or so. Just so dull. Of the ones I made it all the way through, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Disclaimer: I haven’t seen Crystal Skull.
Hitchcock- I know I’ve seen Torn Curtain, but I don’t remember a single thing about it. I guess I’ll go with that one. At least I remember a few scenes from Family Plot.
Richard Lester - Love both Beatles movies (yes, even “Help”- if you watch it expecting a goofy 60s comedy that just happens to have Beatles cameos instead of expecting A Hard Day’s Night 2, it works pretty well - and it’s still way better than Magical Mystery Tour), enjoyed “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (never saw the play); loved the Musketeers adaptations, and at the age of 15 enjoyed “Superman II”. (I’m kind of afraid to rewatch it to see whether or not it holds up.) But what the hell happened with Superman III? That was awful.
Ridley Scott - “Prometheus”
It’s a weird one. I just watched it the other day after not seeing it since it came out. It has some good elements - Dustin Hoffman is pretty good as Hook, the kids are great, Maggie Smith is wonderful - but then there are bits that are just wrong in a way that’s hard to pin down.
Robin Williams is clearly really enjoying being a big kid but it sometimes comes across as messed up rather than just a man playing at being a kid for a movie role. Young Wendy is played by young Gwyneth Paltrow, aged about 20 and looking older than 20, but we’re supposed to believe she was a Victorian twelve-year-old. Maggie Smith, made up to look like she’s 90 (nearly 30 years ago), kisses adult Peter, looking about 40, who was briefly her adopted child when he was 12, which is what she’s thinking of when she kisses him. Rufio, one of the main child characters, actually dies, and it’s brushed off and ignored.
For a story that’s partly about aging, youth, fighting death, it really messed up all of those. It just had a ship and pirates.
That’s all the second half of the movie, so you didn’t miss out.
Sure you do. Paul Newman and a woman killing a guy by forcing his head into an oven and turning on the gas…? The scene is kind of unforgettable, although I sometimes forget that it’s from that film.
Someone mentioned Marnie upthread. That’s actually a better choice for Hitchcock IMO.
For Spielberg, how about 1941?
I haven’t seen “Hook” and “1941”, and “Crystal Skulls” was exceptionally bad for a beloved franchise, but the biggest stinker I’ve seen by Spielberg was “War Of The Worlds”. Nothing but screaming teenagers and everyone uselessly running around and acting stupid. And it’s even more aggravating because the source novel is such a classic.
:biting my tongue:
It’s hard to think of any director who has made enough good films to be worth calling a favorite. All of them seem to do about two, maybe three solid films and then they either get bland or boring. When someone has made a dozen sort of stupid films (e.g., Dark Shadows, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc., Prometheus, Robin Hood, etc.) it feels like it’s not really worth raising one to be the worst of the bunch.
Kubrick and David Lynch are probably the only two who have stayed somewhat consistent but Kubrick’s good films tend not to be something that I would want to watch more than once or twice so, even though I wouldn’t say that I would really want to watch Lynch’s films all that often either but I suppose that he would have to be “my favorite” when we consider that he’s the only person with a small enough of sheer duds.
I haven’t seen it but, by all accounts, Inland Empire isn’t good. I have seen The Straight Story. It wasn’t great, but it was fine, so I’ll have to say Inland Empire since I can’t nominate Twin Peaks 2.
As an honorable mention, David Fincher did come back from bland-land with Gone Girl (though, he may have been saved by the choice of script) putting him up to about 3.5 properly good films. I would definitely put down Benjamin Button as his worst but I haven’t seen The Social Network.
My favorite directors have modtly been taken, so let me choose Brian de Palma, many of whose films I really like.
from all accounts, his film adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities was abysmal, panned critically and a failure at the box office. So bad, in fact, that an entire book was written about how it went wrong (The Devil’s Candy, by Julie Salomon).
But I haven’t seen that movie (although I’ve read the book), so I can’t honestly say that’s the worst of his that I’ve seen.
That honor would have to go to The Fury, in which de Palma goes back to the telekinesis well he’d visited with Carrie, but this time basing his film on a book by John Farris rather than by Stephen King. But even having Kirk Douglas – Kirk freakin’ Douglas! – and Amy Irving from Carrie (who gets the Sissy Spacek role this time) couldn’t save this film. It’s awful. You don’t see anybody remaking this film, or trying to turn it into a stage musical.
I saw “The Fury” a year ago. I’m a fan of Kirk Douglas (and a bigger fan of John Cassavetes) and I wanted something “easy”, and man, it was really bad. I made the same mistake with Gregory Peck in “The Omen”
Shutter Island by Martin Scorsese. Not terrible, but a pretty big letdown.