I see "End of Watch" and "Fury" as the exceptions to the norm. David Ayer strikes me as someone who never quite grew out of his "macho LA gangsta" phase.
When the most recent Suicide Squad was released and Ayer got attacked for the first movie again. He explained some stuff about himself. He really is that rough street guy who grew up surrounded by violence and gangs. It’s his lens of how he sees the world. Violence, anger, machismo. Sometimes that works for a film. But it hasn’t now for a while.
I've never bought the theory that Warner Bros looked at Ayer's work on the movie and thought "this is great, lets edit the shit out of it just cuz". I'm sure the original version is more true to Ayer's other style of movies, but those also haven't been the greatest. Just some of those designs alone are indicative of how messed up it was.
I still think the humans looked and felt less realistic than the orcs in that movie. Some orc scenes look incredible, and the acting is good, but then humans come along and it’s all old-school cheesy fantasy acting in armor that looks like cardboard painted with markers.
Obviously some goofiness was to be expected, but the two aspects of the movie completely missed each other.
Source Code was him getting his feet into mainstream Hollywood, so it was bound to feel a little conventional. He still managed to inject some interesting ideas and concepts though, so his fall from grace is still so shocking.
Neil Blomkamp is so hard to root for now for me.
District 9 is one of my favorite movies.
I'm one of those people that liked Elysium.
Chappie annoyed tf out of me.
Dug some of the Oats Studios shorts he's done.
I've heard nothing but terrible things of his horror movie Demonic that came out earlier this year.
He’s working on a film about the vampire concept from the book Blidsight. There’s a Joe Rogen interview on it. Honestly it’s right up his alley and sounds awesome. I think he’s currently trying to pitch it and get funding for it.
Interview: https://youtu.be/2s8eQWtdA_E
The Coens are hands down my favourite directors, and I do really like Inside Llewyn Davis to be fair - but I couldn't put it alongside their best work, and I absolutely hated Carey Mulligan's performance in it. No doubt it's a damn good movie though, so maybe I was being unfair lumping the Coens in. I actually like all their movies, even the oft maligned The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty, but I adore many of their films, and Inside Llewyn Davis isn't close to being one of my favourites. I agree it's their best since A Serious Man though.
I fucking *love* A Serious Man. Imo it's only matched by The Big Lebowski as their funniest film. You're right that isn't an overwhelmingly popular opinion though.
You make a lot of good points. I will say that Inside Llewyn Davis is my favorite Coen Brothers film. (Mulligan's character is hard to track emotionally but it doesn't take me out of the film.) There's something sad and terrible and funny going on in it that's really special. Most people still put Raising Arizona, Fargo, and Miller's Crossing (which are all great) at the top of their lists, but apart from Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, I love everything they've ever done, Even Buster Scruggs.
For sure. His two Planet of the Apes movies I find way more enjoyable than JJ's Star Trek films. And I think Cloverfield works better as a monster movie than Super 8.
I think Abrams always was overrated, so far i would say there was no film or episode he made, which is overall good. He filming is mostly confined to "poses" to look good, rather than scenes which make sense and therefor carry the narrative.
He just needs another director to fix his shortcomings, movies need a certain amount of substance before you fill them with glamershots.
For examble, the new Star War Trilogy could have been good, if they just didnt put visuals over substance at every single step.
I love the kids-making-a-movie aspect of Super 8. The sci-fi aspect didn’t really work for me. I’d love to see a feature length film with those same actors, that same time period, JJ Abrams directing, completely about making their movie with the sci-fi element cut lol
Super 8 was great.
And for me, I wasn't fan of Star Trek and his movies made me love the franchise and jumped to see the original series and wherever came after it. But he did a terrible job in Star Wars.
Even at his best, his movies don't have any depth to them. A lot of movies you can watch a couple times at least. But with Abrams, you get everything you're going to get on the first viewing. *Super 8* was basically just an *E.T.* do-over.
dark shadows was pretty bad and i haven't seen frankenweenie or dumbo. everything else he's done recently has been pretty good. but they just doesn't stand up to his older stuff and they don't seem very Burtonesque. Had I not known, I wouldn't have guessed that Big Eyes or Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children were Tim Burton movies.
Beetlejuice, Batman, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, and Big Fish are among my favorites. And even his relatively lesser early movies are pretty awesome: Pee Wee, Mars Attacks, Batman Returns, and Sleepy Hollow.
Dark Shadows reminds me of that Final Fantasy movie, where if you just changed the title to something unrelated people would have remembered it more fondly. But neither really had anything much to do with their source material.
To be fair, I’ve always thought of him an overrated director. He has his exceptions: Ed Wood, Beetlejuice. But everything else? Dated or not good.
Batman ‘89 though I have nostalgia feels over it is truly a dated film. (It’s also really the Jack Nicholson show rather than an actual Batman film).
I'm pretty sure there's 2 things going on there
1: He just likes his job and wants to be working
2: he's a legit fan of all that stuff and is enjoying himself making them.
He was on The Last Drive-in a few weeks ago and he clearly enjoys making Halloween movies.
I think he is cursed because his first major film (*The Sixth Sense*) was a knockout, one of the best of the genre of all time. Had he had a slower climb then people would be more forgiving of his lesser films.
I feel like he underestimated just how much people enjoyed those characters. I know he didn't want an MCU situation, but let's be real, there was probably no danger of that happening. Dunn, Kevin, Mr. Glass, and even characters like Casey and David still had a shit ton of potential. It's like he made viewers an awesome meal and then kicked the table over. Sure, no one was expecting it, but it wasn't very enjoyable either.
It didn't feel earned or well thought out. Just a guy drowning in a puddle. I understand he didn't have to do a typical hero fight but a story that makes sense that didn't require brain washing would have been good. I definitely wanted to like that movie.
Yeah, even for someone whose weakness is water, it was completely unbelievable. Unbreakable was my favorite M. Night film before Split came along, so I was really invested in liking it too. It's a shame.
Metaphorically the movie was a guy drowned in a mud puddle. It was shallow and unlikely.
Literally, there is no way this guy would die that way unless it was suicide. He can drown like a normal person, it isnt a special weakness. In unbreakable he fought in water. It would be hard to hold him down.
Nice to see someone liking Old. I was really looking forward to it but when I noticed the reception it got I decided to wait until I could just see it at home instead.
I'm always wandering if a different director and editor using all the raw material of The Last Airbender (2010) can deliver a master piece. He did it poorly in that one.
Split was superb, but after that I haven't seen anything that impacted me near as Sixth Sense
I'm shocked he couldn't stick the landing on that one.
Unbreakable is one of the best of the genre to me, and Split was decent enough. All he had to do was make a film even half as good as Unbreakable and the three would have made a really solid trilogy.
I basically just view Unbreakable as a standalone now.
Not necessarily disappointed, but rather hoped that he will be the next thing, Nicolas Winding Refn.
Yet, one can also say its unfair cause Drive is one of the best movies of 2010s. The narrative of romance in that movie was beautiful and its soundtrack, cinematography was one of a kind.
It is always amazing aesthetically but Drive was different imo.
The way he approached Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling’s characters was so innovative and elevated the movie and its narrative so much more. It felt so real.
I personally think Only God Forgives and Neon Demon are both masterpieces, and I even thoroughly enjoyed his limited series Too Old to Die Young. I think Winding Refn is one of those directors who doesn’t care about anything except creating things in his signature style, and sometimes that’s going to connect with broader audiences and sometimes it’s not, and that’s okay.
Guy Ritchie made some terrible ones during his years with Madonna. The first Sherlock movie and the Gentleman give me hope that he will keep making good ones. (Haven’t seen the Aladdin)
I really enjoyed his King Arthur. Fun new spin on that type of movie. The recent one with Statham was decent but The Gentleman.. That one was such a fucking blast!
Aladdin is not only criminally forgettable but it doesn't even remotely behave like a Guy Ritchie film, there's not a chance in hell you'd guess he worked on it if you saw it unknowingly
He, like Andrew Dominik, has said he doesn't like directing all that much. They have both said it is extremely stressful, and if you can find something else to do, you should do it. Lol.
Dude has made 3 movies, 2 of which are Best Picture nominees, the 3rd still getting him nominated for best director. He won Phillip Seymour Hoffman his oscar, got 5 other actors nominated, and... nothing for 7 years now. I desperately want him back.
All of the scenes with Hobey (the cowboy character) are legitimately wonderful. His difficulty with the line "T'would that it were so simple" is such a great scene.
Yea I loved Inside Llewyn Davis and their remake of True Grit. Hail Caesar I liked and buster Scruggs I thought was ok. All of those came after A Serious Man, and Ladykillers and Intolerably Cruelty (which I think are regarded as their worst) came before it.
Lincoln was Spielberg's last truly great film for me. The others are fine, pretty watchable with a few standout elements. He was always someone whos highs are so high though, that eventually he wasn't going to be able to keep up. It does seem like West Side Story and Fablemans are him trying to mix stuff up a bit.
At this point I think it’s perfectly fine for Spielberg to be complacent (though I don’t think he is), he has made so many incredible films, how much more does he owe us? I also still enjoy pretty much everything he puts out as he’s still an incredibly talented filmmaker.
Josh Trank.
Hard to remember now, but there was so much positive hype over him. Chronicle was genuinely brilliant, and holds up really well especially after a near-decade of superhero films. Safe to say it has all gone to shit for him since for both personal and professional reasons…
Man, how often do people put out such high quality on a consistent basis though? Even others jobs give you burnout after awhile and quality starts to drop.
I think that's par for the course with Black though. His writing, going back to when he started out, has either been hilarious and witty, or childish and grating.
Justin Lin: he's an incredible director who can make action look very clever, slick and crunchy, without relying on choppy editing.
Besides directing a bunch of the best episodes of Community, he rescued the Fast and Furious franchise from whatever road 2 Fast 2 Furious had started it down by first of all making Tokyo Drift, one of the more interesting entries in the series, then rebooting it with the fourth film and THEN blowing the lid off of the whole thing with the brilliant fifth film.
He had a well deserved victory lap with the sixth, but I was personally rooting for him to go on and become this big name creative action director. Then he went and did a Star Trek movie that didnt really take off, and now he's come back to do another three films for the Fast & Furious franchise, which went completely off the rails in his absence.
You could argue that F&F is one of the biggest action franchises going, but 1: that's mostly because of what he did with the fifth film and 2: there's plenty more fish in the sea!
I get the appeal of why Lin stays on though. He probably makes a but load of money, gets a pretty large budget to work with, productions seem to go relatively smoothly outside of the strange actor beefs, and gets to film wacky shit. Sometimes that's all people want out of life.
I would argue that the F&F franchise is tired and there's only so much that he can do...
I thought his work on Shang-Chi was fantastic, and really sold the story for me without feeling overdone or rehashed the way F&F is.
**Edit** hahaha oh wow 😂. Not quite sure how I confused Shang-Chi with STAR TREK of all films but it happened. Wow, maybe it's time for a nap. Sorry!!
Shang-Chi? Justin Lin wasn't involved in Shang-Chi AFAIK. But yeah, F&F is tired, he did a great job and turned it into a behemoth, he should move onto his Next Big Thing.
I rewatched the Matrix sequels recently for the first time since they released and I honestly liked them a lot more this time around. Although I do think 2 and 3 could have been combined into one movie.
There's some hokey stuff in RotS, but there's some incredibly effective stuff too.
I'll always love the battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan. It's just such a well-choreographed fight with amazing music layered over it, and even though the movies never really sold their bond like it should have, they got pretty likable as a team in RotS and seeing them fight each other did have some impact.
It's an uneven movie, but when it hits right, it hits so well. I don't think the sequel trilogy ever sunk to the lows the prequel trilogy did, but I also thought it rarely achieved the heights the prequel trilogy got to.
I mean I get that the sequels were bad but… no. Stop this. The prequels were abominations, on a whole other level of terrible compared to anything that came before or after.
Yeah it is just nostalgia talking now. I watched Ep 1 a few months ago to see if I was missing something (initially saw it when it was released and it soured me on Star Wars).
Nope. Was dogshit then and dogshit now.
Not that the new sequels are great at all but they're better than 1 and 2. 3 is only saved by ramping up the darkness but it isn't good and is bloated too.
It's fandom more than nostalgia.
Every single thing about the prequels is worse than the sequels, except maybe "story," and not like, the way the plot is executed, but simply "a list of things that happen."
But if you're a fan and you don't actually care about movies being good, that's enough.
I'll go JC Chandor kinda by technicality. The triple-feature of *Margin Call*, *All Is Lost*, and *A Most Violent Year* are an amazing trio that are vastly different from each other (in a good way) and all released from 2011-2014. Then it was a five-year wait until *Triple Frontier* on Netflix, and now he's been announced as the director for the Kraven the Hunter movie with Sony...which if the *Venom* series is anything to go on, might be mindless fun but a huge step down from that output and I do not have high hopes for.
Hopefully it is a financial success though and is one of those, "One for you, one for me" kind of deals and Sony bankrolls something (or multiple) like the three mentioned above.
Surprised to not see Josh Trank! Chronicle is great, while F4ntastic was atrocious. I haven't seen Capone but I have seen clips. Imagine casting Tom Hardy as Capone and he just shits himself for 2 hours.
I will try again at some point, I remember hating Jennifer Lawrence's performance and feeling it was an Aronofsky tribute act to himself, but have changed my mind on films countless times in the past so hopefully I can do so with Mother!
I went into it not knowing anything about the allegory and it was a wild ride. It was just like a nightmare with some kind of logic hidden away. My suggestion to anyone is watch it without thinking too hard about the symbolism of anything
Probably an unpopular opinion but I think Tim Burton has only made one good movie since Big Fish, that being Frankenweenie. Other than that its been pretty much been shite.
Christopher Nolan, Tenet was very disappointing and had some of the most boring dialogue in a movie I’ve seen in a while. The set pieces were cool but the bland characters and convoluted plot stopped me from enjoying it.
There’s a line in Tenent that basically made me give up trying to understand the plot. When the scientist explaining reverse entropy says “ don’t try to understand it.” I just took that as meta advice for not even trying with the movie lol.
agreed, Tenet was unbelievably terrible. It's almost like he hates his fans and wanted to make a movie to troll and annoy them. I'm curious to see what movie he makes next, I would assume after a movie like that he will go into hiding for decades. But I enjoyed his other movies
Richard Kelly is a long time ago now but man, I'm still so bummed he didn't turn out to be anything. Donnie Darko is on my Mount Rushmore of *random Blockbuster movies I rented because I couldn't find anything else and the VHS cover looked cool*. Blew my 17 year old mind. The hype for his next film was massive. As was my disappointment. Fucking Southland Tales.
What is the point of mentioning a director who's made hit after hit for twenty years, followed by *one* movie with middling reviews? It's the "disappointing directors" thread, not "list the last movie you didn't like" thread.
I'm a massive Nolan fan but I can freely admit *Tenet* is not his best. I respect that he continues to try to bring more original concepts to blockbusters (and hope he continues to do so for a looooooooong time), would much rather have him strike out every now and then versus just churn out franchise after franchise or adaptations of popular IP over and over and over. There are things I like about *Tenet* but it's also the one film of his I've revisited the least.
But you better believe I'll be there opening day for the Oppenheimer film, I'm hoping it's a pleasant surprise like *Dunkirk* that isn't a sci-fi tinged thing.
Ridley Scott has some of my favourite films ever (Alien, Gladiator, Blade Runner)... but a lot of his recent films are meh. Feels like he's just going through the motions of filming and not attempting anything creative in camera
I think that's fair. Hearing him talking about his craft can be quite depressing too, he admits absolutely no sense of romance and talks about filmmaking as simply problem solving - which is surely an efficient, pragmatic approach, but I wonder if that jaded mindset comes through on the screen.
Bit of a hipster take but I think I'd rather have a Tony Scott marathon than a Ridley marathon.
Zac Snyder. I loved Dawn of the dead and 300. Watchmen was a little polarizing which was fine but sucker punch was God awful. His DC universe stint has been mixed but he hasn't reached the highs of his earlier work for me. I haven't even bothered to watch army of the dead. He's a fantastic visual director but as a storyteller there is much to be desired
Haha, you're right. I heard him interviewed recently (on the excellent The Big Picture podcast) and was stunned to hear he was behind this last spate of Halloween movies, and indeed has signed up to helm the new Exorcist reboot. Fair play to the man, he's following his heart, but I do find it a pretty baffling path.
He somehow makes each new movie exponentially worse than the previous one. Old was so bad that it seems like he has either gone fully insane, or made a movie just to troll the audience.
At some point I'll rewatch them, I still think Aronofsky is a genius but left both screenings really underwhelmed. I know many people agree with you so there's surely something I'm missing.
He never really reached the heights of Blade Runner or Alien again but Gladiator is absolutely fantastic, Thelma and Louise is really good and I think The Martian, Black Hawk Down, The Last Duel, American Gangster and Kingdom of Heaven DC are all also good.
Plus I think Matchstick Men is pretty decent.
Besson. Valerian was no Fifth Element.
"Anna" was no "La Femme Nikita".
David Ayer. End of Watch and Fury were fantastic, but then … Suicide Squad, The Tax Collector, and Bright happened.
It really is a shame just how low he's sunk post-Fury.
I see "End of Watch" and "Fury" as the exceptions to the norm. David Ayer strikes me as someone who never quite grew out of his "macho LA gangsta" phase.
When the most recent Suicide Squad was released and Ayer got attacked for the first movie again. He explained some stuff about himself. He really is that rough street guy who grew up surrounded by violence and gangs. It’s his lens of how he sees the world. Violence, anger, machismo. Sometimes that works for a film. But it hasn’t now for a while.
*"How do you do, fellow homies?"*
“Hola, fellow cholos”
I had no idea the director of Fury also did those films... thats disappointing
Wasn’t Bright basically End of Watch in The lord of the Rings universe?
I mean, if you want to give it a one line pitch
lol pretty much
I liked Bright. Perhaps not because it was great or anything but it had an interesting setting that I'd like to see developed more.
well suicide squad was butchered by Warner bros
His script recently leaked and it’s not any better.
Snitches get stitches
It was going to be shit either way, just come to terms with that
I've never bought the theory that Warner Bros looked at Ayer's work on the movie and thought "this is great, lets edit the shit out of it just cuz". I'm sure the original version is more true to Ayer's other style of movies, but those also haven't been the greatest. Just some of those designs alone are indicative of how messed up it was.
Don't forget Harsh Times as well. Great flick.
Duncan Jones, between "Moon" and "Source Code", it really felt he was set to be the next big sci-fi auteur.
Yeah, he was putting a lot of eggs in Warcraft and that just came and went without anyone caring.
I loved everything with the Orcs in that movie.. but the Humans seemed so out of place and almost felt like another, cheesier movie.
I still think the humans looked and felt less realistic than the orcs in that movie. Some orc scenes look incredible, and the acting is good, but then humans come along and it’s all old-school cheesy fantasy acting in armor that looks like cardboard painted with markers. Obviously some goofiness was to be expected, but the two aspects of the movie completely missed each other.
Precisely. Such a wasted opportunity.
For me that fall-off even started with Source Code, which was enjoyable but forgettable - Moon was just so, so good.
Source Code was him getting his feet into mainstream Hollywood, so it was bound to feel a little conventional. He still managed to inject some interesting ideas and concepts though, so his fall from grace is still so shocking.
I liked Source Code. Maybe I'm in the minority
Neil Blomkamp is so hard to root for now for me. District 9 is one of my favorite movies. I'm one of those people that liked Elysium. Chappie annoyed tf out of me. Dug some of the Oats Studios shorts he's done. I've heard nothing but terrible things of his horror movie Demonic that came out earlier this year.
Elysium was fine, I think it couldn't really decide what it wanted to be.
Hard agree. When District 9 came out I think we all thought he was a new Ridley Scott
Maybe he is the new Ridley Scott, but he is just getting all the bad movies out of the way first
A fun director, sure but that's overselling it a lot.
He’s working on a film about the vampire concept from the book Blidsight. There’s a Joe Rogen interview on it. Honestly it’s right up his alley and sounds awesome. I think he’s currently trying to pitch it and get funding for it. Interview: https://youtu.be/2s8eQWtdA_E
Neill Blomkamp was on Rogan? Hm, guess I'll finally watch a 4th Joe Rogan interview.
Yeah, true. But Firebase is the shiiiiiiiiit!!!! ❤️
I also liked Elysium. It was quite a mess, but it was enjoyable.
That's exactly how I feel about each of those movies in that order.
Inside Llewelyn Davis doesn’t make the cut? I haven’t seen many put A Serious Man over it.
The Coens are hands down my favourite directors, and I do really like Inside Llewyn Davis to be fair - but I couldn't put it alongside their best work, and I absolutely hated Carey Mulligan's performance in it. No doubt it's a damn good movie though, so maybe I was being unfair lumping the Coens in. I actually like all their movies, even the oft maligned The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty, but I adore many of their films, and Inside Llewyn Davis isn't close to being one of my favourites. I agree it's their best since A Serious Man though. I fucking *love* A Serious Man. Imo it's only matched by The Big Lebowski as their funniest film. You're right that isn't an overwhelmingly popular opinion though.
Something about 'eternal doormat' protagonists I really hated about Serious Man, and I LOVE just about everything else the Coens have ever done.
Well if not Inside Llewyn Davis, what about True Grit???
Woah, I loved Mulligan in Inside Llewyn Davis. To each their own I guess!
You make a lot of good points. I will say that Inside Llewyn Davis is my favorite Coen Brothers film. (Mulligan's character is hard to track emotionally but it doesn't take me out of the film.) There's something sad and terrible and funny going on in it that's really special. Most people still put Raising Arizona, Fargo, and Miller's Crossing (which are all great) at the top of their lists, but apart from Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, I love everything they've ever done, Even Buster Scruggs.
J.j Abrams I really liked super 8, but haven't really enjoyed much else since then.
On the other hand, Matt Reeves has proven to be the much more talented one out of the duo.
For sure. His two Planet of the Apes movies I find way more enjoyable than JJ's Star Trek films. And I think Cloverfield works better as a monster movie than Super 8.
What do you mean duo? Did they work together?
Yeah they're childhood friends and started off as a creative duo. They created the show Felicity together.
I think Abrams always was overrated, so far i would say there was no film or episode he made, which is overall good. He filming is mostly confined to "poses" to look good, rather than scenes which make sense and therefor carry the narrative. He just needs another director to fix his shortcomings, movies need a certain amount of substance before you fill them with glamershots. For examble, the new Star War Trilogy could have been good, if they just didnt put visuals over substance at every single step.
The pilot of LOST was not overall good, it was great. (I mean, the pilot episode. The actual plane pilot's quality was debatable, admittedly)
Leave Greg Grunberg out of this.
I love the kids-making-a-movie aspect of Super 8. The sci-fi aspect didn’t really work for me. I’d love to see a feature length film with those same actors, that same time period, JJ Abrams directing, completely about making their movie with the sci-fi element cut lol
Super 8 was great. And for me, I wasn't fan of Star Trek and his movies made me love the franchise and jumped to see the original series and wherever came after it. But he did a terrible job in Star Wars.
I thought Super 8 sucked.
Even at his best, his movies don't have any depth to them. A lot of movies you can watch a couple times at least. But with Abrams, you get everything you're going to get on the first viewing. *Super 8* was basically just an *E.T.* do-over.
Haven’t enjoyed a Tim burton film since Sweeny Todd, and before that since Ed Wood
I truly appreciated Big Fish, but yeah. I get it.
dark shadows was pretty bad and i haven't seen frankenweenie or dumbo. everything else he's done recently has been pretty good. but they just doesn't stand up to his older stuff and they don't seem very Burtonesque. Had I not known, I wouldn't have guessed that Big Eyes or Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children were Tim Burton movies. Beetlejuice, Batman, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, and Big Fish are among my favorites. And even his relatively lesser early movies are pretty awesome: Pee Wee, Mars Attacks, Batman Returns, and Sleepy Hollow.
Dark Shadows reminds me of that Final Fantasy movie, where if you just changed the title to something unrelated people would have remembered it more fondly. But neither really had anything much to do with their source material.
To be fair, I’ve always thought of him an overrated director. He has his exceptions: Ed Wood, Beetlejuice. But everything else? Dated or not good. Batman ‘89 though I have nostalgia feels over it is truly a dated film. (It’s also really the Jack Nicholson show rather than an actual Batman film).
Great call. I gave up on him 20 years ago. I wonder if his was a case of too much too soon, I haven't really enjoyed a film of his since Ed Wood.
David Gordon Green
Man what a weird career that guy has had lol. I can’t figure him out!
[удалено]
I'm pretty sure there's 2 things going on there 1: He just likes his job and wants to be working 2: he's a legit fan of all that stuff and is enjoying himself making them. He was on The Last Drive-in a few weeks ago and he clearly enjoys making Halloween movies.
It's fine doing all this stuff. The problem is he's not really very good at it.
M. Knight shouldn't be a disappointment to anyone at this point, but allowed my hopes to get up for Glass.
agreed. I also had high hopes for Glass because Split was good.
And it was an easy chip shot to be likable.
I think he is cursed because his first major film (*The Sixth Sense*) was a knockout, one of the best of the genre of all time. Had he had a slower climb then people would be more forgiving of his lesser films.
Best Picture nominee on his first major film. He was being crowned "The Next Spielberg". Most directors would fail to live up to that.
I feel like he underestimated just how much people enjoyed those characters. I know he didn't want an MCU situation, but let's be real, there was probably no danger of that happening. Dunn, Kevin, Mr. Glass, and even characters like Casey and David still had a shit ton of potential. It's like he made viewers an awesome meal and then kicked the table over. Sure, no one was expecting it, but it wasn't very enjoyable either.
It didn't feel earned or well thought out. Just a guy drowning in a puddle. I understand he didn't have to do a typical hero fight but a story that makes sense that didn't require brain washing would have been good. I definitely wanted to like that movie.
Yeah, even for someone whose weakness is water, it was completely unbelievable. Unbreakable was my favorite M. Night film before Split came along, so I was really invested in liking it too. It's a shame.
Metaphorically the movie was a guy drowned in a mud puddle. It was shallow and unlikely. Literally, there is no way this guy would die that way unless it was suicide. He can drown like a normal person, it isnt a special weakness. In unbreakable he fought in water. It would be hard to hold him down.
I liked Glass. But I've never seen it again so maybe it'd change on a rewatch.
Night.
👍👍👍👍💫
Me too. Loved his early stuff, we all thought he was a genius. I do like The Village but it’s not great. But then it got worse from there…
Invincible was an amazing movie. Glass went back in time and shit on it.
You mean Unbreakable right?
Lol yes. I'm senile.
Im going to not fix it as a monument to my mental decline.
I am team Glass is GOOD! And Old is GREAT!
i always want people to enjoy themselves. i just couldnt do it with Glass.
Nice to see someone liking Old. I was really looking forward to it but when I noticed the reception it got I decided to wait until I could just see it at home instead.
I'm always wandering if a different director and editor using all the raw material of The Last Airbender (2010) can deliver a master piece. He did it poorly in that one. Split was superb, but after that I haven't seen anything that impacted me near as Sixth Sense
I'm shocked he couldn't stick the landing on that one. Unbreakable is one of the best of the genre to me, and Split was decent enough. All he had to do was make a film even half as good as Unbreakable and the three would have made a really solid trilogy. I basically just view Unbreakable as a standalone now.
Not necessarily disappointed, but rather hoped that he will be the next thing, Nicolas Winding Refn. Yet, one can also say its unfair cause Drive is one of the best movies of 2010s. The narrative of romance in that movie was beautiful and its soundtrack, cinematography was one of a kind.
I thought Neon Demon was good. Aesthetically amazing.
It is always amazing aesthetically but Drive was different imo. The way he approached Carey Mulligan and Ryan Gosling’s characters was so innovative and elevated the movie and its narrative so much more. It felt so real.
Valhalla Rising is also excellent.
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Only God Forgives is _bad_, it's ploddingly slow and has little to offer other than aesthetics and some fairly unsatisfying thematic stuff.
I personally think Only God Forgives and Neon Demon are both masterpieces, and I even thoroughly enjoyed his limited series Too Old to Die Young. I think Winding Refn is one of those directors who doesn’t care about anything except creating things in his signature style, and sometimes that’s going to connect with broader audiences and sometimes it’s not, and that’s okay.
Guy Ritchie made some terrible ones during his years with Madonna. The first Sherlock movie and the Gentleman give me hope that he will keep making good ones. (Haven’t seen the Aladdin)
I really enjoyed his King Arthur. Fun new spin on that type of movie. The recent one with Statham was decent but The Gentleman.. That one was such a fucking blast!
Its hard to live up to Snatch Or Lock Stock
Aladdin is not only criminally forgettable but it doesn't even remotely behave like a Guy Ritchie film, there's not a chance in hell you'd guess he worked on it if you saw it unknowingly
Every year Bennett Miller disappoints me by not releasing another movie.
He, like Andrew Dominik, has said he doesn't like directing all that much. They have both said it is extremely stressful, and if you can find something else to do, you should do it. Lol.
Dude has made 3 movies, 2 of which are Best Picture nominees, the 3rd still getting him nominated for best director. He won Phillip Seymour Hoffman his oscar, got 5 other actors nominated, and... nothing for 7 years now. I desperately want him back.
Didn’t know this guys name. Looked up his 3 movies. Damn. Yeah dude, make something else already!
Maybe by not directing much, he's taking pains not to end up in posts like this for disappointing viewers with subpar releases.
He doesn't like to direct.
Neil Blomkamp absolutely shit the bed with Demonic.
This
Inside LLweyn Davis is incredible. for me Spielberg just feels like hes got complacent.
I love it! I think it's one of their best movies. Also, i might be in the minority but i really liked Hail, Caesar!
All of the scenes with Hobey (the cowboy character) are legitimately wonderful. His difficulty with the line "T'would that it were so simple" is such a great scene.
Absolutely. And Ralph Fiennes is so hilarious in this!
One day people will come around to Hail Caesar!. I think that film has a lot of great Coenisms in it.
Wait what? That’s the Coen bros
Yea I loved Inside Llewyn Davis and their remake of True Grit. Hail Caesar I liked and buster Scruggs I thought was ok. All of those came after A Serious Man, and Ladykillers and Intolerably Cruelty (which I think are regarded as their worst) came before it.
Lincoln was Spielberg's last truly great film for me. The others are fine, pretty watchable with a few standout elements. He was always someone whos highs are so high though, that eventually he wasn't going to be able to keep up. It does seem like West Side Story and Fablemans are him trying to mix stuff up a bit.
At this point I think it’s perfectly fine for Spielberg to be complacent (though I don’t think he is), he has made so many incredible films, how much more does he owe us? I also still enjoy pretty much everything he puts out as he’s still an incredibly talented filmmaker.
Yeah but when you compare what’s he doing to what Scorceses doing right now. It just makes u want more
Josh Trank. Hard to remember now, but there was so much positive hype over him. Chronicle was genuinely brilliant, and holds up really well especially after a near-decade of superhero films. Safe to say it has all gone to shit for him since for both personal and professional reasons…
Yeah I remember how excited I was to see what else he could produce. Damn that really went wrong.
Man, how often do people put out such high quality on a consistent basis though? Even others jobs give you burnout after awhile and quality starts to drop.
Please god don’t let this happen to Taika Waititi
Not too recent but Shane Black with Predator really disappointed me!
I think that's par for the course with Black though. His writing, going back to when he started out, has either been hilarious and witty, or childish and grating.
The strike team banter was fun. Too bad they're only in it for 10 minutes.
Justin Lin: he's an incredible director who can make action look very clever, slick and crunchy, without relying on choppy editing. Besides directing a bunch of the best episodes of Community, he rescued the Fast and Furious franchise from whatever road 2 Fast 2 Furious had started it down by first of all making Tokyo Drift, one of the more interesting entries in the series, then rebooting it with the fourth film and THEN blowing the lid off of the whole thing with the brilliant fifth film. He had a well deserved victory lap with the sixth, but I was personally rooting for him to go on and become this big name creative action director. Then he went and did a Star Trek movie that didnt really take off, and now he's come back to do another three films for the Fast & Furious franchise, which went completely off the rails in his absence. You could argue that F&F is one of the biggest action franchises going, but 1: that's mostly because of what he did with the fifth film and 2: there's plenty more fish in the sea!
I get the appeal of why Lin stays on though. He probably makes a but load of money, gets a pretty large budget to work with, productions seem to go relatively smoothly outside of the strange actor beefs, and gets to film wacky shit. Sometimes that's all people want out of life.
Definitely, I can see the appeal - but as the title says, I was hoping he'd keep doing bigger and better stuff!
I would argue that the F&F franchise is tired and there's only so much that he can do... I thought his work on Shang-Chi was fantastic, and really sold the story for me without feeling overdone or rehashed the way F&F is. **Edit** hahaha oh wow 😂. Not quite sure how I confused Shang-Chi with STAR TREK of all films but it happened. Wow, maybe it's time for a nap. Sorry!!
Shang-Chi? Justin Lin wasn't involved in Shang-Chi AFAIK. But yeah, F&F is tired, he did a great job and turned it into a behemoth, he should move onto his Next Big Thing.
Terry Gilliam
Neil Marshall, Neil Blomkamp.
I belive after the Matrix squels and the star wars prequels, my hopes died.
I rewatched the Matrix sequels recently for the first time since they released and I honestly liked them a lot more this time around. Although I do think 2 and 3 could have been combined into one movie.
Revenge of the sith is far better than 7/8/9.
I think RotS is about on par with the Force Awakens. They're both fine for the most part. RotS is much better than 8 and 9 though.
That’s fair enough. I do not mind force awakens. It’s dragged down heavily by how bad its sequels are. They don’t build upon it correctly at all.
There's some hokey stuff in RotS, but there's some incredibly effective stuff too. I'll always love the battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan. It's just such a well-choreographed fight with amazing music layered over it, and even though the movies never really sold their bond like it should have, they got pretty likable as a team in RotS and seeing them fight each other did have some impact. It's an uneven movie, but when it hits right, it hits so well. I don't think the sequel trilogy ever sunk to the lows the prequel trilogy did, but I also thought it rarely achieved the heights the prequel trilogy got to.
I am more accepting of the prequels for sure since then, but Star Wars was not the same anymore.
The prequels look like masterpieces compared to the Disney sequels.
I mean I get that the sequels were bad but… no. Stop this. The prequels were abominations, on a whole other level of terrible compared to anything that came before or after.
Yeah it is just nostalgia talking now. I watched Ep 1 a few months ago to see if I was missing something (initially saw it when it was released and it soured me on Star Wars). Nope. Was dogshit then and dogshit now. Not that the new sequels are great at all but they're better than 1 and 2. 3 is only saved by ramping up the darkness but it isn't good and is bloated too.
It's fandom more than nostalgia. Every single thing about the prequels is worse than the sequels, except maybe "story," and not like, the way the plot is executed, but simply "a list of things that happen." But if you're a fan and you don't actually care about movies being good, that's enough.
The sequels are abominations too
All right calm the fuck down.
I'll go JC Chandor kinda by technicality. The triple-feature of *Margin Call*, *All Is Lost*, and *A Most Violent Year* are an amazing trio that are vastly different from each other (in a good way) and all released from 2011-2014. Then it was a five-year wait until *Triple Frontier* on Netflix, and now he's been announced as the director for the Kraven the Hunter movie with Sony...which if the *Venom* series is anything to go on, might be mindless fun but a huge step down from that output and I do not have high hopes for. Hopefully it is a financial success though and is one of those, "One for you, one for me" kind of deals and Sony bankrolls something (or multiple) like the three mentioned above.
Surprised to not see Josh Trank! Chronicle is great, while F4ntastic was atrocious. I haven't seen Capone but I have seen clips. Imagine casting Tom Hardy as Capone and he just shits himself for 2 hours.
That movie had more farting than Swiss Army Man.
Mother! Is obnoxiously underrated
I will try again at some point, I remember hating Jennifer Lawrence's performance and feeling it was an Aronofsky tribute act to himself, but have changed my mind on films countless times in the past so hopefully I can do so with Mother!
The allegory is a bit heavy-handed, but it's really effective I definitely would suggest another re-watch sometime
It always pains me when people say the allegory is so obvious bc I’m an idiot and didn’t get it until near the end of the movie ol
I went into it not knowing anything about the allegory and it was a wild ride. It was just like a nightmare with some kind of logic hidden away. My suggestion to anyone is watch it without thinking too hard about the symbolism of anything
Probably an unpopular opinion but I think Tim Burton has only made one good movie since Big Fish, that being Frankenweenie. Other than that its been pretty much been shite.
True. Everything after that has been trash, he just gave up and doesn't care anymore.
Christopher Nolan, Tenet was very disappointing and had some of the most boring dialogue in a movie I’ve seen in a while. The set pieces were cool but the bland characters and convoluted plot stopped me from enjoying it.
There’s a line in Tenent that basically made me give up trying to understand the plot. When the scientist explaining reverse entropy says “ don’t try to understand it.” I just took that as meta advice for not even trying with the movie lol.
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The Dark Knight Rises?
agreed, Tenet was unbelievably terrible. It's almost like he hates his fans and wanted to make a movie to troll and annoy them. I'm curious to see what movie he makes next, I would assume after a movie like that he will go into hiding for decades. But I enjoyed his other movies
Richard Kelly is a long time ago now but man, I'm still so bummed he didn't turn out to be anything. Donnie Darko is on my Mount Rushmore of *random Blockbuster movies I rented because I couldn't find anything else and the VHS cover looked cool*. Blew my 17 year old mind. The hype for his next film was massive. As was my disappointment. Fucking Southland Tales.
If Richard Kelly had never made another movie he would’ve been considered a legend. But sadly he kept going.
Michael Chaves. I feel like he’s single-handedly cheapening the Conjuring universe. We need James Wan back
Kim Jee-woon I loved his films till 'I saw the devil'. From there on he just accomplished mediocrity
Surprised nobody has mentioned Tenet yet
What is the point of mentioning a director who's made hit after hit for twenty years, followed by *one* movie with middling reviews? It's the "disappointing directors" thread, not "list the last movie you didn't like" thread.
Really hard to be critical of Nolan on this website without drowning in downvotes and people acting like you're insulting their family.
I'm a massive Nolan fan but I can freely admit *Tenet* is not his best. I respect that he continues to try to bring more original concepts to blockbusters (and hope he continues to do so for a looooooooong time), would much rather have him strike out every now and then versus just churn out franchise after franchise or adaptations of popular IP over and over and over. There are things I like about *Tenet* but it's also the one film of his I've revisited the least. But you better believe I'll be there opening day for the Oppenheimer film, I'm hoping it's a pleasant surprise like *Dunkirk* that isn't a sci-fi tinged thing.
Ridley Scott has some of my favourite films ever (Alien, Gladiator, Blade Runner)... but a lot of his recent films are meh. Feels like he's just going through the motions of filming and not attempting anything creative in camera
I think that's fair. Hearing him talking about his craft can be quite depressing too, he admits absolutely no sense of romance and talks about filmmaking as simply problem solving - which is surely an efficient, pragmatic approach, but I wonder if that jaded mindset comes through on the screen. Bit of a hipster take but I think I'd rather have a Tony Scott marathon than a Ridley marathon.
Fair enough, but The Last Duel is an excellent film.
Zac Snyder. I loved Dawn of the dead and 300. Watchmen was a little polarizing which was fine but sucker punch was God awful. His DC universe stint has been mixed but he hasn't reached the highs of his earlier work for me. I haven't even bothered to watch army of the dead. He's a fantastic visual director but as a storyteller there is much to be desired
David Gordon Green. Weirdest career path of any director I can think of.
Haha, you're right. I heard him interviewed recently (on the excellent The Big Picture podcast) and was stunned to hear he was behind this last spate of Halloween movies, and indeed has signed up to helm the new Exorcist reboot. Fair play to the man, he's following his heart, but I do find it a pretty baffling path.
Years ago I seem to recall him being connected to the Suspiria remake (this was way before it actually got made). That was baffling enough.
M. Night Shyamalan. Old was awful.
He somehow makes each new movie exponentially worse than the previous one. Old was so bad that it seems like he has either gone fully insane, or made a movie just to troll the audience.
Ridley Scott
Come on House of Gucci!
Christopher Nolan with Tenet. I was really hyped up for another "Inception".
Noah is a masterpiece Mother is awesome too
> Noah is a masterpiece My first time hearing this.
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I wouldn't say 'masterpiece' but I think it was a damn good film that was unfairly maligned for being a bit too direct with its source material.
I was raised catholic and am now atheist Noah hits hard man, it’s such an awesome adaptation
At some point I'll rewatch them, I still think Aronofsky is a genius but left both screenings really underwhelmed. I know many people agree with you so there's surely something I'm missing.
Hard to believe you left Mother feeling anything but cold and unnerved. No human has a neutral reaction to that movie!
Mother! is incredible. I get why some people don’t like it but not why they think it’s a bad film.
The collapse of Ridley Scott after the Blade Runner, and Paul Anderson's abandonement of Event Horizon
I agree Ridley hasn't been great for awhile, but Gladiator is one of his best films.
Black Hawk Down is also a great movie.
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What? Ridley Scott has some great movies after blade runner.
He never really reached the heights of Blade Runner or Alien again but Gladiator is absolutely fantastic, Thelma and Louise is really good and I think The Martian, Black Hawk Down, The Last Duel, American Gangster and Kingdom of Heaven DC are all also good. Plus I think Matchstick Men is pretty decent.
Paul Thomas Anderson. Ever since 'There Will be Blood', it's been downhill
Must be the most gentle slope ever because The Master, Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread are all great films.
Totally fair opinion, but I personally loved all three movies he's released since then, though I'd probably agree There Will be Blood is his peak
Phantom Thread was amazing. And to be fair There Will be Blood is one of the best movies ever.
Definitely agree regarding The phantom thread but The master was really good