Directors Two films, one great, one awful - from the same director? (1 Viewer)

[Dick]

John Frankenheimer

Manchurian Candidate
Prophecy

Ridley Scott

Alien
G.I. Jane

Alfred Hitchcock

North By Northwest
Topaz

Michael Bay

Bad Boys
The Rock
Armageddon
Pearl Harbor
(sorry, couldn't resist)

 

[JonZ]

George Lucas
Star Wars
The Phantom Menace

Oliver Stone:
Platoon
U Turn

Steven Speilberg:
Jaws
ET (God I hate this movie)

The Coens:
Fargo
Intolerable Cruelty

 

[Jan H]

Bob Rafelson:

Great: Five Easy Pieces
Crap: Man Trouble

Roland Joffe

Great: The Killing Fields
Slop: The Scarlet Letter

Spike Lee

Great: Do the Right Thing
Dreck: Bamboozled

Mike Nichols

Great: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Swill: Regarding Henry

Francis Ford Coppolla

Great: The Godfather
Sludge: Jack

To name a few...

 

[george kaplan]

Well I'll do Michael Bay the right way

The Rock
Armageddon

 

[StevenD]

David Lynch

The Elephant Man
Fire Walk With Me

 

[Brian Lawrence]

Luc Besson

Nikita
Everything else

 

[Peter Mazur]

James Cameron

The Terminator
T2

 

[Andrew_Sch]

Michael Bay:
The Rock
Pearl Harbor

 

[Arman]

This thread is very strange & weird. Lot of definitely not awful films which I thought are mostly great, critically acclaimed and beloved by film scholars (Cries and Whispers, E.T Extra Terrestrial, Blue, Annie Hall, The Searchers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Full Metal Jacket, The Thin Red Line) are being hated with such passion and conviction here and the so-so films (IMHO ) like the The Rock is being repeatedly hailed as a great Michael Bay film (Thanks Dick for that beautiful reminders! ).

BWT, oopps, can I join the mob or to each his own madness here?

Okay, let's start with James Cameron!

Great - Titanic ; I'm one of those who watched this "King of the World"'s epic multiple times in theaters. I just thought then (several years ago) that it was one of the greatest films of all-time.

Awful - Titanic ; During the start of my shift in taste (two years ago) in films, when I watched Titanic again on DVD, I was like in total shocked and kicking myself, what the heck I'm thinking then for watching this cheesy silly trash that many times in theaters?

Now, I don't have that much hatred anymore to Titanic but if I would have to grade it now, I will give this entertaining (epic) piece of shit a C+. (Yeah, I would'nt put The Matrix (A-) in the great category and The Matrix Reloaded (C+) or The Matrix Revolutions (C+) in the awful category too.

Note: I don't find any of James Cameron films great.

Anyway, to add some more weirdness to this thread's bizarre topic - "Two films, one great, one awful - from the same director?" :

Woody Allen
Great: Annie Hall or Crimes and Misdemeanors
Awful: Hollywood Ending

Steven Spielberg
Great: E.T or Minority Report or Close Encounters of The 3rd Kind or Empire of The Sun
Awful: Hook

How about Godard's films? It's either you hate or love his films (Pierrot le fou)! I know some posters here who hated In Praise of Love and at the same time love his classics like Breathless, Contempt and Weekend.

And lastly, PhilipG, I love The Talented Mr. Ripley and I'm beginning to loathe (or probably less and less like) Minghella's award-winning English Patient.

 

[PhilipG]

Strange, weird and bizarre?!

I liked E.T. at the cinema (I was very young at the time), but have grown to really dislike it. I still think it's a well-made film, but that's not the point of this thread. My cousin (now 8) loves the new Star Wars films (esp. II), and doesn't think much of episode IV.

And lastly, PhilipG, I love The Talented Mr. Ripley and I'm beginning to loathe (or probably less and less like) Minghella's award-winning English Patient.

Now that's weird!

Seriously though, those two films are both rather pretentious and heavy-handed. The difference is that TEP manages to engage me on an emotional level, but TTMR does absolutely nothing for me.

 

[Arman]

"Seriously though, those two films are both rather pretentious and heavy-handed. The difference is that TEP manages to engage me on an emotional level, but TTMR does absolutely nothing for me."

Now, the point and purpose of this thread is really confusing!

So, you think The English Patient is a rather pretentious and heavy-handed film but you would still consider it a great film because it is emotionally engaging? (And you are serious about it? ) That's really weird, strange, confusing and bizarre! LOL

 

[Arman]

PhilipG,

I'm just really messing with you. And I can't resist because I really need to say this one last joke, maybe we can change the subject of this thread to "Two films, one great that you hate, one awful that you love - from the same director?"

 

[Alex Spindler]

How about a few off the "same director for the sequel" aisle?

Matthew Bright
Freeway
Freeway II : Confessions of a Trickbaby

What the holy hell happened here? Talk about a huge fall.

Barry Sonnenfeld
Men in Black
Men in Black II

Somehow managed to totally misplace the eccentric charm and humor of the first nearly altogether. If they made a trailer that has Frank's singing and the locker community in it, there would be no reason to see the sequel.

Stephen Sommers
The Mummy
The Mummy Returns

Take a nice adventure film with good effects and break everything in favor over the top effects and no fun whatsoever.

Andrew Davis
The Fugitive
U.S. Marshals
Chain Reaction

He seemed tireless for a while to try to recreate the magic of The Fugitive with those other two rejects, both focusing on wrongly accused fugitives being pursued by relentless fast talking Marshals with expensive special effect escape sequences.

 

[PhilipG]

I'm just really messing with you.

Hey, no kidding!

 

[john davies]

Wenders;
Paris Texas (and Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road)
Million Dollar Hotel (muddled and pretentious) Wenders' body was taken over by a horrible imposter at the beginning of the 90's

Ford
The Searchers (faults and all)
How Green was my Valley (i'm Welsh)

Scorsese
The Age of Innocence (and Raging Bull)
Gangs of New York (and Kundun)

Bertolucci
The Sheltering Sky (and The Conformist)
Last Tango in Paris (turgid, cold, boring, and starring the great self-indulgent mumbler)

 

[Blaine Skerry]

ALIEN RESURRECTION

AMELIE Jeunet redeems himself bigtime with this one.

 

[Tanja]

Cameron Crowe:

almost famous
vanilla sky