Two films, one great, one awful - from the same director?

This is easy, and I could probably do it for many directors, but the obvious one is Ingmar Bergman.

The Seventh Seal is a truly great film.

Cries & Whispers is my most despised film of all time.

What George said on being able to do it for a great many directors. Jean Cocteau comes immediately to mind with:

Beauty and the Beast, which I consider a magical film—great from almost every perspective and

The Blood of a Poet, which may be important as a piece of surrealism, but is so incredibly amateurish that it belongs in the dreaded ‘student film’ category. Plus I consider parts pretentious in the extreme.

Time and time again, I've seen you proclaim a deep hatred for this movie. I can understand not liking it, but I can't understand why someone would hate it with so much vitriol. What's the deal, George? Isn't something like Airheads or Battlefield Earth or Biodome more deserving?

I'm hardpressed to come up with anything. If I'm a fan of a directors work, they just don't make movies that I hate. I guess I could go with Woody Allen or DePalma, but there's usually a few times I'll laugh even in the Allen movies I don't care for and Mission to Mars is terrible, but I can't say I hated it.

I guess the best I can do (and keeping in the Italian spirit):

Giuseppe Tornatore
Cinema Paradiso: A beautiful, magical film for film lovers, and lovers in general.

Malena: A hateful piece of woman-abusing slime.

Well Martin, it's hard to explain because it's not so much an objective analysis as it is an overall impression. Let's just say that when I finish watching a film, I'm either pleased, unimpressed/indifferent, or irritated. It's hard to say, in most cases, why I'm irritated. For a film like Do the Right Thing, it's easy to say, it's because I view the film as promoting racism.

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

Let's just say that I feel the same way after viewing Cries & Whispers that Brook feels when he hears me talk about it. Brook can't help feeling irritated by my opinions anymore than I can help feeling irritated by the film.

Richard Lester:

Great: Help!
Awful: Superman III

Alfred Hitchcock

Great: Vertigo
Awful: Torn Curtain

Well avoiding the terms 'awful' or 'hated', etc., let's just say the following are examples of films by a director that I love and one I dislike to varying degrees.

Kubrick

Dr. Strangelove
Barry Lyndon

Hitchcock

Rear Window
Under Capricorn

Coppola

The Godfather
Finian's Rainbow

James Cameron

The Terminator
Titanic

Woody Allen

Sleeper
Annie Hall

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

The Ghost & Mrs. Muir
All About Eve

John Ford

Mister Roberts
The Searchers

etc., etc.

John Carpenter:

Great: The Thing (he has other greats as well)

Awful: Ghosts of Mars

Terence Malick:
Badlands
The Thin Red Line

Bob Clark:
A Christmas Story
Porky's

John Singleton:
Boyz N the Hood
2 Fast 2 Furious

Rob Reiner:
This Is Spinal Tap
North

Kubrick
2001: A Space Odyssey -
Full Metal Jacket -

I'll take a lead from George. I have never cared much for anything by Spike Lee, but 25th Hour knocks me out.


I'll get obscure. Hope I'm remembering this right. Geoff Murphy did the fine little Sci/Fi film The Quiet Earth and then went on to make things like Species 2.

James Cameron:

Terminator 2: Judgement Day -

Piranha 2: The Spawning-

Kubrick:
Dr. Strangelove-One of my absolute favorite films of all-time.
2001: One of my most despised.

Krzysztof Kieslowski
- Red
- Blue

- I fucking hated that ending to Blue. It sums up almost everything I hated about that movie.

Strangely enough, I don't get much hell about me hating this film relative to george hating Cries and Whispers.

I haven't yet seen Blue, but when I do, if I end up hating it, I will get the flak, and you'll get collateral damage.

Wow, no mention of George Lucas yet. What restraint!

- Cryo

P.S. Is this ever subjective. I see several people listing "bad" movies that I thought were good like Full Metal Jacket, Talented Mr. Ripley, Alien 3, etc.

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)

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

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...

Well I'll do Michael Bay the right way

The Rock
Armageddon

David Lynch

The Elephant Man
Fire Walk With Me

Luc Besson

Nikita
Everything else

James Cameron

The Terminator
T2

Michael Bay:
The Rock
Pearl Harbor

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.