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

[PhilipG]

The other night I watched my new DVD of Enigma - a truly brilliant film. While looking up the director's bio I realized he also directed the stinkfest The World Is Not Enough. I was shocked, to put it mildly. No doubt I underestimated the importance of other factors (writer/producer/editor/cast/etc).

So can you name two films, one you loved, one you hated from the same director?

(Here's an extra one from me: I adored Anthony Minghella's The English Patient, but utterly loathed The Talented Mr Ripley.)

 

[george kaplan]

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.

 

[Lew Crippen]

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.

 

[MartinTeller]

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

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?

 

[Zen Butler]

Lew beat me to it. In the spirit of the new Italian poll I'd say Antonioni:

L'Avventura - One of the best Italian films ever.
Zabriskie Point- IMO, frivolous and a snoozer.

You could do this all day. Almodovar, Woody Allen, Speilberg anyone?

 

[Brook K]

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.

 

[george kaplan]

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.

For Cries & Whispers, I can only say that the characters, the story, the cheap symbolism of the color schema, they all just irritated the hell out of me. I saw a film that just had a bunch of bitchy sisters hating each other, I guess due to something when they were children, though it was never explained to my satisfaction. Why did these sisters do what they did to themselves and each other? I don't know, and the film didn't make me care. I felt like I lived next door to these psycho bitches and I just wanted to move away and not have to deal with them.

Similarly, the characters in Jules & Jim all irritated the hell out of me. Maybe it's that I just can't relate to their bizarre behavior. I don't know. Maybe it's some deep-rooted psychological problem in me. I don't know.

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.

 

[Angelo.M]

David Fincher...

Loved: Seven.
Hated: Alien 3.

 

[Patrick McCart]

Richard Lester:

Great: Help!
Awful: Superman III

Alfred Hitchcock

Great: Vertigo
Awful: Torn Curtain

 

[george kaplan]

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.

 

[Nick Sievers]

John Carpenter:

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

Awful: Ghosts of Mars

 

[Rob P S]

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

 

[Bill J]

Kubrick
2001: A Space Odyssey -
Full Metal Jacket -

 

[JohnRice]

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.

 

[ErikG]

James Cameron:

Terminator 2: Judgement Day -

Piranha 2: The Spawning-

 

[Andrew_Sch]

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

 

[Dome Vongvises]

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.

 

[george kaplan]

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.

 

[Jack Shappa]

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.

 

[PhilipG]

Krzysztof Kieslowski
- Red
- Blue

I have the exact opposite reaction to these two.