Overrated Directors?

[ElPandaRoyal]

Don't bring Baz and Smith into this discussion  :P

Actually, I also think that the main compliment we can make Baz Luhrmann is that his movies are unlike any others. The thing is... I like them  8)

As for Kevin Smith, well... With all due respect, I'd rather not talk much about him on a message board that originated from an old PTA board. I will always think of Chasing Amy as a trully amazing film.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Oh, JB... not Atom Egoyan! And not Hitchcock!!!! And not WELLES!?!?!?!?

I don't think they're not good directors... they're just overrated. I also can't make a personal connection with any of the directors I listed.

[Gold Trumpet]

I think Federico Fellini is overrated, but I still think he is a genius. I just think he only made a few films that were complete. Most of his films have good qualities along with many bad qualities. The same could be said for Orson Welles, as well.

[SoNowThen]

Scorsese is not overrated.

[j_scott_stroup04]

brad:

You're excused...

[Alexandro]

Af all the people who have been mentioned here, hardly anyone is really overrated.

Richard Donner IS an accomplished artist, who works within a genre and does it well. The Lethal Weapon movies are exactly what they want to be: fun. Those movies depend on the on screen chemistry of their actors and they have it.

Spielberg is, I'm starting to see, underrated. Too many "film" people dismiss him unfairly.

It is simple minded to say he has altered th eindustry and it's responsible for the "sports" mentality that plagues american and world society this days on every aspect of our lives: from the money we earn, the awards we receive, the popularity we have on our circle of friends, the music that is more listened to. Blaming him for that is bullshit, that behaviour is throughout all society these days, not only movies, and it¿s not his fault that his films, which are very personal for him, make a lot of money cause they are accesible and well made.

Oliver Stone overrated?!?!?!? Are you people fucking kidding me?? Could any of you take out the amazing performances he has repetadly taken from his actors in almost every single one of his movies?? Would you dare to make an 80 million film about Richard nixon and turn it into a greek/american citizen kenian tragedy??? I mean would you even have the balls to work with the enormous casts of tremendous actors he manages with ease???

No one here says Bergman is overrated (he isn't of course), but I suspect that's only because of a general perception that he is just not that well known and recognized by the general public. The general publici doesn't have to give a shit about movies if they don't want to, and they can choose. They are better filmmakers than Spielberg and Oliver Stone, but just because those filmmakers are not that recognized by audiences doesn't mean the others are overrated. I bet if some of us were discussing barroque music with someone who actually knows about it and we tell him our preferences on that genre, then he would think we're a bunch of ignorants. Or maybe he would be cool and understand that there are people for every tastes.

A lot of bashing here towards filmmakers and actors seem to come only from a close minded perception of what film should be, and seem to be overlooking the work, effort, heart and visible results that these people have with their art.

I think I read somewhere that Welles is overrated, which is a load of crap. He changed cinema!!!! One great movie is enough...all the names here...I'm just amazed, it's like when Diane Keaton is bashing everyone from Bergman to Tarkovski in Manhattan and Woody Allen can't just believe it...Altman??? Hitchcock??? Overrated???

The great thibg about movies and any arts is the variety, the range of forms that the medium can take...I love movies cause they offer me all these different perspectives, all these styles: Spelberg, Kubrick, Allen, Lee, Bergman, Fellini, Passolini, Scorsese, Tarantino, Altman, Hitchcock, Stone, Haynes,Pta, Moretti, Jeunet, Kurosawa, Coppola, Oshima, Tarkovski, Kusturica, all these people, and a lot more are terrific cause they are honest artists and they make everything from the heart. They can fail sometimes but we can always be sure thay do it with respect for our minds and perceptions and intelligence. And the failure and success is in the eyes of the individual viewer, in the end...

I mean there are plenty of filmmakers out there who are doiung it really only for the money and who are really just playing around doing crap: where the fuck is MCG in the overrated list????

sorry about any spelling mistakes here....

[SoNowThen]

great post

[Pubrick]

end of thread, topic, and discussion.

[cowboykurtis]

im just curious are you jealous of his success? are you critical of his technique? do you disregard his choices of subject? i truly feel anyone who discounts spielberg as a great directors is embittered,jealous,  uninformed, or one of the group who herald guys like richard kelly and harmonie korrin and brillaint cinema masterminds.

Well, I appreciate the opportunity to do a little false-binary-busting here; I am none of the above.

I think Spielberg sets the bar low for himself and therefore the medium \It's all spin, inflated acclaim and empty award-grubbing; he's got the Stamp of Approval from everyone in showbiz. It seems to have overridden people's faculties; I can't think of any other filmmaker so unnecessarily coddled and endeared to so many, with so little of any actual importance or even relevance in his work.

He more than anyone else is responsible for the horse-race climate of modern film, for box office numbers being the only measure of a film's "success." .

you answered my question -- your a mix between jealous and bitter.

By your standards, then, anyone dissatisfied with the way things are (and who are skeptical of the status quo-enforcing people who've made them that way) is dissatisfied because they're jealous or bitter, and in no way because they expect more of the vast possibilities cinema has to offer?

(

Again you've solidified my judgement -- you havent once adressed the movies he makes -- rather the climate you feel he has created as a business man. if your spiteful because JAWS created the blockbuster, which in affect has pushed smaller films out of the picture, i do not feel Spielberg should be held responsible. if you understood the way this industry works, you'd understand that the audience is in control -- in effect, your bitterness should be directed towards the uneducated people of this country.  they make a decision to pay 10 bucks for a specific product -- out of the buckets of garbage that the studios produce, speilbergs films actually hold  merit. if you tell me why you dont like his films, id be singing a different tune, but all you've given me is angst ridden whining about the current state of cinema, who spielberg, in your mind, is responsible for. i assure you if a film like 21 grams made 100 million opening weekedn, those are the films they would be making. they give the people what they want, its how its always been. the industry hasnt gone down the shitter, the people of this country have....a great man once said " no one has gone broke underestimating the intelligence of america".

[SoNowThen]

Saving Private Ryan made me laugh with its stupid flag waving crying bullshit that bookmarked the film. Plus, Berg neatly divides his characters into either good or bad. No room for human depth in a Berg film.

I think we can all agree that the ending of Hook was lame.

His constant pushing of the kid characters in Jurassic Park just created such annoyance.

His version of Lost World drained all intelligence that the novel had, in favor of cheap thrills that were cheap to be sure, but not thrilling.

Minority Report: all the so called "dark" stuff, soooo light. Even when he has a dystopia, shows a slum building, and has people screwing, it seems light, fluffy, and fake. Plus the neat wrap up ending (even if it's a dream) undermines any serious topic he might have broached.

E.T. - I haven't seen for years, but when I was a kid I was A. bored, B. didn't give a shit if the alien died or not -- and it's supposed to be a movie for kids!!!

I'm glad people dig his films, and get something out of them. I don't, and hence I find him very overrated. Especially when, to the common person, he is the yardstick of what a "good director" should be (as godardian was getting at).

[MacGuffin]

This whole thread makes me wonder if any of you even like movies?

[godardian]

Spielberg is, I'm starting to see, underrated. Too many "film" people dismiss him unfairly.

It is simple minded to say he has altered th eindustry and it's responsible for the "sports" mentality that plagues american and world society this days on every aspect of our lives: from the money we earn, the awards we receive, the popularity we have on our circle of friends, the music that is more listened to. Blaming him for that is bullshit, that behaviour is throughout all society these days, not only movies, and it¿s not his fault that his films, which are very personal for him, make a lot of money cause they are accesible and well made.

A lot of bashing here towards filmmakers and actors seem to come only from a close minded perception of what film should be, and seem to be overlooking the work, effort, heart and visible results that these people have with their art.

The great thibg about movies and any arts is the variety, the range of forms that the medium can take...I love movies cause they offer me all these different perspectives, all these styles: Spelberg, Kubrick, Allen, Lee, Bergman, Fellini, Passolini, Scorsese, Tarantino, Altman, Hitchcock, Stone, Haynes,Pta, Moretti, Jeunet, Kurosawa, Coppola, Oshima, Tarkovski, Kusturica, all these people, and a lot more are terrific cause they are honest artists and they make everything from the heart. They can fail sometimes but we can always be sure thay do it with respect for our minds and perceptions and intelligence. And the failure and success is in the eyes of the individual viewer, in the end...

I mean there are plenty of filmmakers out there who are doiung it really only for the money and who are really just playing around doing crap: where the fuck is MCG in the overrated list????

I really appreciate your passion for film and respect your point of view, but:

I have a very hard time believing Spielberg's films are personal in any way. I'm astonished that people time and time again grossly misconstrue what I'm saying as "That Spielberg, his films make too much money. I hate him because of that" I have to stress again and again that that's not it at all. Even if he is only symptomatic of a cultural tendency to boil things down to the lowest common denominator and just go with the flow of supposed public opinion and marketing trends, he is still film's biggest symptom of that. Even if my guesses at why his films are bad are inaccurate, I still find them to be mediocre films. For whatever reason, he has a remarkably shallow sensibility that I don't like; I find his films gloppy and soft-headed. It's not because I think I'm better than him or better than people who like him; when I'm sitting there in the dark and looking at the screen, I dislike what I see for the reasons I mentioned.

What really rubs salt in this wound is the way he is hailed, not just at the box office, but by nearly EVERYONE. There are so few voices of dissent on Spielberg that it's shocking. Certainly, Oliver Stone- as overrated as I find him to be- has a body of work of more cinematic ingenuity and inspiration than Spielberg's, but Stone has legions of detractors (me among them quite often). Where are those claiming the emperor has no clothes when it come to Spielberg?

To me, Spielberg's films and their canonization represents the embrace and valuation of the mediocre, and I just refuse to accept it. If having even the barest aesthetic standards or a strong opinion makes me an elitist, then so be it. I care too much about the medium to just accept whatever is merely popular or merely acclaimed.

You can't count Spielberg as a huge cultural influence on one hand and discount the fact that he's had a huge influence on the way films are made/marketed/seen on the other. I do blame him for that. There are others, but the others tend to be seen for what they are; Spielberg, as a master thinker in terms of personal image, demographics, and marketing, has been able to fool the public into thinking he's some kind of heartfelt genius, which he certainly is not.

Maybe it's just seeing the cup as half full, but I think the fact that people like McG aren't being mentioned here is a good thing; that would just be too easy and simplistic. "Overrated" means they have to be rated in the first place. I mean, plenty of people despise McG and his ilk, or Joel Schumacher, or Adrian Lyne. When we're talking about the "overrated," we're talking about people who have a lot of widespread respect and are considered "great filmmakers" by people with informed opinions, and why we disagree with that general conventional wisdom.  

That leads me to an agreement with cBrad, though; these discussions tend not to be very productive. "Who's overrated" is kind of an antagonistic question, not to mention tired. There are so many of those kinds of threads around, it's pretty amazing that anyone finds the need for a new one.

[godardian]

Again you've solidified my judgement -- you havent once adressed the movies he makes -- rather the climate you feel he has created as a business man. if your spiteful because JAWS created the blockbuster, which in affect has pushed smaller films out of the picture, i do not feel Spielberg should be held responsible. if you understood the way this industry works, you'd understand that the audience is in control -- in effect, your bitterness should be directed towards the uneducated people of this country.  they make a decision to pay 10 bucks for a specific product -- out of the buckets of garbage that the studios produce, speilbergs films actually hold  merit. if you tell me why you dont like his films, id be singing a different tune, but all you've given me is angst ridden whining about the current state of cinema, who spielberg, in your mind, is responsible for. i assure you if a film like 21 grams made 100 million opening weekedn, those are the films they would be making. they give the people what they want, its how its always been. the industry hasnt gone down the shitter, the people of this country have....a great man once said " no one has gone broke underestimating the intelligence of america".

Those who exploit others who are uneducated or passively uncritical for their own gain are complicit and act in bad faith. Too many of Spielberg's films- particularly the "great," "serious" ones- feel to me like acts of bad faith.

I've addressed the films themselves numerous times; the sentimentality is cheap and gross, the perception of life and people complacent and dull, and the execution transparently manipulative to the point of being laughable. Hey, he's just doing what seems to work on people- but they're bad films. People call them good films. People call them GREAT films. The hills come alive with the sound of laudation for Spielberg. Spielberg is considered the foremost American director. All that = way, way overrated.

[godardian]

This whole thread makes me wonder if any of you even like movies?

I LOVE movies, but it's probably because of that that I'm so damn picky. Liking movies doesn't mean never disagreeing with a perception of greatness, does it? It sucks to have your own beloved directors/films slagged off, but I find that kind of thing can actually give me a renewed surge of (protective) love for them.

[Pubrick]

godardian, edit. seriously.