Which "Class of '99" major American filmmaker has most flagrantly sold out to awards-baiting?

I intensely disliked the RT binary of fresh/rotten when I was a critic and still do. Owen Gleiberman gave Lebowski a B minus, which is around where I come down, and that counts as "fresh." So would a C plus, I guess.

B minus would still be a notch or two above 'HATED', though?

Lebowski was nowhere near as hated as The Life Aquatic because it was such an idiodynscratic movie that even if you loathed it there was no reason to think that the Coens had lost it, whereas TLA seemed like hollow self-parody and magnified all of Anderson's worst qualities. If there's a Coens equivalent it's The Hudsucker Proxy (which I love btw). Also, people who loved Lebowski did so with a passion whereas most of the praise for TLA was more cautious eg The AV Club: "Even when caught in a rut, Anderson's obsessive vision still yields many exhilarating surprises."

I swear I'm not making it up about contemporary reviews of Lebowski --- on the other hand, review aggregators didn't exist then (duh) and I don't pretend to have read all the reviews that year. And yeah, there really was a "Fargo was an Oscar qualified movie and I thought the Coen Brothers had grown up but look" vibe in reviews I saw then. The Coen Brothers career, judging from daily reviewers, has been a hype/backlash cycle all along.

Do please note that a lot of the reviews available now of Lebowski were NOT written the year it came out, but in the next decade.

Since its original release, The Big Lebowski has become a cult classic.[4] Steve Palopoli wrote about the film's emerging cult status in July 2002.[40] He first realized that the film had a cult following when he attended a midnight screening in 2000 at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles and witnessed people quoting dialogue from the film to each other.[6]:129 Soon after the article appeared, the programmer for a local midnight film series in Santa Cruz decided to screen The Big Lebowski and on the first weekend they had to turn away several hundred people. The theater held the film over for six weeks, which had never happened before.[6]:130

An annual festival, Lebowski Fest, began in Louisville, Kentucky, United States in 2002 with 150 fans showing up, and has since expanded to several other cities.[41] The Festival's main event each year is a night of unlimited bowling with various contests including costume, trivia, hardest- and farthest-traveled contests. Held over a weekend, events typically include a pre-fest party with bands the night before the bowling event as well as a day-long outdoor party with bands, vendor booths and games. Various celebrities from the film have even attended some of the events, including Jeff Bridges who attended the Los Angeles event.[41] The British equivalent, inspired by Lebowski Fest, is known as The Dude Abides and is held in London.[42]

Some RT reviews are from '98 but have the date they were linked to RT or put online, I think. Sarris's positive review is contemporary.

yes, there are more potheads in the gen pop than among critics... i think.

I do remember a baffled response at the time but a year later three or four college friends surprised me by quoting chunks of the dialogue; they'd watch it on VHS for hours, stoned.

I wasn't that into it at the time but it definitely grew in my esteem upon repeated viewings.

^^^

I went in not expecting a comedy, was the problem

or at least, I was expecting a darker/bleaker comedy a la Barton Fink

I know the dates are when they were linked/uploaded, it's when the reviews reference 'cult status' etc. that I know it's a later take.

I think Lewbowski's path to at least cult acclaim was pretty close to instant.

clemenza. I don't get your warpath on Wes Anderson.

When I hate a film as much as I hated Grand Budapest Hotel--and I probably hated it as much as any film by anyone who ever made a film I love (Rushmore)--it's not very interesting to hear me go on about why. I end up as shrill and as repetitive as however the film struck me in the first place. The short version has nothing to do how the film figures into Anderson's artistic timeline, or anything other than how excruciating I found the actual experience of sitting through it. For what it's worth, I've been okay with most of what he's done since Rushmore, though nothing has come close to it for me; haven't seen Fox.

When people say he's all style and no substance I just think they're not paying attention.

I do pay attention to his films; he earned that much with Rushmore.

ha I forgot yr visceral hatred of GBH. seems like an outlier reaction tbh

Ah, I haven't seen GBH yet.

i really enjoyed 'the life aquatic' considerably, i enjoyed its over the top nature. the rescue scene is A+.

'the big lebowski' felt like a step back for some reason bc i guess reviewers were expecting the coens to turn into atom egoyan all of a sudden after 'fargo' but that's what happens when critics try to fit filmmakers into a pattern or create a career narrative. not a huge lebowski fan here, tbh. i think their post lebowski work is a lot better than their other stuff as well though.

I hated Lebowski when it came out, but probably because I took the Coens more seriously than they deserved. I have not seen Life Aquatic or Express since they came out, because I disliked them both so much,but Fox, Moonrise and Hotel I think are so good I might take the three of them over his first three.

that's just, like, your opinion, man

Empire review i posted is contemporary. got 3 stars from Ebert back in the day too. Guardian '98 review was sniffy but positive.

even though i saw it within the last six months, i have little recollection of GBH. ditto MK, though I recall loving it. Fox is imo really great and something i'm always happy to watch with someone that has never seen it before, it's kind of an autumn tradition for me now

never saw express, mostly because i was so disappointed by the life aquatic

I will stan for DE, it's better than Life Aquatic.

Weird - Googling "Darjeeling Express" brings up the wiki page of the film, but I've not seen anything calling it by a name other than "The Darjeeling Limited"

That's how memorable it is.

Oh sure, I was just struck that googling something in quotes usually only gets you exactly that phrase - even Google has forgotten what it's called.

ok DL whatever

I think it is great at capturing the entitled western tourist view of India, which tbf is probably a more realistic depiction of India than what you see in most Bollywood films

though that could be the entitled western tourist view of Indian cinema

Bollywood doesn't do realism really, I don't think any of its most ardent fans would argue otherwise

Don't think Limited captured much of anything, iirc. I like Wes Anderson, but all of his movies exhibit a similarly entitled Western tourist view, of sorts.

That said, I thought his last three had a more nuanced and complex view of relationships/perspectives. Between adults and children, children and the world, privilege and denial, entitlement and earned rewards, platonic and emotional love, etc..

What is the opposite of entitlement?

Darjeeling was kind of his last daddy-issue-centered film, which he needed to stop doing. Still mining that a bit (both the kid in Moonrise and the bellhop in Budapest, with Willis and Fiennes respectively) but it's better integrated into the whole film.

def daddy issues in Mr. Fox!

http://i.imgur.com/E42m0.jpg

yes, but dome more cleverly, not HERE ARE MY DADDY ISSUES

take that pic to the Teal & Orange thread.