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

(Or is just the worst? Or both, if it matters?)

As opposed to the Blair Witch ganfg, who sold out by getting day jobs.

Or Shyamalan, who only made awards-bait that one fleeting moment.

Jonze easy. His bait may not be working, but you'd have to tie me down to watch any of his shitastic movies.

Actually love that the other three movies mentioned on that cover, and very conspicuously apart from the cover story about 1999 being the year that changed movies, are ... Dogma, Sleepy Hollow and James Bond Part 20.

I'm not crazy about Her but it's leagues better than last year's awardsbait.

Wes Anderson has TGBH and TFMF.

There Will Be Blood and especially The Master are the kinds of "problematic" I like.

The worst in descending order:

Russell
Payne
Fincher

I think Wes Anderson is the most annoying, as he burrows deeper and deeper into his (symmetrical) square-inch of territory.

russell clearly the worst according to this criteria.

i hate payne too but russell is more soulless

Russell definitely changed course to chase Oscars the most (PTA 2nd most, but it was more like he changed the strategy for the awards chase he was on from the beginning). but i still want to vote for Wes Anderson just because he's the one whose output has become the most curdled and useless over time for me.

Russell, whose nutty early movies have given way to strictly middlebrow Oscar bait.

Or Fincher, whose talents and vision still lead him to compromise with shameless pulp like Dragon Tattoo or Gone Girl. Or crap like Button, which is such blatant Oscar bait even the Oscars barely bit.

Payne is a bit up his own butt. Jonze is fine. I'd find a way to retroactively slip Darren Aronofsky into this.

Not Wes Anderson, who has not only remained steadfast and refused to compromise his whatever it is he does but whose last two films may be his best. Or Paul Thomas Anderson, who may be the most eccentric and ambitious of the bunch and also the least guilty of overt Oscarbating.

Fincher started with pulp, and since he's not a screenwriter, it only stands to reason that as his career progressed, his source material would end up being best-sellers with built-in cachet instead of thriller screenplays.

"the director who debuted with the singular vision of Alien 3 has devolved into chasing shameless paydays"

agree that Aronofsky shoulda been in here. i actually assumed he was until someone pointed out he wasn't.

Aronofsky does have the feel of a late-arriving class of '99'er, for sure. But of all his recent movies, it's the kinkiest one that somehow got the Oscar attention.

His early stuff was pulp too for sure, but it was a very cinematic pulp. So by pulp I did just mean that Fincher went to actual mass-market people on the trains bestsellers.

he burrows deeper and deeper into his (symmetrical) square-inch of territory

oh, the irony of this post.

But of all his recent movies, it's the kinkiest one that somehow got the Oscar attention.

You mean Black Swan? I guess it got the most noms, and made a ton of money, but before that Burnstyn got an Oscar nom for Requiem, Rourke and Tomei were nominated for The Wrestler. And then after he moves on to the batshit Noah, which is such a weird mix of pandering and ... I don't know what it was.

Benjamin Button is potentially the single biggest Oscar bait move out of the whole bunch, i just don't think his career arc overall scans as especially cynical to me. i'd love to see an alternative universe where he kept getting handed original screenplays as well matched to his aesthetic as Seven/The Game/Panic Room but i don't really have any problem with the projects he's chosen. when a director with visual flair who doesn't write screenplays becomes bankable, the endpoint is usually superhero movies or, y'know, Tim Burton.

how can you say anyone but payne? when i think "awards bait" i think of every single movie he ever did after 1999

haven't seen Nebraska but About Schmidt and Sideways and even The Descendants seem pretty well of a piece with his first 2 movies

Yeah, I don't think there's anything particularly Oscarbatory about his movies. Those are just the sort of movies he makes.

Russell is probably the worst, but Fincher is the one that most gives off a vibe of "I desperately want an Oscar," to me.

Honestly, I don't feel any of these directors have gone downhill enough to warrant the cynicism of this poll. They all put out stuff I found enjoyable this decade and generally maintained the style and voice they started with

pta - 70mm tales of constipated men
wes anderson - big stars in the cutest dioramas
david fincher - "biopics, procedurals, sex thrillers - digital improves everything"
spike jonze - digital tales of lonely puppeteers
Alexander Payne - if the farrelly bros read books
david o russell - look he had a movie close production half way through and buddy that's never happening again

Paul Thomas Anderson is worse than Hitler

did hitler's movies really get much awards buzz outside the reich tho

Triumph of the Will was better than that piece of shit Magnolia

Anderson totally ripped off that moment in Olympia where they all lipsync to Lili Marleen.

A pity Jason Reitman wasn't making movies in 1999.

First time anybody has ever said that.

Benjamin Button would have been one of the weirdest and most melancholy oscar winners ever, i think. the movie scans as middlebrow, and it surely is, but it's not crippled with the smug complacency and audience reassurance that typifies the "awards bait" genre.

Fincher strikes me, more than the others, as very dependent on the strength of his collaborators--so his reputation as someone who "elevates" his material doesn't really make sense to me.

Benjamin Button is probably the most pointlessly ponderous movie that I've ever seen... Like, it's a long succession of scenes that give the impression of signifigance, but when you think about them a bit, they don't really mean anything. I don't know if that's awards-baity or not, but BB definitely is the worst movie that I've seen from any of these guys.

worst from each:
There Will Be Blood
Hotel Chevalier
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Where the Wild Things Are
About Schmidt
Silver Linings Playbook

Well, Payne's like a 4-way tie between Schmidt, Descendants, Nebraksa and Sideways.

it's a reverse Heaven Can Wait at an Out of Africa-level of ponderousness.

Like, it's a long succession of scenes that give the impression of signifigance, but when you think about them a bit, they don't really mean anything.

remind you of anything else?

in any case Im not trying to make any great claims for it, I just think it's better than Forrest Gump et al.

As the question is presented, the answer is clearly David O. Russell. But I don't really mind his Oscarbaiting movies. The one who has had the most disappointing career to me is Alexander Payne, who has followed up the fantastic Election with a long series of mostly mediocre movies.

I prefer Forrest Gump, because it at least makes no effort to conceal its silliness. Benjamin Button puts an imaginary amount of weight on each of its moving parts and by the time it's over (I've seen it three times) I am quite resentful of everything about it.

Worst in descending order:

Silver Linings Playbook
The Curious Case...
About Schmidt
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Panic Room
Where the Wild Things Are
The Life Aquatic
American Hustle
There Will Be Blood

Benjamin Button puts an imaginary amount of weight on each of its moving parts and by the time it's over (I've seen it three times) I am quite resentful of everything about it.

i.e. Forrest Gump

Whatever, y'all. I like Forrest Gump and nobody's gonna change my mind.

Benjamin Button at the very least had 4 or 5 good minutes with Tilda Swinton.

https://flavorwire.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/tumblr_m6ts36vjse1rtxbzgo1_250.gif

Fincher a weird choice for "class of 1999" as he'd already made his best movie, The Game, two years earlier

ban "awards bait" forever since you ppl either don't know what it is, or that when done right it's a good thing.

hey eephus! Fincher himself recently pointed out that The Game is shit.

ban "awards bait" forever since you ppl either don't know what it is, or that when done right it's a good thing.

― this horrible, rotten slog to rigor mortis (Dr Morbius)

did you forget your bifocals this morning?

By the way, Zissou was last decade's Big Lebowski: badly received movie that immediately followed the well-received movie (Fargo; Royal Tenenbaums). Attacked for the exact same reasons: indulgent, insular, smug, aimed at the intolerably knowing insiders --- rather than the goodhearted, salt of the earth, properly-demanding-of-sensible-entertainment citizens daily reviewers imagine themselves nobly uplifting & guiding to higher cinematic appreciation.

So yeah, Zissou was a blast, always, so a decade later we get ultra-nerdy articles such as this. http://mentalfloss.com/article/60795/32-facts-about-life-aquatic-steve-zissou

If the movie was such an obvious turkey, why any interest a decade later? Same question resounds with Lebowski, except critics have quietly decided to pretend they were into it from the beginning. But I was paying attention: Lebowski was HATED when it came out.

Wes Anderson has become a great litmus test for whether I'm interested in someone's opinions on cinema. When people say he's all style and no substance I just think they're not paying attention.

there is literally a clickbait listicle like that for every movie ever. it doesn't mean anything and zissou's cultural weight hasn't increased since its release imo. it had its fans and then they grew up and became accountants and it never got a second wind like lebowski

xp I think it's possible to have gone cold on Anderson and still have "valid opinions" about cinema?

It's about the nature of the critique. With the BAFTA noms and the Golden Globe win I've seen lots of people on social media wheel out the lazy received-wisdom line on Anderson: fussy dollhouse movies, all aesthetics, no emotion, etc. Obviously smart viewers have smart reasons for not liking him.

it might also be received wisdom etc., but for me Anderson's propensity to pretty much re-make the same film over and over again is the problem. I've seen Rushmore and enjoyed it, I have no reason to see repetitions with minor variations on the same theme(s).

Well to take just one movie, Grand Budapest Hotel isn't a repetition - it uses ideas of aesthetics and creating a perfect world to entirely different ends. Max Fisher is a confused teenager, Gustave is a hotelier in an old Europe threatened by totalitarianism. They share a desire for beauty and control but their motives are drastically different.

formally speaking those are two examples are pretty similar, if perhaps not in terms of content.

You're right that Wes Anderson does seem to get singled out for this kind of criticism though, no one seems to say the same about any of the other directors listed above when they arguably all have equally rigid aesthetics, stylistic tics etc.

Yes that's what I mean. Nobody is compelled to like him but he gets treated as the only director with a distinctive style and pet themes.

Lebowski was hated?? nah.. i mean i hated it, still do i think it's dreadful but it got very good reviews in the UK.
5/5 from Empire for starters
http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/reviewcomplete.asp?FID=2759

Yeah, looking at the Lebowski reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, overall critical reaction seems to have been mostly positive (80% favourable, for what that's worth).

But then Vic Perry's post above seems so stuffed full of straw critics it could be used to sacrifice Edward Woodward.

critical success, commercial flop IIRC

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.