ILM : U2 :: ILF : ??

I nominate Ron Howard. Or is he too easy?

Personally, I'd say Senor Spielbergo.

I'd love you all even more if Oliver Stone was named the Bono corollary.

senor spielbergo is one of the best and most interesting american directors right now

I have no real problem with anyone mentioned on this thread (or in its title) thus far.

Michael Bay, anyone?

I suppose since U2 is the band that receives the most knee-jerk dismissals on ILM, Spielberg is probably accurate. Bay's awfulness is just taken for granted, although it shouldn't be, since there are worse directors.

I've heard more interesting defenses of Bay in the last few years than anyone else on this list so far. Though A.I. did bring new Spielberg fans out of the woodwork. Haven't been here long enough to answer the question.

i can't knock spielberg cause of empire of the sun.

of course u2 have a few good songs too....

Kent Jones in Film Comment, July-August 2001:

"It's a joy to watch Bay enlarge on certain themes and motifs he's previously explored in The Rock, his first mature work... whereas the girlfriend-waiting-in-the-control-room is nothing more than an afterthought in The Rock, Liv Tyler's girlfriend-waiting-in-the-control-room in Armageddon is a geyser of love and devotion."

Just one reason why I adore Kent Jones.

But anyway, Bay won't do because unlike U2 he has no reputation to speak of, and Spielberg won't do because any time someone's said something bad about him on this board, someone's always stood up to defend him. Let's keep looking...

BTW, the last ten Best Director Oscar-winners:

Roman Polanski
Ron Howard
Steven Soderbergh
Sam Mendes
Steven Spielberg x2
James Cameron
Anthony Minghella
Mel Gibson
Robert Zemeckis

Number of good candidates here: at least four.

i hate american beauty.

soderbergh seems like a good candidate too.

Mendes is definitely the worst of that bunch, Mel Gibson excepted since I haven't seen Braveheart.

I agree, Mendes is the plague.
So is Minghella.
Soderbergh would be ok if he would keep his mouth shut between films. And that Richard Lester interview book he wrote, it was nauseatingly self-depricating while actually being self-aggravating. Unforgivable.

Soderbergh is on this weird treadmill where he alternates "quirky" pictures that are far too selfconscious in flaunting Hollywood codes, and commercial pictures that are increasingly just mannered variations on unremarkable genre fare. None of his movies so far has been bad, but I still think he's a bit of a victim of his own success.

Minghella does a good job handling those prestige pictures; I liked The Talented Mr. Ripley. I can imagine he's got one spectacularly awful picture in him; it will probably have something to do with the Holocaust. (Expect more Holocaust movies in the wake of The Pianist.)

Polanski's reputation speaks for itself. I'm not incredibly passionate about any of his films (although I really like the look of Chinatown) but they speak for themselves. (The Ninth Gate seemed like 2/3 of a really good movie.)

Ron Howard is a talented filmmaker. He really likes crane shots.

James Cameron can be clumsy sometimes; I think some of his talents were lost when his budgets got huge, and he can't control his mise en scene too much. But there's a basic enthusiasm for storytelling that I can admire. I'd like to say he's at the mercy of his scripts but...doesn't he always write his own scripts? Aliens was a really satisfying and fairly clever mixed-genre movie. Titanic is one of those movies that defies criticism I guess.

Spielberg: a can of worms. Suffice to say I tire easily of film critics using him as a bete noire.

Robert Zemeckis: probably the best of this bunch. A very confident director...uses the widescreen boldly and intelligently...so many of his movies have becoming indelible parts of the pop landscape. His weaknesses are overstatement and banality, but even those can be faint virtues in the context of big summer movies.

Mendes: too early to make a glib assessment of course, but both of his films to date are very tony (thanks Connie Hall) and quite unremarkable. Although American Beauty is notable for being the most visible example of that clever-stupid vein of modern Hollywood films whose patron saint is David Fincher.

It's important to note that all of these folks--save for Soderbergh--work well within the contemporary Hollywood codes of realism, of story construction, of visual style, etc. even as they might be exemplars of such an approach. They have more in common and it wouldn't be wise to overstate the integrity of their respective bodies of work.

Mel Gibson: like I said, I haven't seen Braveheart, but his next film is the story of Jesus, starring Jim Caveziel and Monica Bellucci, and it will be entirely in Latin and Aramaic. It is a cruel God that fails to prevent such a monstrosity while preventing Robert Bresson and Carl Dreyer from realizing their own Jesus films.

do you really think zemeckis trumps his mentor spielberg amateurist? their relative strengths and weaknesses are quite similar, and to be honest, spielberg hasn't yet made anything as poisonously awful as forrest gump.

That's a good example of a film that is very stylistically assured and pleasant but (to me) completely unwatchable because of the fearsome sentimentality and banality. I suspect it will look better once the context is lost--once its essentially reactionary character turns from sinister to quaint.

I do think Zemeckis does the populist thing at least as well as Spielberg--the Back to the Future films are fantastic, and have some of the comic book broadness that people find so appealing in Hong Kong films (albeit put on screen in a v. different fashion). But yeah it'd be silly to place one above the other, not least because (as you note) Zemeckis comes right of that Spielberg wing of Hollywood.

I meant stylistically pleasant (as in, no moments out of step with the overall assured design); obv if I find the film unwatchable I don't think its pleasant overall!

Still none of these doods is half as good as Michael Mann, Spike Lee, David Lynch,* Jonathan Demme (at least through Philadelphia), or John McTiernan at their best.

*Not quite fair, since Lynch plays outside the rules.

I'd hesitate to put McTiernan on that list--outside of Die Hard and Predator (and I know you said at their best) he has a pretty terrible track record.

And I really hated Gump's style--especially the soundtracking, which I found infuriating. There was nothing in that movie I liked (least of all Tom Hanks's too-bad-to-be-true performance).

I'm a little worried about Soderbergh, because I think he has it in him to make some really terrific movies, though he seems to have maybe film-geeked himself into a corner. But I maintain that Out of Sight, The Limey, King of the Hill and probably a couple of others are terrific. I don't really mind that he's doing those Ocean's movies either, although I wasn't really crazy about Ocean's 11. Actually, I thought it was a bit of a self-congratulatory grind, with some nice moments.

Mendes drives me nuts; you just know he hangs a portrait of Orson Welles over his desk.

And returning to your last statement--and I know this is unfair--but would you really say Roman Polanski isn't ever half as good as John McTiernan at his best?

Ron Howard to me is neither here nor there. Capable, very nice-seeming, though perhaps too nice.

I want Cameron to direct another sci-fi/action movie; it's so clear that that's what he's best at. Dude needs to stop obsessing over the Titanic.

Minghella I'm not so sure of; I'm sort of ashamed to admit I've never seen The English Patient; Ripley was pretty good though it seemed to lose the plot after the murder; Truly, Madly, Deeply was very sweet & I have sentimental associations with it.

Re. Polanski: no, I was being polemical. I shouldn't ever do these so-and-so is better than so-and-so things, since I always paint myself into a corner.

hahaha

we all do that, that's the fun of message boards.

oliver stone. oliver stone. oliver stone.

(Except it's kind of an insult to U2)

Oliver Stone by rights should be the Momus of ILF.

Good call Amateurist, though Abel Ferrara would be more fun.

No no no it would be Michael Almereyda!

Almereyda had a good piece on Chris Marker's latest film in Film Comment this month, which I read at the library the other day.

Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape is one of the best films ever! His hollywood career, I'm not sure of (I've only seen Traffic), but at least no one can claim that his talentless as a director.

spielberg hasn't yet made anything as poisonously awful as forrest gump.

You haven't seen Hook, have you?

i liked Hook!!!

of course, i was 14.

I've seen Hook, and I still think Forrest Gump is worth. I mean it's terrible fer shure, but not nearly as cruel & creepy.

The difference I think is that Hook is a failure and Forrest Gump is a grotesque success.

Which is worse?

(I mean generally I'd rate an interesting failure higher than a grotesque success--but I wouldn't really call Hook an interesting failure)

I'd kinda prefer not to have to see either of these movies ever again, but I definitely think Forrest Gump is the more interesting of the two by far.

Forrest Gump is better than Hook because there is actual decent performances underneath the undeniably fucked-up story. Hook does not have this. Plus Hook is "for kids," and I'm always more offended by the idea of foisting reprehensible malarkey on children than on Oscar fans, who should know better.

All in all, Zemeckis hasn't had as many flops as Spielberg, and apart from Gump his films are quite good entertainment. Of course, his filmography is also leaner than Spielberg's, and lacking of "serious" films. Whether this is a good thing or not, I'm not sure. At least Zemeckis knows his place.