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Directors with the highest highs and lowest lows

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Steven Spielberg. The dude made Schindler's List, A.I., Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report....He had the talent to make such diverse movies and now he's making crap that no one will ever remember in few years.

Cronenberg

You have The Fly and Dead Ringers and then you have Cosmopolis
I must Agree. I couldn't finish that disappointment of a movie, fuck that twilight piece of shit.
 
Steven Spielberg. The dude made Schindler's List, A.I., Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report....He had the talent to make such diverse movies and now he's making crap that no one will ever remember in few years.


I must Agree. I couldn't finish that disappointment of a movie, fuck that twilight piece of shit.

He also made A History of Violence, which was pretty good, so Cosmopolis comes off as just him being out of touch for a moment.

The Brood however, that is one Cronenberg movie I can't finish.
 
Adolf Hitler, before starting his whole final solution business and kicking off WW2 he managed to pull Germany out of one of the worst depressions the world has ever seen.

EDIT: I THOUGHT THIS WAS A THREAD ABOUT DICTATORS!

My mistake, I'll show myself out.
 
He also made A History of Violence, which was pretty good, so Cosmopolis comes off as just him being out of touch for a moment.

The Brood however, that is one Cronenberg movie I can't finish.

Haven't seen Cosmopolis, probably won't, but yeah the rest of Cronenbergs films are pretty solid. Eastern Promises, Existenz, Crash, all are pretty good, and the rest of his films are decent.
 
Steven Spielberg. The dude made Schindler's List, A.I., Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report....He had the talent to make such diverse movies and now he's making crap that no one will ever remember in few years.

I certainly hope you're not lumping Lincoln into the "crap he's making that no one will ever remember in a few years," because Lincoln was excellent.
 
John McTiernan thread? John McTiernan thread

he made quite possibly the best western action movie of all times: Die Hard

then he made a godawful Rollerball remake, a superbad movie with Banderas and some arabs fighting demons and a terrible mystery with John Travolta
 
Okay, so not a director but this completely blew my mind when I first learned about it:

Guinevere Turner wrote the screenplay for both American Psycho and also BloodRayne.
 
Lol c'mon, Event Horizon was decent at tops. One of the best sci-fi ever made? Please.

Anyway also Wes Craven. He made some of the most important and influential horror ever, from The Hills Have Eyes to Nightmare On Elm Street and Scream, but he also made:

A70-6480


Also he became victim of his own critics with Scream 3.

A lot of masters of horror made some shit movies to be honest.

Also Takashi Miike with his twenty movies per year sometimes makes something barely good.


The majority of Wes Craven's filmography is pretty bad. As far as I'm concerned, he's only had 3 good movies: ANOES, New Nightmare, and Scream. Everything else is garbage, even Last House On The Left and The Hills Have Eyes.

FFC is probably my vote. All 3 Godfathers and Apocalypse Now to Dracula (which is one of the worst major movies I've ever seen), Jack, and not even being able to get funding for movies. Apocalypse really ruined him.
 
Yea but a cold Woody Allen is like 10x better than Rollerball. Are we really going to try and go out on a limb and say Curse of the Jade Scorpion was terrible? Come on son.

You're comparing Woody Allen films to Rollerball?

And show me where I said Curse of the Jade Scorpion was terrible.

I said he was hot and cold. Interpret that as you wish.
 
To me, Verhoeven's highest and lowest moments all seem to blend together.

Like the element that makes Total Recall and Robocop great, are because they are insane movies filled with weird shit, which can be said about his bad movies too, to be honest.

With something like The Thing vs The Ward, one is an example of a genius knowing how to use restraint in creating a masterpiece, whereas the other is an example of someone just not caring.
 
No mention of Robert Rodriguez? When he goes dark and gritty he's great, when he makes movies for his kids it's a whole new ball game.

I think Rodriguez makes those kids movies because their success allow all his other projects. The first Spy Kids was made for 35 million, and grossed 148 million. The last one was made for 27 million, and grossed 85 million. So long as he occassionally pops out one of these films, we get an endless stream of Machete.
 
John McTiernan thread? John McTiernan thread

he made quite possibly the best western action movie of all times: Die Hard

then he made a godawful Rollerball remake, a superbad movie with Banderas and some arabs fighting demons and a terrible mystery with John Travolta


Listen hear buddy, the 13th Warrior is not a Superbad movie!


Also John Carpenter is my pick for this thread ....... so many great highs and some real stinkers ......... the gap from his best to his worst is massive.
 
Adolf Hitler, before starting his whole final solution business and kicking off WW2 he managed to pull Germany out of one of the worst depressions the world has ever seen.

EDIT: I THOUGHT THIS WAS A THREAD ABOUT DICTATORS!

My mistake, I'll show myself out.

hehe
 
Peter Jackson

Great to good:Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King

Mediocre:Hobbit Pt.1

Bad:Two Towers, King Kong

All his works pre-LOTR is a mixed bag
 
Four pages and no Mel Brooks? From GOAT-level classics to DTV-level shit.

Wow what ? People didn't like the Hobbit ?

There are people who like it? I loved the LotR movies and I probably won't watch part 2.
 
I've already put my vote in for McTiernan, but I thought I'd detail my reasoning:

Die Hard - still the best action movie ever made
Predator - still the second best action movie ever made, and the only good one featuring a Predator
The Hunt for Red October - a classic thriller featuring the best Jack Ryan (aw yiss motha fuckin Alec Baldwin)
The Thomas Crown Affair - a shamefully underrated film, one of the best remakes of all time, and one of the rare few actually better than the original
Die Hard: With a Vengeance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ64IR2bz5o :)

Then there's

Medicine Man - worse than Zardoz
Basic - worse than it should have been
Rollerball - worse than cancer (and one of the worst remakes of all time)

Edit: Also, The 13th Warrior is a good movie just for this scene alone : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnREr8BV24
 
For me it's got to be John Carpenter.

On one side he made The Thing, Halloween, Escape from New York and They Live, and on the other side you've got Ghosts of Mars.

I haven't seen all of his movies, but with something like The Thing, you can really see the sort of genius he can be, but then with the stuff he's done bad, it just comes off like he doesn't care, at all.

Ridley Scott is also up there where his best films are spectacular, and the worst films are slow and pointless.

See I would put Escape from New York on the Ghosts of Mars side.
 
I've already put my vote in for McTiernan, but I thought I'd detail my reasoning:

Die Hard - still the best action movie ever made
Predator - still the second best action movie ever made, and the only good one featuring a Predator
The Hunt for Red October - a classic thriller featuring the best Jack Ryan (aw yiss motha fuckin Alec Baldwin)
The Thomas Crown Affair - a shamefully underrated film, one of the best remakes of all time, and one of the rare few actually better than the original
Die Hard: With a Vengeance - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ64IR2bz5o :)

Then there's

Medicine Man - worse than Zardoz
Basic - worse than it should have been
Rollerball - worse than cancer (and one of the worst remakes of all time)

Edit: Also, The 13th Warrior is a good movie just for this scene alone : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnnREr8BV24


Love the 13th Warrior ....... Viking movies are in short supply.
 
I don't think anyone knows who Joseph Sargent is, but I came across this once and thought it was funny. Both directed by the same guy.

QKZCbkh.png
 
Definitely Ridley Scott.

When he's on, he makes the films no one could object to a top 10 inclusion over (The Duelists, Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven DC).

When's he's off, he makes Legend, Robin Hood, and Prometheus.


At least his films, good or bad, are always the best looking in the industry. That's something.
 
I don't think anyone knows who Joseph Sargent is, but I came across this once and thought it was funny. Both directed by the same guy.

QKZCbkh.png

I'm pretty sure that Joseph Sargent actually appeared on the podcast "How Did This Get Made" to talk about what went wrong with Jaws 4. The story about him sending the script to Stephen Spielberg and hearing Spielberg's reaction was pretty funny!
 
You're comparing Woody Allen films to Rollerball?

And show me where I said Curse of the Jade Scorpion was terrible.

I said he was hot and cold. Interpret that as you wish.

The thread is about directors with the highest highs and the lowest lows. Woody Allen does not have the lowest lows in relation to other films and directors mentioned in this thread (i.e. Rollerball). Someone else mentioned Curse of the Jade Scorpion was among his bad films, which I feel is completely wrong.
 
Definitely Ridley Scott.

When he's on, he makes the films no one could object to a top 10 inclusion over (The Duelists, Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven DC).

When's he's off, he makes Legend, Robin Hood, and Prometheus.


At least his films, good or bad, are always the best looking in the industry. That's something.

Ridley is a great director...when he has a good script. He doesn't seem to involve himself in writing and story development the way other directors do, and I think his work suffers for it.
 
Fucking DePalam man...On his best day, I think he's a more interesting Hitchcock. On his worst day, fuckin' Mission to Mars, man. And you never know what day of the week it is. And his fans never agree on which days are better than others.

It's confusing
 
Ridley is a great director...when he has a good script. He doesn't seem to involve himself in writing and story development the way other directors do, and I think his work suffers for it.
He certainly involves himself in the story development - watch any of the making ofs and you can see that. He goes through many script revisions, has a hand heavily involved with the design of the world etc. Thematic arcs are of big importance to him.

I think his problem is he isn't a writer, so even if the themes of a script are where he wants them, he can't identify entirely the quality of the writing.
 
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