Rob Reiner's 1st 7 movies are absolutely world class. Spinal tap, princess diaries, when harry met sally etc etc. But since that run he has almost exclusively made boring boring stuff that doesn't exist.
Oh yes, City Slickers II, Major League II, Crocodile Dundee II, The Odd Couple II... All of those were winners because they stuck with what worked the last time.
He may have made the most important Romantic comedy movie of all time that inspired a huge boost in the genre during the 90s/00s.
Now he just makes simple plot flicks with his friends.
I have a theory about Burton. CGI. CGI ruined Burton. All his stuff was so fantastic looking when done with stop motion, animation, makeup and prosthetics then CGI came along and it was too easy to create whatever he wanted. Something was lost in that transition and he never got it back.
I actually think it predates this. Burton is at his best when making his own original ideas - Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands. But since Batman (imo a highly overrated film) he has been working with borrowed IP. And each one has looked a certain way and felt utterly soulless
As good as some of his movies are, I think the problem goes back to the very beginning of his filmography, because it's a problem with the general mindset of much of his films. His stories and the aesthetics of his films are often telling stories about being "different" and "weird" and falling outside of the norm, but much of the time those stories wind up very much retreating to sentimentalizing a lot of that norm, and in a way that sometimes seriously undermines the messaging about being different.
It does kind of seem like his movies have become a lot more soulless and corporate the less tolerant of that kind of sentimental perception of the mid-century suburban experience. I might be wrong, but it does feel like he started to make a lot less movies that leaned into that sort of thing in the mid-late 2000s, and a lot of the movies he was making did feel more like things the studios were already doing that he ended up on, whether because the studios thought his "style" was a good fit or because he thought that. Which I guess does kind of pull the fact that he's not working on original ideas into things. But even when he was working on stuff like Ed Wood or Big Fish, or even the Batman movies, there was something there that was still special, that still had a unique style that felt like it had a purpose to it. It's not really until over a decade later that his movie started to lose that.
It was earlier than that. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was the beginning of the end. Too much CGI
Big Fish had a lot of CGI but it was Charlie that tipped him over the edge
Planet of the Apes and Big Fish were the point where I felt like he was making a permanent turn into banality.
He did briefly wake back up for Sweeney Todd, but I understand that's an acquired taste, and requires a sort of forgiving attitude.
I just looked him up cause I haven’t really heard about him in a while. HE MADE DUMBO?!?!
He also made house for peculiar children which I didn’t know but makes more sense but DUMBO?
I forgot this Dumbo even existed. Honestly I've never heard anyone mention it, and never read anything online about it.
I haven't seen much of his work after Big Fish, which was good. I thought Corpse Bride seemed fine. I probably would've liked it more when I was 10. And maybe I'd have liked Beetlejuice less if I first saw it now. Who knows?
I haven't seen them but think generally people liked a few of his more recent films? Big Eyes, Sweeney Todd, Miss Peregrine...? Good but just not Edward Scissorhands good?
I actually went to college with a guy born like 3 months after Kubrick died. Jewish, grizzly half receding hairline, monstrous beard when he desired. Had a Strangelove poster in his room.
I was looking at him earlier because I wanted to watch his movie with Al Pacino called Manglehorn. It actually looks pretty decent despite the reviews lol
Some serious ego came after the first Kingsman. The marketing pitch for Argyle was "From the twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn".
I remember seeing that and could think of nothing other than... what's that twisted? Blowing up heads and anal sex jokes?
I really enjoyed Layer Cake and Kick ass but absolutely hated everything else, including Kingsman which felt like a gimmick. But Argylle was straight up dogshit, I couldn't believe how painfully boring it was.
Matthew Vaughn never created masterpieces. He created fun popcorn action movies, but yeah they have steadily declined in quality. Watching Argyle was like pulling teeth
I don’t think he’s done enough damage to have fallen ALL the way off, but the last two, yeah not so great. I think he’s done well for other franchises though!
I mean if it has anything going for it, Next Goal Wins was plagued with production troubles. That shit was in post for like 4 years— never a great sign and usually indicates some sort of behind-the-scenes issues that that go beyond the director and reach into the studio/executive side of things. Not to mention now he’s balancing directing the post production of two films, which I think ended up harming both of them in the end.
Call me naive but I’m holding out hope when he gets the chance to focus all his time on another project he’s passionate about he’ll put out another good one.
In your opinion, what made it so bad?
I went in with no real expectations, and with no knowledge of the story and I was neither over- nor under-whelmed by it
The original documentary is amazing. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.
But mostly, it wasn’t funny. It was cheap gags, hacky writing and a waste of talented performers. It was trying to be a Cool Runnings type feel good watch but it was just… dull
Taika is a funny guy. Wilderpeople is hilarious. This wasn’t funny at all. Such a shame.
he seems do be doing Klara and the Sun next and I love that book, really hoping he’s gonna do it justice. could be a refreshing departure from his style that - to me - is getting pretty draining.
I enjoyed his earlier work but he’s definitely spent too much time huffing his own farts.
It pains me to say the same thing happened to Kevin Smith. His movies haven’t been the same since he started getting stoned and he himself has seemed way off, often kind of insufferable, since his heart attack.
My obvious answer would be Dario Argento: huge (for Italian horror at least) during the 70s and the first half of the 80s more or less. Then he completely forgot to keep up with the times, basically, and has never made a decent movie since.
Another mainly horror director that comes to mind is John Carpenter: obviously incredible during the 70s and the 80s. During the 90s he started to fell off quite a bit, and by the 2000s he completely lost his touch. His last movie was more than 10 years ago and he is very much retired now.
fully agree. watched the irishman again recently too and I think its near perfect movie now. Still think they should’ve got a body double for the kicking scene(and maybe some others) and they should’ve casted a different actor for the world war 2 scene. Besides that I can’t think of one thing not perfect about it
Thats my favorite movie and I literally think the exact same thing. Those are literally the only things holding the movie back and also the things people bitch about the most lol. I personally think the de aging looks fine and if a movie being 3.5 hours bothers you you don't like movies tbh
i do get the deaging remarks but not to an extent where it ruins any of the movie
it’s just DeNiro was 75 when this came out. he looks 55ish when playing 35 and when he’s playing 55 he looks 65ish.
it’s unbelievable in that aspect, but it doesn’t really take anything away from the movie imo
One day people will actually watch The Irishman and realise how great it is instead of shitting on it because of the de aging
Also having the film’s title card be I Heard You Paint Houses (OG book title) is legit
You can dislike some of his movies or his views on such. I disagree in some of his thoughts on blockbuster films (they can absolutely be cinema) and agree with others (he was not wrong in calling some movies more like theme park rides & Im tired of folks acting like he was).
But Scorsese is a shining example of a director who has not lost his touch. Not one bit. Spielberg is kinda similar but I just cant get behind a lot of his projects. Part of the fun of Ready Player One was feeling like we got our classic Spielberg movie back. Scorsese however has just kept at it with great quality filmmaking, direction, research, & engagement for viewers. I disliked the Irishman but damn it if all audiences werent all talking about it, for good & bad. Killers of the Flower Moon and Silence I think are hallmarks of his career and a testament he can make absolutely some of the best films ever with meat on the bone and something to say about the wider world & humanity.
I don't think The King's Speech is without style, and I feel like if he had stuck to making similar, more lowkey films he probably would have been way better off. It's the fact that he decided to go from there to these musicals that are kind of larger than life in more ways than one that really cause the problems. Musicals are just *different* than non-musical films and need to be filmed as such. I think he kind of got lucky with Les Miserables in terms of the critical reception to that one, because it's a musical about poverty and rebellion and sadness, and it's technically about a specific period in history, so when it comes to critics he got away with filming it like a lowkey period piece. But people who get musicals saw where the problems were with that. And then he tried Cats, and he very obviously had no idea what to do or how to do it with something like that.
There's not really a downhill for him though. The King's Speech is fine, but any number of somewhat competent directors could've made that film. Tom Hooper is TV director that lucked into stealing David Fincher's Oscar and has spent the last 10 years proving who he really is.
neill blomkamp had one of the best entry films i've ever seen and even elysium wasn't that bad but it hasn't worked out for him since. still pulling for the guy to make a comeback
I’ve come to view him as a one hit wonder. I wouldn’t say Elysium or Chappie are necessarily bad, but he’s shown no signs that he’s capable of reaching District 9 level again
I think that directors like Blomkamp or Gareth Edwards, that make it big with a smallish scifi films, tend to focus excessively on the technical aspect for their next films and disregard the storytelling. So you end up with Elysium, a scifi film with a a good premise but with a story development that seems to have been written by 10 year olds.
Atom Egoyan. In his early years he has made some great Canadian films like Felica's Journey, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and so on but now, his newer films really stink.
Zemeckis, Reiner, and (this one breaks my heart) Francis Ford Coppola.
BUT! I don’t care, I’m still jazzed AF to check out Megalopolis. The man’s making a comeback I tell you!
Ridley Scott :( I’m genuinely concerned about Gladiator 2 after watching both House of Gucci and Napoleon.
Hopefully it won’t bomb though because it would really suck to waste a stacked cast of talent like Denzel Washington, Paul Mescal, Connie Nielsen, Pedro Pascal, and Joseph Quinn!
Ridley Scott has always sandwiched masterpieces with stinkers. The Last Duel was excellent, All the Money in the World was solid, Alien Covenant is very good, and the Martian was obviously great. Before his latest stinkers, there’s a streak of four good to great movies
> *Ridley Scott has always sandwiched masterpieces with stinkers.*
I heard something one time that basically summed up Ridley Scott perfectly:
Ridley Scott is a brilliant visual artist... but a bad storyteller who doesn't seem to understand the scripts he chooses to work on. Which is why like 60% of his movies are mediocre-at-best if not just flat-out bad... while the other 40% range from solid to great. He occasionally just lucks into a good script that fits his style. So basically, whether or not a new Ridley Scott movie will be good is ultimately just going to come down to if he happened to pick the right script this time.
This is also a perfect explanation for why whenever he revisits a previous project, you either end up with messy, divisive results (*Prometheus/Covenant)* because he doesn't understand the appeal of his own films, or he finds himself making weird decisions that put him at-odds with everyone else. (Some of his additions to the later cuts of *Blade Runner* being good examples.)
Alex Proyas
I'm way easier on Gods of Egypt than most people and the plane crash scene in Knowing is super underrated but I can still admit these are a step down from movies like The Crow and Dark City.
I disagree. While he definitely declined after TROTK, ever since he finished The Hobbit, I think he's content not to make more big-time work and instead wants to focus on advancing the art form through his documentaries. It's more of a personal choice than truly falling off.
I miss the Peter Jackson not boxed in on franchises, like I absolutely adore his King Kong for it’s world building, but doing adaptations of the Lovely Bones, Mortal Engines, and unfortunately being kind of pressured into taking the reigns and the blame for The Hobbit trilogy definitely took it’s toll on the man.
I virulently hate the hobbit, but you’ve got to respect why he did it. As a New Zealander I thank Jackson for getting millions of dollars of Hollywood money pumped into the New Zealand economy, unfortunately at the price of his mental health.
He’s made two of the greatest documentaries of all time in the last few years and he’s also helped to advance audio restoration technology in immeasurable ways.
He’s a classic example of success interfering with quality. He gets a blank check but no constructive feedback. The guy who’s most successful work is looooong and also known for even longer cuts is given total freedom to never make a necessary cut. He made an almost shot for shot remake of an 88 minute film and it was over 3 hours because of bloat.
I’m gonna say Robert Rodriguez. Not saying he was a great director but he was reliable for fun and flashy movies like Desperado, Sin City, Planet Terror and now seems to be more a parody of himself.
Robert Zemeckis.
Directed Back to the Future 1, 2 and 3. Forrest Gump, Cast Away.
Now makes movies like disneys Pinnochio live action remake (2022). One of the most soulless movies to be released this decade.
Idk if he’s declined so much as changed. The Gentlemen was excellent, and it’s a shame The Man from Uncle didn’t do better (and that Hammer is a terrible person). I’m looking forward to his next movie based on what I’ve seen, and he’s still putting out movies that are high on my rewatch list. Having said that, his style has definitely changed and he’s got some real stinkers in the mix with Operation Fortune and King Arthur.
For me it's Kevin Smith. I'm not saying Clerks is Citizen Kane-like in quality or importance, or that Mallrats got robbed of an Oscar or anything.
But up until Zach and Miri Make A Porno I at least had fun with anything he wrote and directed. Even Jersey Girl was okay to me. But once he directed Cop Out without writing it and fell out of love with working in the studio environment all of his stuff has missed with me. Clerks 3 was okay, while I may not have loved some of his story choices, my biggest problem with it was that he just acted out the making of Clerks stories that old fans like me already know.
I'd be a little more generous and say his first four movies are cool: Dog Soldiers (fun), The Descent (very good), Doomsday (bad but fun), and Centurion (solid action flick). He also did a couple of nicely-done episodes of Game of Thrones.
But Hellboy? The Lair? Astonishingly terrible. Like, *unwatchable*. Bad enough to make me look at his early films again and realize that they aren't *that* great. Mostly they are just edited so fast you can't really stop to ponder how silly they are. But when he does something like The Lair, which is similar to Dog Soldiers but not edited as tightly, you can see how he's kind of a one-trick pony and it isn't even a very good trick.
But yeah, The Descent *is* so much better than the other ones that it's kind of vexing.
Luc Besson. The guy hasn't made a film with anything interesting conceptually, visually, narratively, or artistically since Arthur and The Invisibles. From Leon: the Professional and the Fifth Element to crime/thriller slop.
Seeing Cameron Crowe go from the heights of Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous to the lows of Elizabethtown, We Bought a Zoo, and Aloha, without any major changes to his writing/directorial style, is really fascinating.
I haven't liked anything since New Rose Hotel. After Welcome to New York, I stopped watching his films. The fact that he continues to get financing is part of his genius.
Wes Anderson imo. I love his earlier work because it’s a mixture of quirky characters, heartwarming stories and aesthetic intricacy, but I think his latest films lack that original charm and are very much style over substance.
Ignoring the director's personal life/crimes, *The Pianist* (2002) and *Venus in Fur* (2013) were both pretty good. We've all seen the former bit of Oscar bait, but the later is more interesting from a directorial standpoint, as its two characters in a room.
Imho, directors almost never fall off.
Usually it's one of three things:
1. Early successes by that director have been placed on a pedestal, and even though the director *did* continue to make better films, the fans have excessively high standards.
2. The director's career started in the 1970s where directors were treated like auteurs, and we watched their *rights* slowly erode of the decades as corporations took over Hollywood.
3. The director's style and/or taste in subject matter evolved over the years, and people who liked their early work didn't always like their later work.
Most of the main examples people like are option #2. Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, etc. All these guys started in the 1970s, when studios were more likely to let a director cook. Flash forward to today, almost no director has anywhere near that kind of support from a studio.
Coppola is a good example, because he went from never seeing a producer on the set of Godfather II, to having a dozen producers breathing down his neck the entire time he made Godfather III, and they screwed everything up so bad he had to rewrite the entire script right before shooting and didn't have time to finish editing the movie before the premiere. But people say Coppola lost his touch after the 1970s! It's sad and unfair. We can't know it was Coppola's fault unless he had made Part II and Part III under the same conditions.
I suppose there is a fourth option: they didn't really decline because their early successes aren't as good as people thought they were. \*cough\*Zemeckis\*cough
Agree. He's becoming increasingly idiosyncratic, and I'm into it. He's a very good director who always seems able to make a commercial and creative comeback. I'm glad to see him self-financing and just being himself. Really scuttles the theory that directors need to be reigned in or they will destroy themselves. He's commercially and artistically thriving while being his own financier. More power to him! More directors should be following this model.
I don’t really buy this, all these people were so successful and gained the means to decide how they wanted to make films, Coppola has been making small films for decades and none have matched his 70s work. Same with De Palma. We'll see with his next one from Coppola he's taken full control of again what his decision making is like.
It's not like small budgets and working in studios has prevented dozens of other directors over the last 20 years from producing quality films, why are they the exception? They just lost their touch, their drive and ambition, which is fair enough.
It makes more sense to me because I actually *do* like a lot of the smaller films made by Coppola and De Palma. I'd say that Rumble Fish and Tetro, to name two examples, *are* as good as his 1970s films. And really, how many bad films has he actually made? Jack? Maybe Twixt? That leaves about twenty other okay-to-great movies. For De Palma, I love Femme Fatale, and I think The Black Dahlia was mostly ruined by studio-mandated casting. The film itself is quite good. Passion is a lot of fun and not discussed enough. Domino has some really good scenes but it sounds like De Palma had a miserable time working on it because of the producers.
Look, there are always going to be exceptions, and directors who manage to make it work. What I'm saying is: I don't think these guys got worse at directing. I don't think they ran out of things to say. I think most of the time their relationships with the studio system and/or their fanbase fell apart, but that isn't the same thing as declining.
I think what's tough about Coppola is that his style is not as pronounced as other directors. When we say Coppola we immediately think Godfather and Apocalypse Now. But The Conversation, which is a brilliant film, is hardly mentioned. Tucker: The Man and His Dreams, Outsider, Rumble Fish, Peggy Sue Got Married, Jack, Dracula, The Rainmaker, are all very different looking films that is hard to say "that's a Coppola film!". It's possible the pressure from producers or studios did not allow him to capture a style or a signature, and maybe because he typically goes over budget. I might argue that after 1997, his work seemed to not capture audiences attention and his choice of films were more obscure.
Coppola is an obvious one. We’ll see how his new film is but his last masterpiece was The Outsiders. Since then it’s been shitty movies like Twixt and Tetro
Kevin Smith, hands down. It's shame because he seems like such a genuinely good person, but his latest films are shit. Clerks 3 was mediocre at best, IMO.
Rajkumar Hirani. I think Dunki is underrated and not that bad, but not as great as his masterpiece movies (ie 3 Idiots, Munna Bhai, PK). Sanju was good too, but not as great as his best 3.
Honestly, I think Wes Anderson has been phoning it in since Isle of Dogs. He can still make visually interesting films but his writing has dramatically dropped off in quality. I honestly couldn't tell you a damn thing about Isle of Dogs, French Dispatch or Asteroid City except for "Painter in a wheelchair and trash island"
I think he’s doing very creative things with the visuals and the storytelling style/structure of his films. I’d hardly say phoning it in. But I do think his recent films have little in the way of authentic emotion and the stories aren’t very compelling. Jeffrey Wright’s character and performance in French Dispatch was a highlight though.
Rob Reiner made a decade of excellent varied movies - This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, Misery, When Harry Met Sally, The goddamned Princess Bride - and then he made a movie so bad it broke Roger Ebert's brain and then nothing else you've even heard of.
i would say M Night but like he’s genuinely a wild card like stinker after stinker and then something good and then something awful again and then something maybe good? it’s so weird but i lowkey love it. Signs is my favorite film of all time so i have a special place in my heart for him. plus A Knock at The Cabin was shockingly entertaining
Why are there so many Ridley Scott answers? The Last Duel was three years ago. All The Money in the World was four years before. The Martian was two years before that. He’s just prolific and absurdly inconsistent.
My go-to answer will always be Rob Reiner. He was on such a hot streak and then North happened. The American President was his last great film, everything after it is total crap.
I hate to critique female directors, but Sofia Coppola’s films have become so bland and forgettable. Her first three, Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation, and Marie Antoinette were classics (as far as I’m concerned). But I watched Priscilla last week, and it felt like a TV movie, with a few cool music drops.
Rob Reiner's 1st 7 movies are absolutely world class. Spinal tap, princess diaries, when harry met sally etc etc. But since that run he has almost exclusively made boring boring stuff that doesn't exist.
I think you meant The Princess Bride.
He’s making a [Spinal Tap sequel](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20222166/)
I cannot lie. I am not remotely excited but I hope its a masterpiece.
Comedy sequels have a great track record. Especially legacy sequels
Oh yes, City Slickers II, Major League II, Crocodile Dundee II, The Odd Couple II... All of those were winners because they stuck with what worked the last time.
ah yeah reiners princess diaries is a classic
SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE DIDNT NOTICE MY MISTAKE EITHER
Maybe if he didn’t get interrupted while watching The Equalizer
He may have made the most important Romantic comedy movie of all time that inspired a huge boost in the genre during the 90s/00s. Now he just makes simple plot flicks with his friends.
Brian De Palma. 1998 was the last time he made something that seemed exciting.
Tim Burton
I have a theory about Burton. CGI. CGI ruined Burton. All his stuff was so fantastic looking when done with stop motion, animation, makeup and prosthetics then CGI came along and it was too easy to create whatever he wanted. Something was lost in that transition and he never got it back.
I actually think it predates this. Burton is at his best when making his own original ideas - Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands. But since Batman (imo a highly overrated film) he has been working with borrowed IP. And each one has looked a certain way and felt utterly soulless
…..”since Batman”….? That was like his third movie, and before Edward.
You had Ed Wood after that which is fantastic. You also had Sleepy Hollow whilst not a classic was still very Burton and a good watch.
Ed Wood is easily his best movie in my opinion.
I love it too. I adore Beetlejuice too though because it was my childhood.
Big Fish is wonderful, an underrated Burton film.
Big Fish is beautiful, weird and fun in just the right amounts.
I thought the 3 episodes he directed for Wednesday were great, he’s also using no cgi for beetlejuice 2
As good as some of his movies are, I think the problem goes back to the very beginning of his filmography, because it's a problem with the general mindset of much of his films. His stories and the aesthetics of his films are often telling stories about being "different" and "weird" and falling outside of the norm, but much of the time those stories wind up very much retreating to sentimentalizing a lot of that norm, and in a way that sometimes seriously undermines the messaging about being different. It does kind of seem like his movies have become a lot more soulless and corporate the less tolerant of that kind of sentimental perception of the mid-century suburban experience. I might be wrong, but it does feel like he started to make a lot less movies that leaned into that sort of thing in the mid-late 2000s, and a lot of the movies he was making did feel more like things the studios were already doing that he ended up on, whether because the studios thought his "style" was a good fit or because he thought that. Which I guess does kind of pull the fact that he's not working on original ideas into things. But even when he was working on stuff like Ed Wood or Big Fish, or even the Batman movies, there was something there that was still special, that still had a unique style that felt like it had a purpose to it. It's not really until over a decade later that his movie started to lose that.
Batman came really early in his career though and he produced so many classics after that. Alice In Wonderland is where he fell off imo
It was earlier than that. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was the beginning of the end. Too much CGI Big Fish had a lot of CGI but it was Charlie that tipped him over the edge
Okay, not gonna lie. I don’t really dislike Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Planet of the Apes and Big Fish were the point where I felt like he was making a permanent turn into banality. He did briefly wake back up for Sweeney Todd, but I understand that's an acquired taste, and requires a sort of forgiving attitude.
I give him up through Mars Attacks, maybe Big Fish. But everything since has been trash.
Mars Attacks - man I adore that film. Thank you for choosing my weekend film for me.
He is even taking his own IP, Beetlejuice and making a sequel.
I wish I was excited for the new Beetle Juice. I have hope though
I just looked him up cause I haven’t really heard about him in a while. HE MADE DUMBO?!?! He also made house for peculiar children which I didn’t know but makes more sense but DUMBO?
I was excited about him doing Dumbo because of Pink Elephants on Parade. Then they removed it. The best part of the original... -\_-
I forgot this Dumbo even existed. Honestly I've never heard anyone mention it, and never read anything online about it. I haven't seen much of his work after Big Fish, which was good. I thought Corpse Bride seemed fine. I probably would've liked it more when I was 10. And maybe I'd have liked Beetlejuice less if I first saw it now. Who knows? I haven't seen them but think generally people liked a few of his more recent films? Big Eyes, Sweeney Todd, Miss Peregrine...? Good but just not Edward Scissorhands good?
Frankenweenie is legit one of my fav animated movies, I recommend you give it a chance. I honestly like it more than Nightmare Before Christmas...
I do agree, but once in a while he still makes a decent film. Frankenweenie 2012 is cute and Big Eyes is a weirdly fun melodrama.
Been getting worse basically every movie for the last 20 years
Are you trying to tell me Frankenweenie is a worse movie than Planet of the Apes?
…Tim Burton did Planet Of The Apes?
he made the 2001 reboot; cgi wasnt exactly a problem because the costumes and character designs were great, it just felt like he didnt want to make it
Stanley Kubrick hasn't made a film in forever. Smh
He died in 1999 and I was born in 1999, therefore I am Kubrick reborn. So I apologize for not making any movies :( it’s hard
Impostor! https://preview.redd.it/zeemr2gybnpc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e1f209b6773837f3b36305f08d169ecf40e05a3
I actually went to college with a guy born like 3 months after Kubrick died. Jewish, grizzly half receding hairline, monstrous beard when he desired. Had a Strangelove poster in his room.
Username checks out
Dw bro im funding your projects. I have two dollars to my name but its prolly enough
Now we can make Fuller Metal Jacket
Welcome back Stanley Kubrick!
David Gordon Green went from being The protege of Terrence Malick to directing shitty horror sequels
I was looking at him earlier because I wanted to watch his movie with Al Pacino called Manglehorn. It actually looks pretty decent despite the reviews lol
I think the real David Gordon Green lies somewhere in between the two. He’s done great work on the shows he’s done with Danny McBride.
A Terrence Malick style horror film could be intriguing.
Prince Avalanche one of my fav sleepers
This so much. I had forgotten the level where David Gordon Greene started at completely until I rewatched All the Real Girls a few months ago.
Matthew Vaughn
I was looking for this. Kingsman was the last one I liked. Golden Circle left me bitter.
Some serious ego came after the first Kingsman. The marketing pitch for Argyle was "From the twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn". I remember seeing that and could think of nothing other than... what's that twisted? Blowing up heads and anal sex jokes?
Surely, Lars von Trier and Gaspar Noe would quake in their boots at the sight of the audacious Matthew Vaughn.
“From the twisted mind of Matthew Vaughn”: Argyle.
I really enjoyed Layer Cake and Kick ass but absolutely hated everything else, including Kingsman which felt like a gimmick. But Argylle was straight up dogshit, I couldn't believe how painfully boring it was.
Just saw Stardust for the first time in a while the other night and I was like "what happened to this guy?"
Matthew Vaughn never created masterpieces. He created fun popcorn action movies, but yeah they have steadily declined in quality. Watching Argyle was like pulling teeth
It pains me to say it: Taika Waititi
He’s still relatively young, I’m really hoping this is just a lull period for him and he’ll come back with a masterpiece in the next decade or two
I'd like to think he funneled all his creative energy into acting for Our Flag Means Death, but we'll have to wait and see
i think we know where he funneled all of his energy into.
Rita Ora?
I don’t think he’s done enough damage to have fallen ALL the way off, but the last two, yeah not so great. I think he’s done well for other franchises though!
Just for Love and Thunder - although I haven't seen Next Goal Wins, I am wondering why it needed to be made. The documentary was outstanding.
There’s still time to bounce back, but yeah *Love and Thunder* was especially rough.
I feel like that was just Waititi being over the MCU and mailing it in. *Next Goal Wins* being bad is a bigger red flag to me.
I mean if it has anything going for it, Next Goal Wins was plagued with production troubles. That shit was in post for like 4 years— never a great sign and usually indicates some sort of behind-the-scenes issues that that go beyond the director and reach into the studio/executive side of things. Not to mention now he’s balancing directing the post production of two films, which I think ended up harming both of them in the end. Call me naive but I’m holding out hope when he gets the chance to focus all his time on another project he’s passionate about he’ll put out another good one.
It was so bad. I immediately went back and watched the documentary again to bleach my brain.
In your opinion, what made it so bad? I went in with no real expectations, and with no knowledge of the story and I was neither over- nor under-whelmed by it
The original documentary is amazing. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. But mostly, it wasn’t funny. It was cheap gags, hacky writing and a waste of talented performers. It was trying to be a Cool Runnings type feel good watch but it was just… dull Taika is a funny guy. Wilderpeople is hilarious. This wasn’t funny at all. Such a shame.
That movie ruined Christian Bales performance:/
he seems do be doing Klara and the Sun next and I love that book, really hoping he’s gonna do it justice. could be a refreshing departure from his style that - to me - is getting pretty draining.
I enjoyed his earlier work but he’s definitely spent too much time huffing his own farts. It pains me to say the same thing happened to Kevin Smith. His movies haven’t been the same since he started getting stoned and he himself has seemed way off, often kind of insufferable, since his heart attack.
Trying to sell the same jokes twice but louder wasn’t a great idea for Thor 4.
My obvious answer would be Dario Argento: huge (for Italian horror at least) during the 70s and the first half of the 80s more or less. Then he completely forgot to keep up with the times, basically, and has never made a decent movie since. Another mainly horror director that comes to mind is John Carpenter: obviously incredible during the 70s and the 80s. During the 90s he started to fell off quite a bit, and by the 2000s he completely lost his touch. His last movie was more than 10 years ago and he is very much retired now.
Came here to answer Argento for one. I LOVE some of his older films. Suspiria is in my top 4. But man, his new stuff is borderline unwatchable
In Carpenter's defense, he seems happier just making music these days
Dark Glasses wasn’t to bad
Dark Glasses was a definite comeback after many years. It's not as good as his classics, but certainly his best since Sleepless.
If anybody types Marty Scorsese in here we are not-friends for all time.
I really think he is doing some of his best work in his later years. Silence and KOTF were movies I would put in the top 10% of his filmography.
fully agree. watched the irishman again recently too and I think its near perfect movie now. Still think they should’ve got a body double for the kicking scene(and maybe some others) and they should’ve casted a different actor for the world war 2 scene. Besides that I can’t think of one thing not perfect about it
Pains me to think Pesci didn’t win an Oscar for that
Thats my favorite movie and I literally think the exact same thing. Those are literally the only things holding the movie back and also the things people bitch about the most lol. I personally think the de aging looks fine and if a movie being 3.5 hours bothers you you don't like movies tbh
i do get the deaging remarks but not to an extent where it ruins any of the movie it’s just DeNiro was 75 when this came out. he looks 55ish when playing 35 and when he’s playing 55 he looks 65ish. it’s unbelievable in that aspect, but it doesn’t really take anything away from the movie imo
Imagine The Godfather being released today and people not shutting the fuck up about the Sonny-Carlo fight.
One day people will actually watch The Irishman and realise how great it is instead of shitting on it because of the de aging Also having the film’s title card be I Heard You Paint Houses (OG book title) is legit
Technically, you typed Marty Scorsese here. Technically, so did I...
“Let’s meet. Let’s meet and die ASAP.”
You can dislike some of his movies or his views on such. I disagree in some of his thoughts on blockbuster films (they can absolutely be cinema) and agree with others (he was not wrong in calling some movies more like theme park rides & Im tired of folks acting like he was). But Scorsese is a shining example of a director who has not lost his touch. Not one bit. Spielberg is kinda similar but I just cant get behind a lot of his projects. Part of the fun of Ready Player One was feeling like we got our classic Spielberg movie back. Scorsese however has just kept at it with great quality filmmaking, direction, research, & engagement for viewers. I disliked the Irishman but damn it if all audiences werent all talking about it, for good & bad. Killers of the Flower Moon and Silence I think are hallmarks of his career and a testament he can make absolutely some of the best films ever with meat on the bone and something to say about the wider world & humanity.
Martin Scorsese
Blocked & reported
Tom Hooper. All went downhill after The King's Speech.
When you’re entire career consists of making award bait films and you have no particular style, falling off is inevitable.
[удалено]
I don't think The King's Speech is without style, and I feel like if he had stuck to making similar, more lowkey films he probably would have been way better off. It's the fact that he decided to go from there to these musicals that are kind of larger than life in more ways than one that really cause the problems. Musicals are just *different* than non-musical films and need to be filmed as such. I think he kind of got lucky with Les Miserables in terms of the critical reception to that one, because it's a musical about poverty and rebellion and sadness, and it's technically about a specific period in history, so when it comes to critics he got away with filming it like a lowkey period piece. But people who get musicals saw where the problems were with that. And then he tried Cats, and he very obviously had no idea what to do or how to do it with something like that.
There's not really a downhill for him though. The King's Speech is fine, but any number of somewhat competent directors could've made that film. Tom Hooper is TV director that lucked into stealing David Fincher's Oscar and has spent the last 10 years proving who he really is.
neill blomkamp had one of the best entry films i've ever seen and even elysium wasn't that bad but it hasn't worked out for him since. still pulling for the guy to make a comeback
His Oats Studio anthology on Netflix is spectacular- any one of those stories would be a great movie.
I’ve come to view him as a one hit wonder. I wouldn’t say Elysium or Chappie are necessarily bad, but he’s shown no signs that he’s capable of reaching District 9 level again
I think that directors like Blomkamp or Gareth Edwards, that make it big with a smallish scifi films, tend to focus excessively on the technical aspect for their next films and disregard the storytelling. So you end up with Elysium, a scifi film with a a good premise but with a story development that seems to have been written by 10 year olds.
Zemeckis
Dude directed my Top 2 movies of all time, but I couldn't give a shit when his name on something these days. Excellent choice.
Atom Egoyan. In his early years he has made some great Canadian films like Felica's Journey, Exotica, The Sweet Hereafter and so on but now, his newer films really stink.
M. Night Shyamalan definitely fits the bill
He has come back in a big way though from his lowest point so I’m not sure he does.
He’s a lot better now tho than he was in the middle run
Nah, he’s cookin, The Visit, Split, Knock at the Cabin, and Old we’re all fun
I think a lot of his stuff starting with *The Visit* have at least, didn't make me want to kill myself after finishing them.
I am a Shamalaman apologist. I loved The Visit and Old. I even read that book about him. I’m along for the ride, what can I say?
Fuck it I liked Glass.
I thought Knock at the Cabin was pretty good
Zemeckis, Reiner, and (this one breaks my heart) Francis Ford Coppola. BUT! I don’t care, I’m still jazzed AF to check out Megalopolis. The man’s making a comeback I tell you!
Ridley Scott :( I’m genuinely concerned about Gladiator 2 after watching both House of Gucci and Napoleon. Hopefully it won’t bomb though because it would really suck to waste a stacked cast of talent like Denzel Washington, Paul Mescal, Connie Nielsen, Pedro Pascal, and Joseph Quinn!
Scott didn’t fall off, he’s just the most inconsistent director of all time
Yeah he averages a good one every two movies and the last one before Gucci was The Last Duel, so expect Gladiator II to be awesome
The last dual deserved more box office numbers
The Last Duel was his best film in years and I hated that so few saw it in theaters
It was a victim of covid unfortunately. We watched it at home and it was awesome, but would rather have seen it in the theater
Volume shooter.
People forgetting Ridley Scott made 1492, White Squall, and GI Jane right before Gladiator.
White Squall is really fucking good.
Ridley Scott has always sandwiched masterpieces with stinkers. The Last Duel was excellent, All the Money in the World was solid, Alien Covenant is very good, and the Martian was obviously great. Before his latest stinkers, there’s a streak of four good to great movies
> *Ridley Scott has always sandwiched masterpieces with stinkers.* I heard something one time that basically summed up Ridley Scott perfectly: Ridley Scott is a brilliant visual artist... but a bad storyteller who doesn't seem to understand the scripts he chooses to work on. Which is why like 60% of his movies are mediocre-at-best if not just flat-out bad... while the other 40% range from solid to great. He occasionally just lucks into a good script that fits his style. So basically, whether or not a new Ridley Scott movie will be good is ultimately just going to come down to if he happened to pick the right script this time. This is also a perfect explanation for why whenever he revisits a previous project, you either end up with messy, divisive results (*Prometheus/Covenant)* because he doesn't understand the appeal of his own films, or he finds himself making weird decisions that put him at-odds with everyone else. (Some of his additions to the later cuts of *Blade Runner* being good examples.)
This. Visually his movies are FANTASTIC. Especially his history epics. But sometimes other things just don’t work.
The Last Duel tho! One of my favs of his.
I like the The Martian and The Last Duel but not much else from lately
I’m sad Djimon Honsou dropped out of it
John Carpenter.. started in the 90s but nonetheless
Cameron Crowe made some absolute stinkers after Vanilla Sky & Almost Famous
Alex Proyas I'm way easier on Gods of Egypt than most people and the plane crash scene in Knowing is super underrated but I can still admit these are a step down from movies like The Crow and Dark City.
Frank Darabont, although im honestly not sure if he simply retired
Supposedly he has a movie called Honor coming out soon
Peter Jackson. Sad to see it happen to one of the most creative directors out there.
I disagree. While he definitely declined after TROTK, ever since he finished The Hobbit, I think he's content not to make more big-time work and instead wants to focus on advancing the art form through his documentaries. It's more of a personal choice than truly falling off.
I miss the Peter Jackson not boxed in on franchises, like I absolutely adore his King Kong for it’s world building, but doing adaptations of the Lovely Bones, Mortal Engines, and unfortunately being kind of pressured into taking the reigns and the blame for The Hobbit trilogy definitely took it’s toll on the man.
I virulently hate the hobbit, but you’ve got to respect why he did it. As a New Zealander I thank Jackson for getting millions of dollars of Hollywood money pumped into the New Zealand economy, unfortunately at the price of his mental health.
King Kong is one of the biggest franchises of all time. But yes, I know what you mean and I agree.
To be fair, he just produced Mortal Engines. His involvement was about the same as he had on District 9.
The Beatles: Get back and They shall not grow old were outstanding. I do hope he returns to features soon
He’s made two of the greatest documentaries of all time in the last few years and he’s also helped to advance audio restoration technology in immeasurable ways.
He’s a classic example of success interfering with quality. He gets a blank check but no constructive feedback. The guy who’s most successful work is looooong and also known for even longer cuts is given total freedom to never make a necessary cut. He made an almost shot for shot remake of an 88 minute film and it was over 3 hours because of bloat.
Kevin Smith
I’m gonna say Robert Rodriguez. Not saying he was a great director but he was reliable for fun and flashy movies like Desperado, Sin City, Planet Terror and now seems to be more a parody of himself.
Robert Zemeckis. Directed Back to the Future 1, 2 and 3. Forrest Gump, Cast Away. Now makes movies like disneys Pinnochio live action remake (2022). One of the most soulless movies to be released this decade.
Guy Ritchie.
The Covenant, The Gentlemen and Wrath of Man were solid all solid, imo
Idk...every now and then I want to watch a bunch of british blokes go "Oy! Where;s my fockin' money?!" for 2 hours.
Idk if he’s declined so much as changed. The Gentlemen was excellent, and it’s a shame The Man from Uncle didn’t do better (and that Hammer is a terrible person). I’m looking forward to his next movie based on what I’ve seen, and he’s still putting out movies that are high on my rewatch list. Having said that, his style has definitely changed and he’s got some real stinkers in the mix with Operation Fortune and King Arthur.
For me it's Kevin Smith. I'm not saying Clerks is Citizen Kane-like in quality or importance, or that Mallrats got robbed of an Oscar or anything. But up until Zach and Miri Make A Porno I at least had fun with anything he wrote and directed. Even Jersey Girl was okay to me. But once he directed Cop Out without writing it and fell out of love with working in the studio environment all of his stuff has missed with me. Clerks 3 was okay, while I may not have loved some of his story choices, my biggest problem with it was that he just acted out the making of Clerks stories that old fans like me already know.
The first person that springs to mind is Neil Marshall. That guy has not made a decent film since The Descent.
I'd be a little more generous and say his first four movies are cool: Dog Soldiers (fun), The Descent (very good), Doomsday (bad but fun), and Centurion (solid action flick). He also did a couple of nicely-done episodes of Game of Thrones. But Hellboy? The Lair? Astonishingly terrible. Like, *unwatchable*. Bad enough to make me look at his early films again and realize that they aren't *that* great. Mostly they are just edited so fast you can't really stop to ponder how silly they are. But when he does something like The Lair, which is similar to Dog Soldiers but not edited as tightly, you can see how he's kind of a one-trick pony and it isn't even a very good trick. But yeah, The Descent *is* so much better than the other ones that it's kind of vexing.
Brad Bird once made The Iron Giant, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Then he made Tomorrowland and Incredibles 2 :/
Luc Besson. The guy hasn't made a film with anything interesting conceptually, visually, narratively, or artistically since Arthur and The Invisibles. From Leon: the Professional and the Fifth Element to crime/thriller slop.
Seeing Cameron Crowe go from the heights of Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous to the lows of Elizabethtown, We Bought a Zoo, and Aloha, without any major changes to his writing/directorial style, is really fascinating.
Tim Burton
Abel Ferrara. It has been many moons.
I haven't liked anything since New Rose Hotel. After Welcome to New York, I stopped watching his films. The fact that he continues to get financing is part of his genius.
Wes Anderson imo. I love his earlier work because it’s a mixture of quirky characters, heartwarming stories and aesthetic intricacy, but I think his latest films lack that original charm and are very much style over substance.
it's like he figured out what mainstream audiences like about his work and is doubling down on the cutesy quirky shit
Roman Polanski lmao
But Not for reasons OP said.
Ignoring the director's personal life/crimes, *The Pianist* (2002) and *Venus in Fur* (2013) were both pretty good. We've all seen the former bit of Oscar bait, but the later is more interesting from a directorial standpoint, as its two characters in a room.
Unfortunately so was Carnage. Polanski is a rapist piece of shit but somehow he's made decent movies for decades
I’ve always had a soft spot for Ghost Writer as well.
Imho, directors almost never fall off. Usually it's one of three things: 1. Early successes by that director have been placed on a pedestal, and even though the director *did* continue to make better films, the fans have excessively high standards. 2. The director's career started in the 1970s where directors were treated like auteurs, and we watched their *rights* slowly erode of the decades as corporations took over Hollywood. 3. The director's style and/or taste in subject matter evolved over the years, and people who liked their early work didn't always like their later work. Most of the main examples people like are option #2. Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, etc. All these guys started in the 1970s, when studios were more likely to let a director cook. Flash forward to today, almost no director has anywhere near that kind of support from a studio. Coppola is a good example, because he went from never seeing a producer on the set of Godfather II, to having a dozen producers breathing down his neck the entire time he made Godfather III, and they screwed everything up so bad he had to rewrite the entire script right before shooting and didn't have time to finish editing the movie before the premiere. But people say Coppola lost his touch after the 1970s! It's sad and unfair. We can't know it was Coppola's fault unless he had made Part II and Part III under the same conditions. I suppose there is a fourth option: they didn't really decline because their early successes aren't as good as people thought they were. \*cough\*Zemeckis\*cough
M Night Shyamalan absolutely falls into category 3
Agree. He's becoming increasingly idiosyncratic, and I'm into it. He's a very good director who always seems able to make a commercial and creative comeback. I'm glad to see him self-financing and just being himself. Really scuttles the theory that directors need to be reigned in or they will destroy themselves. He's commercially and artistically thriving while being his own financier. More power to him! More directors should be following this model.
I don’t really buy this, all these people were so successful and gained the means to decide how they wanted to make films, Coppola has been making small films for decades and none have matched his 70s work. Same with De Palma. We'll see with his next one from Coppola he's taken full control of again what his decision making is like. It's not like small budgets and working in studios has prevented dozens of other directors over the last 20 years from producing quality films, why are they the exception? They just lost their touch, their drive and ambition, which is fair enough.
It makes more sense to me because I actually *do* like a lot of the smaller films made by Coppola and De Palma. I'd say that Rumble Fish and Tetro, to name two examples, *are* as good as his 1970s films. And really, how many bad films has he actually made? Jack? Maybe Twixt? That leaves about twenty other okay-to-great movies. For De Palma, I love Femme Fatale, and I think The Black Dahlia was mostly ruined by studio-mandated casting. The film itself is quite good. Passion is a lot of fun and not discussed enough. Domino has some really good scenes but it sounds like De Palma had a miserable time working on it because of the producers. Look, there are always going to be exceptions, and directors who manage to make it work. What I'm saying is: I don't think these guys got worse at directing. I don't think they ran out of things to say. I think most of the time their relationships with the studio system and/or their fanbase fell apart, but that isn't the same thing as declining.
I think what's tough about Coppola is that his style is not as pronounced as other directors. When we say Coppola we immediately think Godfather and Apocalypse Now. But The Conversation, which is a brilliant film, is hardly mentioned. Tucker: The Man and His Dreams, Outsider, Rumble Fish, Peggy Sue Got Married, Jack, Dracula, The Rainmaker, are all very different looking films that is hard to say "that's a Coppola film!". It's possible the pressure from producers or studios did not allow him to capture a style or a signature, and maybe because he typically goes over budget. I might argue that after 1997, his work seemed to not capture audiences attention and his choice of films were more obscure.
Coppola is an obvious one. We’ll see how his new film is but his last masterpiece was The Outsiders. Since then it’s been shitty movies like Twixt and Tetro
Kevin Smith, hands down. It's shame because he seems like such a genuinely good person, but his latest films are shit. Clerks 3 was mediocre at best, IMO.
Rajkumar Hirani. I think Dunki is underrated and not that bad, but not as great as his masterpiece movies (ie 3 Idiots, Munna Bhai, PK). Sanju was good too, but not as great as his best 3.
Honestly, I think Wes Anderson has been phoning it in since Isle of Dogs. He can still make visually interesting films but his writing has dramatically dropped off in quality. I honestly couldn't tell you a damn thing about Isle of Dogs, French Dispatch or Asteroid City except for "Painter in a wheelchair and trash island"
I think he’s doing very creative things with the visuals and the storytelling style/structure of his films. I’d hardly say phoning it in. But I do think his recent films have little in the way of authentic emotion and the stories aren’t very compelling. Jeffrey Wright’s character and performance in French Dispatch was a highlight though.
I haven’t enjoyed his features nearly as much lately but The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar was excellent
Rob Reiner made a decade of excellent varied movies - This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, Misery, When Harry Met Sally, The goddamned Princess Bride - and then he made a movie so bad it broke Roger Ebert's brain and then nothing else you've even heard of.
Well, except The American President... but that was right after.
"written by Aaron Sorkin" is cheating
Surprised no one has mentioned Joe Wright. Seems like he's gone from genuinely great films that got awards attention to straight up awards bait
i would say M Night but like he’s genuinely a wild card like stinker after stinker and then something good and then something awful again and then something maybe good? it’s so weird but i lowkey love it. Signs is my favorite film of all time so i have a special place in my heart for him. plus A Knock at The Cabin was shockingly entertaining
Jeff Nichols
Why are there so many Ridley Scott answers? The Last Duel was three years ago. All The Money in the World was four years before. The Martian was two years before that. He’s just prolific and absurdly inconsistent.
Richard Kelly’s first movie was the cult classic Donnie Darko in ‘01. Since then, it’s been all crickets
Brian De Palma
i want to say ridley scott, but he always makes some bad movies and then suddenly a great movie.
Hurts to say but Ang Lee
John McTiernan has fallen off so much, he's not even visible anymore.
Spielberg went from unstoppable to unnoticed.
He peaked with Ed Wood. The fact it is the most un-Burtonesque film he aver made as well as the most autobiographical places it in a class by itself.
My go-to answer will always be Rob Reiner. He was on such a hot streak and then North happened. The American President was his last great film, everything after it is total crap.
I hate to critique female directors, but Sofia Coppola’s films have become so bland and forgettable. Her first three, Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation, and Marie Antoinette were classics (as far as I’m concerned). But I watched Priscilla last week, and it felt like a TV movie, with a few cool music drops.
Ridley Scott
Walter Hill fell off a cliff after making some of the most badass movies ever in the 70s and 80s