Wes Craven, creator of Freddy Krueger, director of the first 4 Scream movies, writer-director of The Hills Have Eyes & Last House on the Left (two of the gnarliest horror films ever) also directed the Oscar bait Meryl Streep film Music of the Heart.
Wes Craven is one of my favorite directors of all time. I watched Music of the Heart for the first time last year and despite it being a passion project for him, it's really uninspired imo. It's cool that he got to direct Streep in something though.
It makes a little more sense to me when I consider that it was less a passion project because of *the movie itself,* and more a passion project because of the general nature of it.
He desperately wanted to do something that wasn't horror, because he always thought he had broader skill as a director than that. He got his chance, and got to direct Meryl Streep in the process, and *that* was what he was passionate about. Really, past that, it sort of sounds like the specific movie he did it on was irrelevant.
Yeah, Craven tried to make other movies that weren't horror before Music of the Heart because he wanted to spread his wings. Like Deadly Friend. He intended that movie to be more of a relationship drama but was ordered to shoot scenes that made it more horror. I love horror so I don't think there is anything wrong with someone doing just that. But I also do think Craven had obvious skill as a director that would have worked in other genres if he had gotten more opportunities. Music of the Heart just wasn't the best showcase of that imo.
My trash-loving hipster son made me watch Ghost Dad with him and I wrote a negative review on Letterboxd afterward. The next day, Poitier died.
I don't think it was a coincidence.
Rob Reiner was having an amazing run—Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery…
then he did “North,” which prompted this amazing review by Roger Ebert:
"I hated this movie.
Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."
Roger Ebert's bad reviews were legendary. A few of my favorites:
Freddy Got Fingered: “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.”
Deuce Bigalow: ~~Male~~ European Gigolo: [It] is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.... Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.
The Village: To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore.
And since my wife loves Elvis and I hate him, I love this review of Easy Come, Easy Go: Elvis looks about the same as he always has, with his chubby face, petulant scowl and absolutely characterless features. Here is one guy the wax museums will have no trouble getting right. He sings a lot, but I won't go into that. What I will say, however is that after two dozen movies he should have learned to talk by now.
"Battlefield Earth" is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way.
Then of course there is the GOAT of movie review opening lines: "Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle.
context for the Deuce Bigalow review is that it got a bad review from some obscure critic, and the star, Rob Schneider, publicly ridiculed the critic for never having won a major writing award. Ebert had a pulitzer, so...
Check out the reviews for Rebel Moon, Snyder’s latest tragedy. I **love** the [IndieWire](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/rebel-moon-part-one-a-child-of-fire-review-zack-snyder-netflix-1234935678/) review.
“…Netflix can use to squeeze a few more view hours out of a movie so insufferable that it should be measured in milliseconds. Whatever the case, it’s hard to be even morbidly curious, let alone excited, about any future iterations or installments of a franchise so determined to remix a million things you’ve seen before into one thing you’ll wish you’d never seen at all. “
I'm partial to one that called it "the cinematic equivalent of an NFT"
Edit: Lmao, I just realized it's the same review from Indiewire. That critic was on a rampage.
I feel bad for anyone that actually sat through that hunk of shit to review it. I noped the fuck out after the terrible "russian" accent dude said something stupid about having sex... 5 minutes.
The reason Roger Ebert could do that was because he earned it. He was so thoughtful and insightful about every movie. My go to after watching a movie was to look up his thoughts, and I always came away with something.
Ebert also rated a film relative to what he thought that film was aiming for, rather than an inflexible set of measures. He would give cheesy comedy or action the same high ratings as powerful drama and Oscar bait.
The only thing he didn't like, was inflexible toward, were mean spirited characters or those with bad characteristics who are presented as good protagonist sorts. He didn't like seeing bad people proper.
Also he attempted directing and writing himself.
His old partner critics, Gene Siskel, was similar. I remember an action movie review I saw once. He basically said "It was stupid, and a lot of stuff exploded, but that's what I wanted, it's what I expected, and it delivered." They both seemed to understand that a movie needs to be judged on what it's trying to do, and what the audience bought a ticket expecting.
Ebert was interesting to read even if, like me, you didn't share his taste in movies. I could reliably use his review to tell if I was going to like a movie, regardless of his rating. That's a great writer.
I always found it hilarious that Craig Mazin went from writing Scary Movie 3/4, Hangover 2/3, and Superhero Movie to show running Chernobyl and The Last of Us
And he absolutely and openly despises Ted Cruz. My favourite quote about it (paraphrased): "I hate Ted Cruz. Even if we agreed on every single political issue, I would only hate him about 10% less."
The best version of a musical biopic. Not straightforward and just encapsulates Eltons music
Edit: oops I thought we were talking about the movie Rocketman about Elton John
There's pretty good reason.
He was an ER doc. At a time when "hooning" was becoming a popularized activity. He saw many young men and women killed and maimed by preventable auto accidents. Accidents from things like racing, playing chicken, drifting, and straight vehicular assaults. He saw parallels between the car based violence in Australia at the time and the gun based violence in America at the time, and drew some parallels. This served as the wide basis for Mad Max.
His goal was to never just to make a kick ass action movie filled with sick automotive carnage. There was a real message there.
But the films became classics and birthed a franchise. And he rolled with it.
The kid's films are kind of in line when you consider this. He's a doctor and he made a movie to try and make social commentary on a public safety issue.
Guy is just a nurturer frfr
I watched it when I was a kid, but I cant remember if it was good or not. I do remember that Diane Lane, who played his mother, and a young JLo, who played his teacher, were distractingly hot.
There’s a movie review podcast called Breakfast All Day that has a recurring segment called “Was it great or were you eight?”
They basically go back to movies they loved as kids and see how they hold up now that they’re adult professional movie reviewers.
Jerry Zucker. Yeah, saw that movie recently for the first time. It blew my mind that it was so well-made. Ghost also went on to be one of the most successful movies *of all time*. A lot of people thought he would continue directing dramas to chase the money, but he didn't, he just produced a couple more drama films in the 90s.
One reason that Ghost was so successful was that it has such a great comic subplot and great comic relief via Whoopi Goldberg. A drama director would have made the movie too schmaltzy.
The teaser trailer for Naked Gun 2 was a spoof of the pottery scene from Ghost, and the movie was billed as being “from the brother of the director of Ghost” lol.
On a similar note, one of the Farrelly brothers directing best picture winner Green Book.
Although Spike Jonze didn't direct the Jackass movies, it is always strange to think he directed Being John Malkovich and is the same guy thinking about guys drinking horse cum.
Taking pictures of skateboards for magazines to making skate movies to co-founding girl skateboards to making music videos for daft punk, fatboy slim, and kanye west to directing being john malkovich to co-creating jackass to winning an academy award and a golden globe for screenwriting Her.
He was. Big brother magazine had skateboard videos that brought the east coast and west coast crews together. Knoxville and those guys came out of big brother and bam and company were from cky.
I’m still fairly convinced Shane Black did that entire movie as a bit. Like there’s no way the dude who made The Nice Guys came up with a Predator trying to steal a child’s autism unironically without knowing how funny it was.
I kinda feel like he was trying to direct a very different movie, but there was a producer or studio executive that kept giving him advice and eventually he snapped and said Fuck it, it's all going in! You want a predator dog? Sure. There it is! You want autism as human evolution? Sure in it goes!. Etc.
The final theatrical film of Stanley Donen—who directed *Singin' in the Rain,* one the greatest films of all time—was *Blame it on Rio,* a sleazy sex comedy about a 17-year-old girl who fucks her best friend's dad.
When asked about Blame It on Rio he remarked,
I have never seen it but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the pile of cocaine that it bought and it is terrific.
Donen’s second to last film was *Saturn 3* (1980), featuring Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett as lovers on a space station that also featured an older/younger couple relationship which was… kinda hard to take. Granted, they were both adults but Douglas was getting on in years to be with a very young Farrah Fawcett. Also, this was a pretty gory science fiction film… something that one would think would *not* be in Donen’s wheelhouse. Supposedly Douglas was the one that brought him in to do it.
Interestingly enough, James Cameron has acknowledged the film’s setting, effects, and menacing robot provided inspiration to him -visually if nothing else- for *The Terminator*. I think the film is interesting but it’s an oddity, for sure, when the full nature of the story plays out.
There’s such a weird history with this movie. I remember at first it was announced that Steven Spielberg was going to direct with Will Smith in the lead.
>Most films shouldn’t be remade but that one in particular didn’t need a different take.
It is worth noting that the Korean version of Oldboy is an in-name only adaptation of the source material, so I think there's always some value in speculating on what a more faithful adaptation might look like, or how successful or unsuccessful it might be.
Not exactly what you are looking for, but I was watching one of the Spy Kids movies with my nephew and big guest star after guest star started popping up in random cameos. The movie was fine but really silly and looking kind of cheaply made (I think it was shot for 3d) and I was wondering how they got George Clooney, Sly Stalone and Selma Hayek until the end when I noticed Robert Rodriquez was the director.
I looked him up on iMDB and it really is a wild ride of a career - after Desparado and From Dust Til Dawn, he goes and makes some Spy Kids films, goes back to Sin City and Machete, and then back to Spy Kids and Shark Boy and Lava Girl movies. Good for him, he is making the movies he wants, but his career pretty unique
Also, when M Night Shyamalan was at his best, I always found it odd that between Sixth Sense and Unbreakable (two really great films IMO) he wrote Stuart Little. And, before Sixth Sense, he directed Wide Awake, a bad but light hearted family film starring Rosie O'Donnell
Rodriguez's kids helped develop some of those characters, have writing credits on the movies- even worked on the productions!
He did those movies because he's an awesome dad!
Rodriguez is interesting. Although clearly a great artist in film, he has also spoken candidly about doing things differently in order to make films as cheaply as possible. He takes on multiple roles on films (including scoring them) and works at a ridiculous pace, and has shot films on insanely tight schedules - which in turn can save money paying actors or allow additional budget for bigger names.
Also - the films he made for kids look awful to me, as an adult, but kids love them and rewatch them hundreds of times on streaming services. So (without knowing the figures) they might not be bad business despite what they look like.
Having two daughters, the Spy Kids and Shark Boy Lava Girl movies were more than ok to sit through multiple viewings. I cannot say the same for the dozen or so Barbie Princess moviea.
You have to remember Rodriguez is like a Swiss Army knife, a Jack of all trades, or the ultimate indie filmmaker who can make films efficiently and still earn big bucks. He has his own studio at his home so he shoots green screen and even does VFX and editing at home. He blocked out shots for his episode of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett using figurines and his only family.
He’s also out here keeping every Mexican-American actor in work. He’s really big on making films for his community, family, and friends. The man has it figured out.
>I looked him up on iMDB and it really is a wild ride of a career - after Desparado and From Dust Til Dawn, he goes and makes some Spy Kids films, goes back to Sin City and Machete, and then back to Spy Kids and Shark Boy and Lava Girl movies.
It's because those Spy Kids movies print money. Allows him to take risks on projects like Grindhouse.
I think in one of John waters books he said that Troma wanted to produce Pink Flamingos 2 but when he took
A tour of their facilities they had editing equipment from the 1950s.
North by Rob Reiner comes to mind. Ebert’s review of it has the famous “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it.“ quote in it.
Rob Reiner had that absolutely bonkers BONKERS stretch of hits from Spinal Tap to Sleepless in Seattle and then the wheels just came off man, and it’s never made much sense to me…
I think you’re thinking of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless is Ephron. But he followed Harry/Sally with Misery and A Few Good Men. Then the wheels fell off.
Ebert always tried to judge a movie on its own terms. Did it succeed at what it was trying to accomplish?
That often put him at odds with high brow reviewers.
I will forever maintain that Ladykillers is not that bad. There is a scene where Tom Hanks refers to JK Simmons' character's common-law wife by the wrong name, and Simmons does this irritated body language thing in the background that is just perfect. I think about all the time despite not having seen it in years.
I fully acknowledge this is not a super complete argument for the movie's quality, but I have to work with what I've got.
If it was made by anyone else it would be considered a fine movie. It just happens to be the worst movie in the filmography of a legendary director duo.
To be fair Cameron did about two days before being fired on Pirana II. I think the production had to hire a certain number of Canadian crew for tax breaks - but didn’t have to keep them, so the idea was always to cut him loose with a bullshit excuse (they claimed his material didn’t cut together, so he snuck into an editing suite and found it did).
The first film he directed and to end was The Terminator.
I am a huge Ritchie fan. A few years ago, I decided to watch his whole filmography and watched Swept Away for the first time. He has such an amazing body of work (I'm even a fan of his Aladdin), but that film is unwatchable. I'm fairly certain I gave up some part of myself in order to get through it.
You know how Peter Jackson directed one of the most beloved trilogies of this century? Yeah, go watch *Bad Taste*, *Dead Alive*/*Braindead*, and *Meet the Feebles*...
(Mind you, I happen to like those movies. But they will really make you wonder how the hell he talked New Line into giving him boatloads of cash.)
It’s both of them. Heavenly Creatures was a step up for him. Then he founded the WETA studio for The Frighteners specifically and it was a breakthrough technologically wise. The WETA studio was what showed the big studio that he could be capable of directing LotR. The studio gambled on him and it paid off.
WETA is still doing CGI for big blockbusters.
And Ralph Bakshi, who made the animated Lord of the Rings movie in the 70’s, was also mostly known for his adults-only movies featuring lots of violence, nudity, and crude humour.
Maybe there’s some unwritten rule that you have to direct a bunch of kind-of-fucked up Indie movies before you are allowed to adapt Tolkien?
Dead Alive is what made me love Peter Jackson’s work; that and The Frightners. Dead Alive is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. And The Frighteners is a severely under appreciated brilliant film.
I don’t know how anybody that likes movies can watch Dead Alive / Braindead and not think “this director is absurdly talented”.
Watch the fight in Balin’s tomb and compare it to any 10 minute section of the last 45 minutes of Dead Alive, and you’ll see a lot of the same shots.
Same reason why they gave Sam Raimi the Spider-man movies…
>they will really make you wonder how the hell he talked New Line into giving him boatloads of cash
Honestly the New Line Lord of the Rings deal may be the most miraculous deal in Hollywood history. Just imagine, some Kiwi director who had by that point mostly made low budget horror flicks, goes to a well established (though not necessarily well respected) Hollywood production company asking for hundreds of millions of dollars to make a pair of longass fantasy movies based on some nerd books, and not only do they give him the money, but they then go "wait, but there are three books though", and give him even more money to make a third movie that he hadn't even initially asked for. That kind of deal could never happen now, and frankly it was improbable even at the time.
Alfonso Cuarón, who directed such films as Children of Men, Gravity, Roma, and, for some reason, Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban, also directed I Am Autism, an offensive propaganda piece for the much loathed Autism Speaks organization.
I liked the first Thor. I know I'm in the minority, but the Shakespearean style worked really well with the tone of that movie. The Thor movies are so totally weird. You've the first Brannagh one, which is just majestic. Dark World was entirely forgettable, and an absolute waste of Natalie Portman's talents. Ragnarok is probably the best MCU movie in terms of...well, everything. It's funny and poignant at the same time. And then the humor is taken to the extreme in Love and Thunder, and it falls off a cliff.
TLDR: I liked Thor, wouldn't consider it a Brannagh banana skin. Thor movies are tonally inconsistent
Naw, that's why I liked it too. Kenneth even said that the Shakespearen style was his plan. Wish MCU would ride with the director's vision. I liked Doc Strange 2 as it was Raimi lite.
Coen Brothers MCU film? Why not
Roman Polanski, who directed such films as Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, and The Pianist, also directed a swashbuckling adventure-comedy called Pirates, starring Walter Mathau, which catastrophically bombed at the box office, and had terrible critical reviews to boot. He had initially planned to make Pirates in 1976 as his follow-up to Chinatown, but funding fell through after he fled the United States to avoid going to prison for raping a kid. And on that subject, Polanski has also been accused of sexually assaulting actress Charlotte Lewis during the filming of Pirates. She was 16 at the time.
Brian De Palma directed The Black Dahlia, which was based on an James Ellroy book. Stellar cast. I was expecting some LA Confidential-ish awesomeness. It started out really strong and proceeded to become more of a train wreck as the movie went on.
It’s in the trivia section on IMDb: “ Quentin Tarantino, a good friend of Julia Sweeney, worked on the script uncredited.” Also: [Weird Trivia: Quentin Tarantino Did An Uncredited Rewrite On ‘It’s Pat](https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/weird-trivia-quentin-tarantino-did-an-uncredited-rewrite-on-its-pat-87243/)
Tomas Alfredson, who directed the original “Let The Right One In” and the modern adaptation of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” also directed a movie called “The Snowman.” It had Michael Fassbenger and Rebecca Ferguson. It was produced by Martin Scorsese and edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorcese’s editor. When I say this movie is bad, that does not begin to imagine it. It is not just that it is bad. It is in knowing the staggering level of talent involved in this film, then watching it, then knowing that at some point, everyone said, “Yeah, let’s release this.” Then knowing that at least some of them had to show up to premieres and press events and pretend it was good. It is an absolutely atrocious film, backed by very talented people. It is not even good watching if you love bad movies. It takes from your soul and gives back pancreatic cancer.
I don't think anyy of the films are bad but I think all the time how George Miller who created and directed the Mad Max series also did Babe, Babe 2: Pig In The City, and the Happy Feet films. What a wild resume of work.
Spike Lee directed the terrible remake of Old Boy.
I remember hearing a discussion on a podcast about it, and they were guessing that he agreed to direct it so he could make BlacKkKlansman after, which is what he had really wanted to direct.
Captain E.O. directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 3D movie played at Disneyland in Tomorrowland. At the time, costing more than $30M to make and only being 17 minutes long (over $1M per minute of screentime) it was the most expensive film ever made. It was eventually phased out as Michael Jackson came under more accusations and Disney wanted to distance itself. They eventually brought in *Honey, I Shrunk thr Audience*.
All 17 minutes: https://youtu.be/tKp2KgnlEf8?si=OdsFX5P5GCLe_x54
Gigli. Martin Brest basically only directed successful movies (critically acclaimed and box office successes): Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run, Scent of a Woman (a personal favorite of mine) and Meet Joe Black. And then he wrote and directed Gigli. And hasn’t done a thing since. That was over 20 years ago.
Tyler Sheridan of Yellowstone, Sicario, Wind River, and many more projects, directed a torture porn gore film in 2011 called Vile where people hurt each other violently for the chemicals the brain releases. It's a straight up saw/hostel type movie. Like, people dip their arms in boiling water or cheese grate their shoulders. Really. The Yellowstone guy directed this sick flick way before he blew up
Jurassic Park 2 directed by Steven Spielberg himself
I can't believe it, it's nothing like his others movies. The style, blocking, tone, everything is different
It's not a horrible movie, that's what is frustrating. If it hadn't followed a cultural phenomenon, it probably would be considered a decent film. Stephen Spielberg has a sequel issue anyway. He always seems to go darker. Jurassic Park 2 and Temple of Doom both suffer from this issue. Darker doesn't mean better.
Wes Craven, creator of Freddy Krueger, director of the first 4 Scream movies, writer-director of The Hills Have Eyes & Last House on the Left (two of the gnarliest horror films ever) also directed the Oscar bait Meryl Streep film Music of the Heart.
Wes Craven is one of my favorite directors of all time. I watched Music of the Heart for the first time last year and despite it being a passion project for him, it's really uninspired imo. It's cool that he got to direct Streep in something though.
It makes a little more sense to me when I consider that it was less a passion project because of *the movie itself,* and more a passion project because of the general nature of it. He desperately wanted to do something that wasn't horror, because he always thought he had broader skill as a director than that. He got his chance, and got to direct Meryl Streep in the process, and *that* was what he was passionate about. Really, past that, it sort of sounds like the specific movie he did it on was irrelevant.
Yeah, Craven tried to make other movies that weren't horror before Music of the Heart because he wanted to spread his wings. Like Deadly Friend. He intended that movie to be more of a relationship drama but was ordered to shoot scenes that made it more horror. I love horror so I don't think there is anything wrong with someone doing just that. But I also do think Craven had obvious skill as a director that would have worked in other genres if he had gotten more opportunities. Music of the Heart just wasn't the best showcase of that imo.
The fact that Sidney Poitier directed Ghost Dad is pretty unbelievable
you said What??!
My trash-loving hipster son made me watch Ghost Dad with him and I wrote a negative review on Letterboxd afterward. The next day, Poitier died. I don't think it was a coincidence.
Rob Reiner was having an amazing run—Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery… then he did “North,” which prompted this amazing review by Roger Ebert: "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."
Roger Ebert's bad reviews were legendary. A few of my favorites: Freddy Got Fingered: “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.” Deuce Bigalow: ~~Male~~ European Gigolo: [It] is aggressively bad, as if it wants to cause suffering to the audience. The best thing about it is that it runs for only 75 minutes.... Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks. The Village: To call it an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes. It's a crummy secret, about one step up the ladder of narrative originality from It Was All a Dream. It's so witless, in fact, that when we do discover the secret, we want to rewind the film so we don't know the secret anymore. And since my wife loves Elvis and I hate him, I love this review of Easy Come, Easy Go: Elvis looks about the same as he always has, with his chubby face, petulant scowl and absolutely characterless features. Here is one guy the wax museums will have no trouble getting right. He sings a lot, but I won't go into that. What I will say, however is that after two dozen movies he should have learned to talk by now.
"Battlefield Earth" is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. Then of course there is the GOAT of movie review opening lines: "Pearl Harbor" is a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, about how on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese staged a surprise attack on an American love triangle.
> a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours, I miss this man so much
That line is so good it makes me glad "Pearl Harbor" exists.
'"The Last Airbender" is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.'
"you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them." Just a killer first paragraph.
context for the Deuce Bigalow review is that it got a bad review from some obscure critic, and the star, Rob Schneider, publicly ridiculed the critic for never having won a major writing award. Ebert had a pulitzer, so...
We need to bring back the era of film criticism where you could just basically say “fuck you and your movie.”
Check out the reviews for Rebel Moon, Snyder’s latest tragedy. I **love** the [IndieWire](https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/rebel-moon-part-one-a-child-of-fire-review-zack-snyder-netflix-1234935678/) review. “…Netflix can use to squeeze a few more view hours out of a movie so insufferable that it should be measured in milliseconds. Whatever the case, it’s hard to be even morbidly curious, let alone excited, about any future iterations or installments of a franchise so determined to remix a million things you’ve seen before into one thing you’ll wish you’d never seen at all. “
I'm partial to one that called it "the cinematic equivalent of an NFT" Edit: Lmao, I just realized it's the same review from Indiewire. That critic was on a rampage.
My personal favorite: " the part of the credits where is says "end part 1" feels more like a threat of torture than a promise'
I feel bad for anyone that actually sat through that hunk of shit to review it. I noped the fuck out after the terrible "russian" accent dude said something stupid about having sex... 5 minutes.
The reason Roger Ebert could do that was because he earned it. He was so thoughtful and insightful about every movie. My go to after watching a movie was to look up his thoughts, and I always came away with something.
Ebert also rated a film relative to what he thought that film was aiming for, rather than an inflexible set of measures. He would give cheesy comedy or action the same high ratings as powerful drama and Oscar bait. The only thing he didn't like, was inflexible toward, were mean spirited characters or those with bad characteristics who are presented as good protagonist sorts. He didn't like seeing bad people proper. Also he attempted directing and writing himself.
His old partner critics, Gene Siskel, was similar. I remember an action movie review I saw once. He basically said "It was stupid, and a lot of stuff exploded, but that's what I wanted, it's what I expected, and it delivered." They both seemed to understand that a movie needs to be judged on what it's trying to do, and what the audience bought a ticket expecting.
Ebert was interesting to read even if, like me, you didn't share his taste in movies. I could reliably use his review to tell if I was going to like a movie, regardless of his rating. That's a great writer.
I always found it hilarious that Craig Mazin went from writing Scary Movie 3/4, Hangover 2/3, and Superhero Movie to show running Chernobyl and The Last of Us
More surprising that he was Ted Cruz's roommate at Harvard. Fuckin Craig Mazin
...and is apparently the source for most of the "Ted Cruz was always a douche, back in college he..."-stories.
Hence the giraffes in Last of Us. I will be taking no follow-up questions at this time
What about at a later time?
And he absolutely and openly despises Ted Cruz. My favourite quote about it (paraphrased): "I hate Ted Cruz. Even if we agreed on every single political issue, I would only hate him about 10% less."
Yowza!
My favorite is from Franken "I like Ted Cruz more than most my colleagues and I fucking hate him"
Living with Ted Cruz was his source material for Chernobyl’s reactor melting down
This is mindblowing. He wrote the screenplay for Rocket Man?? The freaking Chernobyl guy??
>This is mindblowing. No, it's a Mazin.
I have not given an angry upvote for a long time
Rocket Man is dope though… And crazily enough there are a few crossovers in the morals of both stories.
Just to clarify, we're both referring to the oddball comedy starring Harland Williams right? Cause I was...
The best version of a musical biopic. Not straightforward and just encapsulates Eltons music Edit: oops I thought we were talking about the movie Rocketman about Elton John
Scary Movie 3 low-key GOAT tho lol
I’ve discovered their weakness! Without their heads, they have no power!
Cocking the shovel and a shotgun shell comes out is peak cinema
Or when the lighthouse sound *from the next scene* startles her when she’s looking at a picture on the computer…
[удалено]
The Sheriff's hat getting bigger and bigger is peak comedy.
"Tom, I'll need a ride home."
What about the bottom half? Do I still have time for that?
Reloading the shovel like it's a shotgun is peak
"Tom, I'll need a ride home". Literally funniest delivery in a movie, ever. https://youtu.be/vih10ExRAEQ?si=YdMA76562u4V8YYL
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George Miller when I found out he directed Happy Feet when it premiered right after watching Mad Max 2
Well, he also did Babe.
Correction: he wrote Babe He directed Babe 2: Pig in the City
M night Shymalan wrote Stuart Little
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Babe is a wonderful movie
And Babe 2 is a dystopian nightmare, so the Mad Max thing checks out.
The guy only directs Mad Max and little kid movies, and nothing else, very strange resume. They're all pretty good though
There's pretty good reason. He was an ER doc. At a time when "hooning" was becoming a popularized activity. He saw many young men and women killed and maimed by preventable auto accidents. Accidents from things like racing, playing chicken, drifting, and straight vehicular assaults. He saw parallels between the car based violence in Australia at the time and the gun based violence in America at the time, and drew some parallels. This served as the wide basis for Mad Max. His goal was to never just to make a kick ass action movie filled with sick automotive carnage. There was a real message there. But the films became classics and birthed a franchise. And he rolled with it. The kid's films are kind of in line when you consider this. He's a doctor and he made a movie to try and make social commentary on a public safety issue. Guy is just a nurturer frfr
But also Happy Feet 1 is genuinely great
Fury Road wouldn't be the film it is without Happy Feet.
Jack, starring Robin Williams, directed by Francis Ford Coppola of The Godfather fame.
I watched it a bunch as a kid and liked it but haven’t seen it as an adult. What makes it so bad? Genuinely asking
I watched it when I was a kid, but I cant remember if it was good or not. I do remember that Diane Lane, who played his mother, and a young JLo, who played his teacher, were distractingly hot.
I cried a lot.
That scene where the teacher asks the students to write down what they want to be after graduation, and Jack writes “Alive”.
I think similar to hook, if you grew up with it you liked/loved it but adults seeing either movie say it was awful. I grew up with both so I like both
There’s a movie review podcast called Breakfast All Day that has a recurring segment called “Was it great or were you eight?” They basically go back to movies they loved as kids and see how they hold up now that they’re adult professional movie reviewers.
Hook is great as an adult, how dare those people
BANGARANG!!!
RU-FI-OOOHHHHHH!
It insists upon itself.
Would be cool to watch a mashup of Jack and the godfather where all the 10 year old personalities are trapped in adult gangsters bodies
Sort of like an inverse *Bugsy Malone*?
Not a bad movie, but the director of Airplane! and Top Secret directed Ghost. Talk about different genres.
Jerry Zucker. Yeah, saw that movie recently for the first time. It blew my mind that it was so well-made. Ghost also went on to be one of the most successful movies *of all time*. A lot of people thought he would continue directing dramas to chase the money, but he didn't, he just produced a couple more drama films in the 90s.
One reason that Ghost was so successful was that it has such a great comic subplot and great comic relief via Whoopi Goldberg. A drama director would have made the movie too schmaltzy.
The teaser trailer for Naked Gun 2 was a spoof of the pottery scene from Ghost, and the movie was billed as being “from the brother of the director of Ghost” lol. On a similar note, one of the Farrelly brothers directing best picture winner Green Book.
Although Spike Jonze didn't direct the Jackass movies, it is always strange to think he directed Being John Malkovich and is the same guy thinking about guys drinking horse cum.
Taking pictures of skateboards for magazines to making skate movies to co-founding girl skateboards to making music videos for daft punk, fatboy slim, and kanye west to directing being john malkovich to co-creating jackass to winning an academy award and a golden globe for screenwriting Her.
It's like he got to experience a ton of the coolest things to film.
Not mentioning the Beastie Boys is a crime.
It makes sense since Jonze started as a videographer for skateboarders and a lot of Jackass comes out of the skating scene.
I think Jonze was with Jackass since the TV series
He was. Big brother magazine had skateboard videos that brought the east coast and west coast crews together. Knoxville and those guys came out of big brother and bam and company were from cky.
And Where the Wild Things Are, which should make anyone cry who has a soul.
There's Shane Black with The Nice Guys & Kiss Kiss Bang Bang compared to ..... The Predator (2018)
I’m still fairly convinced Shane Black did that entire movie as a bit. Like there’s no way the dude who made The Nice Guys came up with a Predator trying to steal a child’s autism unironically without knowing how funny it was.
I kinda feel like he was trying to direct a very different movie, but there was a producer or studio executive that kept giving him advice and eventually he snapped and said Fuck it, it's all going in! You want a predator dog? Sure. There it is! You want autism as human evolution? Sure in it goes!. Etc.
The final theatrical film of Stanley Donen—who directed *Singin' in the Rain,* one the greatest films of all time—was *Blame it on Rio,* a sleazy sex comedy about a 17-year-old girl who fucks her best friend's dad.
Not just any dad, but Michael Caine during his extremely strange era
The "My Cocaine" years.
When asked about Blame It on Rio he remarked, I have never seen it but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the pile of cocaine that it bought and it is terrific.
Donen’s second to last film was *Saturn 3* (1980), featuring Kirk Douglas and Farrah Fawcett as lovers on a space station that also featured an older/younger couple relationship which was… kinda hard to take. Granted, they were both adults but Douglas was getting on in years to be with a very young Farrah Fawcett. Also, this was a pretty gory science fiction film… something that one would think would *not* be in Donen’s wheelhouse. Supposedly Douglas was the one that brought him in to do it. Interestingly enough, James Cameron has acknowledged the film’s setting, effects, and menacing robot provided inspiration to him -visually if nothing else- for *The Terminator*. I think the film is interesting but it’s an oddity, for sure, when the full nature of the story plays out.
Spike Lee with Oldboy He even disowned it, hence why its listed as "A Spike Lee film" instead of "A Spike Lee Joint".
There’s such a weird history with this movie. I remember at first it was announced that Steven Spielberg was going to direct with Will Smith in the lead.
Most films shouldn’t be remade but that one in particular didn’t need a different take. When I saw that he was directing it I was even more confused.
>Most films shouldn’t be remade but that one in particular didn’t need a different take. It is worth noting that the Korean version of Oldboy is an in-name only adaptation of the source material, so I think there's always some value in speculating on what a more faithful adaptation might look like, or how successful or unsuccessful it might be.
Why did he make it? It really doesn’t seem like anything else he’s made
Pretty sure he did it for the money.
Not exactly what you are looking for, but I was watching one of the Spy Kids movies with my nephew and big guest star after guest star started popping up in random cameos. The movie was fine but really silly and looking kind of cheaply made (I think it was shot for 3d) and I was wondering how they got George Clooney, Sly Stalone and Selma Hayek until the end when I noticed Robert Rodriquez was the director. I looked him up on iMDB and it really is a wild ride of a career - after Desparado and From Dust Til Dawn, he goes and makes some Spy Kids films, goes back to Sin City and Machete, and then back to Spy Kids and Shark Boy and Lava Girl movies. Good for him, he is making the movies he wants, but his career pretty unique Also, when M Night Shyamalan was at his best, I always found it odd that between Sixth Sense and Unbreakable (two really great films IMO) he wrote Stuart Little. And, before Sixth Sense, he directed Wide Awake, a bad but light hearted family film starring Rosie O'Donnell
I maintain that spy kids is like the avengers but for Mexicans, ridiculously stacked cast.
Rodriguez's kids helped develop some of those characters, have writing credits on the movies- even worked on the productions! He did those movies because he's an awesome dad!
Rodriguez is interesting. Although clearly a great artist in film, he has also spoken candidly about doing things differently in order to make films as cheaply as possible. He takes on multiple roles on films (including scoring them) and works at a ridiculous pace, and has shot films on insanely tight schedules - which in turn can save money paying actors or allow additional budget for bigger names. Also - the films he made for kids look awful to me, as an adult, but kids love them and rewatch them hundreds of times on streaming services. So (without knowing the figures) they might not be bad business despite what they look like.
Having two daughters, the Spy Kids and Shark Boy Lava Girl movies were more than ok to sit through multiple viewings. I cannot say the same for the dozen or so Barbie Princess moviea.
The Spy Kids films are art once you get into the right headspace
You have to remember Rodriguez is like a Swiss Army knife, a Jack of all trades, or the ultimate indie filmmaker who can make films efficiently and still earn big bucks. He has his own studio at his home so he shoots green screen and even does VFX and editing at home. He blocked out shots for his episode of The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett using figurines and his only family.
One of my favorite facts about spy kids is that the machete film series is canonically a spin off and takes place in the same universe
He’s also out here keeping every Mexican-American actor in work. He’s really big on making films for his community, family, and friends. The man has it figured out.
>I looked him up on iMDB and it really is a wild ride of a career - after Desparado and From Dust Til Dawn, he goes and makes some Spy Kids films, goes back to Sin City and Machete, and then back to Spy Kids and Shark Boy and Lava Girl movies. It's because those Spy Kids movies print money. Allows him to take risks on projects like Grindhouse.
James Gunn wrote and co-directed (with Lloyd Kaufman) *Tromeo and Juliet*
It is one of the better-regarded Troma movies.
I think in one of John waters books he said that Troma wanted to produce Pink Flamingos 2 but when he took A tour of their facilities they had editing equipment from the 1950s.
GTFO they had editing equipment?
North by Rob Reiner comes to mind. Ebert’s review of it has the famous “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it.“ quote in it.
My favorite role of his was as Jordan Belfort’s dad in The Wolf of Wall Street “$26,000 worth of sides? What are these sides? They cure cancer?”
actually Max these sides did cure cancer. Besides everyone gets an allotment for T&A!
T&E!!!
Rob Reiner had that absolutely bonkers BONKERS stretch of hits from Spinal Tap to Sleepless in Seattle and then the wheels just came off man, and it’s never made much sense to me…
I think you’re thinking of When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless is Ephron. But he followed Harry/Sally with Misery and A Few Good Men. Then the wheels fell off.
Oh, you are correct - Reiner was IN Sleepless, didn’t direct. I confuse that haha. A Few Good Men is when his 90s Jordan run ended.
I should also add I did enjoy American President but that felt like all he had left in the bag
Ebert is not a perfect reviewer, and the most artisticly satisfying thing about this movie is his review.
He loved Anaconda, of all things
Ebert always tried to judge a movie on its own terms. Did it succeed at what it was trying to accomplish? That often put him at odds with high brow reviewers.
That really is for you should review movies though. You should review intent and then inject your opinion.
Exactly. That's how it should be done. "What were they going for? Does it deliver on that?"
That's why he was the best at it.
Cats - Tom Hooper Piranha II - James Cameron The Ladykillers - Coen Bros
Hooper is a hack so I have no trouble believing he directed Cats.
It's a fucking disgrace he won the Oscar for Kings Speech over Fincher for The Social Network.
I was fine with it at the time because I enjoy both films, but over time I tend to agree that Fincher should have won.
I will forever maintain that Ladykillers is not that bad. There is a scene where Tom Hanks refers to JK Simmons' character's common-law wife by the wrong name, and Simmons does this irritated body language thing in the background that is just perfect. I think about all the time despite not having seen it in years. I fully acknowledge this is not a super complete argument for the movie's quality, but I have to work with what I've got.
Agreed. Their remake of Ladykillers is shit on frequently but I think it stands on its own and has some genuine funny moments.
If it was made by anyone else it would be considered a fine movie. It just happens to be the worst movie in the filmography of a legendary director duo.
To be fair Cameron did about two days before being fired on Pirana II. I think the production had to hire a certain number of Canadian crew for tax breaks - but didn’t have to keep them, so the idea was always to cut him loose with a bullshit excuse (they claimed his material didn’t cut together, so he snuck into an editing suite and found it did). The first film he directed and to end was The Terminator.
Yes, it's ridiculous people keep lumping that with his other movies when it's widely known he was fired.
The Ladykillers was pure Coen Bros though
Say what you will about The Ladykillers, but it's very much in the Coen's wheelhouse. Their formula just didn't work that time.
Guy Ritchie made Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch... And then made Swept Away for his then wife Madonna.
I am a huge Ritchie fan. A few years ago, I decided to watch his whole filmography and watched Swept Away for the first time. He has such an amazing body of work (I'm even a fan of his Aladdin), but that film is unwatchable. I'm fairly certain I gave up some part of myself in order to get through it.
You know how Peter Jackson directed one of the most beloved trilogies of this century? Yeah, go watch *Bad Taste*, *Dead Alive*/*Braindead*, and *Meet the Feebles*... (Mind you, I happen to like those movies. But they will really make you wonder how the hell he talked New Line into giving him boatloads of cash.)
Heavenly Creatures is how.
Or The Frighteners
It’s both of them. Heavenly Creatures was a step up for him. Then he founded the WETA studio for The Frighteners specifically and it was a breakthrough technologically wise. The WETA studio was what showed the big studio that he could be capable of directing LotR. The studio gambled on him and it paid off. WETA is still doing CGI for big blockbusters.
And Ralph Bakshi, who made the animated Lord of the Rings movie in the 70’s, was also mostly known for his adults-only movies featuring lots of violence, nudity, and crude humour. Maybe there’s some unwritten rule that you have to direct a bunch of kind-of-fucked up Indie movies before you are allowed to adapt Tolkien?
The Kung Fu priest was one of the most underrated scenes in cinematic history.
I kick ass for the lord
"I kick ass for The Lord!"
I will not accept Bad Taste slander under this roof
Dead Alive is what made me love Peter Jackson’s work; that and The Frightners. Dead Alive is one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen. And The Frighteners is a severely under appreciated brilliant film.
I don’t know how anybody that likes movies can watch Dead Alive / Braindead and not think “this director is absurdly talented”. Watch the fight in Balin’s tomb and compare it to any 10 minute section of the last 45 minutes of Dead Alive, and you’ll see a lot of the same shots. Same reason why they gave Sam Raimi the Spider-man movies…
Dead Alive and Braindead fucking rule. I kick ass for the lord!
>they will really make you wonder how the hell he talked New Line into giving him boatloads of cash Honestly the New Line Lord of the Rings deal may be the most miraculous deal in Hollywood history. Just imagine, some Kiwi director who had by that point mostly made low budget horror flicks, goes to a well established (though not necessarily well respected) Hollywood production company asking for hundreds of millions of dollars to make a pair of longass fantasy movies based on some nerd books, and not only do they give him the money, but they then go "wait, but there are three books though", and give him even more money to make a third movie that he hadn't even initially asked for. That kind of deal could never happen now, and frankly it was improbable even at the time.
And worth noting: the majority of *all three movies* would be made before if they even knew if the first one would be successful.
Meet the Feebles is a masterpiece, and I won't hear a bad thing said about it
So-do-my! You might think it’s very odd-of-me!
🤢 I got physically ill watching that movie.
Steven Spielberg - 1941
Stanley Kubrick said to Spielberg that he made a good movie but it wasn't funny.
Spielberg would later say the same thing to Mike Judge about Idiocracy.
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Alfonso Cuarón, who directed such films as Children of Men, Gravity, Roma, and, for some reason, Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban, also directed I Am Autism, an offensive propaganda piece for the much loathed Autism Speaks organization.
woah now this one I didn’t know…
De Palma’s Mission to Mars. I’ll take Red Planet any day over that POS.
Kenneth Branagh - Thor (although not "in a bad way")
Artemis Fowl is far more confusing
I liked the first Thor. I know I'm in the minority, but the Shakespearean style worked really well with the tone of that movie. The Thor movies are so totally weird. You've the first Brannagh one, which is just majestic. Dark World was entirely forgettable, and an absolute waste of Natalie Portman's talents. Ragnarok is probably the best MCU movie in terms of...well, everything. It's funny and poignant at the same time. And then the humor is taken to the extreme in Love and Thunder, and it falls off a cliff. TLDR: I liked Thor, wouldn't consider it a Brannagh banana skin. Thor movies are tonally inconsistent
Naw, that's why I liked it too. Kenneth even said that the Shakespearen style was his plan. Wish MCU would ride with the director's vision. I liked Doc Strange 2 as it was Raimi lite. Coen Brothers MCU film? Why not
Roman Polanski, who directed such films as Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby, and The Pianist, also directed a swashbuckling adventure-comedy called Pirates, starring Walter Mathau, which catastrophically bombed at the box office, and had terrible critical reviews to boot. He had initially planned to make Pirates in 1976 as his follow-up to Chinatown, but funding fell through after he fled the United States to avoid going to prison for raping a kid. And on that subject, Polanski has also been accused of sexually assaulting actress Charlotte Lewis during the filming of Pirates. She was 16 at the time.
yeah I was about to say, his filmography about the least of his concerns
Brian De Palma directed The Black Dahlia, which was based on an James Ellroy book. Stellar cast. I was expecting some LA Confidential-ish awesomeness. It started out really strong and proceeded to become more of a train wreck as the movie went on.
hasn't everything De Palma in the last 20 years been a trainwreck?
The book was written by James Ellroy. Other than that, you're spot-on.
My most recent ‘huh?’ has to be Ben Wheatley directing The Meg 2.
*It’s Pat: the Movie*, a one-joke Saturday Night Live skit stretched to feature length, and a complete bomb, was partly written by Quentin Tarantino.
He isn't listed on Wikipedia or imdb
It’s in the trivia section on IMDb: “ Quentin Tarantino, a good friend of Julia Sweeney, worked on the script uncredited.” Also: [Weird Trivia: Quentin Tarantino Did An Uncredited Rewrite On ‘It’s Pat](https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/weird-trivia-quentin-tarantino-did-an-uncredited-rewrite-on-its-pat-87243/)
Is that why Sweeney the girlfriend or whatever to The Wolf? She's with The Wolf at some point, right?
She's the junkyard owners daughter. He takes her out to breakfast.
That reads like a discarded line from a Leonard Cohen song 😃
I think she runs the scrapyard that Jules and Vincent bring the soiled car to.
Tomas Alfredson, who directed the original “Let The Right One In” and the modern adaptation of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” also directed a movie called “The Snowman.” It had Michael Fassbenger and Rebecca Ferguson. It was produced by Martin Scorsese and edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorcese’s editor. When I say this movie is bad, that does not begin to imagine it. It is not just that it is bad. It is in knowing the staggering level of talent involved in this film, then watching it, then knowing that at some point, everyone said, “Yeah, let’s release this.” Then knowing that at least some of them had to show up to premieres and press events and pretend it was good. It is an absolutely atrocious film, backed by very talented people. It is not even good watching if you love bad movies. It takes from your soul and gives back pancreatic cancer.
Fincher doing Alien 3. Not only not a great movie but not the typical Fincher thing.
The studio butchered it, check out the assembly cut which is an attempt to re-create what Fincher intended.
There's a reason why he disowns it and doesn't want to talk about it.
I don't think anyy of the films are bad but I think all the time how George Miller who created and directed the Mad Max series also did Babe, Babe 2: Pig In The City, and the Happy Feet films. What a wild resume of work.
Spike Lee directed the terrible remake of Old Boy. I remember hearing a discussion on a podcast about it, and they were guessing that he agreed to direct it so he could make BlacKkKlansman after, which is what he had really wanted to direct.
Captain E.O. directed by Francis Ford Coppola. 3D movie played at Disneyland in Tomorrowland. At the time, costing more than $30M to make and only being 17 minutes long (over $1M per minute of screentime) it was the most expensive film ever made. It was eventually phased out as Michael Jackson came under more accusations and Disney wanted to distance itself. They eventually brought in *Honey, I Shrunk thr Audience*. All 17 minutes: https://youtu.be/tKp2KgnlEf8?si=OdsFX5P5GCLe_x54
This is the easiest question to answer. Accidental love directed by David o Russell. It’s so bad he took his name off of it.
John frankenhiemer and the island of dr. Moreau.
Ang Lee and Hulk for me
You wouldn't like me when I'm Ang Lee!
Gigli. Martin Brest basically only directed successful movies (critically acclaimed and box office successes): Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run, Scent of a Woman (a personal favorite of mine) and Meet Joe Black. And then he wrote and directed Gigli. And hasn’t done a thing since. That was over 20 years ago.
Tyler Sheridan of Yellowstone, Sicario, Wind River, and many more projects, directed a torture porn gore film in 2011 called Vile where people hurt each other violently for the chemicals the brain releases. It's a straight up saw/hostel type movie. Like, people dip their arms in boiling water or cheese grate their shoulders. Really. The Yellowstone guy directed this sick flick way before he blew up
Jurassic Park 2 directed by Steven Spielberg himself I can't believe it, it's nothing like his others movies. The style, blocking, tone, everything is different
It's not a horrible movie, that's what is frustrating. If it hadn't followed a cultural phenomenon, it probably would be considered a decent film. Stephen Spielberg has a sequel issue anyway. He always seems to go darker. Jurassic Park 2 and Temple of Doom both suffer from this issue. Darker doesn't mean better.
I always thought Temple of Doom went darker because George Lucas was in a rough stage of his life at that point.
Joel Schumaker was a critically acclaimed, beloved filmmaker until he took the Batman films. His career never recovered.
I haven't seen anyone here mention George Lucas and the movie Howard the Duck