Name the worst of all living film-makers.

[jam.fuse]

Though to be fair, R. Scott has done some good work also.

[Jeff]

It's Tim Burton everyone!

Maybe not the worst, but the most recursive. I went to Mars Attacks with high expectations, but it was an utterly joyless experience of frenetic familiarity. And I haven't enjoyed or been surprised by a work of his since, only by works mistakenly taken for his, like Coraline.

[MinM]

Ridley Scott for his neo-L. Reifenshtahlesque(sp)? Blackhawk Down.

His brother Tony deserves a special mention for this bit of counterpropaganda:


viewtopic.php?p=370544#p370544

[Spiro C. Thiery]

Sure Howard and Zemeckis right along with Lucas and Spielberg. But each is really as obvious a choice as any 'heimer - Bay contingent. And...

M Night Shyamalan always lets me down.

...this defines ironic humor. Well done! And My Night Slammin'aLamb is a def candidate.

Then there's...

Ron Howard. I'm too old for Willow to have been a formative experience for me like it seems to be for a lot of people, but Ron Howard films always seem like they're made by a committee of robots.

Funny and true, funny and true!

Brekin makes the best argument, I think, with...

It's Tim Burton everyone!

...'cause not even Pee Wee justifies those remakes.

But then I saw this...

paul w s anderson

...and was like, "Friggin' yeah!" but I was thinking of Paul Thomas Anderson, who even if he hadn't done Magnolia would qualify for what he did to Upton Sinclair's novel. One can climb no lower.

[marycarnival]

In defense of Jane Campion, she made a film called 'An Angel At My Table' which is fantastic. Kind of slow-paced, but beautifully shot and acted. It's also a biopic. Tells the story of NZ writer Janet Frame.

And yeah, Tarantino can get on one's nerves, but I have to join in to toot the horn for 'Jackie Brown'. That one is excellent. Seen it at least 10 times.

I absolutely LOATHE James Cameron.

[JackRiddler]

.

Magnolia

Magnolia causes division on this board. It has its strong advocates. I found it to be one of the most unbearable movies of my life, and not in a good way. A "good unbearable" might have been if it challenged my entrenched ideas; but the problem here was not a philosophical difference. (Well, it is my philosophy that music should not drown a movie in pathos.) I think there is truth in the idea that everyone is a hurt child, but this was done to the point of schtick. I was begging for it to end, and almost left just before it mercifully brought on the frogs. This was at the Berlinale, so it might have been the world premiere. I didn't know what would win, but I knew it would never be Magnolia. And then I heard it got first prize! So much talent on screen -- so much pretension killing it. These characters never lived for me. Incredibly Tom Cruise worked best, as he generally does when he is cast as a dominant asshole.

A great movie does not batter its collected plotlines in a sudden rain of frogs to remind you how strange life is. It starts with a rain of frogs and considers the aftermath.

.

Badology and The Worst

Movies are the prevalent factory of myth, self-image, propaganda and trend. Their influence is pervasive. To be the worst, you must do damage. To do the greatest damage, you must be successful and influential. The worst doesn't flop silently in an unnoticed box. Even spectacular flops may be merely bad, or poorly timed, or unfairly maligned, or killed by politics. No. The worst does not flop, because that would be good. The worst is path-breaking. The worst inspires people to be worse than they were. It may do so in a concentrated form within a limited niche, for example the Left Behind series among Christianists. Or it may do so in a general assault on all culture, like Bay/Bruckheimer/Emmerich.

Being the most bad as an artist or technician is not enough. In that case we could settle on Ed Wood or someone like that and fold up. Bad is common. In attempts to define a scale, fifty percent of everything will theoretically be below the median. Most bad is easily seen and laughed off. Most bad has little reach. Most bad flops. Even when it succeeds, most bad does so by meeting the expectations of a given audience, without however exercising influence upon that audience other than providing a reinforcement they were already seeking.

The difference between the bad and the worst is the difference between meeting an existing demand for shitburgers, as opposed to finding ways to expand the shitburger market. To take examples from the daytime category, it's the difference between the latest identical installment of a 30-year-old soap and the first time Oprah gave everyone a car. Some of you here are naming the film-makers you think make the most singularly bad shitburger you ever had the displeasure to eat, and I think Ron Howard is a contender for that. But who defines the cutting edge in shitburgers? Who's making the shitburgers that others will emulate for years to come? Who's helping to make the world a dumber place, like the "60 seconds" car-stealing movies with Vin Diesel? Who's damaging nervous systems and setting off fatal seizures across the land, like Tony Scott? Who's mass-raping history and science, like the DaVinci Code and the National Treasure series?

.

[barracuda]

I find it hard to fault any artist who has made even a single successful, demonstrably valuable work of art. Considering the difficulties of filmmaking generally, it's practically a miracle when a good movie reaches it's intended audience in a form recognisable to the filmmaker's vision.

The only filmmaker on this thread who doesn't qualify in this regard is Michael Bay. I honestly cannot think of a single film he's made which can be shown to have any redeeming social or artistic value, although I found the sheer abstraction of the CGI robot fight scenes in Transformers 2 to be highly enjoyable, and nearly beautiful in their quality of awesome confusion and opaque unrecognisability.

[JackRiddler]

I find it hard to fault any artist who has made even a single successful, demonstrably valuable work of art.

So you're lobbying for a Ridley Scott loophole? He's got two very influential ones: Blade Runner and Alien. And James Cameron made The Terminator.

[DrVolin]

Unfortunately for Tim Burton, one of his mainstays is one of my main pet peeves: indoor for outdoor sets. I absolutely hate fake outdoors. So most of his films end up annoying me into not finishing them. Although I greatly appreciated Ed Wood. Obviously a work of love on the part of Burton, Depp, Landau, Murray, and I am sure many others.

[DrVolin]

I honestly cannot think of a single film he's made which can be shown to have any redeeming social or artistic value, although I found the sheer abstraction of the CGI robot fight scenes in Transformers 2 to be highly enjoyable, and nearly beautiful in their quality of awesome confusion and opaque unrecognisability.

And of course Transformers 2 has to be single out for the wonderful performance of John Turturo and the work of whoever wrote the character. It made the rest almost tolerable.

[Seamus OBlimey]

I'm surprised Paul F. Little hasn't been suggested yet.

[barracuda]

So you're lobbying for a Ridley Scott loophole? He's got two very influential ones: Blade Runner and Alien. And James Cameron made The Terminator.

Ridley Scott is a brilliant filmmaker. Thelma and Louise? Someone To Watch Over Me? C'mon, that's four great films.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

Magnolia
...I found it to be one of the most unbearable movies of my life, and not in a good way. (Well, it is my philosophy that music should not drown a movie in pathos.)

It's not... going to stop...
...until you walk out.

And then he went on to take one of the greatest Bildungsromane from the 20th century and with it shoot a friggin' DLC commercial that the "Academy" could quickly give it's stamp of approval to.

[JackRiddler]

So you're lobbying for a Ridley Scott loophole? He's got two very influential ones: Blade Runner and Alien. And James Cameron made The Terminator.

Ridley Scott is a brilliant filmmaker. Thelma and Louise? Someone To Watch Over Me? C'mon, that's four great films.

Yes, Thelma and Louise. Pathbreaking in its time, in a positive sense, but with a questionable ending, I must say. Glorious, but what does it look like 30 seconds later? Imagine instead a prison epilogue -- and they're titans on the inside, not gang-leaders, but leaders period. That would have been the inspirational moment people attributed to the movie. I shall make sure to see the fourth, which I haven't.

No, you're absolutely right. It's just that his success must have spawned his brother's somehow, which has no explanation on the merits, and includes some pretty damn pernicious propaganda, like Black Hawk Down with its reptilian Somali alien-beasts for some reason inhabiting Mogadishu as though it was their own, terrorizing the flesh-and-blood US soldiers who were just innocently wandering into town with a lawful warrant. But that's fate, we shouldn't blame Ridley for that. Oh, except he was the producer. Well, money and sympathy patriotism from the UK and all that.

Anyway, let's call it the Cameron Loophole. (Will it completely discredit me to say I cried during Titanic? I steadfastly resisted, but then they had that booby-trap scene with the screaming kid the principals briefly tried to save, obviously designed to overwhelm the Last Guy on a Date Not Crying.)

.

[JackRiddler]

Magnolia
...I found it to be one of the most unbearable movies of my life, and not in a good way. (Well, it is my philosophy that music should not drown a movie in pathos.)

It's not... going to stop...
...until you walk out.

And then he went on to take one of the greatest Bildungsromane from the 20th century and with it shoot a friggin' DLC commercial that the "Academy" could quickly give it's stamp of approval to.

To what do you refer?