Quentin Tarantino - Overrated. As C-towner perfectly summed up my feelings on another thread: "It sometimes seems way too much to me like Tarantino is too much of a fanboy - he just wants to do one long homage to everything, be it blaxploitation in Jackie Brown or Asian cinema. I feel like a truly great director should try to be moving the medium forward, rather than repeatedly (and often self-indulgently) bowing down before the altar of its past." Woody Allen - I liked Annie Hall and found Sleeper and Manhattan entertaining. Sweet and Lowdown, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Zelig and Radio Days were pretty good too. But how much neurotic, past-romanticizing, pseudo-intellectual, New York psycho-babble is too much? I'm a New Yorker and find Woody's one and-a-half- trick pony act a little tiring. George Lucas, you directed one good movie - American Graffiti. Star Wars is overrated bollocks.
Every director robs from the past. The majority refuse to admit it. Tarantino actually provides references. Why should we hold that against him? He moves the medium forward just fine. If you named your favorite directors, I could tell you who they robbed. Shot by shot if you like.
I agree with Astorian, and I'd also add Wes Craven, never a real groundbreaking director, just a bunch of re-treds in his portfolio
If you think about , Tarantino can get a bit old aftere a while. He has his 'thing', and that's about it. I think he's just riding that 'thing' out untill it's really dead. But I still love Reservoir Dogs. and George Lucas. the first 3 star wars movies he made aren't overrated bollocks. They are good movies. But the new ones are just cartoons. and I'd like to add John Woo. I really don't like this guy, mainly because of Mission Impossible 2. I really liked the 1st MI movie. It was an actual spy thriller. But MI2 was just mindless explosions after explosions crap. really, the guy puts 90% of the movie in slow motion, puts doves in 3% of it, and fills the remaining 7% with double fisted machine gun garbage....and people call him a genius.
Re: Re: The Overrated Directors Thread The recent problem of Tarrantino is not just he stole from the past. He also failed to advance the concept, despite with a much bigger budget, better cinematography and much more hype. You may find directors like Hitchcock or Kubrick also were influenced by the past, but they put in a lot of their own ingenuity into their movies. You want to compare e.g. Kill Bill with 2001: A Space Odyssey?
Re: Re: Re: The Overrated Directors Thread I think this is spot on. It's perfectly AOK for directors to "borrow" or "steal" ideas I had a class once with the novelist Charles Baxter, and he said its OK to steal, but you have to twist it and make it your own. The way you twist the idea tells us about you, your ideas,your concerns, etc. What Tarntino's thefts say about him is that he is shallow as all get-out. Take Harvey Keitel's "Cleaner" in PUlp Fiction, clearly lifted from "La Femme Nikita." What did it add? He just plays it for laughs, as far as I can tell. What did it tell us about Tarnatino? That he doesn't have a lot going on in his head besides a continuing tape loop. T obe fair, though, Tarnatino has influenced films in the past decade with his writing style andthe close-quarters connection of violence to humor.
I'm surprised that George Lucas has done anything other than Star Wars. They're the only films I knew he did until 30 seconds ago.
Hal Hartley. Not "overrated" because he's not really exceptionally well known, but people who like him, really like him alot.
Check out his first movie, THX-1138. I haven't seen American Graffiti, but THX is as different from Star Wars as you can imagine. In fact its completely unlike any movie I've ever seen. You'd think when the dump trucks full of Star Wars cash didn't have anywhere else to unload, he'd go back to making films like that. But he didn't. Stephen Spielberg sucks donkeys. I don't care what anyone says about whatever good movie I've missed or he might make in the future, I've vowed never to watch anything with his name on it again. If Lucas sold his soul to the devil, Spielberg never had a soul to begin with. And David Lean. My god, what a body of Utter Crapola that man accumulated.
There aren't any overrated directors, only people with different tastes. There are bad directors who ruin movies. Most notably, Joel Schuamcher or Tony Scott. Sure, they can make one so-so movie within their careers, but their entire body of works just suck. Then there are directors who lost their touch for one reason or another, for example, John Woo, Ridley Scott, Spielberg, Lucas, and many old time directors. Their technique has been copied so many times, it's no longer fresh. (List might include the Wachowski brothers in the future) Then there are the Orson Welles, the Alfred Hitchcocks, the Akira Kurosawas, the Charlie Chaplins and few others mentioned in the 10 greatest directors thread. No matter how high you rate them, they can't be overrated. Of course there are those who just get the job done, like Michael Bay or Barry Sonnenfeld or millions of others directors, no one rates them very high so they can't be overrated. Then there are directors for who people have no idea how good they really are. And I am not only talking about indy directors, or the documentary makers. This list also includes foreigner directors who made one very special firm, or big budget directors like John McTiernan, James Cameron or Peter Jackson because no one is sure whether it's the talent or the money, or Italian directors who makes mafia movies, HK director who makes action movies, Japanese director who makes animes, I am sure some are better than others but who can tell? Of course we must not forget the porn directors, they have to go through a lot of work to capture those shots. Quentin Tarantino is a great director, and he is not overrated.
Paul Thomas Anderson. God, I hate his movies. His movies are like Lifetime channel movies, but only not for women, but for pathetic people who like to feel sorry for themselves and sulk around in their own grief.
That Twin peaks geezer, David Lynch ?. I've seen a little bit of his stuff, and it's just weird for the sake of being odd. Mind you, I'm not a very arty kind of person, so some would say I don't 'get it'. Spielberg has done some enjoyable films, like Indiana Jones, and some pretty good films Saving private Lion (hold on, that was Adam and Joe). But I don't think he's quite as good as some make out.
Not enough people to get the overrated boat moving I Don't think there are enough people that regard Tarantino as a 'director god' for him to be considered overrated. Sure he has his fanatics, but compared to the Kubrick camp not really. I never thought his innovation was the way he shot the movie, it was all about the dialogue he had going between the characters. How could you not seriously rethink this whole tipping thing after hearing Mr. Pink's take on it? Also Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez helped chip away somewhat the long held idea that if you didn't go to film school you shouldn't even entertain the thought of becoming a director, not even for a second because you don't the first thing about it! You might say these are only two cases, but how many students do film schools graduate a year that never make it who supposedly know their stuff.
The irony of someone citing Manhattan in a thread about the overrated is too much to bear. CM P.S I nominate George Lucas
Re: Not enough people to get the overrated boat moving Indeed. You can talk about who Tarantino's robbed, but you also have to consider how many directors have robbed Tarantino, subtlely otherwise. He's the very poor man's Orson Welles. His innovations have been copied so many times over that the innovations he brought no longer seem innovative, but his influence shows in movies that come after.
Forget about his movies made in this country and watch those made in Hong Kong. I am not sure that he has the same creative freedom in Hollywood.
I disagree with the folks who think David Lean and Ang Lee are overrated. Especially the latter. I guess the Hulk stinks, but the Ice Storm was an amazing, nuanced, moving piece. I think Antonioni is overrated. Todd Solodntz (sp?) is pretty crap, too. I hate him more than most others because he makes "critic-proof" movies. Every time I tried to explain to someone why I hated "Happiness," they assumed that I was some kind of prude, that I couldn't take the "shock" of what he had to say.
Great observation. Did you get it from the Film Comment article a few years ago on Solondz? That's where I first heard the term "critic-proof" movie. That was a great article. If you didn't get it there, then you should read it, if somehow possible.
I saw a lot John Woo movies in HK before he moved to Hollywood. he made 4 turkeys out of five. The one good movie got good international recognization. I admitted a few of his are my favorites. But then, he still sucked. In Hollywood, he did the same..... I liked Face-Off.... everything else he made was turkeys. He liked Thanksgivings....
I'll see if I can find it. I didn't get the term from that article, but I've seen it used before to describe similar "artists." Thanks for the tip.
When I first saw Happiness, I was pretty shocked and what not (especially since the guy who played the dad introduced it and I was outside the theater afterward hitting on a woman, ugh). But when I saw it again a year later, it just seemed...silly. It was like he was trying to be shocking and went just a bit too far over the top. Welcome To The Dollhouse has stood up more than Happiness, in my opinion.