Favorite Directors' Movies I Like the Most
Submitted by Amie on Tue, 02/20/2001 - 09:21
Tags:
- Paul Anderson, Boogie Nights
- Wes Anderson, Rushmore
- Darren Aronofsky, Requiem for a Dream
- James L. Brooks, As Good As It Gets
- Tim Burton, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure
- Nick Cassavetes, She's So Lovely
- The Coen Brothers, The Man Who Wasn't There
- Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides
- Vincent Gallo, Buffalo 66
- Terry Gillam, The Fisher King
- Hal Hartley, Henry Fool
- Alejandro Gonzalez Inarrito, Amores Perros
- Jim Jarmusch, Down By Law
- Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Delicatessen
- Wong Kar-Wai, In the Mood for Love
- Ari Kaurismaki, The Match Factory Girl
- Akira Kurosawa, Ran
- Karyn Kusama, Girlfight
- Ang Lee, The Ice Storm
- David Lynch, The Elephant Man
- Jessie Nelson, I Am Sam
- Martin Scorsese, Raging Bull
- Todd Solondz, Happiness
- Terry Zwigoff, Ghost World
Night on Earth was uneven but worth watching, if you're looking for your next Jarmusch. I haven't seen Ghost Dog yet; what did you think of it?
I greatly enjoyed Ghost Dog. On the surface, it is an off-kilter urban assassin tale, but dig deeper and you'll discover an interesting study of our post-modern world riddled with battling philosophies. That copy of Rashomon circulating throughout the film is no simple book, but rather the controlling metaphor of the film, exploding the varying personal viewpoints into cultural worldviews that do not (can not, perhaps) agree. Extremely thoughtprovoking and fun to boot.
It is a samurai film about as much as Hal Hartley's Amateur is an action film.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
There was a lot to admire about Ghost Dog. I liked that it was original and offbeat; I liked its off-kilter humor; I liked what Jarmusch had to say about communicating on a deeper level than with verbal language, shown when Ghost Dog (Forest Whittaker) is not only able to understand the ice-cream man who speaks only French, but he considers him his best friend; I liked the young girl Samuri, who reads, thinks, and is strong beginning at a young age, and I liked the juxtaposition of the Samuri with RZA's hip-hop. However, I really think the killing was in excess (something that didn't bother me as much in Dead Man, as it seemed to fit in that context more.) I especially disliked the scene where Ghost Dog kills the hunters; I couldn't see the reason for that. Also, I am not so keen on the Samuri philosophy as a whole. I liked that Ghost Dog was disciplined, strong, and sharp in a gang-infested ghetto, but I don't understand the Samuri willingness to die for honor, so I was pissed off when Ghost Dog just lets himself die at the end, although I do see that it was a "circle;" Ghost Dog "had" to die to because he killed the "mafia guy's" family. Perhaps my discomfort is because Eastern philosophy is so different from Western. I liked it for the reasons stated, but these parts made me unsettled (perhaps that's good, though; another way to think about things.) I hope you've seen the movie by now, or this didn't ruin seeing it for you!
"Ruin" is too strong a word, although I haven't seen it yet. Fortunately, I tend to enjoy the travellin' as much as the arrivin'. :) Still, I hope you don't mind, but I've taken the liberty of cloaking a portion of your post. For future reference, here's The Listology's spoiler policy. I must say, even with the spoiler, I enjoyed your comments. I am more eager to see it than ever.
Minor note: Smoke was directed by Wayne Wang, although Jim does have a cameo in Smoke's sequel-of-sorts, Blue in the Face.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Thanks for the correction!
I find your Brooks choice a bit surprising, though I do enjoy As Good As It Gets. Have you seen Broadcast News? A very under-rated film, and one of the best dramas of the late 80s, in my book!
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
I listed Brooks as a favorite director only because I like the movie As Good As It Gets so much. Honestly, I haven't seen much of his other work besides the notorious ("I am king of the world") Titanic. I haven't seen Broadcast News--I'll check it out.
Actually, Brooks didn't direct Titanic, but As Good As it Gets did lose to it in 1997 at the Oscars. James Cameron directed that, and he is a pompous ass of a director.
My last response certainly sunk. Well, heck, then I haven't seen anything else directed by Brooks (that I am aware of...I guess I should find out) except As Good As It Gets. Actually, Titanic won at the 1998 Oscars. At least Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, and Greg Kinnear won Oscars for their performances...not as good as it could have got. Also, I read that the pompous "king of the world" phrase that Cameron uttered at the awards was a quote.
Ah yes, indeed, the ceremony did take place in 1998. The quote was from the film, but that doesn't excuse the tackiness ;)
You're right--the quote was from the film. And also right that he'll never let down repeating it in his Oscar speech.
Hate to say anything else, but Kinnear lost to Robin Williams for his performance in Good Will Hunting.
Well, Kinnear should have won! His performance was outstanding. All Williams did to get the Oscar was to finally play a serious character (although I can't diss the man too much--the Fisher King, one of my favorite movies, wouldn't be the same without him). I bet Williams gets nominated for his role as a murderer in Insomniac.
No offense, but whether Williams deserved to win the Oscar or not, Good Will Hunting was far from his first serious character.
The World According to Garp and Awakenings jump out off the top of my head.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
That's true, but Williams is known as an over-the-top comedian-actor and his role as a psychologist in Good Will Hunting seemed to be his first serious role in a long time. The Academy seemed impressed with the performance, but I didn't think it was anything special and can't help thinking he was awarded the Oscar for just showing some more range as an actor. Not to say he isn't a fine, or even brilliant, actor. I did love The World According to Garp (Irving's book is a lot better than the film, though). I haven't seen Awakenings.
This is an interesting list from my perspective, in that we seem to agree quite a bit on directors we like, but disagree quite a bit on favorites by those directors. Although the only one I'd strenuously (but politely) disagree with is The Man Who Wasn't There, my personal choice for "worst Coen Brothers movie." But I think mine is the minority opinion. I'm right with you on Delicatessen though (disclaimer: I haven't seen Amelie)!
Why is the Man Who Wasn't There your choice for "Worst Coen Brothers Movie"? What's your favorite? What other director/movie did you disagree with on this list? The majority of people I've talked to like Amelie better than Delicatessen--I know what it's like to be in the minority in some areas!
Regarding TMWWT, see my comments here and here. Here are the other places we differ:
Tim Burton: Edward Scissorhands or Sleepy Hollow
Terry Gillam: Brazil
Jim Jarmusch: Ghost Dog, although I haven't seen Down By Law
Akira Kurosawa: The Seven Samurai
Ang Lee: Sense and Sensibility or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Coen Brothers: Blood Simple
David Lynch: Mulholland Drive
Not so many differences, I guess! Although for some of these I don't really have an opinion. And I'll be seeing Raging Bull soon. I enjoy this list. I'd be curious to see a Favorite Movies by Genre entry from you.
I read your comments on TMWWT and was intrigued by your line "any movie...has to relate to real people on some level and for me TMWWT completely missed the mark." I think TMWWT did relate to real people, but those people were in mismatched, dysfunctional, or dishonest relationships and could not fully connect with each other in a human way. I take the title (the man, or any of the other characters, not being "there") to mean that the characters go through life without really being present and are spiritually isolated from one another.
This spiritual isolation in TMWWT is exactly why I love Ghost World so much, another movie you commented you didn't feel much for. The movie's setting could have been any suburb in an America saturated with mini-malls, "authentic" 50s diners, fast food restaurants, and coffee (Starbucks?) places. In the background, there's telephone poles that block the scenery, fat, faceless characters stuffing their faces with McDonald's food, and anti-intellectual jocks at bars who pass up listening to a ragtime legend for "Blues Hammer," a rock group comprised of four well-to-do white men who I'm sure neither themselves nor their ancestors spent a day "picking cotton all day long." In a gentrified America in intellectual decline, the characters walk through a capitalistic realm looking to make a human connection in a world that makes no sense and offers no real meaning. I think TMWWT, in part, works along the same line.
God, I love to watch a movie where characters are real and totally connect and I try as hard as a can to have real relationships with people in my own life. Perhaps I'm sad, but as much as I believe the reason for living is to love, I believe we are all in spiritual isolation and no matter how hard we try we can never *truly* understand and connect with another person or people. Movies such at TMWWT and Ghost World are meaningful to me because they remind me that I'm not the only person who feels alone even when surrounded by a lot of people.
At that, as for the places we differ on director/movie, I stand firm on most of my choices, although admit that the only movies I've seen by Kurosawa and Ang Lee are Ran and The Ice Storm respectively, so I didn't have much to pick from! Also, although I haven't seen all of Lynch's films, I doubt anything can match The Elephant Man. I watched it when I was very young and had nightmares. I forced myself to watch it eleven years later and I don't think there's a more wonderfully depressing, sad, or human film out there...
Give me some time...I'll put together a Favorite Movies by Genre list.
Very interesting response, and very astute of you to zero right in on my lukewarm response to Ghost World as relevant to my outright dislike for TMWWT! For me Ghost World is much more successful than TMWWT in that is shows isolated characters that are at least *trying* to connect. Ed the barber, on the other hand, is a complete muddle - he's mostly indifferent to his entire life, has a bizarre relationship with his wife in which he waffles between understated gentleness and affection and detached distain, he goes into "meaning of life" trances and ponders hair growth, kicks off an awful chain of events pursuing a dry cleaning business that I never believed he really had any interest in in the first place, gives little sense of horror at what he's unleashed, and fixates on the teenage piano player for reasons that are as mysterious to us as everything else he does.
I dunno, I just didn't get out of it what many others seemed to. It is a mystery that didn't intrigue me, a thriller that didn't thrill me, and a comedy that didn't amuse me. As a meditation on isolation, it worked in that the characters are indeed isolated, but not in ways that seemed realistic to me. I just don't think the Coens had anything to say with this one. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - I think the Coens emphasize style over substance in general, and usually successfully. Their thematic range seems to be "laugh at this - it's funny" (Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, O Brother Where Art Thou?) or "don't people do stupid and/or horrible things to each other" (Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Fargo) with lots of references to other movies thrown in. Don't get me wrong, I *like* most Coen movies . . . but not this one.
The one bright spot for me in the movie was Tony Shaloub. Very funny, and I got a kick out of his last name sounding like a legal partnership ("Reed and Schneider").
You have some great Kurosawa and Lee movies ahead of you. You can't go too far wrong with either of them (which isn't to equate them - Kurosawa is in his own class).
Looking forward to your "Favorites by Genre" list!
Perhaps TMWWT can be likened to American Beauty. The taciturn Ed, controlled and jilted by his wife, experiences a mid-life crisis where he is jolted out of his lifeless existence and questions himself and his life. As with Kevin Spacey's character in American Beauty, Ed develops an obsession with an an underage girl and his efforts to better his life entangle him in a series of events that lead to his untimely death. Should have Ed/Spacey just have stuck with their routine, unhappy existences or was it more meaningful that they at least tried to live a little before they died?
This is another way to view TMWWT positively, but, of course, I'm not trying to sway you!
Your efforts to sway me are admirable, but doomed to failure. :-) Many of your points are good, but spring from the premise that the characters are interesting human beings. When you start from a foundation of finding the characters unbelievable and inhuman (as I did with TMWWT) any overlying defense won't be able to stand. Getting back to one of your original responses to my complaints:
I think TMWWT did relate to real people, but those people were in mismatched, dysfunctional, or dishonest relationships and could not fully connect with each other in a human way.
You seem to be saying here that circumstances prevent the characters from connecting in a human way (isolation breeding inhumanity), while I think it's the opposite (inhumanity breeds their isolation). It's an important distinction: in your viewing it's possible to build layers of meaning, while in my viewing the movie is already dead in the water and cannot be built upon meaningfully.
Isolation breeds inhumanity or inhumanity breeds isolation? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? How do you view human interaction in, say, a movie like Mulholland Drive?
Well, if you assume that at the moment life first appeared on earth the primordial soup yielded a bunch of tiny critters rather than a bunch of tiny eggs, and if you agree that the animal form generally drives natural selection more than the fetal form, I'm thinking the chicken came first. :-)
But I don't think posing the chicken/egg problem in entirely fair in such subjective matters. You think these characters are inhuman because of their isolation; isolation is a common plague of humanity's sense of well-being, and is certainly good movie fodder. As a result, you think the movie is the best of the Coen brothers oeuvre. I, on the other hand, think these chickens sprang from their eggs fully inhuman, and thus are about as emotionally interesting to me as my toaster. And I think it's the worst of the Coen's lot. We disagree (which I'm enjoying, by the way!).
If the Coen's had given me some hint as to a backstory of isolation that brought these characters to their inhuman state, perhaps I would have bought in a bit more. But they provided no such backstory, and the characters not only arrive to us inhuman, but I was given the distinct impression Ed has *always* been the coldest of fish (or chickens, I'm losing track). The backstory doesn't have to be explicit - it could be conveyed by a certain (probably subjective) depth of character but I couldn't find any of that in TMWWT either.
And you can keep trying to distract me with superior movies that feature isolation as a major theme (Ghost World, American Beauty, Mulholland Drive) but just because TMWWT shares a theme with those movies doesn't put it in the same class. Again, just my opinion.
I believe in creation so I, too, think the chicken came first :-) In real life, it's often hard to tell whether the isolation or the inhumanity came first, but since we are talking about movies, you're right--a film-goer should be provided with enough backstory and should not have to guess at meaning.
What about films that perhaps purposely don't provide a backstory in order to be open to viewer interpretation? You're right that the film did not implicitly show isolation leads to inhumanity, but it also didn't show that inhumanity led to isolation. Since there was no backstory, we both added meaning to the movie and I find it interesting that our interpretations are so different.
I asked what you thought about Mulholland Drive not to compare it to TMWWT, but because MD was bascially made to be open to interpretation and I wondered what you thought of the human relationships there. You're right that I shouldn't push a film by comparing it to others; a film should stand on its own, but it was interesting for me to think about TMWWT's similarity to other films. Maybe this is due to too many hours of theorizing in English classes.
This conversation is interesting to me because I always carried the philosophy that isolation breeds inhumanity and I haven't thought much about it the other way around. But I can see TMWWT being about inhumanity leading to isolation, too; Ed's inhuman acts increasingly isolate him. Even in Ghost World, Enid didn't necessarily start out isolated, but she made a series of mistakes that led to her isolation. In both of these movies, I can view it either way.
But, my belief that people are helpless against isolation is a pessimistic policy. If I become more conscious of how myself and others end up feeling isolated, maybe I can be more proactive and stop what inhumanities I can before they happen.
Sorry about the delay! Regarding Mulholland Drive, I thought it was terrific - broken hearts & crushed dreams, interestingly told. While I could only unravel the plot in hindsight, I thought our heroine's character and her story were well-developed. In relation to our TMWWT discussion, I thought MD was a good example of a movie that successfully (subjective, of course) delivers the necessary backstory implicitly rather than explicitly.
I also love Ghost World; it's such a good movie. Steve Buscemi is always a great performer.
Yes! That movie rocks! Have you seen Buscemi in his self-directed Trees Lounge?
Forgive me if I have asked this before, but what other Hartley films have you seen? Just curious...
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs (lover of Hal Hartley films)
As the case with my Kurosawa and Lee, I haven't seen many Hartley films, just Flirt and Henry Fool. I keep of list of Hartley's films in my wallet, and particularly want to see The Book of Life, but I'll never find any at my local Schlockbuster and I don't currently have the cheese for my own copies.