When Good Dogs Do Bad Things
Submitted by Cosgrove on Tue, 08/17/2004 - 01:14
Tags:
- Woody Allen: Everything from "Small Time Crooks" to "Melinda and Melinda"
- Robert Altman: Buffalo Bill and the Indians; Cookie's Fortune; Dr. T and the Women; Popeye
- Dario Argento: The Cat o' Nine Tails (plus everything post-"Opera")
- Joe Berlinger: Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
- Claude Berri: The Housekeeper
- Luis Bunuel: The Milky Way
- Tim Burton: Planet of the Apes
- John Carpenter: Escape from New York
- Charles Chaplin: Monsieur Verdoux
- Rene Clair: Le Million
- Joel (and Ethan) Coen: The Ladykillers
- David Cronenberg: Fast Company; Spider
- Alex de la Iglesia: Dying of Laughter
- Guillermo del Toro: Hellboy
- Brian de Palma: Snake Eyes
- Clint Eastwood: True Crime
- Sergei Eisenstein: Ivan the Terrible, Part 2
- David Fincher: The Game
- Milos Forman: Man on the Moon
- Terry Gilliam: The Brothers Grimm; Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
- David Gordon Green: Undertow
- John Huston: Annie
- Jean-Pierre Jeunet: A Very Long Engagement
- Neil Jordan: In Dreams
- Fritz Lang: The Woman in the Window
- Barry Levinson: Bandits; Sphere
- David Lynch: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
- Anthony Mann: Strange Impersonation
- Russ Meyer: Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens
- Takashi Miike: Full Metal Yakuza; Rainy Dog
- Mike Newell: Pushing Tin
- Mike Nichols: Wolf
- George A. Romero: Bruiser
- Ridley Scott: Hannibal; Legend
- M. Night Shyamalan: The Village
- Michele Soavi: The Church
- Todd Solondz: Storytelling
- Seijin Suzuki: Pistol Opera; Tattooed Life
- Jan Svankmajer: Faust
- Gus Van Sant: Elephant; Last Days; Psycho
- Paul Verhoeven: Basic Instinct
- John Woo: Broken Arrow; Paycheck
- Robert Zemeckis: What Lies Beneath
Author Comments:
Even the best directors have big fat blemishes on their records. Here's a few clinkers I've seen from people who should have known better.
Suggestion maybe?
Tim Burton - Sleepy hollow?
I dunno, I liked "Sleepy Hollow". Crap script, true, but Burton, Depp and Ricci make it watchable.
Man, I'm really starting to feel not only lonely, but pathetic in my enjoyment of The Game. I may have to watch that again to see if I was on crack that night, or something.
I dig The Game. I think it's very clever.
Ah, right, I thought maybe there was somebody I forgot! Thanks Ash!
Don't feel bad -- everybody loves "The Game" but me.
Nah, The Game is totally awesome. Cosgrove's the one on crack ;-)
Says the man who gave a 50 to "Knife in the Water". ;-)
Excellent rundown
I've never seen Wolf but I can't believe that it was worse than The Day of The Dolphin (*Faa... loves... Paaaa*) It made me wish for tuna old-school style.
...yes, that was a pun.
...and I'll admit it: I liked Escape from New York , it was Escape from L.A. that raised my bile.
Hey! I liked The Game, Fear and Loathing, Bandits, and especially Elephant.
For Gilliam, I nominate Time Bandits instead.
What was so terrible about Ivan the Terrible Part II that was different from Part I?
I also enjoyed What Lies Beneath and Basic Instinct, but those are guilty pleasures, I'll admit.
I agree, Time Bandits sucks. I haven't seen Fear and Loathing though.
"Ivan II" was exactly the kind of logy, boring sterotypical Russian cinema that I thought Eisenstein was incapable of making. As Ivan retreats into his paranoia, so the film draws into itself until we may as well be watching nothing at all.
"Elephant", of course, is an extraordinarily divisive film. Count me on the side that was wholly unimpressed. I found it to be beautifully filmed but unwilling to acknowledge the sadism in its heart (you could have stuck "Friday the 13th"'s notorious tagline on Van Sant's film and nobody would have batted an eye).
And I rather like "Time Bandits", though I agree it's not all its reputation has it cracked up to be. "Fear and Loathing", though... ugh. Headache city.
Gotta say, I loved Cronenberg's Spider, although it's far from his milieu. Was it something about Ralph Fiennes' constant mumblemouthing?
Cookie's Fortune? I certainly won't argue it is an undiscovered gem, but it certainly isn't a clinker. Pret a Porter, Dr.T and the Women, yes, but Cookie's Fortune is nothing more or less than a low-key charming Southern drama. Great acting, good bluesy soundtrack, it's a minor entry in Altman's canon, but not a bad one.
Johnny Waco
Maybe it's not a clinker in relation to Altman's other losers (when he whiffs, he really freakin' whiffs), but I couldn't finish watching it. It was so mannered and frantic (low-key, my arse) that I had to leave before I threw something through the TV. Even Julianne Moore was bad, and that never happens.
nice list... but i do have a few gripes and although it's useless to note them since, obviously, you disagree... here they are for my pleasure...
Woody Allen: Everything post-"Sweet and Lowdown"... exp.bullshit, but at least you give him more credit than most, most would really reach and say something like post-crimes and misdemeanors... i think "anything else" is one of his best movies and melinda isn't bad at all.
I strongly disagree on... because i simply love the movies... Escape From NY/Hellboy/Ladykillers/The Village
True Crime i don't agree with because eastwood has directed some terrible movies pre-mystic river, of which, true crime is not nearly the worst... in fact i think it's one of the decent ones... same goes with the faculty, i would say it's probably the best Rodriguez film.
If anyone deserves a "everything post..." it's robert zemeckis, everything after(and about half the stuff prior to) forrest gump has sucked.
and lastly... this list without steven spielberg is astonishingly empty... ET/Minority Report/Color Purple/1941... specially considering how amazingly he has directed half a dozen of his great films.
hell i would argue zemeckis and gilliam aren't even good dogs... but if you were gonna keep zemeckis on how about everything other than gump and back to the future trilogy.
Not a fan of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
never seen it... didn't realize he directed it
As for Gilliam... maybe it's a state of mind. Who knows. Personally, I love that bastard and eagerly await everything he does. Even "The Brothers Grimm" (which part of me is severely worrried about).
If part of you isn't worried every time that Gilliam manages to bring a movie to release then you're probably unfamiliar with his work. I think he's a genius. He's the one director who gets me into a theater every time (Pixar notwithstanding.)
You're absolutely right, of course. Seeing the man at work in "Lost in La Mancha" didn't help.
Well, saying post-"Crimes and Misdemeanors" is jes'plain stupid and I wouldn't trust anyone who would make that generalization. That would marginalize the accomplishments of, among others, "Sweet and Lowdown", "Deconstructing Harry" and "Husbands and Wives". But the way I see it, "Anything Else" is the best of Woody's last five films, and I barely recommend that one. The parts between Biggs & Allen are sharp, but the female characters are irritating and shallow. Honestly, Woody often rides the line when it comes to misogyny, but "Else" is one of his few films where I find myself asking if he hasn't jumped the line.
I couldn't even finish watching "True Crime". As for Eastwood's other 'bad' films... I'll just have to 'fess up and say I haven't seen them. My knowledge of Eastwood's ooo-ver pretty much starts with "Unforgiven". Note, though, that I skipped both the supposedly-dire "Space Cowboys" and "Blood Work". I'm only talking about films I've seen here, man.
Robert Rodriguez will probably be deleted from this list in the near future, as I've come to realize that I like what he stands for more than the films he makes. His enthusiasm is helpful, true, but there's only so far you can go before you have to admit that the enthusiam is a cover story for an embarassing fascination with juvenalia and a really awful sense of pacing and plotting. (Maybe that's why "Sin City" works so well -- it's not his framework.) I singled out "The Faculty", though, because it was his blandest and most faceless film. Who wants to pay for a Rodriguez film that doesn't at least feel like a Rodriguez film?
Zemeckis is an amazing technical director and I give him a lot of credit for that. That said, I'll agree he hasn't been quite the same director since "Roger Rabbit" won a couple of Oscars. I don't even care for "Gump" that much (it's either the most disgusting piece of reactionary holy-foolism this country's ever seen or it's the most brilliantly subtle piece of satire this country's ever seen), but I don't dislike it enough to include it here. And what of "Cast Away"? That was pretty awesome IMO.
Lastly, I've skipped most of Spielberg's 'bad' films (I tend to stay away from good-liberal filmmaking like "Amistad" or "The Color Purple"), but classing "Minority Report" in with "1941" is just... so... wrong.
i agree with you on the on sweet and lowdown, decon. harry and husband and wives... but a lot of people don't acknowledge them as good woody allen movies... it's just ridiculous as you say, but i think anything else is better than those three, but then again i often find myself being misogynistic so i guess that could be why, not seeing that as a problem may allow me to apreciate it more...
and all i was saying was that if you had seen more eastwood films trust me, true crime wouldn't be there...
"Who wants to pay for a Rodriguez film that doesn't at least feel like a Rodriguez film?"... haha, precisely my point, that IS the only rodriguez film i would pay to see.
and i don't think gump is that good either... i like it, but not that much... and cast away i've only seen once and didn't really care for, but that was a while ago.
i would put spielberg in the company of the coen brothers and bunuel because at times he can be that good(if you haven't seen duel, i highly suggest it), so surely you can find one terrible film among the lot of terrible films he has made.
And as a point of clarification: This list only includes films I've given a C or below to (with two exceptions -- the Bunuel and Coen entries -- for filmmakers of whom I think so highly that any falter is a major misstep). If I included films rated as a C+, this would probably be far more bloated.
I liked quite a few of those. Monsieur Verdoux, Le Million, Elephant, Pistol Opera, Ivan the Terrible Part 2 were all some of those directors' best work. Twin Peaks FWWM, Spider, Buena Vista Social Club, Storytelling, Fear and Loathing weren't bad either.
And I wouldn't call Jeunet a good dog. All of his post-Caro flicks were awful.
Of course this is all subjective. But I do think the films mentioned here are lacking something (especially, of the ones you mentioned, "Pistol Opera" and "Fear and Loathing") that usually doesn't elude the directors in question.
Also, I think Jeunet is still quite interesting. I dug "Amelie" and even "Alien: Resurrection" wasn't that bad.
Oh, Alien Resurrection was that bad (have you watched it again?). Amelie's quirkiness kind of got out of hand, but I thought it truly had some transcendent moments.
I, too, was highly disappointed in Shyamalan's The Village - it was cracked up to be so good in the commercials/trailers, but it let me down, man. :(
I read your comments on Wim Wenders and his recent work here. So, I thought, maybe it'd interest you to hear that Wenders' Don't come knocking is (IMO) not bad. The cinematography is beautiful (inspired by Edward Hopper), and the acting pretty good. The only thing that really pissed me off was that he made the same (big) mistake as in Wings of Desire. He is able to create wonderful pictures on the big screen, but somehow he doesn't seem to be very sure of their effect, and so he (unfortunately and to my disgust) adds endless conversations and even monologues to underline what the images already tell. (I must admit though that I haven't seen that much of Wenders' work, but I have many of his films on tape, and the possibility to get Paris, Texas.)
P.S.: Is Shyamalan's The Village even worse than Signs?
About Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, i haven't seen it, but were you a fan of the series?. I'm watching it on Dvd now, i think i have only 3 episoded to go, and the better episodes are the ones directed by Lynch imho.
It seems there are mixed feelings about the movie.