An Acclaimed Director You Don't Like

It can be anyone. A Director's work everyone likes but you just don't.

Mine is Ridley Scott. I like Alien, but he hasn't made really anyone else worth shouting about if you ask me.

Discuss Here.

Blade Runner man, but otherwise I agree

I would pick Robert Zemeckis, Mel Gibson, Clint Eastwood (except a couple), half of Ang Lee's work (the other half I really enjoy).

Two more, I won't say I don't like them necessarily but very little of their work strikes me at all, Spielberg and Coppola.

Haven`t seen Blade Runner yet, but i have it, but yeah Robin Hood wasn`t a good film.

Zemeckis - I liked Back To The Future Trilogy
Gibson - ...Yeah alright
Eastwood - He's not great at directing, but he does it better than most
Lee - Never seen any of his
Spielberg - Not all of Spielberg's films are great
Coppola - Aside The Godfather Films, Id agree.

Ang Lee did Crouching Tiger, Brokeback Mountain, The 2003 Hulk, and Sense And Sensibility, all of which I dislike immensely. However, he has done really good work: The Ice Storm, Ride With The Devil, Lust Caution, Eat Drink Man Woman.

The Ice Storm has got to be his worst. It has one memorable scene to me (the upside-down car); otherwise, it's old news and a complete rehash of themes and characters from dozens of other movies. I believe The Wedding Banquet is a much-better film about family.

The Duellists is a very good Ridley Scott flick. It's something like a Scorsese film set during the Napoleonic Wars as co-directed by Terrence Malick.

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Clint Eastwood is the only one that comes to mind. I really don't know what "new thing" he brings in to film making.

His films, don't get me wrong, I find those good but and the stories are solid but in terms of directing, what's the big deal?

Ridley Scott is definitely one I don't like much.

I don't like much of Ang Lee's work either, but I really liked Hulk.

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Does M. Night still count as 'acclaimed'? I also don't like Robert Rodriguez and Ron Howard.

I'd be surprised if we go past page 1 without someone mentioning Michael Mann (and meaning it). Not me though, like that dude.

James Cameron for starters.

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M Night it depends. His career has gone way down hill after The Village. Its the same plot device which gets old and stupid. Cameron i guess because Avatar was dull as was Titanic. Although i do think The Abyss is slightly underrated.

The two highest-grossing films of all-time were "dull"? I realize there are other films which would earn more if corrected for the era of their release and the unholy amount of money films earn all over the world now, but a lot of newer films have been released and none have come all that close to those two films which apparently made a lot of money to put people to sleep.

Dull is possibly a matter of attention span, but they are both pretty long.

I don't quite see why people are picking directors because they only like half of their films. I'd say half was pretty good going. If I was picking my favourite directors there's still be some of their films I wasn't so keen on. (Incidentally, wintertriangles and I have very different views on Ang Lee's work - I love Brokeback Mountain, Sense and Sensibility, The Wedding Banquet and Lust Caution but don't rate The Ice Storm or Ride With the Devil)

My pick for a director I just don't like would be Cameron Crowe because I find all the films of his I've seen intensely irritating. I'm not that keen on what I've seen of Soderbergh's films either, but who knows, I might really like the other half...

I'd feel comfortable calling them dull by elaborating that they were predictable, which makes them dull in a way. Moment to moment, sure, plenty going on, and in the case of Avatar some purty pictures, but dull in an overarching sense. For me, at least. Might be different with others.

Oh, and I agree with Thursday about panning directors because you only like half their filmography. If their record is mixed, personally I'd only list them if the half I didn't like I really, really disliked.

The only reason I mentioned Ang Lee is because his acclaimed films are the ones I don't like

oh, i have to agree

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Just because certain films are popular doesn't mean they're not basically dull and predictable with no real surprises. After all, many of the young people who flock to such films are very discriminating in their tastes. Box office is not my criteria for judging a good or bad film.

Roman Polanski, Oliver Stone, M. Night--I've never cared for any film by these directors I've ever seen.

It's not my criteria either. I just find it suspicious when people go out of their way to constantly slam popular films because they appear to think they're better than the hoi polloi.

Pretty much all blockbusters are dull. In order to be retained by such a vast audience they're compressed and simplified for the global market.

What I'm saying is that to make a movie that appeals equally to American, Japanese, Korean, German and Mexican teenagers, you need to simplify that **** down to things they all understand equally. Anything dealing with, say, the subtle trials and hardships of everyday life in the American Midwest is going to be totally lost on someone from the other side of the planet.

The art of story telling is always going to be hampered when it has to be water down and smoothed off. Avatar was such an unbelievably basic ass story. It was dull, boring, predictable and more. It wasn't made for you, it was made for everyone and that's the problem.

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I certainly don't consider Cameron's epics on the same level as some of the most popular (and best in my opinion) films ever, such as Jaws and Star Wars, but apparently different people have different definitions of what constitutes dull. I also rue the fact that most modern blockbusters today don't have the depth of some older ones, but believe it or not, there are many people who find those Cameron films moving and I don't think anybody has the right to tell people that they're somehow wrong for having honest feelings. Call them dull in bold letters but they've still outdistanced the other dreaded blockbusters of the last decade and a half, and if that's because Cameron's a lousy writer who somehow still taps into people's hearts (usually through his visuals - I'm thinking of the actual ending of Titanic here), then you should at least give the guy some credit, even if you somehow find it personally offensive, predictable and dull.

I've badmouthed modern mainstream films around here a lot, yet I also defend some of the same depending on which ones we're talking about. I have no axe to grind one way or the other, so I would never say that "pretty much all blockbusters are dull" even if I wished they were more original and creatively made. I also would never say that all of certain foreign films are wonderful. It seems to imply a closed mind. Anyway, I'm shutting down because I've already spent way too much time on this for what I think it's worth since nothing I say matters to reality in general and Cameron specifically.