Bad Movies by Great Directors?

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All of these great directors like Ingmar Bergman always seem to never miss and usually come out with well received output. Then bad directors like Uwe Boll come out with abominations. I have been pondering for a while as to what bad movies had a good director? Here are some of them I noticed but never saw:*

North directed by Rob Reiner - Everyone hated hated hated every audience insulting moment of this one. Also funny that George and Elaine from Seinfeld are North’s parents.
Son of Pink Panther by Blake Edwards - He had several bad movies and this one shows him end with a whimper.

Serpents Egg by Ingmar Bergman - Luckily he went out with a bang with Fanny and Alexander.

Folies Bourgeois by Claude Chabrol - The name fit as this one was a folly. I seen clips of this one but I found it amusing that a 42 year old lady(Stephane Audran) would show off her legs from a Volkswagen. That is something a 20-30 year old usually does.

Now one for my opinion. Don’t hate me but...

Dr Strange into The Multiverse of Madness by Sam Raimi - This movie for me was pretentious nonsense like I said in another thread and then there was a weak story that I heard a million time already. Everyone I saw it with had headaches when (this?) was over. This movie only seems to have good marks because it is of the MCU. If it was of the DCEU, it would be trashed. I like the Spider Man trilogy much better than (this?).

I did not hate it, but I did not care for Reservoir Dogs by you know who very much. I found it to be kind of boring. For me it looked kind of plain and was more of a template for what future Tarantino works would look like. The only one I did not really like by him.



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Bergman is one of my favorites. He's made many great movies, but I thought his last handful of movies were his weakest by far.



Vittorio De Sica is my favorite but I didn't like "Indiscretion of an American Housewife" and I couldn't get past either of his "comedy" movies with Peter Sellers.. One day, like Visconti's last movie - couldn't get past the very beginning.


John Cassavetes - Killing of a Chinese Bookie



Victim of The Night
I did not hate it, but I did not care for Reservoir Dogs by you know who very much. I found it to be kind of boring. For me it looked kind of plain and was more of a template for what future Tarantino works would look like. The only one I did not really like by him.
I see this one a lot and it makes me scratch my head. When it hit back in the 90s, people thought it was quietly one of the best American films in years and many people thought, after Pulp Fiction came out, that there was real debate that Reservoir Dogs was actually better.
And now I hear so many people saying they don't think it's one of QT's better or even good movies, when silly crap like Django gets some kind of a pass and overlong masturbation sessions like OUaTiH get heaped with praise.
Color me confused.



Victim of The Night
Also, is Ridley Scott considered "great" enough to be held accountable for half his filmography?



I suppose 1941 is an obligatory entry for Spielberg, but I found it amusing as a kid and I still have a soft spot for it.



North directed by Rob Reiner - Everyone hated hated hated every audience insulting moment of this one. Also funny that George and Elaine from Seinfeld are North’s parents.
Son of Pink Panther by Blake Edwards - He had several bad movies and this one shows him end with a whimper.
Most of Reiner's output after The American President is weak; especially when compared with the amazing run he had in the 1980s.

I did not hate it, but I did not care for Reservoir Dogs by you know who very much. I found it to be kind of boring. For me it looked kind of plain and was more of a template for what future Tarantino works would look like. The only one I did not really like by him.
I still haven't seen Death Proof, but I have enjoyed to varying degrees all of Tarantino's work. If you ask me now, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight are his weakest.
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Victim of The Night
I suppose 1941 is an obligatory entry for Spielberg, but I found it amusing as a kid and I still have a soft spot for it.
Yeah, I always kinda liked it, I've never really understood what all the guff was about.



Victim of The Night
Two of the few missteps in the career of the legendary Sidney Lumet:




I like The Wiz.



I see this one a lot and it makes me scratch my head. When it hit back in the 90s, people thought it was quietly one of the best American films in years and many people thought, after Pulp Fiction came out, that there was real debate that Reservoir Dogs was actually better.
And now I hear so many people saying they don't think it's one of QT's better or even good movies, when silly crap like Django gets some kind of a pass and overlong masturbation sessions like OUaTiH get heaped with praise.
Color me confused.

Because Reservoir Dogs is the bare bones skeleton that he eventually found interesting ways to completely reinvent genre film making from.



Reservoir Dogs is a very good movie. But it is nothing compared to Django or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Like, it doesn't even register.



And there is absolutely nothing masturbatory about Hollywood. You cut all the scenes I assume the critics of it consider excessive or unnecessary, it loses everything that makes it potent and loveable and interesting.



I like The Wiz.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but my opinion is coming from a different perpsective..,many years ago I played the Lion in a stage production of the musical and I am unable to take seriously what Lumet and Quincy Jones did to a brilliant Broadway show.



Since this is entirely subjective, these are my least favorites from several well-known directors...

PTA - Magnolia (haven't seen it in 20 years, though)
Bergman - The Seventh Seal (have only seen 6 films)
Cameron - Piranha II
Coen - Intolerable Cruelty
Fincher - Mank
Hitchcock - Champagne
Kubrick - Fear and Desire
Lynch - Wild at Heart
Mann - The Last of the Mohicans (haven't seen it in 20 years either)
Nolan - Interstellar
Scorsese - Gangs of New York
Spielberg - The Post
Tarantino - The Hateful Eight
Villeneuve - Arrival

Bold are ones I've seen all films from them.



I see this one a lot and it makes me scratch my head. When it hit back in the 90s, people thought it was quietly one of the best American films in years and many people thought, after Pulp Fiction came out, that there was real debate that Reservoir Dogs was actually better.
Pulp Fiction is clearly the better film, but Dogs would be an admirable first outing for any director, although it is a bit of a plagiarism.

And now I hear so many people saying they don't think it's one of QT's better or even good movies, when silly crap like Django gets some kind of a pass and overlong masturbation sessions like OUaTiH get heaped with praise.

Color me confused.
I have been less impressed with QT as his career has progressed. He really needs someone like Menke with him in the editing bay, but it's not just that. His ambitions changed. He shifted more into pure ungrounded fantasy and whimsy in his later films. Jackie Brown is just a middle-aged flight attendant trying to make a play before she is trapped in a crappy apartment forever. Pulp Fiction is "ridiculous" in that the sequence of events is implausible, however, these series of implausible events unfolds in a universe is closer to the one we live in (e.g., without Kung Fu punches that will stop a human heart in five steps, without re-writing the history of WW2, without melodramatic satire of the slave-holding south). It's a pulpy story told in what is, more or less, our world. Ditto for Res. Dogs -- what gave this film such an edge when it came out, was the shock factor of hanging out with these scumbag criminals as they turned on each other. His later films are more fantastical, counterfactual, and dare I say, silly.



I think the performance of Jackie Brown may have stung him, but ANY film that followed Pulp Fiction was going to suffer in comparison. After Jackie Brown, QT arguably retreated into more explicit/pronounced genre pastiche of exploitation cinema (multiple genres at once) to amp up the whimsy and fun factor, but it costs. And all we really get are bloody revenge fantasies in long-format cinema. Take that Buck! Take that Bill! Take that Adolf! Take that Candie! I think that it is a sort of masturbation, Our bloody revenge on the frustrations of our own lives and against history itself. Once a Time in Hollywood is more of a return to his old form, but even here he cannot resist sticking it, counterfactually, to the Manson Family.



I think it would be good for QT to find the big in the small again. Narrow the scope of the fantasy B.S. and go for character development and dialogue that delivers that goods through conversations rather than bullets and blades. And maybe don't write the first treatment of the script. Buy a good story from a writer and, if need be, touch it up or change up the structure.



Because Reservoir Dogs is the bare bones skeleton that he eventually found interesting ways to completely reinvent genre film making from.



Reservoir Dogs is a very good movie. But it is nothing compared to Django or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Like, it doesn't even register.



And there is absolutely nothing masturbatory about Hollywood. You cut all the scenes I assume the critics of it consider excessive or unnecessary, it loses everything that makes it potent and loveable and interesting.
Hollywood is QT's best film.

Reservoir Dogs is the work of a talented amateur that asked "what if I combined City on Fire and the Killing?"



Hollywood is QT's best film.

Is it? In a world where Pulp Fiction exists? If the library of cinematic Alexandria was burning and we could only save Pulp Fiction or Hollywood, which would we choose? Pulp Fiction is pretty much a perfect film, so I am going with that one.



I mean, I liked Hollywood OK. This seemed to be a step in the right direction. But his best? No. QT at his most nostalgic, a love letter to old Hollywood and old Southern California? Sure.



I have my personal preference towards Kill Bill, and I think Pulp Fiction is what Tarantino looks like when he approaches standard ideas of perfection. But I think it's more than fair to consider Hollywood as being his best. It's his most interesting film since Pulp Fiction, but also has a much deeper emotional core even as it is weirder and more demanding than anything else he's ever done. Its probably as close to abstraction he's ever going to get, which allows for its hangout vibe to linger long after it ends. It is one of his rare films which I feel doesn't treat pure entertainment as it's primary goal. It really has something to say about what it means to be human, which is a rarity in his filmography.

It's an astonishing film that only becomes more and more resonant on further viewings. I think it is flawed, but only in the way that it needs those wonky moments to really work. I wouldn't change a thing about it



John Cassavetes - Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Oh yeah, gonna have to second this one, big time.



This will obviously vary for everybody, but as of now, Hollywood is my #3 Tarantino, behind Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. I think it's excellent.