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Post by stephen on Jul 28, 2019 18:22:19 GMT
Ridley Scott: Sci-fi.
Has there been a director more versatile and diverse in world-building than Ridley Scott? Period costume drama, contemporary buddy movies, glossy-slick crime flicks, pulse-pounding war stories, sweeping epics... Scott's done it all.
Of course, what he'll probably mostly be remembered for is what he's done for the sci-fi genre. Two instant iconic classics out of the gate in Alien and Blade Runner, which hold up absolutely beautifully (more than any other film in the genre, really, in terms of their futuristic portrayals; they also feel like they're part of the same universe, really). Say what you will about his recent entries in Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, but he still commands that sense of wonder and awe the genre desperately needs.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 29, 2019 22:31:19 GMT
David CronenbergGenre: Bio-Horror/Bio-TerrorMattsby themoviesinner both fans iirc. I had mentioned this before about Cronenberg in the thread abut "unique" traits that make directors different. I won't repeat that post but wanted to sort of re-think it and how special he was. This genre sort of existed prior to him and would have existed without him - Alien and The Thing existed after all - but he completely radicalized it. You can picture him making both those films AND Invasion of the Body Snatchers in ways that look entirely different from the films we know - he controls the genre he doesn't just serve it. David Cronenberg didn't even make particularly good films early on - he worked in a way exploiting genre traps with weak casts and no budgets. When his budgets got bigger though he didn't all of a sudden "get better" - it's just the mechanisms of film caught up to his ideas and he could fully illustrate them. But no filmmaker ever had more ideas right from the start than David Cronenberg - his films in many ways predict an AIDS (and Ebola) like crisis, argued against the fashion industry and exploitative beautification projects, illustrate complex birthing ritual gone wrong or (strangely too right) - that argue for pro-abortion AND pro-choice simultaneously in his work - the need and suffcation of the family unit. Addiction to video devices which predates internet porn - evil companies that want to control ALL of that in a way that eerily seems uncannily like social media. It doesn't end there - when his work goes into politics explicitly he foreshadows Trump the rise of Socialist thinking and loss of freewill. When his work stays personal he uncannily sums up healthcare prescription addiction and care for the dying (the AIDS metaphor again in his mid-80s The Fly - in the moment but worse because he had hinted this was coming a decade earlier - physical collapse through our tainted blood a Cronenberg specialty) He is wildly on target so much of the time that David Cronenberg's work is sometimes genuinely terrifying to assess - horror comes from every angle - your body, your mind, outside sources, every friend has an ulterior motive and there is never any peace - he speaks to our time precisely and overwhelmingly. From The Dead Zone - again eerily predicting our US political climate right now. It isn't even his original source material - but it's entirely his vision:
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Post by Mattsby on Jul 30, 2019 0:28:50 GMT
pacinoyes Great writeup. I’m a fan though to a degree, like idk if he’d make my Top 50 directors but he’s always fascinating, even his failures. He’s demented and daring and perverse but uniquely so, and like you said quite wise and prescient too. The Dead Zone was the first I saw (“the ice....is gonna break!”) - that one specifically, really all of his bio body horrors relate to this Cronenberg quote: “Biology is destiny. Of course it is, from beginning to end. But it's a very human thing for us to want to derail destiny, to derail biology, and that is what many of my characters are in the process of trying to do.” I actually prefer Shivers and Rabid over Videodrome, Scanners, & The Brood. Those first two are effective and complement each other - failed experimental surgeries causing wild outbreak, following the evolving of a virus, Shivers in a contained setting, with carnal overtones, at times super creepy, is a tight concept realization though with noticeable budget constraint; Rabid, better, encompasses more, with the virus traversing city to city - following thru on the last note of Shivers, and with subtext - ingenious casting of Marilyn Chambers. So I like how Cronenberg himself evolves his trademark ideas, scientific backfire, bodily mutations, compulsion, contagion - and how his characters, indeed, consciously or not, physically or metaphysically, are attempting to derail, mutate, fix or save social, political, biological order.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 30, 2019 1:08:15 GMT
“Biology is destiny. Of course it is, from beginning to end. But it's a very human thing for us to want to derail destiny, to derail biology, and that is what many of my characters are in the process of trying to do.”
That's a really great quote and I hadn't heard it before. He's a fascinating guy - earlier I metioned he could have done Alien, The Thing or Invasion of The Body Snatchers but he could also have done classic works like Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and transformed them into even more specifically bio-terror films. There's a psychiatric condition which has always existed but is discussed more nowadays BDD - Body Dysmorphic Disorder which if it wasn't a real thing would be a thing that seems like something he'd invent (and yeah even that pops up in his films way early predating developments or discussions on it we have nowadays)
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 30, 2019 19:51:08 GMT
Claude ChabrolGenre: SuspenseThe great Claude Chabrol is sometimes lumped into "mystery" but he's really not. Mystery implies something that's happened......Suspense is what will happen. In his very best movies something may have happened already but its stakes are not in solving it but on how that will end up. In maybe his greatest film - Le Boucher several possible alternatives are in play at the end - the two main characters could die, fall in love, neither, both - since the mystery is (fairly) minor the suspense becomes almost unbearably intense. Chabrol, like Hitchcock his artistic forebear knew exactly how to play an audience - his films could end many different ways and he very much liked pulling the rug out from his fans. L'Enfer plays with ending alternatives even..... La Rupture an ending that could not have been forseen at any point in the film (yet is completely logical) and Betty a penetratingly pensive and contemplative, ominous final note when much chaos has preceded it and where you expect more of that. Because these movies are all under his masterful hand you can have great fun working your way through his themes. He loathed the rich, often times seems to side with their killers in his films or mocking their cultural privilege as merely a mask for a murderous intent of their own. His characters are often vain - in several films mirrors may as well be supporting characters He often had quite intelligent characters on the surface who confuse love with lust, what they need with what they want and what they can buy with who they are. If you look at all those elements it's no wonder he loved suspense - who knows how all that will end up From one of of his nature vs. nurture specialties - another pet theme of his actually - Isabelle Huppert in Merci Pour Le Chocolat:
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 3, 2019 18:51:36 GMT
Robert Altman
Genre: Satire (Dramatic or Comedic)Of all film genres satire - almost never works in movies. Unlike when you are reading a satirical piece - the medium is too immediate to make subtle points. Satire in film depends an immediate reaction which usually fails - and you're ability to process it is less anyway because movies are always.........moving to the next thing. Robert Altman you could argue did "Revisionist" movies better than anyone too - but nobody had his satirical bent - he thought everything was ripe for it - war, Hollywood - heck they're arguably the same thing - class differences, weddings, day to day life. What made him so great is he would weave in and out of satire without making his film overtly in that genre. M*A*S*H because satirical and political within seconds but that keeping you off balance helps you process the jokes - the way you do when you read. That element made him laugh but kept him from getting board with material - he's laughing at Hollywood because the alternative may be to unbearable to show, the satirical elements of Gosford Park also mask a seething outrage. Robert Altman was an American original and like many American mavericks - Mark Twain to Tom Wolfe - he knew that laughing seriously - laughing with thinking involved - carried a greater weight and cut two ways. From his 1992 The Player - one of 3 great Hollywood films along with Sunset Blvd. amd Mulholland Drive .......but .......far funnier:
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Post by TerryMontana on Aug 3, 2019 21:29:22 GMT
A little surprising nobody has mentioned Tim Burton. One of my favorite film makers, his style of work was very innovative in the late 80's - early 90s. I couldn't say which genre exactly he served although I could try to describe it as Gothic/ Dark Fantasy. Many of his movies also contain the element of terror even if they are child movies (most of his are)!! Burton's films are heavily based on photography and costumes/make-up. He is unique in creating a dark, gothic atmosphere almost like in fairy tales and comic books. On the other hand, sometimes it's like he's playing with the colors and the light to make some very fancy (and child friendly) atmosphere (like in the Chocolate Factory). And of course, he's tried many different genres like animation, biopics, super hero movies of course, adventure. In the pictures below, Sleepy Hollow's tremendous photography and Burton's Gotham City.
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 18, 2019 17:00:36 GMT
Michael MannGenre: Crimeurbanpatrician TerryMontana Many directors have done signature work in this genre but to me Michael Mann approached it in a singular way and a way that humanized and romanticized it but cruelly. This genre allowed him to explore and double back on male loneliness and missed opportunities and females victimization and their own missed opportunities. A gifted writer, Mann liked the genre not just for it's macho flash - although he greatly depicted that too - but the artifice it placed over male weakness and masked. In his first great film in this genre, Thief - a (relatively) innocent woman (Tuesday Weld) stands by and watches the man she's entrusted herself and future to (James Caan) - blow their chance at legit adoption, cast her aside and behave in a manner unlike what the life of crime had lead her to believe. He appears in control but stripped away from that veneer he's a time bomb teetering on collapse. Mann would revisit those themes in constantly more nuanced ways - in Heat across couples (even assessing it in race for one), in Public Enemies structuring a romantic Art film on the genre foundations of an period gangster film. It certainly didn't look or feel like a period gangster pic or play to those tropes - but it did break your heart and it needed the crime to structure the feelings. So command is he of this style and genre he can play with locale (Miami Vice, Collateral), scope (Heat), psychology (Thief, Manhunter) - even in films he was peripherally involved in - the uncredited writing he did on Straight Time (1978) that delineates the difference between life behind bars and the bars that come up when they are removed he captured a million details of that world - no one seemed to know crimes and crimes of the heart and their connection better. From his masterpiece, Heat - an astonishing scene below where Robert De Niro goes from ignoring Amy Brenneman to almost threatening suspicion of her to putting the moves on her in about 30 seconds. Not merely great acting but great scene construction and all of Mann's elements boiled down to their essence. What other crime film goes deep like this - what other filmmaker thinks to try? Fascinating little comment from Mann that I had never heard before about his process and specifically editing - really revealing stuff about how editing "makes" his films and how he goes about piecing films together.
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Post by Weaver Addict on Aug 18, 2019 17:31:32 GMT
John DahlGenre: Neo-noirI think "neo-noir" is kind of a goofy term, tbh. The concept of noir to me is so completed linked to the '40s/'50s (and maybe early '60s) that any crime movie post-1970 should really just be called a crime movie instead of getting cutesy with the "neo-noir" label. Buuuuut... there are a decent amount of exceptions for me... and John Dahl's first three films are three of them. Kill Me Again -- clearly the work of a first-time filmmaker... but definitely oozes a strong noir-ish vibe. Lead character PI (Kilmer a bit miscast unfortunately), femme fatale faking her own death... it's all there. Red Rock West - an aimless drifter gets caught up in a small town mess in the middle of nowhere, an insanely crooked sheriff straight out of a Jim Thompson novel who wants his wife knocked off, the femme fatale wife who wants her husband knocked off, and the crazed hitman throwing a wrench into things. The Last Seduction - arguably the GOAT femme fatale... in a film that was released in 1994. I don't know how Fiorentino and Dahl did it. All these movies have an interesting sort of laid back style to them too. And Dahl handles the clichés and more predictable aspects of the genre incredibly well. Now the dude seems to be one of the most prolific TV directors out there... hasn't made a movie since 2007's mostly meh You Kill Me. Not sure if he could still pull off any neo-noir magic in this day and age since the '80s/early '90s aesthetic was somehow perfect for noir-ish stuff ( Body Heat, Blood Simple., After Dark, My Sweet... etc.) but I hope he gets a chance to try. And maybe he could rescue Linda Fiorentino from obscurity while he's at it. Great post and I concur about Fiorentino being THE best incarnation of femme fatale. I just wish you had included her spitting out her gum in the above pic. Berg: You're not from around here. Fiorentino: Fuck off. He and I both were immediately intrigued.
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Post by TerryMontana on Aug 18, 2019 17:44:13 GMT
Michael MannGenre: Crimeurbanpatrician TerryMontana Many directors have done signature work in this genre but to me Michael Mann approached it in a singular way and a way that humanized and romanticized it but cruelly. This genre allowed him to explore and double back on male loneliness and missed opportunities and females victimization and their own missed opportunities. A gifted writer, Mann liked the genre not just for it's macho flash - although he greatly depicted that too - but the artifice it placed over male weakness and masked. In his first great film in this genre, Thief - a (relatively) innocent woman (Tuesday Weld) stands by and watches the man she's entrusted herself and future to (James Caan) - blow their chance at legit adoption, cast her aside and behave in a manner unlike what the life of crime had lead her to believe. He appears in control but stripped away from that veneer he's a time bomb teetering on collapse. Mann would revisit those themes in constantly more nuanced ways - in Heat across couples (even assessing it in race for one), in Public Enemies structuring a romantic Art film on the genre foundations of an period gangster film. It certainly didn't look or feel like a period gangster pic or play to those tropes - but it did break your heart and it needed the crime to structure the feelings. So command is he of this style and genre he can play with locale (Miami Vice, Collateral), scope (Heat), psychology (Thief, Manhunter) - even in films he was peripherally involved in - the uncredited writing he did on Straight Time (1978) that delineates the difference between life behind bars and the bars that come up when they are removed he captured a million details of that world - no one seemed to know crimes and crimes of the heart and their connection better. From his masterpiece, Heat - an astonishing scene below where Robert De Niro goes from ignoring Amy Brenneman to almost threatening suspicion of her to putting the moves on her in about 30 seconds. Not merely great acting but great scene construction and all of Mann's elements boiled down to their essence. What other crime film goes deep like this - what other filmmaker thinks to try? Fascinating little comment from Mann that I had never heard before about his process and specifically editing - really revealing stuff about how editing "makes" his films and how he goes about piecing films together. He's the Mann!!!
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Post by Weaver Addict on Aug 19, 2019 4:10:28 GMT
John DahlGenre: Neo-noirI think "neo-noir" is kind of a goofy term, tbh. The concept of noir to me is so completed linked to the '40s/'50s (and maybe early '60s) that any crime movie post-1970 should really just be called a crime movie instead of getting cutesy with the "neo-noir" label. Buuuuut... there are a decent amount of exceptions for me... and John Dahl's first three films are three of them. Kill Me Again -- clearly the work of a first-time filmmaker... but definitely oozes a strong noir-ish vibe. Lead character PI (Kilmer a bit miscast unfortunately), femme fatale faking her own death... it's all there. Red Rock West - an aimless drifter gets caught up in a small town mess in the middle of nowhere, an insanely crooked sheriff straight out of a Jim Thompson novel who wants his wife knocked off, the femme fatale wife who wants her husband knocked off, and the crazed hitman throwing a wrench into things. The Last Seduction - arguably the GOAT femme fatale... in a film that was released in 1994. I don't know how Fiorentino and Dahl did it. All these movies have an interesting sort of laid back style to them too. And Dahl handles the clichés and more predictable aspects of the genre incredibly well. Now the dude seems to be one of the most prolific TV directors out there... hasn't made a movie since 2007's mostly meh You Kill Me. Not sure if he could still pull off any neo-noir magic in this day and age since the '80s/early '90s aesthetic was somehow perfect for noir-ish stuff ( Body Heat, Blood Simple., After Dark, My Sweet... etc.) but I hope he gets a chance to try. And maybe he could rescue Linda Fiorentino from obscurity while he's at it. Great post and I concur about Fiorentino being THE best incarnation of femme fatale. I just wish you had included her spitting out her gum in the above pic. Berg: You're not from around here. Fiorentino: Fuck off. He and I both were immediately intrigued. Gum spit out served at the end of the trailer. sigh. I'm in love.
The Best Performance by an Actress in 1994 followed closely by Sigourney in Death and The Maiden. In todays world, HBO would have put that film in theatres first for a few weeks before showing it on its cable site. Would she still have won over Lange? She had the critics on her side. What say you? Sorry to derail.
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Post by dadsburgers on Aug 22, 2019 1:49:56 GMT
Less high-brow, but:
John Hughes on high school films Mel Brooks (and the Zuckerbergs) on spoofs David Fincher on crime Christopher Nolan on superheroes/comics The Coen Brothers on independent satire Paul Thomas Anderson on ensembles Rob Marshall on musicals
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Post by pacinoyes on Aug 22, 2019 10:32:09 GMT
Less high-brow, but: John Hughes on high school filmsGood picks - and in particular John Hughes essentially created a whole new genre out of an existing genre - his high school films sort of re-thought the way kids talked and also felt about their world and their parents world too. The parents are crucial in Hughes films and so are the teachers. The kids were the most self-aware teens ever and are still the model for them now. I always think of the scene from his most ambitious film - is the truest and saddest and most real teen scene in any film and it's not funny. It's an adult that says that line and the adult is right in a way - that's what made Hughes films really special. "You want to see something funny? You go visit John Bender in 5 years"
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