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Post by futuretrunks on Sept 5, 2020 0:28:25 GMT
Nothing in common as filmmakers, but Lee has a far more impressive and varied body of work, so him. Mann is no slouch obviously, but he ran out of ideas after Collateral, which is coming up to 16 years ago now, and hasn't done anything particularly interesting since then. He's in that Oliver Stone/Brian De Palma category of filmmakers who suddenly lost their mojo, and never seemed likely to get it back. Lee is always interesting, even when he doesn't hit the mark, and it keeps him relevant. I think many people share your opinion, but I disagree. Public Enemies was atrocious, but I found Blackhat compelling and incredibly underrated, and quite like Miami Vice. I can't say that for anything Spike's done after Inside Man. De Palma is absolute trash now, I agree. Stone lost his mojo, but that Savages movie is weirdly good, like Stone briefly found some pulp inspiration elsewhere. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2020 0:43:36 GMT
Spike Lee
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Post by therealcomicman117 on Sept 5, 2020 0:45:35 GMT
I think Mann is just too ambitious for his own good. I'm sure if he tried he could make a smaller movie, but like Pacinoeyes alluded to, he's a bit trapped. He's always been about pushing forward cool or cutting-edge film techniques, and it's kinda started to be a detriment to him. For example there's no reason that Miami Vice should have had a 135m! budget. I genuinely wonder what a smaller scale or less "produced" Mann movie would look like now. It's been a while. Yep. You see people are saying the same thing about Christopher Nolan now with the reviews of Tenet, about wishing he would go back to smaller films like Memento because he keeps trying to raise the ante in his films in scope, ambition, and budget and it’s hard to keep coming up with original, blockbuster/event type movies with those $100 mil-$200 mil budgets. Even Spielberg did “smaller” movies from time to time. It's also like when Michael Bay directed Pain & Gain and 13th Hours inbetween The Transformers movies, and returned to his economical "less explosive, more low-budget model", that his first Bad Boys film had (people forget, but that movie isn't that big, it just feels big), but then the minute Netflix offers him a deal, 6 Underground goes full big Bayhem to the extreme! Some filmmakers, the minute they had a lot of hits, just wanna use the big playhouse provided to them as long as they can. It's not 100% hard to blame them, but at the same time it can end up being a crutch, especially if they forget how to make "small movies" in general. |
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Post by cheesecake on Sept 5, 2020 0:58:05 GMT
Nothing in common as filmmakers, but Lee has a far more impressive and varied body of work, so him. Mann is no slouch obviously, but he ran out of ideas after Collateral, which is coming up to 16 years ago now, and hasn't done anything particularly interesting since then. He's in that Oliver Stone/Brian De Palma category of filmmakers who suddenly lost their mojo, and never seemed likely to get it back. Lee is always interesting, even when he doesn't hit the mark, and it keeps him relevant. All this, well put. |
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Post by pupdurcs on Sept 5, 2020 1:03:55 GMT
Yep. You see people are saying the same thing about Christopher Nolan now with the reviews of Tenet, about wishing he would go back to smaller films like Memento because he keeps trying to raise the ante in his films in scope, ambition, and budget and it’s hard to keep coming up with original, blockbuster/event type movies with those $100 mil-$200 mil budgets. Even Spielberg did “smaller” movies from time to time. It's also like when Michael Bay directed Pain & Gain and 13th Hours inbetween The Transformers movies, and returned to his economical "less explosive, more low-budget model", that his first Bad Boys film had (people forget, but that movie isn't that big, it just feels big), but then the minute Netflix offers him a deal, 6 Underground goes full big Bayhem to the extreme! Some filmmakers, the minute they had a lot of hits, just wanna use the big playhouse provided to them as long as they can. It's not 100% hard to blame them, but at the same time it can end up being a crutch, especially if they forget how to make "small movies" in general. You make some very good points. Lots of directors, once they get in that huge budget wheelhouse, rarely choose to go down and make things on a smaller scale. They may do it once in a blue moon, but not consistently. It's hard to think of a director in their prime in recent years who once they graduated to big budget filmmaking, willingly alternated between low budget films and big budget studio efforts. Off the top of my head, only Stephen Soderbergh really comes to mind. There was a period where he was the go to guy for big budget, star-driven studio movies ( Oceans 11, Traffic, Erin Brokovich), but in between those films, he'd always drop some extremely low budget film like Full Frontal or Bubble, which both cost under 2 million (which wouldn't cover the toilet roll budget on most Scorsese films these days). Feels like Soderbergh never wanted to get too comfortable with "money is no expense" huge studio budgets. Even though he is a guy who is very capable of doing big budget studio stuff, you can almost tell his heart was never really in it, even though he made good studio films. |
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Post by therealcomicman117 on Sept 5, 2020 1:11:57 GMT
It's also like when Michael Bay directed Pain & Gain and 13th Hours inbetween The Transformers movies, and returned to his economical "less explosive, more low-budget model", that his first Bad Boys film had (people forget, but that movie isn't that big, it just feels big), but then the minute Netflix offers him a deal, 6 Underground goes full big Bayhem to the extreme! Some filmmakers, the minute they had a lot of hits, just wanna use the big playhouse provided to them as long as they can. It's not 100% hard to blame them, but at the same time it can end up being a crutch, especially if they forget how to make "small movies" in general. You make some very good points. Lots of directors, once they get in that huge budget wheelhouse, rarely choose to go down and make things on a smaller scale. They may do it once in a blue moon, but not consistently. It's hard to think of a director in their prime in recent years who once they graduated to big budget filmmaking, willingly alternated between low budget films and big budget studio efforts. Off the top of my head, only Stephen Soderbergh really comes to mind. There was a period where he was the go to guy for big budget, star-driven studio movies ( Oceans 11, Traffic, Erin Brokovich), but in between those films, he'd always drop some extremely low budget film like Full Frontal or Bubble, which both cost under 2 million. Feels like Soderbergh never wanted to get too comfortable with "money is no expense" huge studio budgets. Even though he is a guy who is very capable of doing big budget studio stuff, you can almost tell his heart was never really in it, even though he made good studio films. Soderbergh is also a true experimental filmmaker who loves making movies. He'll do the Ocean Movies just to help fund his smaller more weirder "personal passion project", shot on a cam-quarter or something like Bubble or The Girlfriend Experiment. There are very few mainstream filmmakers out there like him. In general it's hard to think of many filmmakers who return to that "low-budget" filmmaking in general once they break through the studio system. Sam Raimi did a good job of aping his cheesier older horror movies (though with a arguable watered down PG-13 rating), with Drag Me to Hell, but then he's back to making big budgeted studio projects after. That's why I respect genre directors like David Cronenberg. They've played with the studio system, but otherwise like to make movies on there own, often funded by other sources. |
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Post by franklin on Sept 5, 2020 13:27:44 GMT
Lee is more versatile, but Michael Mann is the king of heist genre films.
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Sept 6, 2020 23:36:29 GMT
Well Lee’s best film would be 5th or 6th out of Mann’s filmography so...
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