2021 was a Year of Great Auteurs and Terrible Box Office Results

To those who don’t follow the box office, it might seem like the pandemic has dealt a blow to movie theaters but the numbers have shown for quite a while that films have been in jeopardy for a few years now.

The blockbuster business model of films has geared towards blockbusters and that disincentivised films from prioritizing quality. For one, the emphasis is generally on making money opening weekend. A film might make half its money opening weekend (generally enough to break even) before audiences realize it’s not that good. It’s a curiosity that film critics even devote their time to big releases when audiences will realize a film’s a dud before it’s too late.

I often cite 2002 as the year things changed because the original Spider-Man became the first film to gross $100 million in a single weekend. Believe me, it wasn’t just me looking at a newspaper and realizing “eureka! We’re in a new era.” A lot of press was written about this milestone (which Google News hasn’t been that generous in preserving). Ironically, some of the films that topped the top ten that weekend were Changing Lanes (a thriller starring Samuel L Jackson and Ben Affleck), The Scorpion King (a Dwayne Johnson film) and The Rookie (a sentimental sports movie).

Tragically, very few films would survive in today’s market. A sports film (particularly the Kevin Costner kind) but it’s chances are slimmer, especially in today’s market.

Dwayne Johnson still makes films but they’re board game and Disney ride adaptations in the case of Jumanji and Jungle Cruise. Which brings me to the point that even tired and tested brands and genres like those mentioned above might not get financed if they’re price tag is too expensive. The only thing that sells today is what’s known as Intellectual Properties or IPs which translates to films made from a past property whether a sequel/prequel/reboot/remake of an existing film or an adaptation of a highly popular comic/TV show/broadway show/book (i.e. Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games, 50 Shades of Gray). In fact, in the year 2016, only 2 films out of the top 20—La La Land and Hidden Figures—were original films.

One way around this is to hire visionaries to get an intellectual property and make it their own like Christopher Nolan, Sam Mendes, and Taiki Wahiti have done. Paul Schrader, the screenwriter of the classic film Taxi Driver, wrote and directed the brilliant film First Reformed with Ethan Hawke to the tune of $3.4 million. Director Todd Philips had much better luck when he used Taxi Driver as a heavy influence on his (marginally) comic book based film The Joker for a film that grossed roughly 100 times that amount.

This phenomenon is known as the death of the mid-range film which many people have written about:
Is the Mid-Budget Movie an Endangered Species?

This all came to a head when mega-influential director Martin Scorsese penned an essay attacking the multi-headed beast of Marvel for ruining movies.

Which Brings Us to 2021

I keep track of a list of directors I've seen 4 or more films of. Last year, of the around 45 films I saw only 2 directors that met that benchmark (Ron Howard-Hillbilly Elegy and Chris Nolan-Tenet) and very few other notable names who I just hadn't seen enough of like Lee Daniels (Billie Holiday), Charlie Kaufman (I'm Thinking of Ending Things) and Paul Greengrass (News of the World)...most films I saw were by directors who were making a film I'd seen for the first time. I think (though I could be wrong) that studio money going to trusted film makers is going down and you just have to watch a lot of indie stuff on streaming to not get typical franchise stuff. However, this year that number ballooned to 8 out of only 34 films I've seen so far*. Additionally, there are so many artistically-renowned directors that I haven't yet seen or might not see--Mike Mills, Paul Thomas Anderson, Joel (without Ethan) Coen, Chloe Zhao, Pablo Sorrentino, Pablo Lorrain, Guillermo del Toro, Peter Jackson, Sean Baker—that it's a remarkably rich slate. A few years ago with David Fincher and Steven Soderbergh moving to TV and aging masters like Mike Nichols, Francis Ford Coppola, and Jonathan Demme struggled mightily with the studio system.

Now whether they're streaming or in a theater, I'm not sure if we can declare movies dead just yet if visionary filmmakers are being able to get their visions met. This has been a great year for movies.

Most industry insiders treat Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws (followed by his friend George Lucas’s 1977 film Star Wars) is ground zero of blockbuster culture.

Spielberg’s near-impossible feat of remaking a classic--West Side Story—and turning it into an entirely new classic puts him in the category of auteurs behind this year’s wave of greatness.

However, like great auteurs in this day and age he also has no place in the new sad era of the blockbuster. Instead, it’s once again Spider-Man which grabbed those headlines with another record-breaking gross even in the age of the pandemic.

  

How Many Films of Sidney Lumet Have You Seen?

Originally posted on THE SOLUTE

Welcome to a new series called How Many Films of _____ Have You Seen, in which I pick a director each week, discuss him and my experiences with the director and list the films that I have seen of that director. Then you tell me how many and which films you’ve seen and from there we make recommendations, discuss and maybe dive into the auteur theory. This is a space where we can open up about the holes in our film viewing and not get beaten up by a million responses of “you haven’t seen ______? How dare you!”

This week I am posting about Sidney Lumet to promote a talk I’m co-leading about Sidney Lumet at DC Cinema Lounge this Monday at 7 PM in Washington DC. Teaism is located by Archives/Navy Memorial metro. Please come so we have people to discuss with. https://www.facebook.com/events/2095973147393902/

This week’s director Sidney Lumet.

Murder on the Orient Express

 Overview:

Sidney Lumet consistently made films that have stood the test of time from 1957 with a sensational debut in 12 Angry Men to his sleeper critical darling 50 years later in 2007. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Unlike Francis Ford Coppola or William Friedkin (the 70s), Blake Edwards (60s), or Brian de Palma (70s/80s), or Clint Eastwood (00s) who were among the most critically praised over the course of a single decade, Lumet was never associated with the greats of any one decade even though they made films in other eras. A child of stalwarts in the Yiddish theater scene, Lumet worked as a child acting in Yiddish theater but also taking a keen interest in every department. When he returned from the war, he set his sights on putting those experiences into directing.
 
He cut his teeth in live TV which perhaps gave him the workmanlike quality of serving the project rather than trying to infuse his personal style into (in most cases) already-adapted material. Lumet was most comfortable in gritty urban settings (although many films such as The Hill or Murder on the Orient Express were exceptions) and had a great gift for suspense but if there was a singular trait, it was possibly his gravitation toward and handling of socially significant material. This quote is a good guide to Lumet’s work:

"While the goal of all movies is to entertain, the kind of film in which I believe goes on step further. It compels the spectator to examine one facet or another of their own conscience."

 What Most People Believe Are the Essentials:

12 Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Verdict

2nd tier: Pawnbroker, Murder on the Orient Express, Fail Safe, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Prince of the City.

My number: 8

12 Angry Men, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, The Verdict, Prince of the City. Pawnbroker (Additionally, I saw the Richard Dreyfus TV reproduction of Fail Safe)

My Favorite: Network is a masterpiece based on just how eerily prescient in its foreshadowing of the media’s influence in the present day, but it’s also a great stand-alone morality play. Like much of Lumet’s work there’s a theatrical quality with characters (particularly Ned Beatty in what might be the best one-scene appearance ever) going for mythological performances rather than naturalism. While Peter Finch’s Howard Beale has the quote “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore”, nearly every character except William Holden’s Murrowesque executive is pretty much an epic lunatic. There’s also the cryptic romance between William Holden and Faye Dunaway’s characters that is so deliciously twisted.

Underrated: Murder on the Orient Express. The 2017 remake upped the thriller angle to it (perhaps wisely so), but the original has an aura of continental sophistication with an admirable adherence to the source material. Has a novel mystery ever been bought to life better? (I honestly don’t know, so correct me in the comments) It’s a fun mystery with one of the best ensembles ever assembled on screen. And no offense to Kenneth Branagh, but Albert Finney is the better Poirot: A big presence and idiosyncratic without being hammy.

Overrated: Prince in the City seemed bloated with characters who all made little mark on the story and felt static in terms of plot movement. I’ve never been able to get particularly invested in mole/informant-type plots because it lends itself to such easy plot twists that there’s little reason to be surprised.

What I might approach next: Serpico is the most high-profile film I haven’t seen, but after Prince in the City I am burned out on crooked cop stuff. Find me Guilty seemed like a flop. Because it has the great Rod Steiger and deals with the Holocaust in a curious way, I’m very curious about The Pawnbroker. The Fugitive Kid might be interesting because of the amusing anecdotes I read between Marlon Brando and Sidney Lumet in Lumet’s book Making Movies. I also would be interested in watching The Hill to compare and contrast it against other prison escape movies of that era.

If you need help remembering what he’s directed, here’s this handy-dandy list (credit to TCM):

1.Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead(2007)

2.Find Me Guilty(2006)

3.Strip Search(2004) as Director.

4.Gloria(1999) as Director.

5.Night Falls on Manhattan(1997) as Director.

6.Critical Care(1997) as Director.

7.Guilty As Sin(1993) as Director.

8.Stranger Among Us, A(1992) as Director.

9.Q&A(1990) as Director.

10.Family Business(1989) as Director.

11.Running on Empty(1988) as Director.

12.Morning After, The(1986) as Director.

13.Power(1986) as Director.

14.Garbo Talks(1984) as Director.

15.Daniel(1983) as Director.

16.Deathtrap(1982) as Director.

17.The Verdict (1982) as Director.

18.Prince of the City(1981) as Director.

19.Just Tell Me What You Want(1980) as Director.

20.The Wiz(1978) as Director.

21.Equus(1977) as Director.

22.Network(1976) as Director.

23.Dog Day Afternoon(1975) as Director.

24.Serpico(1974) as Director.

25.Lovin’ Molly(1974) as Director.

26.Murder on the Orient Express(1974) as Director.

27.The Offense(1973) as Director.

28.Child’s Play(1972) as Director.

29.The Anderson Tapes(1971) as Director.

30.The Last of the Mobile Hotshots(1970) as Director.

31.King: A Filmed Record … Montgomery to Memphis(1970) as Connecting seq dir.

32.The Appointment(1970) as Director.

33.The Sea Gull(1968) as Director.

34.Bye Bye Braverman(1968) as Director.

35.The Deadly Affair(1967)

36.The Group(1966) as Director.

37.The Hill(1965) as Director.

38.The Pawnbroker(1965) as Director.

39.Fail Safe(1964) as Director.

40.A View From the Bridge(1962) as Director.

41.Long Day’s Journey Into Night(1962) as Director.

42.The Fugitive Kind(1960) as Director.

43.That Kind of Woman(1959) as Director.

44.Stage Struck(1958) as Director.

45.12 Angry Men(1957) as Director.

 

FAQ: Who is the best director today

This is a response to a message board question that asked who the best director was today. It's by no means the best sample of my work but I thought it was interesting enough to post here:

The original question:
"Who is the best director today in commercial terms?

Spielberg and Cameron obviously. Then probably Nolan. It's hard to tell exactly how big he will be without Batman but if Inception is any indicator he is pretty huge. Tarantino has had two big hits in a row. I think he might be top 5."

Who else?"

My response:

Tarantino is by no means Top 5. He had two critical hits, and I might even go so far as to say they created a lot of water cooler buzz and that they both rocked the cultural ether but that doesn't mean he was high in the box office. Django Unchained grossed $161 million which is comparable to a high-performing sports film (Remember the Titans and both versions of The Longest Yard were roughly comparable), an Adam Sandler film (which have consistently been between $110-$170 million dating from the Waterboy) or an animated film that isn't made by Pixar (Kung Fu Panda, Over the Hedge and the Ice Age series are all between $150 and $200 million).


Nonetheless, for someone like Tarantino, whose films don't have wide appeal to the kinds of people who don't frequent this message board, $161 million is pretty impressive.

Films with nuanced dialogue dont do well over seas, but then again the world is a little smaller since then, and I'm convinced that if anyone has a chance of selling their films to a distant market like Southeast Asia or Europe, Tarantino might be able to do it. But, a straight-up action director like Roland Emmerich, Wolfgang Petersen, or Michael Bay doesn't have the disadvantage of being overly steeped in film history and therefore already has a head start.

The top commercial directors isn't something that's as debatable as one might think because numbers don't lie. The ones who draw the biggest are, off the top of my head, Spielberg, Michael Bay, McG, Roland Emmerich, Ron Howard, Gore Verbinski, Jon Favreau, Wolfgang Petersen (although some of his films like Troy and Poseidon did fall short of $200 million which is what I would define as a bonafide hit). Some of the names on this list like Michael Bay and McG aren't particularly well-liked by the masses but they continue to be successful which just indicates that being successful on a commercial spectrum isn't something to brag about.

On the other end of the spectrum, Spielberg is critically acclaimed and successful and is pretty much the Michael Jordan of dominance in the box office. Don't forget that Lincoln grossed $155 million and it's not full of actions or explosions, but rather a thinky piece about whether to ask congress to back the 13th Amendment. It's essentially a 19th Century version of C-Span with the world's greatest method actor that would be

If I'm not mistaken, I think the two people who stand behind him on the all-time list last I checked were Ron Howard and Rob Zemeckis. Zemeckis is a protege of Spielberg and has aimed some films like the Polar Express or Christmas Carroll directly to the children's demographic while two of his most famous films Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future are films that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike which is a great recipe for success. No one is going to say that Howard is one of the greatest auteurs but he balances quality with commercial success very well.

I would agree that Nolan is doing very well for himself. I think the biggest measure of his success is when venturing outside of the Batman franchise because it's relatively easy to make a Batman film gross high. Inception had $292 million which is pretty solid. It's somewhat a marvel that it got that high because it's such a confusing film. I think he's riding the coattails off his batman reputation and when that wears off, I think he'll still be a genius, but not sure if he'll have populist appeal.

I think that if you're going to go with the most prominent and bankable director who's name isn't Spielberg, it might be J.J. Abrams. He made Star Trek a success, Super 8 did pretty well and was well-received and I think Star Trek 2 is gonna gross a lot. He also just took over Star Wars. Similarly, Joss Weedon has followed a similar path and Avengers had a spectacularly high gross but it's hard to say whether that's the film or him. He wasn't able to get eyeballs on his TV shows.

James Cameron is a crap shoot because he goes long breaks without making a film. For all we know, in ten years, the public appetite might have changed completely. If you don't make films frequently, it's hard to keep the public appetite up for your next film.

To some degree, it's the properties and not the directors that make big hits. Verbinski lucked out by getting the reigns to Pirates of the Caribbean which increases his average significantly. On the other hand, Favreau grossed $300 million plus with Iron Man but considering he was able to make money off films as disparate as Elf and Cowboys and Aliens, I have some confidence in him.

Lastly, Ben Stiller (a sometimes director of his own material) also has some good commercial instincts. Series of his such as Night at the Museum and Meet the Fockers are seemingly ordinary but they both had incredibly high grosses.

Articles form the Archives: Anthony Minghella's tragic death in 2008

Everyone was mourning Heath's death and talking about how the world is deprived of so many pictures becaues he died young. At the same time, I find it curious that the Heath Ledger effect doesn't work for directors as well. I find it curious that the 2 founders of Mirage died premature deaths this past year and while Sidney Pollack's funeral was one of the most widely attended events in Hollywood this past year, no one has felt it's a loss to the world of movies that he won't be making any more pictures. I don't know but I imagine Pollack might have had 2 or three films left in him. He was 74 when he died, which is pretty old, but Altman, Lumet and Scorsesee seem on course to make films into their 80s as does Eastwood.

Granted, Pollack was old, but Minghella died at age 54. He could have done a dozen more films before he died and while Pollack could be uneven, Minghella's films were usually Oscar caliber. He won an Oscar as the director for the English Patient (1996), and earned a follow-up nomination for best writing on his next film, Talented Mr. Ripley (1999). His adaptation of the Charles Frazier novel, Cold Mountain (2003), was the most buzzed about film of its year, and earned Minghellia his highest box office take to date. He came very close to being nominated for a second directorial Oscar and earned Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for his directorial and writing work. Breaking and Entering (2006) was quiet and not widely viewed but it was well-received among those who had seen it. Minghellia usually tackled booksand challenging adaptations which are a much more timeless and consistently reliable source material than what most films are made of, so it's a good bet he would have had many more memorable films within him.

Not only did Minghella tackle books but he tackled the best: Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient and Cold Mountain had all earned accolades as novels and one has to surmise it was the scribe in Minghella who loved the challenge of taking good source material and capturing the essence of a good novel. I also credit Minghella, the producer, for having an eye for good material, and Mingella, the director, for translating the essence of a good novel into cinematic terms.

Minghella was also said to be very active in selecting the music of his films and is credited on imdb.com as being the music producer of Cold Mountain and Talented Mr. Ripley and I think the poignant bluegrass score of Cold Mountain is a perfect example of everything a good score should be.

Lastly, Minghella was a producer of films and perhaps it's a tribute to him that his latest production, The Reader, just got nominated for an Oscar at the 2008 Academy Awards. The credits are currently in dispute because I imagine they want someone who's alive to pick up the statue and represent the filmat the Academy Awards Ceremony, but if Heath Ledger can be honored posthomously, it is my wish that Anthony Minghella can be honored as well.

Looking at Curtis Hanson

Just watched "8 Mile" (2002) which brings my films watched by Curtis Hanson total to a whopping five films. Hanson produced one of my favorite films in "Wonderboys" (2000) and made one of the moviegoing public's favorite films of the 1990's with "LA Confidential" (1997).

In addition, he also made one of the few chick flicks I would consider a great film with the 2005 "In Her Shoes" (starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MaClaine). Lastly, the only film of his I have seen that I consider kind of a drag is the gambling film "Lucky You" (2007) that starred Eric Bana, Robert Duvall, and Drew Barrymore.

Overall, he's a very strong filmmaker that has worked magic on genres that I would otherwise not be interested in. Even his noble failure, "Lucky You", shows the same traits as his other entries. Here's what I would consider to be Hanson's style: (note: I'm going to use abbreviations WB, IHS, LY, 8M, LAC)

1. Plots that move at their own pace-In WB,the protagonist english professor is about to lose his job for killing the president's dog and/or impregnating the dean's wife, he's just lost his manuscript, and he has until the end of the weekend to decide whether to abort his love child with his dean's wife and try to win her love. Yet despite this frantic crisis, most of the movie shows him in a melancholy state hanging around with his eccentric editor playing parlor games, getting high, and showing his even-more-eccentric student the time of his life. In LY, the protagonist risks his fortune and more with every bet he makes and even as he continually finds himself more and more in the red, an air of panic doesn't really set in there either. Similarly, IHS has one of the two protagonists, a lawyer, either quitting or losing her job and it seems insignificant.

2. Somber visual tones-8M plays into this because it's in the rust belt of Detroit and the harsh life of that town manifest themselves all around. LAC is a send-up to film noir so Hanson thrived on the dark interior spaces. The interior spaces (in Philadelphia and not Florida for the latter) in LY and IHS were pretty similarly shady and dark.

3. Strong Emphasis on Parent-Child Relationships-All five films have strong parent-child dynamics although I'm not entirely sure whether thematically they line up in any way. Let's see:
-A key plot point in LAC is that Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) has to decide whether to be like his father and be an honest cop. He ends up rejecting his father's methodology.
-Rabbit in 8M is trying to cope with a mother who hasn't gotten her life together. His poverty is a result of her but his emotional instability is also a result of her. As he succeeds in rapping, he is able to fix his mother and their relationship.
-In WB, Professor Grady Tripp is trying to decide whether he's a stable enough person to take on fatherhood and his salvation comes through that decision. He breaks into the home of his in-laws to save his hide, but the encounter with his father-in-law shows a paternal relationship there. He also takes on his most talented student as a surrogate son.
-The two sisters in IHS are damaged as adults because of the lack of a mother. They did grow up looking out for each other, however, but when that relationship is damaged, it takes a mother figure (they're grandmother) to repair them. Their salvation also comes through learning the truth about their mentally ill mother.
-The protagonist in Lucky You continues to make ill-advised risks because he's trying to live up to the card player and gambler that his father once. In the middle of the film, one of those ill-advised risks is playing his father directly and losing.

In all these films, people are defined by their parents or the lack thereof. The characters all deal with their parental relationships and in some cases take substitutes. The sisters in IHS use each other for support. Grady Tripp might be missing the guidance and separated from the father-in-law since he's divorced so he takes on a surrogate son, and when he's ready, he takes on an actual son.

4. Slow Secondary Courtships-In 8M, LY, IHS and LAC, there's a courtship that occurs during the movie. The characters meet during the movie so we see the relationship take place in its entirety. In the case of IHS and 8M, the characters also are leaving behind worse relationships that we don't see from the inside out so much. The relationships take place rather naturally and they're not the most important thing about the film but they do drive the film along.

5. Weary Characters alongside more excitable characters-Bud (Russell Crowe) from "LA Confidential" surely fits the bill. His colleague Jack (Kevin Spacey) is very much the opposite. Jack is eager to do his job and tackle a lead and is even eager to spread his legend, so to speak, by advising for a cop show. The bubbly Drew Barrymore is a counterpoint to Eric Bana in LY as is Horatio Sanz's character. WB has Tripp and his married lover as the weary ones. Tripp is balanced by his carefree editor.

"In Her Shoes" has the weary/excitable character dichotomy in three places: Between the two sisters (although the film's reveal is that younger sis is hurting underneath), between Toni Collette's choice of two lovers (one is unfaithful because he reveals a past where he was constantly rejected by girls whereas the other is optimistic, commanding and looking forward), and the grandmother and her circle of friends. The grandmother straddles the divide (although she hasn't necessarily dealt with her daughter's death and her alienation from her grandchildren) and is less eager to jump into love than her friends and suitor.

With the exception of LY, the carefree characters are all painted negatively: Jack is doomed by his eagerness and Bud's fate turns out better because he knows not to trust anyone. Grady's editor is seen as a nuisance and a bad influence on him. In IHS, the younger sis is the drag on her older sister.

2012: At least Emmerich is an autuer

I saw 2012 last night at $1 Mondays at the Cinema and Drafthouse (but have no fear that i'm ripping off the movie industry because I paid a $20 bill), marking my 22nd film I've seen this year. Here are my thoughts:

2012 was such a predictable disaster film that the audience is almost cued to watch it with a wink and a smile. Lines like "We're gonna need a bigger plane" are references to earlier films (Jaws in this case). The film shouldn't be applauded for being a parody because it clearly wasn't intended that way and it comes off more as a film that doesn't care much at all about characterization or being original. John Cusack's character I've seen before in Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds (older child despises him, younger child is too innocent to know the difference).

It didn't matter so much once the action hit because the special effects are the real treat of the movie and they certainly didn't dissapoint. Major points off for waiting 40 minutes to get to the special effects. Plot build-up and anticipation do work well in films like Jaws where the characters are interesting. The shots of a tiny single engine plane curving around crumbling towers and building is pretty cool and 40 minutes in, the picture gets interesting. The action also redeems the lack of characterization. It's the way that people react to an enormous disaster of global scale (in this case, the apocolypse) that defines them and starts to make us care about them to the point where we're in suspense over what happens to them in the finale.

I would say it's a fun but not-so-memorable film except that it was made by Roland Emmerich who's basically made this same exact film twice before: Day After Tomorrow, and Independence Day. They all take on the fairly impossible task of trying to portray the entire planet as one large ensemble and squeezing the face of humanity in a single 2-hour scenario. The scenario involves large scale apocolyptic disaster. The running theme (along with save the Earth, it's fragile) is that people are defined and ultimately united by how they react to disaster. 10,000 BC is sort of a reverse apocolypse with a beginning of the world scenario (as I understand it, I haven't seen the movie.

With these films, he's practically written his own genre and people can compare how he handles the exact same plot three and a half times. The question is whether it's unoriginal. My argument there is that some directors make a lot of sequels and Emmerich has never done that.

How do film buffs/film snobs read Eastwood?

I wrote this on a message board for classic film lovers and got some interesting responses. This is my initial message:

"My guess, right off the bat, is that those high brow viewers might not be big fans of Eastwood, because his films rely more on emotionally rich stories and characters than a sort of film making style that can be dissected, analyzed and torn apart. I find Eastwood's films, except for Unforgiven and Letters, to not be something that an astute film buff and your average viewer could see two different films out of.

If a film buff saw Chinatown, Midnight Cowboy, Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane, Raging Bull, Mullholland Drive, Man Who Wasn't There, Third Man, The Prestige (with it's art imitating life themes), etc., they would come away with a greater appreciation of the film than an average viewer because the films work on multiple levels, they're brilliant in subtext and in text.

I feel like Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River are simply effectively told stories that connect equally to your average viewer and someone looking for rich symbolism and mise-en-scene and everything else.

Do you think this is a valid theory?"

There are those who didn't like Eastwood's styles much and seemed to break down his style as amounting to "just not very good."
Examples:

"If you're saying you think film elitists would look down upon Eastwood films because they rely on heavy handed emotional manipulation, laboured moralising and rather standard filmmaking techniques, you'd probably be right. Then again, I don't think you need to be a "snob" to see that much"

"His narrative technique hasn't really changed and his films often feel over-simplified. He tends to use first take, shoots first draft, and so his films often feel like they need to be re-edited or should have been re-written a couple of times before entering production. Some would praise his simplicity, which strikes you on the first viewing, but when you re-watch his movies you notice how little there is behind what is being told"

"I'm a buff though not a snob. I have mixed feelings on his films. I haven't seen all of them but of what I've seen, Letters From Iwo Jima works on every level and its just a pretty brilliant war film. Flags of Our Fathers, not so much, though it does feature a great performance from Adam Beach. The 2nd half of the film though is just completely misjudged. Million Dollar Baby worked for me initially but on rewatch not so much. Well acted and a decent story but a lot of the stylistic touches are off putting to say the least. His direction is by far the film's biggest problem. Mystic River I found to be absolute drivel. And Unforgiven, though certainly a well made western is far from great."

There were also some interesting comments that compared Eastwood's style to that of the Golden Age directors and mentioned Welles was even a fan of him:
"He's a good director; Times when he hits greatness. What more do you want?
The Golden age had lots of directors who were his equal. They served the story first and personal agendas second. A lot of great films resulted.
Eastwood said that Orson Welles told him that if someone else had directed Josey Wales it would have been hailed a masterpiece."

Along with another story:
"I saw Welles once (well, more than once) on the Merv Griffin show and on one occasion Merv asked him about some current releases - this was in the summer of 1982.

Welles got to Firefox and pretty much dismissed it, but added that Outlaw Josey Wales was one of the best films he had ever seen that was directed by an actor. He added that it was difficult to do both at the same time. It's my favorite of all of his films."

There are some who defend Clint on all levels as well and maintain that he has the critical respectability of his peers:
"Actually Clint Eastwood is internationally respected and feted as one of America's most interesting and talented directors active today, especially in the mainstream. His unpretentious approach to storytelling and character and his fast and economical way of working and also his total lack of sentimentality is prized worldwide.

In France, Eastwood is seen as an auteur and his films get good coverage in Cahiers du Cinema, Positif and also Sight and Sound magazine in the UK.....

Well you are wrong on both counts. Thinking that these films are "easy" or something. They aren't. Especially the harsh masterpiece that is Mystic River, one of the greatest American films of this decade.

Eastwood is a very talented film-maker, a rare(and welcome) minimalist in American cinema. My favourites include Bird, White Hunter, Black Heart, Unforgiven and among his earlier stuff The Outlaw Josey Wales."


And this message board response couldn't deny the one thing Eastwood has going for him: No other filmmaker has had as much praise from the critics of his era this decade. Scorsese might come close:
"No other director or actor has had anything remotely resembling his career trajectory. From television player to movie star to director to auteur to great humanist filmmaker, & at the top of his game in both roles even as he nears 80. He also of course was responsible for ensuring that his actors dominated the Oscars two years in a row what with Sean Penn & Tim Robbins winning for Mystic River & Morgan Freeman & Hilary Swank winning the following year (& Eastwood nominated for his performance too) for Million Dollar Baby. No other director has won Best Picture & Best Director twice since at least as far back as the 1970's. That in itself shows how much the film community regard Eastwood as the greatest living director.

Granted, not every movie is a knockout & Eastwood's notorious impatience has resulted in scripts going into production before they're ready. And yet .. any filmmaker with a body of work as large or larger than Eastwood's is going to suffer from poor scripts/ movies at some point. It's inevitable. What's more important is that in nearly 40 years of directing Eastwood has amassed at least half a dozen great movies, a string of near great ones & a varied oeuvre that encompasses an unexpectedly wide range of genres including, remarkably, arthouse pics. Moreover he was producing strong work right from the start. Play Misty For Me still holds up, likewise his second feature High Plains Drifter, & then came his first masterpiece The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976. The following year The Gauntlet showed that Eastwood was capable of handling action setpieces on a much larger scale than anything he'd done before. Over the years he's shown a fascination with dismantling his screen persona, taking it off into darker areas (Tightrope), or satirizing it(Bronco Billy) or brutally pulling it down altogether (White Hunter Black Heart). And Eastwood's output this decade has resulted in a succession of varied, powerful & resonant work at a level no other contemporary American filmmaker has matched & that is remarkable, not least given the man is well into his 70's.

I find it fascinating that some people have this attitude - which is essentially Pauline Kael's attitude - that Eastwood is not a 'proper' director & therefore can't be taken seriously. This condescension is endlessly amusing. The Outlaw Josey Wales, way back in 1976, with its striking tracking shots in which characters appear to literally slide off the screen during moments of intense emotion, was a quite wonderful bit of work & a film that was highly praised - as most here will know - by none other than Orson Welles, who called it one of the great westerns that belonged up there alongside the best works of Ford & Hawks. Bird in 1988 was another bravura directorial piece in which the shadowy lighting & what has since become Eastwood's trademark rueful, melancholy feel were unmistakable. And Million Dollar Baby, with its characters bisected by pools of light in otherwise complete darkness, was not only thematically apt but direction so discreet that, as one critic noted, watching the movie you were barely even aware of the camera. That approach to me is exactly what narrative storytelling should be. After all that classical style didn't exactly hurt the great movies of the 1930's & 40's & yet it's important to note Eastwood isn't trying to slavishly imitate those old movies. He may be working in the classical style, a style that drives younger viewers weened on the juiced up editing style of a Scorsese, to distraction but there's nothing old fashioned about his fearlessness in tackling dark & disturbing material."

As what might happen when describing Eastwood's films this decade, people are bound to compare him to the other guy who has pulled off 3 nominations and one win in the directing department, Martin Scorsese. Comparing Scorsese and Eastwood could bestbe done with Raging Bull and Million Dollar Baby because the similar boxing themes:
"Yep, better written, acted, directed, scored, etc. Raging Bull is thematically muddled, poorly written & repetitive. Scorsese has no interest in explaining LaMotta's motivations to the audience & ends up with a boorish, alienating thug the viewer can't wait to see the back of. In its musical scoring of the boxing scenes the film is downright pretentious & the ending with its quote from scripture, implying that LaMotta has seen the error of his ways, is downright laughable. We've just spent two hours in the company of a thug who has done precisely the opposite! As one critic memorably wrote, the film is a celluloid bimbo because Scorsese has no interest in explaining the character. The technique is what RB is overly celebrated for & wrongly so IMO.

Million Dollar Baby far surpasses Scorsese's movie in that it does actually have a narratively sound, thematically coherent (about how we choose to live life), script. Coming on as a familiar boxing yarn it's really a sensitive father-daughter love story that turns brutally dark in its third act & climaxes with the father having literally sacrificed his soul. For this reason, as well as Eastwood's beautiful direction, & the three powerhouse performances that are at the centre of the film (including Eastwood himself who gives a career best turn) & infinitely more empathic than the repulsive LaMotta, the film actually surpasses Eastwood's other Best Picture winner Unforgiven as his best work. It's a brutally tough work of art & one of the all time great Oscar winners."

Because there is so much attention bestowed upon Scorsese, I'm going to have to include one more pro-Eastwood side of the argument here:
"When you have to dredge up pablum like Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore as proof of Scorsese's ability to flesh out character then you're really scraping the bottom of the Ragu sauce!

Look, at the top of his game, Scorsese is brilliant! Taxi Driver is a bonafide masterpiece. The Last Waltz may well be the greatest concert film ever made. But oh my God are you going to defend the cardboard cut outs of The Aviator and the cliched stereotypes of Gangs Of New York as proof of Scorsese's genius, too? The only thing great about Raging Bull is Robert DeNiro's ferocious and justifiably lauded performance. As cinema, Raging Bull is about as audacious as Lady Sings The Blues or any other biopic. Scorsese is successful with a certain type of character which is why his most successful work like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Casino is populated with them. He does one thing and he does one thing well though it's getting so old hat that I could only take 36 minutes of The Departed before said, "Oh, God, not again!" and turned it off. When Scorsese attempts to deviate from the tried and true with stuff like Age Of Innocence, New York New York, Last Temptation Of Christ, he stumbles. He's out of his element.

And don't get me started with Scorsese's inability to portray female characters (even he admits he's not very good at it) and rarely are women at the fore of Scorsese's world. Whereas Eastwood has been great at it at the very beginning from Jessica Walter's psychotic in Play Misty For Me, Sondra Locke's vengeful rape victim in Sudden Impact, Meryl Streep's Italian housewife in Bridges Of Madison County, Hilary Swank's struggling boxer in Million Dollar Baby or, if the early reviews are any indication, Angelina Jolie as the distraught mother in Changeling. Whereas Scorsese struggles whenever he leaves the "crime" environment, Eastwood is a chameleon able to shift gears easily."


One response suggested Eastwood might benefit from a historic flip:
"My point is that in the long run ultimately what we think of Eastwood today while it might be of curiosity to moviegoers in 2108 is unimportant. In 2008, is it important that in 1956 a big bloated elephant like Giant was lavished with Oscar nominations when Ford's The Searchers was totally ignored by the Academy? Not really. What is important is that posterity has rectified The Searchers standing over 1956 sensibilities. Who knows what the future will bring. In 2108, contemporary critics and film buffs may consider Adam Sandler to be the one of the great comics of his generation and "misunderstood" by contemporary audiences of his day. In that respect, the general contemptuous regard in which Sandler is held today may be an interesting footnote but unimportant to 2108 audiences and critics."

A look at the Coen Brothers (1996-2004)

I just saw Fargo so now I´ve seen 6 Coen brother films: Intolerable Cruelty, Ladykillers, and Man Who Wasn´t There are genre experiments of the sort you´d see as film school theses, while Fargo, Big Lebowski, and Oh Brother Where Art Thou bear a more distinct mark of the filmmakers:
-Epic-like narratives (this is more the case in Big Lebowski and Oh Brother Where Art Thou and Fargo to a lesser extent) with long winding storylines
-Vague references. I use the word vague here, because i think a little too much is made of their ability to work in their filmic references into their work. The Big Lebowski-Big Sleep connection is somewhat shady in my opinion.
-Characters who arrive at the ends of their story arcs through means in which they never planned themselves. For instance, George Clooney and company has no clue how he´s going to get out of being hanged when a humongous flood miraculously saves them. In Big Lebowski, Jeff Bridges is royally screwed when he loses that briefcase but in a stroke of luck: it turns out there was never money in that briefcase. In The Ladykillers, the characters´ fates aren´t really determined by anything but unfortunate luck.
-A strong sense of place (Minnesota in Fargo, the Deep South in Ladykillers and Oh Brother, California in Intolerable Cruelty)
-Sidekicks to the protagonists that do more harm than good (Steve Buscemi´s wanting to get laid at inopportune moments and panic under pressure in Fargo, John Goodman´s aggressive outbursts in Big Lebowski, the gay baron in Intolerable Cruelty, the guy with IBS in Ladykillers)

My impression of the three that remained popular is that:
-Fargo was an extreme critical hit garnering an oscar nomination and a place in AFI´s top 100 and made several lists of best films of the decade
-Big Lebowski was an extreme cult hit
-Oh Brother (my personanal favorite and the only one of the three to make my personal top 100 list and garner 4 stars) was somewhere in between. It made many top 10 films of the year list and earned an oscar screenplay nomination.

I was wondering why these three films were received this way. My theories:

-Fargo involves murder as a comic gag while big lebowski and oh brother only involve stealing and adding murder to a plot insantly makes things more serious. Oh Brother has characters like John Goodman die but they never really show his death so they never get as graphic as Fargo.

-I also think that Big Lebowski works as wish fullfillment. The protagonist goes through things and lives a life that young men would love to have: tell off some older authority figure and not have to have respect for your elders, smoke pot and get away with it, knock up a woman and not have to deal with the responsibility of fatherhood, hang out with your buddies all day, escape any negative repercussions when you mishandle large amounts of money, etc.

The Christopher Guest stock company

Christopher Guest, co-writer of This is Spinal Tap (1984) and director/co-writer of Waiting for Guffman (1997), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006) has successfully created a niche for himself in comedic films that makes him a very interesting character study.

One of the finer points of Andrew Sarris' auteur theory is that the mark of a great director is being able to impose their mark within the confines of a studio system. In other words, a director being able to take material he doesn't like (that he usually gets stuck with) and make it work within his style. This is one of the most prevalent theories in film study and has generated a lot of heated debate over the years. Some of its detractors might point to someone like Vincente Minelli who took many projects he didn't like just so he could get the financing necessary to make his dream project "Lust for Life." Christopher Guest seems to support that notion because not many of his fans are familiar with the fact that Guest has directed more than four films. A one-time castmember on SNL in the 80's, he has directed some other films and TV movies, like "Dead on Arrival" and the Chris Farley-Matthew Perry vehicle "Almost Heroes," that have absolutely nothing in common with the five films that bear the "Christopher Guest and Co." trademark. The fact that he was willing to completely ditch his style of comedy to play by the studio's rules of conventional comedy before making movies his way, suggests that the studios didn't have a lot of faith in his brand of comedy. Again, I don't have DVD production notes from Almost Heroes with which to make that judgement. The question I want to ask, however, was that deserved?

His films feature a stock company of actors led by Christopher Guest as an actor, Fred Willard, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer (although he's been absent from a couple of them), Catherine O'Hara and Parkey Posey. Other actors such as Ed Begley Jr, Michael E Hitchkock, Bob Balaban, Christopher Moynihan, Jane Lynch, and Jennifer Coolidge have grown into the group as a secondary set of characters, although there are no clear lines.





The Christopher guest method of movie making is establishing the characters and then improvising most of their dialogue along the lines of what the characters might say. Improvizational comedy is not entirely new: Good comic actors have generally been known to ad-lib on the set if something better comes to their mind at the moment but the Guest films are based entirely around improv comedy and market themselves as such. It's also done in a very organic way that's key to the creative process.

It's actually kind of odd how this pattern is so pervasive. Many people within the Christopher Guest camp have not achieved widespread fame outside of it or if they do, it's usually for one or two roles that don't express their full ability. Other actors in the Christopher Guest stock company who are known by just one or two roles. Examples include:
Catherine O'Hara from Home Alone
Eugene Levy as the dad from American Pie
Bob Balaban as the studio boss from Seinfeld (although some might recognize him from Godsford Park)
Michael McKean from Lenny and Squiggy and a brief SNL stint
Jennifer Coolidge from the TV show Joey

One could say that Fred Willard and Parker Posey enjoy careers that enable them to capitalize on their strong spots. Willard seems to pop up fairly heavily in TV series and films and has developed a comic persona of an affable fake know-it-all who interferes with everyone around him. It was best perfected in Best in Show for which he might have been considered the highlight of that film. Posey is known for some independent films.

I'm sure if you had some objective way to rank every actor based on their ability to improvize comedically, the top slots would go to people not from the Christopher Guest camp: Jim Carrey, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, Jack Black, Steve Martin, etc. Many Christopher Guest fans feel that Fred Willard, for example might be the funniest person on the face of the planet and would outperform all the others in an improv scene. It is hard to quantify exactly where a Fred Willard or Harry Shearer fits into the comic spectrum. I think it's very curious how the Christopher Guest stock company for all the praise they get (although, I have a feeling that took a negative turn with the lackluster film For Your Consideration), their stock company of actors has not moved up accordingly in fame. That Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn and Jack Black still dominate comedy.

Perhaps, the Christopher Guest films are very organic processes and they take some underrated actors and combine them together to form the sum of their parts. I don't think a Fred Willard would be able to draw the star power that Ferrell, Vaughn or Black would. He doesn't have the ability to make you laugh like a stand-up comedian would, where he fires a couple of opening liners that have you howling. I think he wears down your guard over time. It's the small subtleties of his character's humor that become more and more exxagerated the longer you watch him. This worked very well in "Best in Show" and in "Waiting for Guffman" with him but I think that kind of character-based comedy that slowly builds up on you would be a hard sell on the studio level.