Pad Berson wrote:
One problem Woody Allen is going to have with younger viewers who catch some of his films now is that he's been so endlessly imitated. It's very hard to see "Annie Hall" for how fresh and exhilarating it was.
I think that's exactly right.
Congrats on that old two-mile world record in the day Alf.
The difficulty with the OP is that it illicits responses that ignore the full body of work. I really appreciate the film buffs who address some of the smaller works of various directors, even if I disagree (hard for me to believe that people don't like Godfather 1 and 2).
For me, Allen was creative but started making the same movie.
Also, if you consider Spielberg overrated because of ET (a nice family film) but not understand the absolute brilliance of Schindler's List, I don't get it.
Picayune wrote:
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Alan Webb
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Well done sir. Slipped that one right past them.
James Cameron is a self important, egotistical wanna be. What has he done outside of spend more money than God to make movies that sold a lot of tickets? If making money wins Oscars, he might be king. If it's about making good films, how he won an Oscar (two maybe?) I don't know. After the Abyss (good, not great) what has he done?
Terminator 2 - when i was 10 it was cool.... I also thought Power Rangers were cool
Titanic - Is that Oprah's marathon time or the length of the film?
and now, Avatar - More than half of it was done on a computer.... and that's film making genius?!
All nothing more than money making crap.
Please don't give him another Oscar....
Anyone that made a popular film.
Oops, forgot about Rambo II, True Lies, Terminator I, Aliens....
I think that you run into the same kinds of problems when you try to compare careers in just about any field. There are consistently good performers, consistently bad performers, and a bunch of people with a mix of good, bad, great, and awful performances.
If Woody Allen had retired after "Annie Hall," I think that he would be almost universally regarded as one of the greatest comedic film directors, even though his directing career was still relatively brief. But after "Annie Hall" (which I consider to be one of the greatest comedies ever), where could he go? He didn't want to return to pure comedies like "Bananas" and "Sleeper," which involved characters about whom we weren't supposed to care much. He tried to imitate Bergman with the very dark "Interiors," which might have worked better if he hadn't been so strongly associated with comedy by that time. I thought that "Manhattan" was a successful return to comedy, but with a certain sadness and wistfulness. (I remember a review that described "Manhattan" as "'Annie Hall' in the shadows, 'Interiors' in the sunlight.") After that, it seems as though he's made a long series of films that have ranged from pretty good to excellent. As you suggest, though, they tend to look and feel very similar.
I avoided the term "overrated" in discussing Spielberg, and I've never even seen "ET." Regarding "Schindler's List," I remember one scene that really tore at my heart (as did a couple of scenes in "Saving Private Ryan"), but I've always felt that Spielberg's movies seem to pull back when they get too close to the edge, as if there's some sort of emotional set point that he always has to return to before the final credits roll.
Marion Davies wrote:
Ron Howard easily the most overated ever!
Ditto. And Spielberg (I simply do not rate any of his except Poltergeist).
Quentin Tarantino