Movie/TV recommendations

[Max Ernst]

Original misspelling aside (I blame my phone), I think Godard I much prefer the earlier work. While I find every obscure film I could, I mainly stuck to the feature length stuff. This whole on and off again, part-time project took me five years. His 60's films are incredible, from Vivre sa vie to Made in U.S.A. They can be tonally all over the shot, so a certain 'style' is hard to nail down, but a certain melancholy does filter through all of his works. His 70s works are not as consistent, but obscure gems such as Here and Elsewhere make it worth going through. Even when his films don't succeed, they are always fascinating. I don't remember much about his 80s stuff except I really liked Every Man for Himself and did not care for King Lear.

 

I have forgotten so much about his works over the years I guess I will have to rewatch them again.

[clyde]

Edit: double post

[clyde]

What do you get out of watching the oeuvre of a single director?

[elmuerte]

despair (in case of Uwe Bol)

[Roderick]

I don't know if I've ever watched everything of a certain director, but I can easily imagine what you get out of it. Especially if it's auteur cinema: an enlarged appreciation of the themes woven throughout an oeuvre.

 

Case in point - I think the one instance of a director I've seen a significant portion of their work of are the Coen brothers. If you take any one of their works alone, you can easily enjoy them, but when you get to know the whole body... it just kind of stacks. I appreciate their movies more, understand them better, and certain expectancies are raised even before I watch them. It's also strangely enjoyable to be able to place a movie into a larger whole, and perceiving where it stands in the development of a creator. Especially with the Coens, you might not understand the dark comedy of it unless you've seen their other films and grasp their bleak world view and how there's a twisted humor in how the lead characters often find a painful end. What is disheartening on its own, is suddenly comforting together.

[Twig]

I can definitely see myself getting something out of watching an entire filmography for a specific director or writer or whatever. But I can also see myself getting bored and giving up pretty quickly, even if I like it.

 

I'm the worst!

[elmuerte]

It only works for directors who have, and execute, an explicit style. There are not a lot of directors who's oeuvres have an overall style. For example: Coen Bros., David Cronenberg, Takashi Miike, or John Carpenter

But if you take directors like Ridly Scott, Luc Besson, James Cameron, ... they make great movies, but they don't execute explicit style in all their movies.

[Patrick R]

It only works for directors who have, and execute, an explicit style. There are not a lot of directors who's oeuvres have an overall style. For example: Coen Bros., David Cronenberg, Takashi Miike, or John Carpenter

But if you take directors like Ridly Scott, Luc Besson, James Cameron, ... they make great movies, but they don't execute explicit style in all their movies.

 

As someone who's hosted a podcast based on this very premise for a couple years, I have to disagree. Once you watch 5 or 6 movies of anyone's work, you will recognize patterns. Ridley Scott may not be making the same movies over and over again, but that tends to make the similarities they have stick out more, not less. When his dumb 80's action cop movie Black Rain and morose sci-fi noir Blade Runner and pop horror movie Hannibal all have the same obsessive attention to location and world-building, it's very revealing as to where his interests as an artist lie.

 

In all the directors we've covered, I can't think of a single one whose work wasn't illuminated by watching all (or most) of their filmography. I always thought Wes Craven was a 2nd rate journeyman who got lucky who got lucky a couple times, but a LOT of his films repeat the same structures, themes, ideas, and even endings (stupid booby traps being Craven's preferred way to end any given movie).

 

Also, Takashi Miike seems an odd example in the former list because his career seems to be defined by his lack of focus. I couldn't tell you what a "Takashi Miike styled" film would be, because that includes Audition and Ishi the Killer and DOA 2 and 13 Assassins and The Box, which span a pretty wildly different styles and subjects and tones.

[Patrick R]

As for Max, I either suggest Truffaut if you want something in the same wheelhouse, or Joseph Losey if you want something completely different. But watching all of Godard's filmography implies you are a fan of Godard, which would mean you and I have very different taste in these sorts of things.

[Frenetic Pony]

Ender's Game: What was there was almost pretty good, there just wasn't enough there. One can barely squeeze a good novel down to 3 hours, trying to do it in 2 hours like they did with Ender's Game ruins any chance it might have actually had.

 

They literally skip most of battle school, "command" school", the game, and even telling him that he killed the two kids he got into a fight with, establishing both the dark tone and that the command is hiding stuff from him, which really shortchanges the whole "it wasn't a game" ending and has the "here's the alien egg thing to save" ending just be totally worthless. But then the post Ender's Game novels are shit anyway so whatever.

 

Also, Cameron's style is: Warrior Woman, with alternating portions between plot building and shit blowing the fuck up in a good even pacing.

 

Ridley Scott's is "I make crap unless it's science fiction, and even I couldn't save Prometheus that much." I liked them the first time I saw them, but Blackhawk Down and Kingdom of Heaven really aren't that good for repeated viewings. Black Hawk Down is just plotless military porn and Kingdom of Heaven is preachy as all shite.

[Patrick R]

I personally think GI Jane is Ridley Scott's most fascinating movie, because it's themes are so muddled that the result is a weird mess that doesn't know what it believes. Sneakily, Thelma and Louise is possibly his best film that isn't called Alien.

[syntheticgerbil]

Wait, I thought it was normal movie going behavior to see everything by a director they like.

 

I make sure to see everything by everyone who created something I seriously liked. The strangest thing I've come across doing this is some godawful terrible shitty rock climbing after school special type movie directed by Sam Kieth of The Maxx fame. The most I can figure out in the auteur sense is that it's something he's deeply ashamed of, but the guy's only a comic book artist/writer otherwise.

[brkl]

I've seen pretty much everything by Kubrick and Cronenberg, but not two of Kubrick's earliest and also not quite all of Cronenberg's. Esp. Kubrick I've also rewatched a lot. You do get a different sense of what makes the director tick.

[TychoCelchuuu]

If you want directors to watch, here's a list I've been compiling of directors it might be worth checking out, some of whom are obvious and some of whom are a little more obscure:

David Fincher

Joel and Ethan Coen

Michael Haneke

Michael Mann

Nora Ephron

Paul Thomas Anderson

Richard Linklater

Steven Soderbergh

Terrence Malick

Werner Herzog

John Cassavetes

Andrei Tarkovsky

David Mamet

Robert Altman

David Lean

Tom Tykwer

Jean-Pierre Melvill

Wong Kar-Wai

Krzysztof Kieslowski

Abbas Kiarostami

Pedro Almodóvar

Bille August

Emir Kusturica

Tony Richardson

Jacques Tati

Eric Rohmer

F.W. Murnau

Akira Kurosawa

Jean Renoir

Federico Fellini

Michelangelo Antonioni

Hal Hartley

Lars von Trier

Jacques Tourneur

John Huston

Warren Beatty

John Ford

Anthony Mann

Fred Zinnemann

Satyajit Ray

Satoshi Kon

Michelangelo Antonioni

Masaki Kobayashi

Zhang Ke Jia

[tegan]

Alfred Hitchcock?

[TychoCelchuuu]

Alain Resnais?

[Max Ernst]

As for Max, I either suggest Truffaut if you want something in the same wheelhouse, or Joseph Losey if you want something completely different. But watching all of Godard's filmography implies you are a fan of Godard, which would mean you and I have very different taste in these sorts of things.

Genuinely curious about your stance on Godard. 

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I am not a big film guy, so this kind of project takes me years. I am very picky with what I watch and have a weird intolerance to middle-brow horseshit, so it's nice when I find a director that I really like.

 

I incidentally did Lars Von Trier, and that was testing. He is such a wonderful film-maker and storyteller, but has such a shitty view on people, and particularly gender  that can sometimes hold back his films. While I think films like Antichrist and Melancholia are criticisms of the hubris of men, his earlier stuff does seem to simply hate women. It's such a conflicted viewing experience. The latter is his strongest film visually and thematically.

[Max Ernst]

What do you get out of watching the oeuvre of a single director?

Sometimes, it is a matter of quality control. I hate watching a bad film, and what I consider bad is a pretty  high standard. I don't have a more refined taste than anybody else, but I watch films so rarely (more of a book guy), that when I do I want it to really count. By sticking with a good directer

 

The other thing is that I have a weird thing with following an artist's progression. When you watch enough of their films and start to tally up motif's and themes, you can really understand their world view and their views on art and storytelling. Watching an artist progress with their view, and watch how it refines and morphs, is fascinating to me. Particularly when the tone remains pretty similar, but the story elements are completely different. I love watching how Lynch goes from something like Eraserhead to Mulholland Drive, and how you can see an interesting progression and through line from the the former to the latter, and how the seeds of his later works are buried in even in his earliest works.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Sometimes, it is a matter of quality control. I hate watching a bad film, and what I consider bad is a pretty  high standard. I don't have a more refined taste than anybody else, but I watch films so rarely (more of a book guy), that when I do I want it to really count. By sticking with a good directer

Ever since I got a Criticker account I haven't watched any bad movies without knowing in advance that I wouldn't like them. It's been incredibly helpful in terms of only watching good stuff.

[BadHat]

Anyone else a big follower of (South) Korean cinema? Like probably everyone else I got into it primarily through the works of Park Chan-wook and Kim Jee-woon, but there's really no shortage of exceptional films from other directors. Three which come to mind from much less prolific directors:

 

Castaway on the Moon - a really touching but also incredibly funny and unconventional romance.

 

Save The Green Planet - kind of impossible to describe because of how eclectic it is, definitely one of the boldest movies I've seen.

 

Bleak Night - a tale of personal tragedy and how it affects a group of high school friends, very subtle and moody.

 

I guess it's kind of strange in a sense to single out one country's output like this, but I think a lot of Korean films have a certain tone to them which a lot of other directors, particularly American, don't seem to be able to recreate as naturally. I'm generalizing of course, but... well, for instance, there's this.

 

[Roderick]

I don't quite understand western remakes when the original movie is clearly not outdated or badly made at all. Why an Oldboy remake when you could watch the actual Oldboy and get the same thing out of that?

[elmuerte]

easy money, that's why

[clyde]

I don't watch Korean cinema, but I watch a lot of cheesy 16-episode Korean romance dramas. I know what you mean about singling out a nation, but the fact is that even though 90% of the Korean romance-dramas are not to my liking, there are certain qualities that I've only been able to find on DramaFever.

It's hard finding good cheesy romances.

[tegan]

I don't quite understand western remakes when the original movie is clearly not outdated or badly made at all. Why an Oldboy remake when you could watch the actual Oldboy and get the same thing out of that?

 

Because, "I wanna' watch a movie, not read it!"

[Roderick]

Dutch people don't know that sentiment, since we sub everything.

 

But if I'm honest, even we turn a blind eye to most non-Hollywood cinema. Regrettably. There's soooo much beyond the hills of H-dubs!