The 5 Best Generation X Filmmakers
Generation X has taken over the movies. Just this fall, new films from David O. Russell, Ben Affleck, and Quentin Tarantino promise to be major players come awards time. So who are the five best American filmmakers under 50?
5. Darren Aronofsky
Arrogant enough to turn down the opportunity to direct Batman Begins, the Brooklyn-born filmmaker has made some surprising choices. After starting out in David Lynch territory with Pi, he threatened to disappear in a fog of epic sci-fi weirdness with The Fountain but returned to Earth in triumph with the agreeably gritty and surprisingly straight-on The Wrestler, which relaunched Mickey Rourke and showed an unexpected depth of feeling and humanity. Then came Black Swan, a worldwide sensation that deservedly won Natalie Portman an Oscar and managed to be cerebral, trashy, arty, and sexy all at the same time. Now Aronofsky is going off in yet another direction, steering the mega-budget Bible epic Noah with Russell Crowe, which sounds like either a disaster or a sensation but seems guaranteed to make an impression.
Praising Tarantino’s “originality of vision” would be like lauding Bergman’s “light touch” or Fellini’s “realism.” Are we really talking about the same guy??
Tarantino is the shallow, derivitive Lady Gaga of movies: predictable, self-indulgent yet he easily fools young people who don’t know any better that he’s a genius.
Pulp Fiction is the most overrated film of the 1990s. When I felt I couldn’t put off seeing it any longer, my friend and I sat through it and muttered our (correct) predictions about what would happen next (“He’s gonnna say he put the watch up his ass”) and observations about his pointless, lazy rip offs (“Oh, please! A Kiss Me Deadly suitcase now?)
The jokes aren’t funny. No one has ever been able to explain to me why “Royale with cheese” is considered the height of wit. The dance sequence is boring, and the concept restaurant in which the servers are dead movie stars is something out of JG Ballard circa 1975. We’re meant to be amazed and astounded that lowlifes have… tattoos!! Wow!
Nobody who is familiar Ballard or Flannery O’Connor or any number of superior, earlier artists can possibly do more than yawn their way through a Tarantino movie.
Why is everyone impressed by the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs, in which they’re arguing about Madonna? It is supposed to be so original and “deconstructionist” and “po-mo” but the characters on Friends and Cheeers had similar conversations about movies and (other) tv shows.
http://www.tvrage.com/Cheers/episodes/32493
His only good movie was True Romance, and that’s because someone else was wisely chosen to direct.
Also, Inglorious Basterds makes no damned sense:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19920_6-movie-heroes-saved-by-gaping-plot-holes.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_18684_6-movie-heroes-who-actually-made-things-worse.html
I agree with your general critique of QT as overrated and Pulp Fiction as the most overrated movie of the ’90s. (And if you want to put a QT takedown on your list of articles to do for PJ Lifestyle then by all means…) BUT, I do take issue:
“His only good movie was True Romance, and that’s because someone else was wisely chosen to direct.”
True Romance sucks. Tarantino at his most juvenile until the self-indulgent embarrassment of Death Proof in 2007. But his real masterpiece is his most underrated and mature film, Jackie Brown:
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/05/04/8-reasons-why-jackie-brown-beats-pulp-fiction/
Jackie Brown is the only Tarantino film I have seen that I actually like. Don’t get most of these other directors in this list either, I find some of the films sort of okay, none I have seen something I would have wanted to watch a second time.
This is a list of men whose film failures far outnumber their successes. What this tells me is that their “vision” is hit-or-miss, and that in essence, they don’t really know what they’re doing.
In my opinion the possible exception could be Tarantino. Something is missing in screen plays and the realization of those screen plays today and I confess I don’t know what it is. I DO know that when I can watch “Ladies of Leisure” starring an unknown Barbara Stanwyck from 1930 and directed by Frank Capra, and find it more interesting than the majority of films made by these 5 wunderkids, something’s wrong in Mudville. Even B-movies from 1933 like “Bed of Roses” with Constance Bennett have a way of drawing you into the story.
Try “The Millionaire” (1931) on for size and you’ll find yourself drawn into what should be a pretty boring film about a millionaire posing as a poor guy and drawn into a gas station feud. Just saw the new “On The Road” and was put to sleep.
As I was reading this list, I thought, I must have misread the title. This list makes much more sense as a “Top 5 Most Overrated Gen X Filmmakers.” Tarantino? Anderson (x2)?
Weak sauce.