Thursday, July 21, 2011

A Very Auteurial Meme for Your Amusement.

 So there's this "movie director" meme thingy out there, making the rounds on social network sites (particularly ones with "like" buttons). The rules are actually pretty simple: someone gives you a director, and you list three movies by them: one you like, one you love, and one you hate. You can simply list the films, or provide and explanation. So far, the people I'm aware that do it have a mix of both, usually because film fans that are willing to subject a director's body of work to a like/love/hate spectrum often feel the need to clarify their choices. I know I did when trying to explain that there isn't really a Woody Allen film I hate*.

  I thought it might be fun to continue this in a non-meme format, so I asked the person who pulled the Cap'n into this to provide me with a few more directors. The Cap'n will also throw in a few, just in case nobody thinks of them. It's a fun and harmless meme, and this time I'm not going to ask anybody to do their own. You're welcome to simply enjoy and carry on doing whatever it is you do when you aren't at the Blogorium.

 We'll begin with an easy example: Robert Wise

 A Movie I Like: West Side Story.
 A Movie I Love: The Haunting (although The Day the Earth Stood Still is a close second).
 A Movie I Hate: Star Trek - The Motion Picture. The part of the title that distinguishes the film from the show is also totally inaccurate.


 Makes sense, right? Let's continue with one of the most difficult possible, a challenge I jokingly posed to Doctor Tom: Michael Bay

 A Movie I Like: Heh, in the interest of fairness, not hating The Island counts a "like," right? I also didn't hate Bad Boys 2 (but was kinda bored), so that counts, right?
 A Movie I Love: Okay, love might be overstating the case, but I can watch The Rock pretty much any time, which is more than I can say about any of Bay's other films. I do really like it, and not just as a guilty pleasure.
 A Movie I Hate: Armageddon.

Moving right along, let's try Charles Chaplin.

 A Movie I Like: I like, but don't love, A King in New York. It's fine until the very end, for similar reasons that keep me from loving The Great Dictator. I really like Monsieur Verdoux.
 A Movie I Love: Modern Times.
 A Movie I Hate: A Countess from Hong Kong.


Spike Lee

 A Movie I Like: Bamboozled, or Summer of Sam.
 A Movie I Love: Do the Right Thing.
 A Movie I Hate: I'm not a fan of Girl 6.


Werner Herzog

 A Movie I Like: Little Dieter Needs to Fly.
 A Movie I Love: Aguirre: The Wrath of God.
 A Movie I Hate: Even Dwarves Started Small. Sorry.


Terry Gilliam

 A Movie I Like: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus or Jabbewocky.
 A Movie I Love: Tough, but let's go with the outside choice - Time Bandits.
 A Movie I Hate: Nothing about The Brothers Grimm works. Nothing. Tideland is very difficult to watch, but even then I wasn't bored.


John Carpenter

 A Movie I Like: Prince of Darkness.
 A Movie I Love: Geez... The Thing. Possibly sets the bar for remakes.
 A Movie I Hate: Hands down, Ghosts of Mars, but because that's universally hated, here's a curveball - The Fog.


Mike Nichols


 A Movie I Like: Closer.
 A Movie I Love: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
 A Movie I Hate: I really dislike What Planet Are You From?

Jim Jarmusch
 A Movie I Like: Permanent Vacation.
 A Movie I Love: Ghost Dog - The Way of the Samurai.
 A Movie I Hate: The Limits of Control.

George A. Romero
 A Movie I Like: Martin.
 A Movie I Love: Night of the Living Dead.
 A Movie I Hate: The Dark Half.

Richard Linklater
 A Movie I Like: A Scanner Darkly.
 A Movie I Love: I know you're expecting Dazed, but Before Sunset.
 A Movie I Hate: Waking Life, for the same reasons I hate Slacker.


 There's not a lot of foreign representation on here, I realize, but I already used up Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luis Buñuel, and gave others Akira Kurosawa, Michel Gondry, and Takeshi Miike elsewhere. I thought about Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, but I'll leave space open to expand later. Until then...

* There are Woody Allen films I don't like, but it takes a lot for me to hate something. I also try to skip out on the universally panned Allen films, so I've never seen The Curse of the Jade Scorpion or Small Time Crooks.

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