New Directors for a New Century

Director Wes Anderson

Eric:
In my opinion, the worst director working today is John Moore. His Behind Enemy Lines stunk up the screen in ways that only backed upped toilettes should. The idea of a soldier surrounded by the enemy, fighting to stay alive should have been an easy movie to direct. All he had to do was show some close calls and a few chase scenes. Moore has a preposterous escape scene and uses slow motion. In Flight of The Phoenix he had one good moment when the plane crashed. The rest of the adventure flick is utterly boring. A bunch of people trapped in the dessert with bad guys camped over the hill could have been an action adventure film with different people learning from each other. Instead there is no action or character development. This guy gets plots with potential and dulls them down to nothing. He could screw up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Robert Luketic, on the other hand, gets movies that, on paper, should bomb. An air head who goes to Harvard sounds dull and should have failed. However, Luketic saw some charm in Legally Blonde and directed Witherspoon to the biggest hit of her career. Win A Date with Tad Hamilton should have bombed, and although not a perfect film, he does manage to squeeze as much personality out of it as he can, making it far more enjoyable that it deserved to be. He has Jane Fonda's seal of approval as he directs her comeback movie, The Monster In-law.

Scott:
Normally I feel that the best thing a director can do is get out of the way of the story. Keep it real and focus on getting the performances of the actors right. However, when it comes to directors who put their personal stamp on a film, I can think of none better than Wes Anderson. His style can best be described as quirky and yet he still manages to evoke real emotion from the story and the actors. The Royal Tenenbaums is probably his best work to date, but Rushmore and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou are also both fine examples of his work.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from Anderson, is Michael Bay. Bay is the king of bloated, overdone epics that feature lousy performances and melodramatic storylines that try to forcefeed the emotions to the audience. Pearl Harbour, one of the greatest military disasters in American history should have been a great story, but in his hands it became one of the worst movies of all time. Armageddon is another of his films that took an intriguing concept and then killed it with bad acting and overdone special effects. His name has become synonymous with all that is wrong with big budget Hollywood pictures.