Posts by Mark Wood79

goldenhound32 said:lol... if there were actually a thread dedicated to their films, who would even bother participating? 🙂

Are you seriously suggesting Bergman and Woody Allen are some kind of ''underground'' directors? 🤣

wiredbison82 said:It's all fine, though "The English Patient" is a bit much for me...🤷

Oh, and that RocknRolla...

Dr. Strangelove, Apocalypse Now, Dracula 🙏

After seeing that movie, half of Hollywood was practically moved to tears, suddenly remembering that we once had a director like David Lean.

Interesting concept and setup. Woody Harrelson is fantastic in his role, though I felt Ben Foster was a bit underwhelming here.
The technical execution definitely earns some points. For instance, using handheld camera work during the press briefings—which isn't always a win, but they pulled it off perfectly here—was a great touch. The subjective shots, like when arriving at the wedding, were also really well done.

That said, that’s pretty much all I have to say about it. The dynamic between Montgomery and the widow felt hollow and uninspiring to me; some scenes dragged on way too long and felt incredibly dull. Even the relationship between Montgomery and Montgomery-Stone failed to grab my interest. Honestly, I was yawning through their final conversation. No matter how hard the director tried to force the drama with those close-ups, there just wasn't any real chemistry there.

There were also a few moments that felt completely mindless and unnecessary.

It's a decent enough movie, but nothing more.

briskhound2 said:Too lazy to rewrite everything, so...🙂

Interesting points. For me, it was actually the opposite—the story is what pulled me in, while the characters felt more like... well, characters just being there (I haven't read the books, so I don't know if the impression would be stronger if I knew them from the page) — but the mystery of the disappearance is presented so well, and the step-by-step reveal is great. I actually hope the authors stuck to the book word-for-word. I agree it's not a perfect ten, but it's definitely a refreshing crime flick after a long time. Personally, I'd cut some parts out, but then again, if I did, other parts of the trilogy wouldn't make sense. As for the remake—I think it's pointless to frame it exactly like the original, let alone use the same settings.

In short: the setup is solid and kept me hooked, but the ending feels a bit limp. Overall impression? It's a decent thriller, nothing more.

It’s nothing special to me, definitely not a 10/10. It feels like a safe, corporate play.
There isn't any real creative spark or sense of risk here—it's almost as if the director was terrified of accidentally deviating from the source material.
When you look at the plot, it's brutal, but in the world of filmmaking, it feels like the focus is primarily on how the story is told, rather than what is actually happening.
Essentially, the person behind the camera becomes more important than the script itself.
As a result, we end up with a movie that feels almost anemic.
That’s why I’m not losing any sleep over Fincher taking a crack at a remake. Look, even he can miss the mark sometimes—nobody’s perfect... we'll just have to wait and see how the next one turns out.

wiredbison82 said:Black Dahlia is definitely a crime film, but when a man of 67—someone of an advanced age, practically a retiree by any legal standard on this planet—shoots something like Redacted, a punkish film stuffed with YouTube clips, that isn't madness. In my view, it's courage and vision.

Sure, Curtis Hanson outdid him, and convincingly so, but De Palma outdid the entire generation of loud, self-important young directors born into the Facebook era by making a film that, while far from a masterpiece, still carries the hallmarks of a great director. A man who clearly hasn't grown old or faded away.

Regarding the representatives of that new German cinema, I find Herzog's Bad Lieutenant to be a perfectly okay film. It's certainly less pretentious than Ferrari's.

I haven't seen "Redacted" yet, but since you're speaking so highly of it, I want to check it out. Regarding De Palma's courage and vision, you can see it clearly even in those excellent late-'60s films I mentioned in my last post. Ultimately, De Palma is a true legend and one of my top five favorite New Hollywood names, though that doesn't mean he's beyond criticism.

When it comes to New Hollywood figures in general, they basically did their job for the next several decades. No sane person should expect them to save the scene in the 21st century, but some have fallen so spectacularly that you can't help but wonder what happened. Of course, compared to the massive collapses we've seen, De Palma is just a little kid.

wiredbison82 said:If we look at the New Hollywood crowd, the only ones who remained consistently grounded during their careers were Robert Altman and Brian De Palma, as far as one can recall today.

The rest were truly "crazy at 3 PM."

I’m all for consistency, but the last De Palma flick I caught (Black Dahlia) was just a sluggish, missed attempt at adapting a hard-boiled crime story. Curtis Hanson made one of the best films of that entire decade about ten years earlier and totally outshined his veteran colleague. I don't know what happened; De Palma used to be such a master storyteller. This one had mediocre acting and felt rhythmically off... sure, there were some "Hitchcockian" touches (like that rope scene), plus those deep subjective shots and other little nods to De Palma's signature style, but overall, "Black Dahlia" turned out to be a pretty raw and unpalatable mess. It seems even De Palma is becoming a bit of a lost, erratic director.🤷

I won't bring up Altman right now since he's passed away. So, among the living, there’s almost nobody left. Maybe Scorsese—whom I usually give a pass—should actually consider retirement. I saw Shutter Island in theaters and kept telling myself it was good and tense, but thinking about rewatching it now... honestly, no thanks. I think I'd find it boring. I’d much rather watch Street of Evil, Alice, or Taxi Driver for the tenth time if I had to.

And don't even get me started on Orson's kid. Where did he disappear to? I was watching The Sopranos recently and saw him playing some psychologist! Good grief, Petra, is it really that bad...

There are plenty of gems to be found here...

Looking back, even the protagonists from those once-powerful New German films didn't exactly find much success in life.

When I think about this topic, my mind immediately jumps to almost the entire New Hollywood generation. It’s pretty rare to find anyone from that era who stayed as grounded and sensible as they did. Take *All That Jazz*, for example.

northerncrane4 said:Oh, absolutely. Last year, the award for best regional film went to "Buick Riviera."

😂😂😂😂

I know it’s silly to waste a whole post just on emojis, but I really had to. That isn't true—it totally crushed me. 🤣🤣🤣

Nicholas Walker3 said:Battle of the Mississippi, Che!, Django Unchained, Easy Rider, When You Hear the Bell, Army of Shadows, The Fall of the Dea, Mackenna's Gold, Midnight Cowboy, Paint Your Wagon, Shinjū, Burn!, The Italian Job, The Wild Bunch, Topaz, Z..........Gavras, Visconti, Bulajić, Pontecorvo, Peckinpah, Melville, and what can you even say about cult classics like Midnight Cowboy or Easy Rider!?

Don't forget that two fantastic short films also came out that same year... well, try to guess which one, maybe Tijuana Toads.... and I just picked a random year to list those. 🙂

That is honestly a really versatile and imaginative list, but Battle of the Mississippi feels totally out of place here... since we're talking about being in these parts and dealing with war, you're better off with Pavlović's Zaseda.
Some crazy Russians recently pushed the Mississippi film into their top 10, so why the hell did they do that?
Am I the only crazy one here...? Come on, someone tell me, what do you all think of that movie?

What else came out in '69? There's Loachev Kes, then Raven which I watched recently, Altman's That Cold Day in the Park, that Czech horror Spalovač, Pollack's To Kill a Horse, my night with Mauda which was in theaters recently, and I absolutely loved Butch Cassidy when I was a kid... yeah, there's plenty more where that came from.

What a wild topic to wrap your head around!

Nobody even mentioned the 50s:

Let’s look at 1955, for instance:

Les Diaboliques (Clouzot)
Rififi (Dassin)
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
Fellini's Il Bidone (Fellini)
Black Rock (Sturges)
East of Paradise (Kazan)
Rebel Without a Cause (N. Ray)
Blackboard Jungle (Brooks)
The Word (Dreyer)
The Big Combo (Lewis)
Kiss Me Deadly (Aldrich)
Mr. Arkadin (Welles)
Lola Montes (Ophuls)
Marty (Michael Mann)
Pather Panchali (S. Ray)
To Catch a Thief (Hitchcock)
Detective Story (Wyler)
All That Heaven Allows (Sirk)
The Ladykillers (Mackendrick)
Mr. Roberts (Ford)
Money Trap (Preminger)
Night and Fog (Resnais)

And I feel like I'm missing something... what a year! In America, you start seeing these new thematic preoccupations—a whole new generation emerging (Rebel, East of Paradise, Blackboard Jungle)—yet noir is still holding its own (Big Combo, Kiss Me Deadly, Phenix City Story). Then you've got Preminger with his Frankie Machine (honestly, Sinatra usually gets on my nerves, but here... ), plus what I consider Sturges' strongest Western. Over in Europe, Dassin and Clouzot are churning out two genre Bibles, Resnais is doing that soul-shaking documentary, Dreyer has that beauty Ordet, Fellini gives us Il Bidone, Ophuls brings us Lola Montes, Welles has Arkadin, Hitch is messing around on the Azure Coast, and over in India, Satyajit Ray is making his mark... man, I really wish I had been alive back then!

But, to be fair, every single year from the 30s through the 70s offers at least ten absolute masterpieces. Probably even the 20s, though I haven't watched enough silent films to go year by year, but anyone who lives for this stuff would probably agree.

Christian Taylor3 said:Reading about how some of the most famous, acclaimed directors navigated the long road from that first spark of an idea to the final critical reception of their Debut film isn't just entertaining—it’s actually pretty inspiring. Their creative journeys do more than just pull back the curtain on the glitz and glamour of the movie industry; they show that beyond whatever talent you bring to the table, success really demands creativity, grit, and the courage to take risks. And sure, having the right connections certainly doesn't hurt. Because of that, I don't think it's an overstatement to say that the topic of 'Debut films' should be essential reading for true cinephiles and aspiring filmmakers alike. Honestly, even those who have been in the industry for a while could find something useful by looking into it.

You really put that beautifully. 👍

Arthur Garcia59 said:It’s not that I dislike the thread—there isn't really anything to like or dislike here—I just don't see the point.
Again, I think your enthusiasm is great, so please keep talking about those films (I'm a von Trier fan myself, if you can believe it), but I don't understand why you're posting them here instead of in the dedicated threads we already have.
If you posted there, you might actually reach people interested in those subjects. Otherwise, we end up opening new threads every single day that quickly become ghost towns.

Plus, if someone wanted to learn something about Jean Vigo a year from now, they wouldn't think to look in a "Debut Films" thread; they wouldn't even know what they'd find. On the other hand, they could easily check out a "Jean Vigo" thread and find exactly what they need. The same logic applies to all the other directors.

Those are my thoughts. Like I said, it's nothing personal, I just think it would be more useful and straightforward to skip this specific thread and channel that energy elsewhere. 😉

You jumped into this discussion and immediately dropped names like Anderson, Berković, Resnais, Erice, and others. Why do that? Why not just say right away that the thread doesn't make sense? What would you have done if someone had replied and started a deep dive into Rondo?

Then you mentioned you decided to go back and watch the first Melville film.

This thread is meant for discussing debut works—how they shaped a director's career, what influences are visible in them, and so on. There's plenty of room for depth here.
It's a space to share information about certain films, nothing more. Every thread, except for the "last movie we watched" one, has some kind of boundary.

I know it would be much nicer if the forum was overflowing with massive threads titled "Jean-Pierre Melville," "Sergio Leone," "Marcel Carne," "Fritz Lang," "Italian Neorealism," "French New Wave," or "New German Cinema"—where you wouldn't even know where to click because there's so much activity. But that's not our reality. I think this thread is clearly defined enough to stay on track, yet broad enough for us to have diverse discussions, swap opinions, and challenge ourselves to remember a director's debut and everything connected to it.

And don't even get me started on the potential for recommendations. For instance, you mention a debut, praise it, explain its significance, and point out the influences. You aren't just encouraging someone to watch that film—though they might continue their journey if they enjoy it—you're also giving them a roadmap of what else to watch.

Forget about what happens a year from now; we're here right now. You talk about preserving enthusiasm... but if I followed that logic, the "last movie we watched" thread would fall apart too, because every time I watched something and wanted to post about it, I'd head straight to the main director threads instead of the general one.

By the way, I'm planning to dig up some old director-specific threads soon to drop a few titles in there. But that's separate from this discussion.

Arthur Garcia59 said:Could you just clarify that bit? It probably wouldn't hurt to specify which Debut film you're talking about.

Fair enough, that was a bit vague of me. My bad.

Arthur Garcia59 said:I meant "pointless" in a futile or senseless way, not like calling someone stupid or anything insulting—I'm really not the type to go around throwing insults.

The issue is that the only thing connecting these movies is that they happen to be the first ones made by their directors. Beyond that, it feels like it would be more productive to discuss them in their own specific threads. There, you can actually link them to the director's later work or build a real conversation. Here, they feel isolated because they’re just categorized as "Debut films." We don't have much to do with them here, other than reminisce about them or recommend them, as the nostalgic Christian Taylor3 might say. 🤷
That said, I have to admit this thread actually nudged me into rewatching the first Jean-Pierre Melville film. Once again, I realized I still don't quite grasp that intro, though I admire him all the more for it.

I get that you aren't feeling this thread, but you have to admit there have been much worse ones.🙂

I was actually planning to write a little something about Ossessione, Element of Crime, L'Atalante, and La Commare Secca, but seeing these tangents about everything being futile and meaningless makes me lose interest.

It is pretty ironic, though, that those big dedicated threads for these directors are usually completely deserted.

rustyscout34 said:but my friend Amanda Nguyen5 mentioned: The whole discussion is a bit pointless because there are so few legendary directors, especially if you set aside those industry veterans like Hitchcock or Spielberg, who actually had rough starts with their first films. 😉

So, we're talking about a handful of greats who had bad debuts. That said, I'm totally with you on your last point. 👍

My bad, I didn't read that sentence closely enough. Sorry, Amanda Nguyen5!

Arthur Garcia59 said:on top of names like Welles, Tarantino, and the rest, you’ve also got Pasolini, Anderson, Scorsese, Resnais, Dumont, Berkovich, Erice, Varda, Gilroy, Corbijn, and a thousand more. Honestly, this whole thread feels a bit pointless because there aren't actually that many truly great directors—especially if you set aside the ones who fully merged with the studio system, like Hawks or Ozu, whose first films were pretty rough.

"Meteor" isn't technically Bogdanovich's debut. It has this weird sci-fi messiness to it that feels almost absurdly bad when you compare it to his other early work.

Yeah, I agree the topic is kind of silly. It’d be better to just stick to those polls you've been running, which I assume were your way of venting.
You listed some genuinely top-tier titles, but you just listed them. You didn't actually dive into them, probably because you didn't feel like it, even though I know you could. It might be easier to just admit the premise of the thread is flawed.

And saying there aren't any great directors isn't quite right either; you've got Huston, Welles, Visconti, Vigo (sadly a flash in the pan), Berlanga (whose work we saw recently at that film festival in New York), Resnais, Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Malle, Cassavetes, Tarkovsky, Polanski, Scorsese, De Palma, Nichols, Malick, Lynch, the Coen brothers, von Trier, Tarantino, and Boyle... plus plenty of others.

There's plenty of material to work with here.

Also, it wouldn't be totally out of line to mention someone's debut if it was actually a solid film, but looking at this list, that's a rare occurrence.

Christian Taylor3 said:Mark Wood79, can we laugh a little about the future here? 🙂 Buckle up, because things might get bumpy:

Christoph Waltz Moving into Directing His First Feature Film

🙂

Haha, hold onto that euphoria—you can never be too cautious.

Let’s wait until he actually finishes his first one before we make any calls.

Speaking of actors, even Dustin Hoffman decided to try directing when he was 72.

Since you’re using aviation metaphors, I’ll play along: Buckle up, but remember you're on a plane, and turbulence happens.

Moving back on topic:

Pather Panchali- Satyajit Ray. The director who put India on the cinematic map started his journey with this beautiful 1955 neorealist film shot in the rural heartlands of India. It follows a single family navigating their difficult daily life—which, unfortunately, was the reality in India at the time.
The film is masterfully directed, and the story is truly moving.

It’s well known that Martin Scorsese always proudly cites Ray’s complete Apu Trilogy, especially Pather Panchali. He’s been championed by many other New Hollywood legends like Dennis Hopper and Francis Ford Coppola, and he was deeply admired by the great Akira Kurosawa.

I should mention, though, that Indian cinema had already made its mark back in 1946 when the film Neecha Nagar won the Grand Prix at Cannes, though I haven't personally seen that one.

We could go on listing titles all day, but I was hoping you’d share a few thoughts on the movies you're mentioning.
For instance, what made a particular film stick with you? Why do you think it matters? Usually, once someone shares their take, it sparks a real conversation, which is exactly what we're aiming for here!
I’ll offer my own amateur perspective from time to time—I'm certainly no critic—but I know there are some real cinephiles in this group who always have something insightful to add. I just don't want our threads to turn into nothing more than a grocery list of titles. So please, keep the lists coming, but try to toss in a sentence or two about why a movie caught your eye.
I have to say, looking at what's been posted so far, there's already a great mix of interesting stuff. 👍
On that note, has anyone seen John Sayles' debut, "Return of the Secaucus Seven"?
Sayles has always been one of my favorite directors to emerge from that whole 80s era, though I haven't checked out that specific title yet. It's definitely on my watchlist.

Christian Taylor3 said:Yeah, you've got a point there. It really just comes down to one person. Nausikaja It’s right up there with... Blood Simple. Vicku Ruicu. 😬

By the way, this is such a great topic! It looks like my little coward actually managed to pull it off—it's definitely a case of quality over quantity. 🧐

Just when you were about to give me some credit, I went and started a poll about Marc Dacasco. 🙂

Never let the legacy of Jacob Harper fade!🙏

I haven't actually seen that Nausicaä movie myself—to be honest, I have no idea what it's even about. And as for Vicko Ruić... I just know he made that one film that absolutely nobody showed up to see. He broke a record, plain and simple. You can say whatever you want about him, whether you think he’s a good guy or not, but at the end of the day, records are records.😂

wiredbison82 said:Yeah, I totally blanked on De Palma for a second, even though I swear by his work all the time on this forum.🤣

It happens. Honestly, if anything, it just goes to show how much ground there still is to cover.

Christian Taylor3 said:What on earth happened? 😕 That logic makes zero sense. By that reasoning, you might as well be saying the Coen brothers are on the same level as Vic Reice. 😬

Maybe for some people, what he's doing is on par with a classic like *Blood Simple*. 🙂

Man, people are just strange. It’s wild how much variety there is out there.