Coen brothers or David Fincher or Christopher Nolan

[leemajors]

You can oversimplify lots of movies into that.

The Big Lebowski is only about cartoonishly idiotic bowling buddies who around and try to solve a non-mystery.
Pulp Fiction is about referencing other films more than anything (as are most of Tarantino's works).

Interesting that you should mention spaghetti westerns, because Leone's movies were not even respected that much by critics because their genre wasn't seen as a serious one. Hindsight being what it is, people now put The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly up there with The Godfather, Citizen Kane, etc. as one of the better movies of all time.

I personally don't care either way. If a director makes a great film, I don't care if one of the characters is wearing clown make-up, or that nothing actually happens plot-wise.

The Big Lebowski is a loose adaptation of a novel.

[redzero]

The Big Lebowski is a loose adaptation of a novel.

...okay.

[leemajors]

...okay.

Just saying they had a very interesting take on Philip Marlowe that varied greatly from his previous incarnations as Humphrey Bogart and Robert Mitchum.

[CubanSucks]

Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and the countless foreign masterpieces, like so many claim.

Citizen Kane: at the end of the day it's just an overzealous asshole who builds a media empire

Taxi Driver: at the end of the day it's just a Vietnam Vet who slowly loses his mind and takes it out on a pimp

The Godfather: at the end of the day it's just an aging gangster and his reluctant son

[DesignatedT]

Coen

[redzero]

this might be the most unintentionally funny exchange of all time

it's like 2 guys sniffing the rarefied area between their own hindquarters

Almost as funny as that one time one mouth breather claimed that Tim Burton is the reason that Batman is portrayed darker and more seriously in movies.

[cantthinkofanything]

And I do think The Dark Knight is a great film. I actually never said otherwise. I just don't think it's one of the best films of all-time, on the level of Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and the countless foreign masterpieces, like so many claim.

And what differentiates "substance-less" films that also happen to be all-time great films, like Pulp Fiction and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, is that their style and feel are unmistakably unique, their respective directors putting something of their iden y into either film. Whereas if you told me Spielberg, Zack Snyder, or Sam Raimi directed The Dark Knight, I'd probably believe you. There's really nothing that stands out enough for me about The Dark Knight to put up there with cinema's all-time best; and Ledger's performance failed to captivate me to the degree like it did many others.

It's ing Batman. Don't you think it was smart of Nolan to direct it in such a way where you weren't saying, "wow...definitely Nolan".

[mojorizen7]

I still can't figure out why America jacks off to the dark night. That movie licked taint, and if you watched that and enjoyed that stupid husky voice Bale kept using, chances are your taste in movies suck. For that reason alone you can't pick Nolan. Give me Coen brothers

+1 on TDK. Take out Ledgers performance and what do you really have left?

Batman Begins was solid IMO.
Inception was a nice looking,nice sounding interesting idea but in the end it was a master cluster . It was like doing Algebra homework while on acid.

Memento was very good,but just a well crafted gimmick.

I went with the Cohen's,but Fincher is right there.

My Cohen Bros gems
Blood Simple
Raising Arizona
Fargo
Lebowski
No Country

As for Fincher we know about his stud resume...but Alien3(the assembly cut) is very underrated IMO.

[Landon Donofag]

Dark Knight is overrated as . LOL at anyone putting it number 1.

[redzero]

+1 on TDK. Take out Ledgers performance and what do you really have left?

A completely different movie because the Joker appearance was the entire point.

[midnightpulp]

Citizen Kane: at the end of the day it's just an overzealous asshole who builds a media empire

Taxi Driver: at the end of the day it's just a Vietnam Vet who slowly loses his mind and takes it out on a pimp

The Godfather: at the end of the day it's just an aging gangster and his reluctant son

And those 3 premises have much more potential to become a great story/film than a story/film centered around a comic book character.

[redzero]

And those 3 premises have much more potential to become a great story/film than a story/film centered around a comic book character.

Do you mean a superhero or any comic book character, no matter what kind of comic it is?

[midnightpulp]

It's ing Batman. Don't you think it was smart of Nolan to direct it in such a way where you weren't saying, "wow...definitely Nolan".

Burton made sure to leave none of his signature style out in his Batman (and no, I'm not suggesting his Batman is superior. The script is fairly weak. As if if the writers focused primarily on making Nicholson's Joker as compelling and entertaining as possible, but in doing so, forget to develop the other characters beyond the two dimensional).

[midnightpulp]

Do you mean a superhero or any comic book character, no matter what kind of comic it is?

Superheroes, since I know there's many mature comics and graphic novels out there that could no doubt become a masterpiece film in the hands of the right people. I'm not saying there isn't mature content in superhero stories, but fundamentally, they're stories made to appeal to kids/adolescents.

[redzero]

yeah, since Tim Burton was first to do it in a movie, it logically follows that everybody else who does it must be copying him.

Nolan definitely wasn't using the comics as a reference; he was using Burton's films, because Burton invented the modern Batman.