My Twenty-two Most Disappointing People

David Lynch is a director who is often considered influential and 'avant-garde.' That seems remarkable considering his stagnating, gimmicky style since the early Nineties has produced few legitimately watchable movies. Worse, the terrible recent output makes one wonder whether any of his few 'great films' were even that good to begin with, or mere anomalies in an otherwise mediocre oeuvre that produced the likes of Inland Empire and Dune. He has by all logic used up any remaining goodwill, instead aiming his resources toward increasingly abstract, tedious vanity projects, both on and off screen. The only thing more grating than his films are his dutiful fans who continue to fuel his cult of banal weirdness. There is a great, romantic delusion in thinking the eccentric or 'other' possess special ability or insight.

He is by all account a great actor. He averages more than a film a year, something like thiry-forty movies since 1983. Yet when I look at his career I see a few quality comedies, a couple decent dramas, and that's about it. (And none of those aforementioned movies are even from this decade.) I quite frankly can't understand why he doesn't get better roles offered or why he insists on the ones he has been taking for three decades (a lot of theatre obligations?). By all the critical acclaim you'd expect a resume of a 'great actor' to be less marred by such inane filler. As far as I know, the late John Cazale made only five films (in less than nine years, no less) and they were all excellent; it isn't impossible to make a great movie twice a decade.

Malick is a bit of a wild card. His output isn't horrible but then neither is it terribly impressive; with five (ambitious yet hare-brained) films in forty years, he is the anti-Sidney Lumet. Talk about bad timing, you wait twenty years to make a movie, and Spielberg releases the most memorable film of that genre at exactly the same time. Along the way Malick has been phasing out the human element in his films for decades in favor of some intangible sense of spirituality, with frequently awkward stream of consciousness narration (in the case of Days of Heaven, improvised at the last moment in place of the dialogue he had written). His own actors are among the most vocal detractors, his capricious directing, oxygen-deprived writing style, and baffling editing choices a source of recurring criticism. The grandiose but empty Tree of Life is yet another film that seems to confirm the worst. It's all been down hill since Badlands.

Watching the soap box satire Buffalo Bill, it hit me. Robert Alman's entire career was spent coasting on MASH's success. Of his subsequent works in that decade: Brewster McCloud is completely forgettable, McCabe and Mrs. Miller is preachy and dull, The Long Goodbye is a botched neo-noir, Nashville (I finally realize after years of defending) is horribly overrated and self-indulgent, and Quintet is a huge waste of time. He closed out the decade with the moronic Popeye. That decade, as I'm told, was supposedly his peak, but other than the aforementioned MASH and merely satisfactory California Split, he has little else to show. 3 Women was only produced through sheer reputation despite the fact it feels like imitation-Bergman, complete with a scattershot script and loopy trio of characters even he couldn't be bothered to understand. The Eighties was basically purgatory for Altman, and he was rightly relegated to t.v. Even The Player, his highly praised comeback, appeals only to a niche audience.

By his later years, new minds like Paul Thomas Anderson had taken Altman's blueprint and were doing it better, rendering the old man obsolete. It's astounding how a lot people don't see how oafish his characters are, his direction smug. His lauded anti-establishment views rarely transcended simple counter-culture truisms: war is bad, politicans are bad, Hollywood is bad, capitalism is bad, colonialism is bad, outsiders & eccentrics are good, etc. Coincidentally, it takes a brave, insightful artist to speak truth to power and mock Nixon a decade after he resigned.

I lost track of his Pirate movies by now. He has a Faustian contract with Tim Burton which now appears to be dragging his career into merchandized, cheesy oblivion. Like Kevin Kline, he is yet another actor who apparently has gotten sick of making interesting movies, turning to make, instead, a series of kids movies based on a forty year-old amusement park ride, among other recent insipid paychecks. Compare his films in the Nineties to his post-Millenium roles for a depressing comparison. And unlike some struggling actors, he isn't doing it out of necessity. He is now content playing a real life parody of a burn-out, disaffected celebrity, to cool to have to worry about his image and lifestyle, but still having to take awful roles to finance it. Concerning his recent failures, he's been big enough to blame on 'dumb' rural American audiences and nefarious, jealous film critics.

....speaking of Faust...Looking at his résumé, one gets the feeling Clooney made a lot of promises along the way to get to the place he is today. He alternates wildly between unfunny comedies and urgent social-message dramas one assumes he does pro bono as long as he can write or direct. I like George (more so behind the camera), but he's no star-activist like Henry Fonda, or star-producer of the magnitude of Burt Lancaster. He's more like Robert Redford, an affable guy who has shockingly only made a handful of classic movies in his fifty-year career. Of Clooney's thirty-plus legitimate films roles (generously discounting his documentaries, shorts, voice-overs, cameos, or early obscure roles) he's really only made about six or seven movies worth watching, with an equal or greater amount of bombs. That's a terrible track record for a guy with his pick of projects. For every charming film like Confessions of A Dangerous Mind we get a bunch of brain-numbing turkeys like The Men Who Stare at Goats or The American. In all films managing seldom to break character, that character being, of course, George Clooney (aka that unflappable, conflicted guy in a nice suit who runs around uttering terse, important lines in a cellphone while ultimately deciding to do the 'right thing'). Acting aside, he seems to judge movie scripts with the same discernment a dog perceives between Mountain Dew and champagne. Recent films such as The Descendants, Michael Clayton, and Up in the Air are a few good examples of timely, sober movies overflowing with Oscar cachet but which have absolutely no lasting appeal or rewatchabilty. George has got to have the most lackluster CV of any superstar working.

If I told you name the best living non-documentary director, Roman Polanski's name would leap to mind among Stephen Frears, Martin Scorsese, Bernardo Bertolucci, or Steven Spielberg. That hardly figures when you consider how remarkably barren the last four decades have been. The Ghost Writer was a sloppy satire/thriller. Carnage was a bore. The Pianist was a needless, dull bomb (it won an Oscar, but so did Crash and Slumdog Millionaire, so who really cares). His last remotely notable effort is Frantic; that was made during the latter half of the Reagan administration. Need I say more? Remember, this is the same guy who made Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby. It's easy to denounce a director for a terrible style, or making repetitive or self-obsessed movies, but in Polanksi's case, it's more like he either lost his touch or stopped trying.

After Goodfellas, Liotta looked like the next De Niro or at least a respectable star with first-billing potential. That didn't happen. His career unraveled, and he's sadly mostly a guess star of sorts, utilized to lend second and third-rate movies some credibility (with the notable exception of Copland). Ray Liotta went from being a potential star to a set-piece in barely above direct-to-video level productions.

Woody Allen gets much flack for his redundant, often self-parodying films, and in all repect he deserves the blame, too. His career was built on a simple template: neurotic, Jewish New Yorker and his quirky struggle to find meaning and lasting love amid career mediocrity and personal stagnation, set up by his most well-honed one-liners. Essentially Woody reimagined himself and personality, almost verbatim, in slighlty different situations from film to film. Most of the time his films clicked, even the bad ones were worth seeing, but at some point in the early nineties his previous razor-sharp wit became noticeably dulled. Like a guy who repeats the same stories at every party because he legitimately has no new ones to tell, Allen became an irrelevant, slightly obnoxious bore.

This one is particulary painful for me. This was a toss up. Everyone mocks Al Pacino and De Niro for their rather rancid string of movies the past decade or so, Righteous Kill a good example. It's too obvious, I can't put both on here; Pacino did a decent job as Shylock and Jack Kevorkian, so the target goes on De Niro. His career is naturally bound to decline from it's lofty peak in 1980, but so much he is forced to make a piece of *bleep* like Machete? Do you really need the money, Bobby? Can I lend you a couple bucks? (I realize he has partially bankrolled the Tribeca Film Fest since it's inception so I will cut him a little slack. And even my hero Max von Sydow agreed to do Flash Gordon and Dune, so who's perfect?)

An actor who loved acting (that is to say a man who loved the sound of his own voice, and rightfully so), Orson Welles did many, many movies. The little acknowledged truth by film buffs is that many of his roles are merely cameos or easy pay days in forgotten movies (most of them below his prestige). He was connected to the abortive Jodorowsky production of Dune along with the likes of such respected thespians as Salvador Dali, Mick Jagger and the midget from Fantasy Island -- but only on the condition he got his own private gourmet chef. This gives you some idea how seriously he took his craft by this point in his life if Casino Royale and The Late, Great Planet Earth didn't tell you enough. He never had a meaty role after '65, which was the same year that essentially marked the end of his career as a director of feature films, perhaps by his own undoing. He was an overrated creative force (Citizen Kane was likely influenced by an earlier film and no, using the news bulletin format for his infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast wasn't his idea either, nor was it his script), possessing far more talent as huckster, whose output was compromised or outright botched as money and enthusiasm dried up. He never reached his full potential. His decline is perhaps best epitomized in his later turn as an argumentative, tipsy pitchman hawking frozen peas.

Solid in every performance, Kathleen Turner suffered from the inevitable bias against aging actresses compounded by an abortive star-making vehicle, and an even more diastrous debilitating physical ailment that cost her years when she should have been in her peak. She was red hot in the Eighties, but by the next decade she was deemed unacceptable leading actress material. She was only in her late-thirties. She hit her stride too late to establish herself a megastar like Maryl Streep or Glenn Close, which might have allowed her to recover her former status intact. She went from being cast as a sultry femme fatale to dumpy housewife in a span of five years.

His first 'real' feature length film, Clerks, is his best by a mile and probably the only movie in Smith's body of work worth viewing. A series of increasingly formulaic, mostly unfunny movies followed after, capitalizing on his previous glory. He is now a self-made pariah to many in the industry. That is very unfortunate but it is his fault, he alienated himself and made a lot of bad movies. I feel like I could say this about many of the directors on the list, but Kevin Smith may very well have had just enough good ideas to make one or two great movies in his lifetime, and that is all.

Spike Lee debuted as a groundbreaking and fearless voice among timid and tepid fellow directors. Malcolm X and Do the Right Thing are magnificent. Overtime much of his effort has been devoted to documentaries, which I will leave out of my judgement. Of his remaining work: 25th Hour was an admirable effort, but his later work is awful.

Son of legendary Henry Fonda, brother to the talented Jane, Peter somehow vanished slowly, but surely, from public eye ever since 1969's Easy Rider. He's sort of a one hit wonder of actors. One could assume from his offbeat film choices, and let's just say 'mellow' lifestyle, that Peter never really wanted to be a conventional Hollywood star, in any case.

He can make a mediocre script look good, but it's still just as empty as any other piece of %^* Hollywood craps out. Regardless if I personally empathize with his politics, all to often his social messages feel banal and simple, not bold or though-provoking. Sex, Lies and Videotape remains his lone great film. It's all downhill afterward. Out of Sight was a glossy but underwhelming little dud. The Informant an equally flaccid attempt at comedy, or drama, or tragedy, or whatever. Contagion is another microcosm of his career, a film with moments of intermittent brillance amid a cliched riddled premise, a bloated cast, and a predictably politicized, ironic end. It notably features a Miami Vice-style drug rip off, and such pseudo-intellectual platitudes as 'Print media is dying!' and 'Blogging isn’t writing, it’s graffiti with punctuation' or 'A scary movie gets more attention than a CDC warning!' Magic Mike and Behind the Candelabra, while enticing concepts, disguise formulaic stories, flat endings, and banal moral lessons: 'follow your dreams' and 'it is better to loved and lost than to never loved at all.' His Che docudrama and Kafka-themed bomb are best forgotten altogether.

Supposedly retired, he now devotes his time fashionably lecturing Hollywood on their financial preoccupations and lack of originality (in other words, for not being independent studios), apparently oblivious he's the same man responsible for reinterpretations of Solaris and Traffic, an Ocean remake and its two sequels, the fourth installment in the diminishing Spalding Gray monologue series, an indulgent, retro-noir that unbelievably lost 25 million dollars, and a myriad of other obscure critical and financial flops such as The Girlfriend Experience, underwritten by his studio successes.

At somepoint Malcolm McDowell's career went off the rails. It is likely still in the ditch; no one's been looking. His career, full of potential, inexplicably disintegrated (wow, how many times can I repeat that cliche in one list). Though actually his burst bubble could likely be tied to the notorious bomb Caligula. His performance in Clockwork Orange is the stuff of legend; nothing to date matches it, and nothing that he's done since the Seventies could be described as even worthy of being called mediocre. Obviously Malcolm favors the quantity over quality route, proving one can, in fact, coast off one role their entire life. In the process making Ben Kingsley and Liam Neeson's recent slumming look modest in comparison. But in his defense, at least he wasn't in Dune.

He's revered among multiple generations of directors, has an honorary Oscar, and his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. However, it's rarely voiced that his prolific and versatile directing career is marked by films that inspired or were later remade as far superior films (eg: The Thing from Another World remade as The Thing, Viva Villa! as Viva Zapata!, Scarface as Scarface), or adapted from more daring or iconic films (eg: His Girl Friday adapted from The Front Page, To Have and Have Not from Casablanca). His screwball comedies date badly, his silents nobody pretends to care about, and he spent his twilight years making several uninspired Westerns that would have surely passed into obscurity if not for John Wayne's star power. Even his 'good' movies were plagued by corny dialogue, bad plotting, stiff acting, or cheesy emotional scenes, Red River a prime example of a nearly great film undone by its over-glossed third act. Squandering his clout and ability to corral talented writers and stars he amazingly avoided making a single classic film in his life. In forty years he never even came close to making a signature film on par with his contemporaries, Hitchcock, Sturges, Huston, Ford, Wilder, Lang, Wellman, or Welles.

Lost amid the praise for the recently departed Ephron is the fact the majority of her movies are terrible; most have already eased effortlessly into heavy rotation on basic cable. Witty and beloved as she was, she basically made chickflicks that lacked any semblance of intellectuality. Her first few film credits show promise, but her output the last twenty years was pretty lame. She lacked range and imagination, her work was redundant and amazingly shallow. She deserves as much scorn for her Woody Allen-lite subject matter and sitcom-grade writing as for her part in inspiring thousands of unnecessary, unwatchable rom-coms. Her personality and her position as a successful female writer/director in Hollywood probably exaggerated her reputation more than her filmography would seem to support. Her spotty screenwriting credits are matched only by her questionable directing choices. Furthermore, anytime a filmmaker starts dragging their family into important positions in the production of their movie, it's a bad omen -- just ask Francis Ford Coppola or Will Smith.

Dune. (The sci-fi debacle epitomizes a career of questionable choices.)

I can't think of a more pronounced decline of artistic and intellectual credibility than this. His celebrated anti-docudrama J.F.K. might as well mark the moment Mr. Stone degraded from contemplative know-it-all to tinfoil hat, makes-your-eyes-roll know-it-all. His early films, even if you didn't agree with them politically, were undeniably entertaining and thought-provoking. But I think he got too full of himself and his ability. Compare his Scarface script to his latest dud, Savages, which he also co-wrote. The previous film's curses ('$&@/i!# little monkey' remains one the most unintentionally funny lines to this day -- alongside the 'Do you remember when you took amyl nitrate in college?' line from the Emily Barringer biopic), machismo, and clichés are still as endearing as they came off thirty-years ago. Can you think of anyone who will recall Savages fondly in five years, with its now perfunctory use of expletives and violence, and time-sensitive political references? If the cracks started to appear with The Doors the crumbling was irreversible with Alexander. Talk Radio an intriguing failure, Natural Born Killers an obnoxious attention-grabbing hoax. His 'W' is little more than a glorified made-for-cable movie.

As several critics keenly note, James Bond is basically P Diddy, a boring playboy. Though the real problem with Ian Fleming's hero lies not in the fact that he isn't 'dark enough,' isn't Jason Bourne, has too many commercial tie-ins, or lacks a John le Carre-like backstory, it's literally everything else. The conceit of the franchise, afterall, is that James Bond is ageless, even if producers hire bland directors and writers to smooth down his rough edges. His former 'flaws' (smoking, misogyny, bad jokes, elitism) were defense mechanisms and signifiers that at least hinted at an underlying personality; he no longer even has that, only vague anguish.

The franchise is stuck in an arms race with itself. The brand uses nostalgia and predictibility as a crutch, and the audience is partly to blame. In obvious overcompensation to appear progressive, the female characters have become karate-chopping nuclear physicists but who regardless still need to be saved by 007. The once mysterious Bond has been provided an unsatisfying backstory when what he really needed was a more nuanced perspective or personal dilemmas. He needs believable villains, and dare I say, more intellectual themes or ethical conflicts (the crucial element of le Carre the writers seem to miss) instead of incessant globetrotting and villains with quirky hairstyles. Even the best premises are usually ruined by exaggerated &/or hokey set pieces, shallow characters, and toothless international intrigue.