It’s Oscar season, people! Can’t you just feel the crackling excitement? The buzz of all those great performances filling the air? The power of all those dynamic scenes jus… hello? Uhh, hello out there! It’s Oscar season! Y’know, little gold statues, longwinded, teary speeches, a staggering tendency to reward old white men for making movies about people exactly like themselves? Come on, I know you know what I’m talking about.
Anyway, nothing gets me excited about movies like the giant chain of self-congratulatory backslapping Hollywood schedules every year for the couple of months prior to the ceremony in late February. Amid all the discussion about which films deserve which awards (and which got snubbed, and which we’re just going to jointly pretend never happened at all), I find myself evaluating my own thoughts about the great movies I’ve seen in the past year and taking a long, hard look at the directors, actors, and screenwriters who made me sit up and take notice.
It’s in that spirit that I present to you the first (and honestly, who knows, maybe the last) installment of Taking Stock.
The idea is simple: if pop-culture were a stock market, in whom or what would I want to buy stock, and whom or what would I be looking desperately to unload, Wolf of Wall Street-style, on any poor schmuck who crossed my path? My criteria? Also simple: If I heard that every director listed below had a movie releasing this weekend, which tickets would I buy first? The answer to that question is the person whose stock is highest for me right now.
My category of choice, in keeping with Oscar season: Film Directors.
Buying:
Richard Linklater
It’s weird to say that a director who’s been making feature films since 1991 (and who’s been a household name for film buffs since Dazed and Confused released in 1993) is just now hitting his peak, but in Linklater’s case, it may actually be true. His 12-years-in-the-making Boyhood has built a ton of Best Picture momentum, and he’s accomplished enough as an indie director that he’s essentially going to be free to make the films he wants to make (his next is a “spiritual sequel” – no, I’m not really sure what that means either – to Dazed, titled That’s What I’m Talking About) without studios peering over his shoulder or trying to rig casting choices to include former Disney channel starlets (If you think Miley Cyrus isn’t going to end up in movies at some point, God bless your foolish little head). This matters because in a cineplex full of cash-in sequels and superhero franchises (some of which I love, to be fair), Richard Linklater is going to keep doing his own thing, and right now, on the heels of Before Midnight and Boyhood, “his own thing” is as good as it gets in movies right now.
David Fincher
David Fincher took a book that I didn’t care for enough to even finish (yes, I’m the only person in the contiguous 48 states who DNF’ed Gone Girl) and turned it into the most intense theater-going experience I can remember having. You know how they say that when people watched Psycho for the first time back in the day, they all but lost their minds with shock and revulsion? Now I know what those people felt like. But the thing about Fincher is that he (like Hitchcock, who is his most notable touchstone) generates those sorts of visceral responses so frequently that it’s easy to forget how impressive it is in the first place. Ever since Se7en (speaking of shock and revulsion), Fincher has been making us squirm. Hell, his depiction of a lonely software coder in The Social Network made me want to shout at the screen about as much as his prowling serial killer in Zodiac. Edgy without being gratuitous, compelling without pandering, David Fincher is as good a studio filmmaker as we’ve got.
Alejandro G. Iñárritu
If you hated Birdman, just skip to the next entry. Go on, I’ll wait… All right, now that we’ve got those fools out of the way, can we collectively acknowledge that nobody is as daring a filmmaker as this guy? When people use the word “visionary,” they’re too often referring generically to directors in possession of huge budgets instead of those like Iñárritu, who challenges his audiences and seems to spend most of his free time thinking of ways to punch their emotions in the (metaphorical – or, actually, maybe not; it’s hard to tell with this guy) groin. Is Birdman for everybody? No. None of his movies are the stuff of blockbusters. It’s easy (and a lazy cop-out) to use this fact to accuse Iñárritu of catering to film school students and elitists who throw up in their mouths when they hear the word “popular,” but my feeling is that he’s happiest when he’s divisive, because that means that he’s pushing buttons and making people think. If more than a handful of directors did the same, my “buy” list would be a lot longer.
Steve McQueen
McQueen is the only director on my “buy” list who didn’t release a movie this year. Last year, though, his 12 Years a Slave won Best Picture and wowed me enough to keep me waiting with bated breath to see what he’ll put out next. It occurs to me as I type this that my “buy” list is – outside of Linklater – basically a collection of people who are really good at conveying misery onscreen. I’m just going to skate right past that and assume it says nothing about me on a personal level, deal? Deal. Anyway, back to McQueen: he’s a feather-ruffler, and those kinds of directors are the ones that hold my interest. The subjects of his films (hunger strikes, sex addiction, and slavery) are in themselves a kind of gauntlet he’s throwing down, and a reassurance that he’s never going to take the easy way out.
Selling:
Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson is collapsing in on himself, and it feels for all the world like I’m the only person who notices. His last two movies, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, feature many of Anderson’s hallmarks (precocious children, bizarre injuries, an abundance of floral patterns), but lack the humor and heart of his work up through Fantastic Mr. Fox. Naturally, his work is more popular than ever (TGBH is his highest-grossing film), AND more critically-acclaimed (TGBH earned NINE Oscar nominations, somehow). Obviously, I’m in the minority here, but I feel like the things that were once the quaint accents of Anderson’s work have now become its obsessive focus. Characters – the strength of Anderson’s best movies – have been replaced by caricatures, and his signature visuals have been turned up to 11 (the result: when everything stands out, nothing stands out). The only part of Anderson’s work I’m not selling at this point is his continued use of Bill Murray, who is the bacon of actors: he’s great on his own and he makes everything around him instantly better.
Martin Scorsese
Marty, you know I love you, right? Remember Taxi Driver? And Raging Bull? Goodfellas? Sigh. Yeah, those were good times. And hey, I even thought the backlash over you winning Best Director for The Departed was silly. Your best work: no way, but one heavy-handed CGI rat doesn’t undo two and-a-half hours of good work, my friend. And so it hurts me to say this, Marty, it really does. But your best days are behind you. Don’t get me wrong, you still land a few punches now and then, but it’s gotten harder, hasn’t it? The Wolf of Wall Street was entertaining, but far from great. Hugo was heartwarming, but ditto. Are you kind of sailing by on your rep at this point? At least a little, right? I mean, come on, who wouldn’t? Your name used to be enough to get me in a theater on opening night, but lately it feels like you’re going a little grandpa-ish on us. If any of our grandpa’s encouraged such persistent, vociferous use of the f-word, that is. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’ve got a little late career magic in you, and you know I’ll always give you a chance to prove me wrong. And honestly, I really hope you do. I really f@$#!*g hope you do.
Clint Eastwood
Quick, without consulting Wikipedia, guess how many movies Clint Eastwood has directed since the year 2000. Go ahead. The answer? 13. That’s almost a movie a year! From a dude who’s now 84 years old! Amazing, right? All right, now think about how many really good movies Eastwood has made out of those 13. Uhh, there was the one with the grouchy old coot who spews political incorrectness for laughs. No, not that one, the other one. No the other other one. Have you settled on a number? By my count, it’s no more than three: Mystic River (unquestionable), Million Dollar Baby (hasn’t aged well, but still in the upper tier), Letters from Iwo Jima (maybe his most underrated). Most of the other films Eastwood has made in the last 15 years are solid. They’re fine. He makes competent films, gets effective performances from his actors, and collects awards and nominations for his efforts. Eastwood as a figure is compelling, but as a director, he’s stuck on the OK plateau. And yes, I’m aware that many of you have probably been screaming the words “American” and “Sniper” at your phones or computers for the last 60 seconds. Confession: I haven’t seen it, and I’m probably not going to until the hype dies down. The reason I can say that? Eastwood hasn’t made a recent movie good enough for me to plunk down theater money on it. If Bradley Cooper and his extra 40 pounds ends up proving me wrong, I’ll gladly cop to it, but it’s going to have to wait its turn.
Quentin Tarantino
It’s weird for me to put Tarantino anywhere but at the top of a favorites list, but he’s got me a little concerned. Django Unchained had a lot going for it, but it seemed like the last stop on a train QT’s been riding since Kill Bill: the Obscure Genre Love Letter Express. We get it, man. You spent your youth watching trashy exploitation flicks, Kung-Fu movies, and Westerns, and now you’ve spent the last decade-plus of your adulthood writing and directing (thoroughly entertaining) homages to all that stuff. Now you’re busy shooting The Hateful Eight… another Western. Will it be funny and bloody and feature at least one aging actor’s complete career renaissance? Of course it will. But, as much as I love your affectionate schlock, it’d be nice to see something resembling grand ambition again, you know? Instead, I fear you’ve painted yourself into a corner, and what’s worse, you’re pretty content over in your corner. So go ahead, finish your current project, and then let’s get to work on that Vega brothers movie you’re always talking about. And be quick about it. I mean, it isn’t like John Travolta and Michael Madsen are just sitting around all day, staring at their phones, waiting for you to call, sobbing quietly to themselves.
So what about it, people? Who’d I leave off? Let me hear it in the comments.
(Oh, and yes, I’m aware that there are no women on this list. I thought about Kathryn Bigelow – whose The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty are both great – but it’s been three years since her last movie. The truth is, with the rare exception of someone like Angelina Jolie – who has enough clout to get her projects off the ground – women don’t get enough chances to direct major motion pictures, and when they do, they’re often ignored by the institutions (like the Academy) that can help them get seen by bigger, wider audiences. Ava DuVernay, anyone? Anyway, let me know about any women doing good work in the director’s chair whose work I might not have seen.)