The best movie director of all time?
I'd say he is top 5 at least.
--Michael D. Clarke
I agree, but I cannot place him higher than 5th.
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MovieChat Forums > James Cameron Discussion > The best movie director of all time?
Below is an amusing sketch about Soderbergh trying to get his Solaris remake going...
Exec 1: Solaris! Look Steven, why don’t you just shoot us and burn down the studio. It’ll save time.
Steven: George Clooney has agreed to star.
Exec 1: He has to fight an alien monster.
Steven: No.
Exec 2: George Clooney’s ass. And it has to be a shot where you can see that it’s really his ass, not a double’s.
Steven: I can do that.
Exec 1: 4 times.
Steven: Once. Anything more would be too obvious.
Exec 1: Thrice.
Steven: I didn’t know you knew the word ‘thrice.’
Exec 1: Princeton SAT preps my friend.
Steven: Twice.
Exec 1: Done.
Exec 1: Now Steven, this is not going to be a slow paced, intellectual snore fest like that Russian piece of shit right?
Steven: No. I promise.
Exec 1: Well I’m afraid I’m still going to have to say
STEVEN looks into the hallway and sees JAMES CAMERON walking by.
Steven: One second.
Exec 1: Sure.
STEVEN darts into the hallway and grabs JAMES CAMERON by the shoulder.
Steven: You know how people who can read hate you?
James: Yeah.
Steven: You should produce this movie I’m doing. Very intellectual. You might earn some respect.
James: That’s what they said about winning an Oscar.
Steven: Who said that?
James: Joan and Melissa Rivers.
Steven: Yeah, well… this time it’s true.
James: What do I have to do?
Steven: Just follow me.
STEVEN leads JAMES back into the conference room.
Steven: James has agreed to produce.
Exec 1: Well. That’s reassuring. James, you’re not going to make this thing too intellectual are you?
James: Well, I guess…
Exec 1: I was kidding James. Let’s do this thing.
The best director of all time is Stanley Kubrick. That will never change.
James Cameron belongs in the top 10, no doubt.
I don't even think he is in the top 20.
shareDo you have a top 20? Mind sharing it? Just curious.
shareI don't have an official top 20, but I do have a top 10:
Alfred Hitchcock
Martin Scorsese
Steven Spielberg
Stanley Kubrick
Ingmar Bergman
Woody Allen
Quentin Tarantino
Wes Anderson
Christopher Nolan
David Fincher
The next group of 10 would likely include (in no particular order) William Wyler, Billy Wilder, David Cronenberg, the Coen brothers, Peter Jackson, Francis Ford Coppola, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Terrence Malick, and Jean-Luc Godard.
Never heard of William Wyler, but have heard of the rest. Thank you for posting this.
shareYou should check out some of William Wyler's films. He won 3 Oscars and is considered by many to be one of the alltime greats. Some of his best films include: Ben-Hur (1959), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Roman Holiday (1953).
shareThanks, even if I don't promise to. I prefer other media to movies currently.
shareMost Best Director Oscar Nominations EVER.
shareDelete this, Steven.
shareI rank him as maybe the most overrated director of all time.
shareClearly, you have a superficial understanding of cinema and art in general.
shareNo way. Cameron is a visionary and genius, and he knows how to draw a crowd, but he’s a mediocre artist.
Sure, next to most writers and directors he’s damn good and has made some of the best popcorn movies ever, but stand him next to Scorsese and Kubrick and he looks like a hack.
After True Lies he really started to lose his talent, and now he’s devoted the rest of his life to the very mediocre Avatar films. Worse, he won’t allow TL or The Abyss to be released on blu-ray or UHD, and he allowed that travesty of a UHD, T2, to be released. He also produced Dark Fate which confirms that he hates his earlier, better work, and its many fans.
Cameron is simply someone who makes bad movies from time to time. He might be creatively over, he might not. But he definitely does not look like a hack compared to Scorsese. Nobody knows the lines of Mean Streets or The Color of Money in the way they know about Taxi Driver. Scorsese is winding down, maybe just like Cameron. They are both humans not gods. The only difference between them is that you worship one and dislike the other. That can hardly be a fertile ground for valuable thought.
shareExtraordinarily dumb and wrong. Scorsese and Cameron are both exceptional filmmakers but very different. Scorsese is a true artist with a vast filmography who continues to deliver masterworks into his 80’s. Cameron is a visionary and genius who made some of the best popcorn movies ever but who lost his magic touch, insists on pounding the audience with eco-messaging, and seems to hate his earlier, better work and its fans. The situation is complex, I neither ‘worship’ nor ‘dislike’ either - you’re projecting your simplistic, emotional, binary worldview onto others.
You also seem to think the general public memorising lines of dialogue is some kind of measure of a film’s quality… 🤣
With classics like The Irishman coming out only a few years ago, Scorsese is clearly not ‘winding down’, another dunce take. Hilarious that you imagine you might be able to determine ‘valuable thought’ after a stunningly stupid post like that 🤣
From your first post I thought you were a troll or simply biased. But here you took your obtuseness to even more deeper depths. Sadly you'll die a misguided fanboy. You're terminally blunt and you have no nuance in your taste in movies.
shareA typically vapid reply which says nothing about me but reveals everything about you.
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