MovieChat Forums > filmgeek99
filmgeek99 (606)
Posts
movies that were really popular just a few years ago that seem to have already been forgotten?
good directors with weak visual chops?
Winners and Nominees of Golden Schmoes' "Best T&A of the Year" Award
RIP
is Anne Lewis a lesbian?
movies that feel comfy to you?
hottest moans you've heard in movies?
films you started but never finished?
wanted a mutant hooker in X3
View all posts >
Replies
Agreed, the acting was horrible too. The lead girl either overacts or underacts in every scene she's in, while the rest of the cast is either wooden or monotone. Just dreadful all-around.
Probably will be.
I honestly fail to see the point of a movie centered around Gollum.
A film going for a docudrama look doesn't necessarily mean bland visuals. Plenty of movies that go for a raw, gritty, cinema verite look have far better visuals than what Bigelow has done lately. Going back to my two examples earlier, both Alfonso Cuaron and the Safdie brothers make far better use of a similar style in their works.
Children of Men, for instance, while also having a very gritty, documentary-esque look to it, is a far more visceral and visually striking film as a whole as Cuaron makes far better uses of long takes and motivated camera moves as opposed to Bigelow's more sporadic approach.
Heaven Knows What, similarly, is also a gritty film, but its visual style compliments the story far more than any of Bigelow's recent works. There, the Safdies make use of very shallow depth of field on purpose to add to the feeling of being trapped and isolated from drug addiction. There's more expressive lighting too, as while most of the film appears very naturally lit, some scenes deliberately employ a more colorful hue to visually represent the high of doing heroin.
You seem to fail to grasp the difference between what a director does vs. what a DP does. The director is usually the one who designs the shot list, blocks out the scene, and coordinates the movement/framing of each shot. The DP, meanwhile, usually focuses primarily on the lighting and the technical nitty gritty behind each frame (exposure, white balance, contrast ratio etc). There's always some overlap between them but that's usually how it works.
A key way to figure out just how good a director is visually is to look at the consistency in their overall works. A genuinely solid visual director would generally make nothing but good-looking films for the majority of their career, whereas a slightly lesser director may fluctuate a bit based on the DP they hire and the subject matter they tackle. The latter is likely the camp where Kathryn Bigelow belongs.
Do you understand me now?
Okay, firstly, why are you getting this emotional over an argument on a movie director of all things? Is Kathryn Bigelow your mom or something? Please keep in mind, I never even said she's a bad director, just that her visual sense is nothing to write home about.
"Please feel free to elaborate on iconic L.A shots in Point Break of which "nothing particularly stands out" such as the tense street lit conversations between Johnny Utah and Angelo Pappas, the nighttime football game, and the adrenaline fueled skydiving scenes to name just a few."
Like I said in my OP, I've only seen Bigelow's most recent batch of films (2009-present) so I can't say much about Point Break, but if you're referring to just simple establishing shots of the city or quick cut action scenes that obscure the actors' faces a lot, then I hate to break this to you but Bigelow probably didn't shoot them. Generally, shots for a film made on that scale that don't feature the lead actors are usually filmed by a second unit crew. And if you're referring to the lighting in the street conversation scenes, then my point from my last post sustains, the lighting is more in the hands of the DP than the director.
Of course, Kathryn herself needs to have the good sense as a director to know the kind of shots the second unit has to get in conjunction with what she filmed to make a scene flow well when cut together later, as well as have good taste in regards to approving/rejecting ideas from the DP, but those are things that are still generally more controlled by those separate units rather than the director themselves.
The effectiveness of those elements in Point Break do prove that she is rather competent in her job, but the fact that her more recent, smaller films (at least in comparison to PB) had such unremarkable visuals is likely a sign of her weakness as a filmmaker. Those films most likely had a lot less stuff shot by a second unit, which is what likely led to them being much weaker visually. Do you get it now?
"Look at the nighttime scenes between Gary Busey and Keanu. Look at that lighting, color and intensity."
That's more of the DP's work than it is Kathryn's. Unless if you are one of those very rare directors who know hows to do the DP's job just as well they do (Kubrick, Cameron, Fincher), chances are, most of the lighting and coloration would be determined mainly by the cinematographer. The director usually just gives some general pointers.
What the director does have much better control over are camera angles, shot sizes, focus lengths, blocking, and movements. And in the case of Kathryn, while none of those elements are necessarily terrible in her works, nothing particularly stands out about them either.
The fact that her earlier works were more traditionally cinematic suggests that she is capable of creating something more aesthetically pleasing and impactful on a pure technical level, but it also makes her decision to embrace the modern Paul Greengrass knockoff style even more of a head scratcher.
"Absolute trash take from OP"
Okay, but why? Explain why you disagree.
bump
From what I hear, he's just a really indecisive, scatterbrained guy who largely just makes the movie up as he goes only to have it fixed later in post. Almost all of his movies have had drastic reshoots as Liman doesn't seem to know what he wants until he sees it in the edit, which obviously pleases no one on set. I think that's where he got his reputation for being difficult from, rather than him being an asshole.
Don't worry, it's been on my watchlist for a while.
View all replies >