Overrated Directors: Hitch? Scorsese? Aronofsky?

Ben Shapiro seems like a bright enough guy. He's certainly more motivated than most, having entered UCLA at 16, expanded his horizons at Harvard, and built a small but multi-tiered one-man media machine. He blogs, he's a Fox News contributor, he writes articles for other sites. And now he's talking movies at Big Hollywood, and I think he's just trying to get a rise out of people. How else do you explain someone saying Hitchcock "never made a great film" or admonishing the lack of editing in Martin Scorsese movies, even though Thelma Schoonmaker is one of the best and most artful cutters in the history of cinema? Shapiro counts down this ten most overrated directors of all time, and it's a brazen list. I do agree with him that some of the filmmakers he's chosen probably get a little too much credit; I'm a huge Michael Mann fan, but he is a stylist first and a storyteller second. Darren Aronofsky may not be reinventing the wheel, but he is not, as Shapiro puts it, "a talentless dud." And he throws out absolutes with no corroborating evidence, or at least, no historical framework. Saying all of David Lean's films are 30 minutes too long forgets that the industry kind of mandated lengthy epics for decades. Even still, neither Lawrence of Arabia nor Bridge on the River Kwai are much too long. Dated, yes, but only in terms of how the productions were executed. They are masterpieces and not, as Shaprio asserts, something less. He also says Alien is slow, when counting the many reasons Ridley Scott is overvalued. More than anything, Shapiro's article reads like a hit list instead of well-honed criticism. I'll leave further comments to you. 1 - Alfred Hitchcock
2 - Martin Scorsese
3 - Woody Allen
4 - Quentin Tarantino
5 - David Lynch
6 - Mike Nichols
7 - Darren Aronofsky
8 - David Lean
9 - Michael Mann
10- Ridley Scott

Comments

[TheWolf]

I agree. This looks more like the all-star team than a overrated list. Of course they have flaws but what director doesn't. Shapiro is just making noise.

[nick soapdish]

how is quentin tarantino on that list? I would love to see his list of top ten directors, who would he put on there? and where is michael bay?

[SEAN]

WOW you have got to be f-ing kidding me...

Completely agree with TheWolf.... this list is a Directors dream!!!!

So basically F this guy Ben Shapiro, I've never heard of this nobody, trying to get famous...

He writes for Fox News, I mean isn't that enough said, looking at his bio on his website this dude is a far right wing nut, he's been on everything from Beck to Rush to O'Reilly, & he's an overtly Christian/religious fanatic by the looks of it....
--of course this guy wouldn't "get" these remarkable illustrious filmmakers...

FUCK BEN SHAPIRO for saying something he knows literally nothing about, stick to politics w/ all the other slimeballs

[MRPigg]

Saying Hitchcock is overrated is like saying that Picasso is not a very good painter or Beethoven is not a very good composer...

Any kind of validity to the argument is devalued by including Hitchcock, especially with no factual evidence to present his case. As such, I could care less if he is "right" about any of the other directors on the list.

[Get The Big Picture]

I can see someone making an argument that any of these guys might be overrated to a certain point, because the great ones have so many fans they tend to get passes for lesser work. That's true in any endeavor. But these ten are nowhere near the top ten, based simply on their individual accomplishments and undeniable impact.

[KXB]

I've seen this guy- he looks (and acts) like Sean Hannity's unwanted son...

[knives]

Bwaa-bawat? This leaves me sort of speechless. While with the exception of Lynch I wouldn't describe any of these as favorites, and actually dislike a few, his criticisms, if you want to call it that, to them are either unverifiable nonsense (Lean making too long pictures) or are qualities that many admirers love of those directors (Mann and style). But just saying Hitchcock never made a decent picture is baloney. Even if he were a hack, which he is not, the sheer numbers of films he made presents a probability that at least one of them is good.

[anybody]

"Directors get too much credit when a movie goes right, and too little blame when a movie goes wrong." Does this quote make sense to anyone else? It certainly doesn't to me... as a writer I agree that a large part of a success of a film is about the writing, but a good director can make a decent script great and equally a bad director can ruin a brilliant script. It seems that a "likable lead" character is a must for his enjoyment/approval so that cancels out any really challenging or truthful filmmaking, not everyone is likable and not all stories are uplifting (I wonder what he thinks about Bergman). Also it seems that if a plot is not A-B-C he's out as well. Lastly, it seems like he doesn't even understand the films that he is bashing... "The psychoanalysis at the end of Psycho is laughable." Isn't that kind of the point? Mocking the way films like that wrap everything up into a nice neat package. Plus in 1960 Hollywood you had to tack on some stupid explanation or motive as to why a killer kills. A few of those directors are some of my favs and in careers that have spanned decades everyone is bound to make a few bad films but they overcome that with the ones that are truly brilliant. I wonder who his favourite filmmakers are? Brett Ratner?