No Oscars for Old Men
by James Roland
Allow me to be young for a moment.
Why is it that all of my favorite film directors start to make horrible movies in the last half of their career? What is the DEAL?
Case in point, Rob Reiner. Undoubtedly one of the reining kings of the 80s and early 90s, Reiner helmed four of my favorite movies: This is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, and Stand By Me. Four fantastic, original, different films. Then he hit the 90s with two decent entries, Misery and A Few Good Men, and then he hit the brick wall at age 47. The uneven North was followed with the forgettable The American President and he quickly descended into the dredges of Ghosts of Mississippi, The Story of Us, and the god-awful Alex and Emma. Next up is the past-their-prime cancer buddy comedy The Bucket List starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Maybe Reiner will act his age and add the class and wisdom that he seemed to have in his youth.
This is where it gets a little touchy. I’m about to say some pretty nasty things about a man I adore.
See . . . here’s the deal with Steven Spielberg. With only a few flops sprinkled in, Spielberg graced us with fourteen fantastic films, from his first TV film Duel (written by Richard Matheson, author of I Am Legend) to the peaks of E.T. and Indiana Jones, the lesser known Twilight Zone: The Movie and Always, and ending with the double punch of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in 1993. Then he took a break for four years and lost us with The Lost World, bored us with Amistad, underwhelmed us with Saving Private Ryan, confused us with A.I., and drowned us with mediocrity via Minority Report, Catch Me if You Can, The Terminal, War of the Worlds, and Munich.
With only the dubiously titled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and his endlessly “in-production” Abraham Lincoln bio-pic in the works, it looks like we’ll have to wait until his recently announced Tintin – a co-directing effort with Peter Jackson that will implement the technology forged by Beowulf and The Polar Express – to see if he has any good material left.
But there is a bit of hope.
The Coen Brothers have a long history of high quality films. Blood Simple, The Hudsucker Proxy, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, O Brother Where Art Thou. Even the overly artsy The Man Who Wasn’t There, despite its snail’s pacing and depressing tones, was a visual masterpiece.
Then came Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, two pointless efforts to meld the Coen Brother’s quirky style with main stream Hollywood fodder. They both fail. Miserably. In particular, Intolerable Cruelty might be one of the worst films this decade.
But early reports look good for the duo’s latest project, No Country for Old Men. Based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy (the author rocketed to near super stardom when his novel The Road was picked by Oprah’s book club), the film looks to be a straight thriller, edgy and violent and starring Tommy Lee Jones and the talented Josh Brolin.
Let’s hope it’s a comeback for the brothers, and if it is, let’s hope Steven and Rob take notes.
My Network
