Dan

I think horror flicks are best suited under 90 minutes unless it just happens to be REALLY good.

GoldenJCJ

Between Judd Apatow's painfully long comedies and Michael Bay's endless action films, it's becoming painfully obvious that proper editing is a dying art form.

RichC2

Michael Bay movies have always been about "MORE MORE MORE!", Apatow I don't have an explanation for.

Alas, go watch Coherence and have your faith slightly restored... by a movie with a like $500 budget.

Hazel Motes

No American director in the history of the medium had a fuller, more prolific, more complete career and filmography than John Huston. Starting and ending his career with a masterpiece and a whole bunch more throughout the years, his powers as a director never waned and he made consistently great work up until the day he died.

Late John Huston during the 70's and 80's was colossally underappreciated in its time, but stands up with the best American directors from that period. Including but not limited to Scorsese, Coppola, Spielberg, Altman and De Palma.

Ash Ketchum

Huston failed more often than he succeeded. He made a handful of films that were good to great, but many more that were mediocre. His good buddy Billy Wilder (same age/almost identical career arc) succeeded way more than he failed. That's the career you want to celebrate.

Huston's autobiography, "An Open Book," is very good, though.

Solid Snake

I just got his autobiography. It is good.

dhmac

Another bold statement...

An unbroken long take (aka unbroken long shot) is just a showy pretentious exercise that is one of the least effective filmmaking techniques because the longer the take, the worse the scene is. In any film with a scene that's an unbroken long take in it, the scenes around it when actual editing is used always work better. And any film that is entirely just one long take would have worked better if it just used editing.

Dan

^ Wow.

I think you need to see Force Majeure, which IMO, uses long takes in a non-showy yet extremely effective way.

Ash Ketchum

The opening shot of TOUCH OF EVIL wants to have a word with you.

rocket1312

This was my first thought as well. The hospital shoot-out in Hard Boiled is another favorite. Sure it can come off as gimmicky at times, but when used correctly the long take is great at building tension.

EddieMoney

Lifetime's "The Brittany Murphy" story is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Makes "Manos" seem overly competent. And I say that knowing damn well what an amazing critical reception it received!!

Solid Snake

Soooooo ineffective.

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One day.... one day we'll get good BDs of The Killer and Hard Boiled.

rocket1312

There is a pretty good non-English friendly Japanese blu-ray of Hard Boiled that's the basis of a custom fan-made version floating around. If you're into that sort of thing, it's probably as good as it will get for that film.

Ash Ketchum

Thanks for the reminder about HARD-BOILED. I need to see that again.

Sean O'Hara

My favorite is the Chris Tucker segment in Jackie Brown, where Tarantino does four long takes in a row.

Living Deadpan

I take this on a film-by-film (or director-by-director) basis. I would agree if this statement was applied to, say, the majority of Brian De Palma films.

But I very much disagree if we're talking about the famous GOODFELLAS tracking shot. I think Scorsese uses the one-shot in a way that's not gratuitous but is an integral part of that film's visual storytelling. As someone who hates waiting in lines, I find that shot exhilarating!

(But, gaaaawd, I recently tried watching MISSION TO MARS... The film opens with an endless tracking shot of a suburban BBQ party, for chrissake!)

BobO'Link

Steven Spielberg couldn't direct a truly *good* SF film to save his life.

James Cameron's The Abyss, Titanic, and Avatar are highly overrated and not worthy of the lavish praise heaped upon them.

The majority of the "Best Picture" winning films are total crap.

Batman & Robin is a better film than any of the films in "The Dark Knight Trilogy" and I agree about Bale being the worst Batman.

CGI has ruined more films than it's helped.

3D is a *still* nothing but a gimmick and will be gone - again - within 3 years.

stvn1974

Wow, what a grouchy post. I agree with all of it.

Solid Snake

I dunno... China really eats up the 3D. I see it staying longer for Worldwide. Dunno about the US. How has it done here? wasn't it in decline here?

hanshotfirst1138

I know lots of people harbor seething hatred for Nolan's Batman films (I don't get it, but hey, that's just me.), but worse than Batman and Robin? That's pretty damning. B&R is a terrible film on so many levels that I just don't get that at all.

As regards long takes, many are showy, but their are also many directors who do showy quite well. Some also have a completely different MO with it. Guys like Bergman, Tarr, Tarkovsky, Haneke tend to use them to be more oppressive or languid than flamboyant.

Alan Smithee

People who say 3D is nothing but a gimmick have either never seen a GOOD 3D movie, or have already made up their minds that they don't like it and never will. But when it is a gimmick it's a good gimmick, and if it does go away I won't have any reason to see a lot of movies- only reason I stuck with the Transformers series is because of the 3D.

Nick Danger

I hope it's a gimmick that will fade away. Damn glasses give me a headache. A good friend of ours is blind in one eye, so he can't watch 3D movies at all.

Does Avatar count as a GOOD 3D movie?

JANK

The 2 best Rom-Coms going today are Silver Linings Playbook & 500 Days of Summer.

majorjoe23

The straight porn industry is too cowardly to put some man on man action in its films.

fumanstan

Or like me, where the effect just does nothing for them I just don't get any more immersed in a film in 3D then I do with 2D and doesn't add to my enjoyment of a movie what so ever.