Is Sydney Pollack the worst director in the universe?

C

c.g._eads

Veteran
How does this man have a career? I was just watching The Firm today and I have never seen so many poor directorial choices in the first 30 minutes of a movie. Starting with the terrible choice of score, terrible lighting, bad composition. Nothing even close to the great dark tone of the book. This man made Random Hearts. This man made The Interpreter (possibly the most boring movie ever made - behind Random Hearts). This man is taking up one movie every 2-3 years from the studios that another director, maybe one of us, could be making.

You get an entire career because Dustin Hoffman does the best acting job of his life. Amazing.
 
Is Sydney Pollack the worst director in the universe?
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No.

Quite the opposite in fact.



Your honor, if it pleases the court, I would like to present to the jury evidence marked A through I...

A) Jeremiah Johnson
B) The Way We Were
C) The Yakuza
D) Three Days of the Condor
E) Absence of Malice
F) Tootsie
G) Out of Africa
H) The Firm
I) Sabrina

The defense rests, your honor.
 
I was going to say UWE Bolle holds the current title (Or me).

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Pollack is a fine filmmaker. Nice list Callaghan.
 
While I don't consider Pollack a great director, he's certainly a decent-to-good director. If he had done nothing other than Jeremiah Johnson he would be okay in my book. But he has, in fact, directed several good movies; see above listing by CallaghanFilms.
 
I haven't seen The Firm since it was in theaters, but I remember several odd choices. Agreed about the soundtrack. And the ending of the movie (unlike the book) is a complete letdown. The Firm is one of those movies that diverges from the book for no good reason. John Grisham has stated that he had nothing to do with it (or any of the other films based upon his work).
 
I liked the score for "The Firm." In fact, it was one of the things I liked best about it. It's been years since I've seen it, so I don't remember the details about what liked and disliked, but the piano-based music was one thing I remember liking a lot. I never read the book.

I also really liked Sydney's first doc, "Sketches of Frank Gehry." I saw it in the Toronto fest last year, but I think it's getting distribution in May through Sony Classics. Of course, if you're not a fan of Frank Gehry's work, you're unlikely to enjoy a documentary about him.
 
Three Days in the Condor will forever solidify him as a great director. When you put that along side Out of Africa the man becomes a genius. Everyone does bad films, I don't think the Firm is one of them.

That being said, all of these films would have been better had Rob Zombie directed them

-Jeremy
 
The Interpreter drove me crazy. Crazy! WWHHYY was Nicole Kidman the embodiment of african suffering for christsakes?? Disregard the PC argument against having a porcelain red-headed austalian play an oppressed african, it was just stupid. It's like having Prince play an Irish cop, Pauley Shore play a european intellectual, or Terry Bradshaw (he's an actor now, right) play Charlie Chaplin. It's just distracting regardless how hot anyone thinks she is. It's just stupid.
 
kimko, i do it now cause i can be more objective! :)

and MAN was the interpreter bad. I mean just that gut-wrenchingly ulta serious mega-heavy performance by sean penn. that was heavy even by sean penn standards. and please note that sean penn has never smiled in a film! i don't even know if he has teeth. hell is a double feature of The Interpreter and Dark Water. Two films that are completely pointless.

c.g.
 
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