Memes aside, let's talk about this guy for a moment.
Most of Sup Forums seems reluctant to criticize him, because Blade Runner is still fresh in our minds and we all liked it. But understand that calling him a "hack director" does not mean that he makes bad movies. Blade Runner is good, Sicario is good, Prisoners is good, Arrival and Enemy are decent. But Villeneuve himself is the weak link in each production. He, himself, brings very little to the table.
He embodies calculated, professional competence, with no real creative spark or genuine talent. He picks good stories, he surrounds himself with talented cast & crew, he faithfully executes the filming of each screenplay, but he does nothing to elevate any of it. There's no poetry or beauty in his framing, camera movement, mise en scene, or editing. Just cold, competent clarity.
Imagine a film directed by a computer program, a low-grade AI that translates a script into a shot-list. And you've got Villeneuve. And that, in a very literal sense, is what "hack" means. "Hack" does not mean "bad," it means he stands there and lets the cast & crew do their work without much interference. I imagine his main function on-set is to make sure everything gets done on schedule and on budget.
He is not a BAD filmmaker, he is true neutral, he is high-grade mediocrity. He doesn't fuck anything up, but he doesn't know how to bring what's on the page to a higher level. I wouldn't pick on him if people weren't so quick to hail him as a "great director." Because this overblown reception, more so than the rise of capeshit and franchise blockbusters, signals a bleak future for cinema. It means we've completely forgotten what a director is actually supposed to do. The only difference between Villeneuve and a nameless Marvel Studios hack is his choice of source material.
I agree with most of what you're saying, but BR: 2049 got to me in spite of myself. It is absolutely his best film by a wide margin, and yes I'm including his non-English shit.
Lincoln Miller
Denis "Hot pocket" Villeneuve
Owen James
Give me one reason why mods shouldn't range ban you for making these daily pasta threads?
Oliver Bell
He is cheeto dust. Nothing more.
Thomas Wilson
Everything you said could be applied to any director who doesn't come out and proclaim themselves as artists, and not filmmakers. There is extreme passion in all his films, that cant be denied. Now stop with this stupid meme.
Levi Morgan
>implying a director who can produce a good movie in a studio environment doesn't make him one of the best directors working today
if you want *sniggers* creative sparks watch an indie movie
the real talent of a modern big budget director is knowing how to keep the Weinstein's of the world the fuck away from the project before they force you to add a cute animal sidekick and edit out the sex scene
Aaron James
Blade Runner>Prisoners (I'm a sucker for the atmosphere)>Sicario>Arrival
Angel Rodriguez
This
Jonathan Fisher
His movies have too much of a distinct tone and aesthetic for him to be perceived as a studio bitch. He's not a genius, but he's definitely not a hack. He's an above-average director with a good taste in scripts.
Jason Gray
If Villeneuve is true neutral, does that make Nolan chaotic neutral?
Thomas Morgan
>But understand that calling him a "hack director" does not mean that he makes bad movies. No, you retard. He's a hack because he makes mediocre movies. It's not the other way around derp.
Easton Hernandez
He's lawful neutral for sure
Luis Ortiz
>He picks good stories, he surrounds himself with talented cast & crew, he faithfully executes the filming of each screenplay, but he does nothing to elevate any of it Have you actually read any of the scripts of these films? Except for BR, they are utterly generic, Villeneuve miraculously made great films out of them. Sicario could've been just another B tier mexican drug trade film everyone forgets about, but because of Villeneuve's execution it's one of the most prominant slow burning thrillers of recent times. Or take the threeway sex scene in BR2049. That could've easily been a completely ridiculous cheesy scene, but because of his execution it's genuinely emotionally involving and one of the better scenes in the entire film. And you talk like every film should be "poetic" and "beautiful", which is quite a close minded ignorant statement.
You lost your train of thought somewhere in all these walls of texts.
Nathan Cox
How many more times are you going to post this awful pasta? You think you're saying something important or original when you're really not. Funnily enough that's exactly why Villeneuve is a hack.
Chase Barnes
Why don't mods delete threads that are the same daily pastas?
William Foster
One thing to note This half breed thinks tfa is good and is only back now for episode 8
Ayden Ortiz
what you're describing is a good producer, not a good director
Hudson Jackson
why do people act like his work started from Prisoners? you guys always talk about him being le reddit director but it seems like you've not even seen his pre-mainstream work
Elijah Moore
>villaneuve J.J. Abrams x Alfred Hitchcock >innaritu J.J. Abrams x Luis Bunuel >cuaron J.J. Abrams x Orson Welles >nolan J.J. Abrams x John Ford >abrams Spielberg x Frank Capra
All memers, all safe, no innovation.
Aiden Collins
So what you are saying is that J.J. Abrams is the most prominant innovative director of our time?
Dylan Cruz
>J.J. Abrams x Luis Bunuel
Isaac Butler
To accept Villeneuve as a quality director is to garb yourself in a coat of hot pockets and video games and then writhe around on the ground in a supermarket while screaching and slapping yourself on the sides of your head.
He is cheeto dust. Nothing more.
Nothing more than a hack, a useful tool for studios to trot out to say "Hey, we're making art house!" I cannot wrap my head around the adulation he receives, let alone the wide praise this has got. The film trudges from set piece to set piece, leaves us no real questions or anything to think about really.
The worst part however was Deakins' "look at me I'm acting!" cinematography. This poor sap has become a parody of himself to appease his internet fans (much like Refn after Drive)
The same bullet that kills a capeshit fan will also kill the Villeneuve and Paul Thomas Anderson fan. They come from the same root, from the same doritos stained console. They are frauds, and as a warrior of cinema it's my duty to expose the fakes and the inauthentic when I see them. I will fight with nails and teeth until the last imposter has fallen to the ground
I have about as much respect for Denis Villeneuve as I do for the dogshit on my shoe. He is reddit. He is video game hotpocket. He is capeshit. He is cheeto dust. I'm literally screaming right now and slamming my arms down on my desk just thinking about him.
He is the most depraved video game infantilised manchild degeneracy. He is Saturday morning cartoons. He is non-neurotypicality. He is memes. He is video game. He is Inarritu. He is IMDB.
Christian Bennett
He is the dilution solution to actual directors.
Ethan Johnson
>He is the most depraved video game infantilised manchild degeneracy. He is Saturday morning cartoons. He is non-neurotypicality. He is memes. He is video game. He is Inarritu. He is IMDB.
I think you're reflecting.
Brandon Bennett
The only one of these that somewhat makes sense is Abrams >comparing innaritu to bunuel You really know nothing about film
Luke Thomas
I think Villeneuve is great and I'm a certified patrician.
Alexander Bell
Top 25 films of all time?
Jose Sanders
In no particular order:
Woman in the Dunes La Grande Illusion Sansho the Bailiff Intolerance Cold Water Dead Man's Letters Le Diable Probablement The Spirit of the Beehive The Great White Silence A New Life The New Land Evolution of A Filipino Family Time to Live, Time to Die Stroszek Days and Nights in the Forest Black God, White Devil Picnic at Hanging Rock The Trial Viridiana Orphee Bob le flambeur Johnny Guitar Sonatine The Beyond Cruel Story of Youth
Joshua Sanders
>time to live time to die >bob le flambeur >sonatine >the grand illusion >woman in the dunes etc.
Not the user that asked but good picks
Evan Moore
>I'm a certified patrician. Top ten novels, top ten operas, top ten paintings.
Isaiah Reyes
He said films, not flicks
Jace Hill
My tastes in everything other than film are not that patrician, would appreciate recs >Books Stoner American Pastoral L'assomoir Demons In Remembrance of Things Past Dead Souls Musashi 100 Years of Solitude Moby Dick The Death of Ivan Illyich >Paintings Don't really know if I can list 10 specific ones, but I really like Magritte, Renoir, Manet, Pollock, Carmichael, Cezanne, Degas, Klimt, Schiele and Gorky. >Operas I haven't watched any
Evan Campbell
copypasta thread, nothing of value seen.
Carson Baker
Didn't think Arrival was anything special, enjoyable yes. Prisoners was great, and Blade Runner was just mesmorising.He's got a good portfolio over all. Oh Sicario was good stuff as well.
Jeremiah Torres
How many films have you made OP? Do you think a director just hires people and then sits aside? As someone already pointed out, his films are too consistent in terms of tone and quality for them to be the result of everyone but himself.
Michael Taylor
>I haven't watched any I'd start off at the deep end with Wagner. Not the ring cycle, but something more self-contained like Parsifal, Tannhäuser, or Tristan und Isolde. The prelude to Tristan is probably the greatest piece of music ever written
Justin Lewis
What are your top films, books, paintings and albums ?
Tree of Life Ordet Last Year at Marienbad 2001 La Notte Persona The Battle of Algiers Accattone Tokyo Story Au hasard Balthazar
Moby-Dick - Melville The Sorrows of Young Wether - Goethe Swan's Way - Proust The Book of Disquiet - Pessoa Lolita - Nabokov The Wreath - Undset Absalom! Absalom! - Faulkner Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky À rebours - Huysmans Don Quixote - Cervantes
-Klimt's Die Griechische Kunst II at the Kunsthistorisches museum in Vienna -Klimt's Pallas Athene -Caravaggio's Head of Goliath -Vermeer's The Astronomer -Velázquez' Las meninas -Rothko's navy and black 1969 -Botticelli's Birth of Venus -Poussin's The Holy Family on Steps -Eyck's Adam and Eve -Delacroix's The death of sardanapalus
Don't ask me for my favorite poems. I have at least 50 in my top ten.
Alexander Carter
>Accattone
fuuck finally someone mentioned this film on Sup Forums, usually only Passolini's Salo gets posted
Ryder Sanchez
>Tokyo Story >Au hasard Balthazar You really like these better than Late Spring and A Man Escaped?
We have similar tastes though so I guess I'm a patrician as well.
Jordan Lopez
Yes and yes. I don't judge by made-up "objective" criteria, but just by how I reacted to it when I saw it. I saw Au hasard Balthazar at just the right time in my teens
Hunter Martin
arrival was trash because of the screenplay. the direction was amazing. sicario's direction was amazing. prisoners also suffered from screenplay/plot issues, but the direction was fine there
havent seen enemy, but all the direction in the films has been good
James James
pleb af desu
Luke Cooper
>À rebours Patrician confirmed
Connor Ramirez
You know what's funny? i have about as much respect for denis villeneuve as I do for the dogshit on my shoe. It is reddit. It is video game hotpocket. It is capeshit. It is cheeto dust. I'm literally screaming right now and slamming my arms down on my desk just thinking about it.
It is the most depraved video game infantilized manchild degeneracy. It is saturday morning cartoon. It is non-neurotypicality. It is memes. It is video game. It is tarantino. It is imdb.
Camden Williams
Excellent pasta
Jaxon Rivera
Watched two of his movies - Sicario (really fell below my expectations) and Prisoners (really fucking good). And i'm planning to go and watch Blade Runner tomorrow. For now, I wouldn't say he is a great director, but if we compare him to the rest of Hollywood... well, he is above most, desu.
