Last week saw the return of long-time champion LC into the ring, duking it out for a late-round win. This week LC asks: What's the best example of a film where the director's self-indulgence paid off?
Guardians of the Galaxy. James Gunn went so completely against the grain that he ended up creating a tributary of the MCU. Unfortunately the movies that followed the formula (the over the top ridiculousness) were mostly pretty lame.
The first thing that comes to mind for this is "Trouble in Mind" (https://youtu.be/veg4lAjX0bs?si=nxxI9WdkavYIvEY-), a 1985 film directed by Alan Rudolph that pushes noir all the way into silliness and then a little further into something odd but memorable. Or as Roger Ebert puts it, "He combines his stylistic excesses with a lot of emotional sincerity, so that we believe these characters are really serious about their hopes and dreams, even if they do seem to inhabit a world of imagination." (There's a shoot-out toward the end that is really quite something, but sadly, not on YouTube.)
Guardians of the Galaxy. James Gunn went so completely against the grain that he ended up creating a tributary of the MCU. Unfortunately the movies that followed the formula (the over the top ridiculousness) were mostly pretty lame.
The first thing that came to mind was Dances With Wolves.
The first thing that comes to mind for this is "Trouble in Mind" (https://youtu.be/veg4lAjX0bs?si=nxxI9WdkavYIvEY-), a 1985 film directed by Alan Rudolph that pushes noir all the way into silliness and then a little further into something odd but memorable. Or as Roger Ebert puts it, "He combines his stylistic excesses with a lot of emotional sincerity, so that we believe these characters are really serious about their hopes and dreams, even if they do seem to inhabit a world of imagination." (There's a shoot-out toward the end that is really quite something, but sadly, not on YouTube.)