The ultimate litmus test in the style over substance argument. At his best, he is very good. Sisters, Obsession,Carrie, The Fury, Dressed to Kill, Blow-out,Body Double, The Untouchables etc.

Not Crap.

Crap. Even at his best he does cynical reinterpretations of hitchcock.
He was the object of Pauline Kael's affections, and she was a pretentious idiot.
For style over substance, i'll take bertolucci.

Hmmm. Of late, complete crap. SnakeEyes and The Black Dahlia are jaw-droppingly awful, Mission To Mars, Bonfire Of The Vanities, Mission Impossible, all pretty piss-poor.

I really like Carlito's Way and Carrie, and The Untouchables and Scarface are good fun.

So many of his more recent films look really flat and syntheticy, like cheap-ish TV drama.

So probably CRAP with waffles

Dudley wrote:Hmmm. Of late, complete crap. SnakeEyes and The Black Dahlia are jaw-droppingly awful, Mission To Mars, Bonfire Of The Vanities, Mission Impossible, all pretty piss-poor.

I really like Carlito's Way and Carrie, and The Untouchables and Scarface are good fun.

So many of his more recent films look really flat and syntheticy, like cheap-ish TV drama.

So probably CRAP with waffles

I agree with this.

Take it to the limit, DePalma.

Scarface- Not Crap
The Untouchables- Not Crap
Carlito's Way- Not Crap
Mission: Impossible- Kinda meh
Snake Eyes- Crap w/ waffles for cool camera work
Mission to Mars- Crap
Femme Fatale- Crap
Black Dahlia- The highest order of CRAP

It seems he's getting crappier as he goes along, so I'm afraid CRAP it is.

Yeah Scarface and The Untouchables were good movies, but they weren't well directed. I think DePalma is complete shit, those movies could have been so much better.

DePalma is a hack. I like Blow Out, Sisters, Dressed to Kill, and Body Double okay, but that's about it. His work is nowhere near as engaging as that of the directors he steals from.

I have read that he and Dario Argento have some sort of long-standing feud. On his best day, DePalma cannot touch Argento.

CRAP.

Oh very very Crap. I think every film he's made is deeply flawed or at least very clunky direction wose. Those that placeholder mentions are all ok. I, for the life of me, can't work out how he attracts the big name casts he does. What he does well, however, is plunder others work(Hitchcock or Eisenstein for example), not unlike Tarantino.

boilermaker wrote:Oh very very Crap. I think every film he's made is deeply flawed or at least very clunky direction wose. Those that placeholder mentions are all ok. I, for the life of me, can't work out how he attracts the big name casts he does. What he does well, however, is plunder others work(Hitchcock or Eisenstein for example), not unlike Tarantino.

I disagree. His direction (at his best) is far from clunky because of his often strong visual style and the fluidity of his camerawork. Is he on par with Hitchcock or even Scorsese? Of course not. He has made, especially recently, a lot of duds but that doesn't take away from his best work. Simply saying he just steals is also an oversimplification. He infuses those cinematic ideas of Hitchcock or Eisenstein with his own auteurist approach.

placeholder wrote:I have read that he and Dario Argento have some sort of long-standing feud. On his best day, DePalma cannot touch Argento.

Argento has made as much dreck as DePalma. He hasn't even directed a decent film since the 1980's.The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Reed and Suspiria are the only ones I would rate really highly. At least DePalma has been eclectic and mixed genres with misfires along the way. I think "hack" is too harsh a descriptor.