I just rewatched TITUS on saturday, and I will never doubt that woman.
I once felt the same way. In fact, I was ready to crown Julie Taymor as one of my favorite directors on the basis of TITUS alone back when it was in theaters.
And then FRIDA happened. It wasn't bad per se, but it was a huge step down from TITUS. Given how lousy the script and pacing were, I instantly suspected that she may need to stick to pre-existing stories to maintain a good sense of structure. "Titus Andronicus" may be Shakespeare's most criticized play, but it's strong enough for Taymor to make a good movie out of it. FRIDA just seemed unfocused and occasionally lame. Plus, I wanted to pluck that cotton ball goatee off of Geoffrey Rush's chin and cram it in his mouth to stop that Russian accent he was doing. FRIDA is the only movie which made me dislike a Geoffrey Rush performance and that includes the awful LES MISERABLES from 1998.
And ACROSS THE UNIVERSE was just bad. It starts off okay and has occasional moments of watchable inspiration, but it's too long, the characters are too boring and many of the visuals are really bad. The big LSD sequence is ugly to look at and horribly paced.
Now we have SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK which sounds like a bad Joel Schumacher version of Spidey. An "ugly pageant" to introduce The Sinister Six? Really? The lead villainess singing a song about how much she likes shoes?
Whoa, nelly!
