Some directors are clearly talented but their work can be infuriating.
Ken Russell, Jean-Luc Godard, Peter Greenaway, Francis Coppola, David Fincher, Yorgos Lanthimos and Lars Von Trier fall into this group - delivering some truly dazzling films during their careers but also a high proportion of really pretentious duds.
Luca Guadagnino is a director who falls into this category.
When he is on song in films like 'A Bigger Splash,' 'Call Me By Your Name' or 'Queer,' the results can be thrilling.
However he can also make hugely overblown movies like 'I Am Love,' 'Suspiria' and 'Challengers' that get dragged down by the weight of their own pretentiousness and a desperate need to impress on audiences his technical bravura.
The Italian's latest 'After The Hunt' is in the latter camp, unfortunately.
A self important tale about cancel culture in American universities, it begins with a pompous onscreen declaration that "it happened at Yale" before subjecting the audience initially to the sound of ticking while we watch scenes from Julia Roberts' character's life on campus.
Roberts plays Alma Imhoff, a philosophy professor at Yale who is married to Michael Stuhlbarg's psychiatrist Frederik Mendelssohn.
Vying for tenure with Andrew Garfield's Hank Gibson, she has had an affair with her rival.
At the start of the film, she and her husband host a party in their residence, where Hank and Chloe Sevigny's student liaison Dr Kim Sayers rub shoulders with a talented group of students who include Ayo Edebiri's Maggie Resnick, Thaddea Graham's Katie and Will Price's Arthur.
During the party, Maggie stumbles upon a mysterious envelope taped to a bathroom cupboard and after examining its contents, pockets a newspaper clipping from inside it.
After engaging in a spot of intellectual jousting, the party breaks up with Hank leaving with the students and walking Maggie home.
The following day, Alma is rattled when Maggie turns up at her houde after missing class and alleges Hank sexually assaulted her in her apartment.
Wary about what is being claimed, Alma appears initially unsympathetic and unsupportive of Maggie.
As a complaint about Hank is lodged with the Yale authorities, he meets Alma at a restaurant to dispute the allegations.
Hank aclaims Maggie is a privileged, academic fraud who has made the sexual assault claim up to distract from the fact that she has plagiarised her dissertation.
Deciding to talk to David Leiber's Dean RJ Thomas, Alma finds herself caught in the middle of a storm with Maggie angry at how she has treated her claims and Hank believing she has betrayed him after he is fired.
But will she emerge unscathed? And what exactly is in the envelope?
What emerges is an overlong and consistently smug tale from Guadagnino and his screenwriter Nora Garrett about academics fumbling a very thorny situation.
David Mamet's 1992 play 'Oleanna' and his 1994 movie covered essentially the same territory but achieved it in a much more convincing and gripping way.
By way of contrast, the characters in 'After the Hunt' wander about like they're in one of Woody Allen's po faced, dull human dramas.
They have pretentious conversations that just make you want to scream and their incessant navel gazing is insufferable.
It's bad enough that at a running time of almost two hours and 20 minutes the film plods along but then you have Guadagnino's direction at its attention seeking worst.
Boring dialogue is interrupted by jarring close ups of hands, knees and in one sequence, part of Garfield's torso minus much of his face while Roberts is in full shot.
Roberts, Edebiri, Garfield, Stuhlbarg, Sevigny and the rest of the cast invest a lot of effort.
But who cares? Because it counts for very little with a script as leaden as Garrett's and directing as shallow as Guadagnino's.
Garfield is back working with him once more alongside Monica Barbaro, Yura Borisov, Cooper Hoffman, Billie Lourd, Chris O'Dowd, Mark Rylance and Jason Schwartzman in the biographical comedy drama 'Artificial'.
Here's hoping the director can curb his worst excesses.
However I'm not holding my bteath.
('After The Hunt' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on October 17, 2025)
Now lets go to the opposite end of the intellectual food chain with Ayo Edebiri.
'Opus' is one of those tongue in cheek horror pics that wants to be taken seriously like Jordan Peele's 'Get Out' and 'Us,' Ari Aster's 'Midsommar' or Mark Mylod's 'The Menu'.
Director Mark Anthony Green is a former editor of GQ magazine and the target of his debut feature is the media's obsession with celebrity.
Specifically, he is having a pop at the willingness of magazines, newspapers, bloggers, influencers and broadcasters to katow to celebrities' demands just to have access to them.
Ayo Edebiri plays Ariel Ecton, an up and coming journalist at a music publication who works for Murray Bartlett's seasoned entertainment hack Stan Sullivan.
When the team around John Malkovich's reclusive Prince like 1990s pop icon Alfred Moretti take to YouTube to announce his first new album in 30 years, both are swept up in the excitement of it all.
Ariel and Stan are invited to an exclusive listening party at the star's compound in Utah along with Juliette Lewis's chat show host Clara Armstrong, Melissa Chambers' paparazza Bianca Tyson, Stephanie Suganami's influencer Emily Katz and Mark Silverstein's shock jock Bill Lotto.
Upon their arrival, they are greeted by uniformed employees of Moretti's who are known as the Levelists who confiscate the electronic devices of their guests.
The Levelists have a cult like vibe about them and include Amber Midthunder's Belle, Tatanka Means' Najee, Young Mazino's Kent and Tony Hale's PR adviser Soledad Yusuf.
Belle is assigned as Ariel's concierge but feels more like a prison guard and a spy than a servant.
While Ariel's fellow guests go along with Moretti's demands in return for just being in his presence, she feels much less comfortable about a meal where the hosts and guests share one loaf of bread, each taking a bite out of it.
She's also taken aback when Belle informs her that as part of a fashion makeover for the guests, Moretti insists they must all shave their pubic hair.
When one guest disappears with no real explanation and another is wounded in an apparent accident, Ariel suspects there is something much more sinister afoot on the compound.
But can she avoid falling foul of Moretti and his followers?
With Green providing the script, 'Opus' is one of those horror movies that convinces itself that it is much cleverer than it actually is.
In reality, it's heavy handed, muddled, very often dull and frankly unbelievable.
Half baked ideas are flung around with no real focus on how to shape them into a compelling narrative.
Not surprisingly, the cast really struggle as the film pays homage to Takashi Mike's Japanese chiller 'Audition,' John Krasinski's 'A Quiet Place,' 'Midsommar' and 'Tbe Menu' but it fails to land its punches.
It's not simply good enough to bemoan how ridiculous media fawning over celebrities has become.
'Opus,' however, doesn't know how to go beyond that gripe.
Malkovich delivers another stock, eye rolling, eccentric villain performance.
Meanwhile Edebiri has a dot to dot horror movie part as the woman who you know will end up being the last one standing.
Bartlett, Lewis and Midthunder's talents are also wasted.
With disco legend Nile Rodgers and R&B and hip hop writer and producer The-Dream involved in crafting Moretti's music, Malkovich lends his vocals to several songs.
However these, like Green's entire film, come across as wildly self indulgent in hugely underwhelming.
('Opus' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on March 15, 2025)
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