that sounds about right to me.
None of his Hollywood films are worthy enough to be in the top 3 imo, although an argument for Truman Show and M+C could surely be made.
1. Picnic at Hanging Rock
2. The Last Wave
3. Master and Commander (one of the best naval films ever made)
1. The Truman Show
2. The Way Back (shamefully underrated, but needs to be seen at the cinema to be fully appreciated)
3. Picnic at Hanging Rock
1. The Truman Show
2. Witness
3. The Mosquito Coast
1. Picnic at Hanging Rock
2. The Last Wave
3. The Year of Living Dangerously
1. Picnic at Hanging Rock
2. The Last Wave
3. The Truman Show
4. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
5. Gallipoli
6. The Year of Living Dangerously
7. The Mosquito Coast
8. Green Card
9. Witness
10. Dead
11. The Way Back
12. Fearless
1. Green Card (one of the five best rom coms ever made)
2. The Cars That Eat People
3. Fearless
@Dennis Brian
I forgot about The Cars That Eat People. That was a good one.
1. Witness
2. Dead Poets Sociey
3. The Truman Show
Sigh, the Truman Show and Green Card over his Aussie films?
No way…
Top 5 Weir (because the guy has talent even in some Hollywood films unlike Spielberg’s later career)
1. Picnic at Hanging Rock
2. Gallipoli
3. The Last Wave
4. The Year of Living Dangerously
5. The Cars That Ate Paris (the cars that ate people? is that the American title? pretty silly one if I may say so…)
Other top films:
1. Dead Poets Society
2. Witness
3. Master and Commander
4. The Truman Show
5. The Mosquito Coast (for camp reasons)
Haven’t seen The Plumber yet and neither of his short films but will be doing so as well as The Way Back…
The Cars That Ate Paris is friggin’ bizarre!! It’s been read as a commentary on Australian culture, and maybe it is, but it’s one of the most off the wall films ever made in this country.
I rewatched The Mosquito Coast and Witness just recently and they were nowhere near as good as i remembered. Witness starts and ends well but the middle drags imo. M.Coast doesn’t go far enough. weir is too middle of the road for that kind of material, and Ford was miscast.
I wish an edgier director took on Schraders script. it could have been great.
Last Wave is his most visually impressive film imo. Even moreso than Picnic.
Pardon me Joks but for all the bickering I have for Mr Ford, Witness is one of his top 5 performances (but not in Mosquito Coast, that’s as high as it goes for me for personal reasons), now…edgier studio director than Weir? Hmmm, probably Coppola but at the time, he was turning into a revisionist of hits and misses…
^^Ford is great in Witness, but not in M.Coast.
1. The Last Wave
2. Picnic at Hanging Rock
3. The Mosquito Coast
Peter Weir is a frustrating director in that he’s an extremely talented man who’s always fallen short of making a great film. I agree with Dennis Brian, Green Card is his best work.
“The Mosquito Coast (for camp reasons)”
LOL!! i hear you on the camp reason Dim!!! There are some truly hilarious moments in that one, courtesy of Ford!!
The Plumber isn’t bad. decent, not great or anything.
MATT: has Fearless dated then? i remember it being quite good at the time.
Green Card is good. esp for a romantic drama/comedy. Shows you can make a romcom that isn’t idiotic.
“has Fearless dated then? i remember it being quite good at the time.”
Yeah, for me all the midgrade Weir films don’t hold up all that well. Even Gallipoli paled quite a bit on second look.
^^But Gallipoli is regarded as one of his best though!!!!
i grew up watching it, so i have no distance really.
For me the real failure in Mosquito Coast is that Weir doesn’t get/Ford doesn’t provide a performance that really endears you to the character early in the film, so you never really buy into his quasi-utopian vision of what they’re about to do.
“Hmmm, probably Coppola”Were you thinking like Peggy Sue Got Married edgy or Captain Eo edgy, D? ;)
Having gotten to know some devout Amish and Mennonite folks fairly well some years back, I find Witness all but unwatchable.
^^Yeah, he just comes off like an eccentric inventor with bad social skills rather than a crackpot visionary ;-)
1. The Truman Show, for its Orwellian themes and malevolently Darwinian performance by Ed Harris
2. Picnic at Hanging Rock, for its sexual hysteria and absolutely stunning cinematography (hoping this gets an American Blu-ray soon)
3. Gallipoli, for being possibly the most underrated mainstream art films of the 1980s and its great Mel Gibson performance
Weir is not a great director, but he’s very intriguing most of the time, since there is no absolute stylistic signature to his films except the mysticism of nature – you could call him an Australian Malick in that sense.
^^agree but not just mysticism of nature, but also, to a degree, conflict.
He is more interesting than great
I agree that there’s a steep drop off in quality after his Aussie films. Picnic and Wave are two of my all-time faves. I find it hard to believe that the same man made dead poets society.
This thread just serves to reveal how much Weir is misunderstood as an auteur.
^^True although he made better hollywood films than Beresford or schepisi.
personally i can’t think of one Australian director that makes intelligent AND great films on a consistent basis.
even Rolf De Heer i’d say is more interesting than great. He often has problems integrating his ideas with cinematic language, and tends overplay his cards.
“This thread just serves to reveal how much Weir is misunderstood as an auteur.”
. . . which is . . .
1. GALLIPOLI
2. YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
3. PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
I found MOSQUITO COAST to be just too hilariously miscast with the Ford to be taken seriously — Theroux’s novel is far grimmer than poor old Harry can really play. Allie Fox required someone like John Lithgow, and Weir is a pretty strange choice for director on this project anyway. A rather staid film of a goforbroke novel.
JaxorMax0r
1. Picnic at Hanging Rock
2. The Last Wave
3. Gallipoli
How about you guys?