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Bergmanesque to Shyamalian: A guide to auteurist adjectives

Anderson

Philippe Antonello / Touchstone Pictures

By Deborah Netburn and Patrick Day, Times Staff Writers

Andersonian

Definition: A film made or inspired by Wes Anderson. Characterized by an obsessive and precious attention to detail, an inflexible manner and a subtle sense of humor. Often, but not always, featuring Bill Murray. A body of films that get worse as time passes.

Examples: Bill Murray jumping -- morosely and fully clothed -- into the swimming pool in “Rushmore.” The stop-motion animated sea life of “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.”

Could Describe: “The Baxter,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “I Heart Huckabees.”

Film styles so distinctive, we had to make up words to describe them.
By Deborah Netburn and Patrick Day, Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2007
With the death of Ingmar Bergman, film has lost one of its great auteurs.

Bergman was one of the few directors distinctive enough to inspire his own adjective. The term "Bergmanesque" describes a specific worldview -- a bleak psychological chronicle of people living in a world that God has abandoned --evidenced in films the director never even made.

There are other directors who have similarly been honored with having their names turned into adjectives -- Hitchcockian (smart psychological thriller), Wellesian (strong visual style) and Altmanesque (rambling, character driven).

Related
But there are other directors who have not yet been adjectified but whose very specific point of view, way of telling stories and use of cinematic language beg for critics to add their last names to descriptions.

And so, in our Latimes.comian way, here are some of our own director-derived adjectives that we think should be added to the film criticism books.



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