This, I think, is the problem so many of us have with Paul W S Anderson. This is what has lead many to declare him the worst filmmaker of our time.

Now, I want to make this clear from the off - I don't think Anderson is the worst filmmaker working today, not by a long shot. Watch a few Sci-Fi Channel originals and it's safe to say there a great many people working in the genre with a considerably weaker grasp of drama, character, story structure and action. And if we want to go a bit more high profile, there is of course Uwe Boll, but I won't dwell on him here as it's like shooting fish in a barrel. No, Anderson is not as awful as those guys. In truth, he's really not all that bad. The problem is he's nowhere near as good as he needs to be. We keep on finding him at the reigns of movies that look to be fan-boy wet dreams, movies that have the potential to be really special - and he turns up results that are, at best, adequate. It's not that his movies are unmitigated turkeys; it's that they're nowhere near as good as they should have been.

This is not to say that things always looked so bleak. His largely forgotten debut Shopping - a deliberately controversy-courting teen rebel flick about ram-raiding - may have fallen awkwardly between British kitchen sink realism and Hollywood gloss, but it certainly made clear that Anderson was more interested in action than most of his UK contemporaries in the early nineties. This was cemented by his stateside breakthrough follow-up, which in many respects drew up the blueprint for his career: Mortal Kombat. To call that movie 'fun but dumb' goes without saying; to declare it one of the better video game movies to date is pretty much the definition of damnation by faint praise, considering there's the likes of Street Fighter, Super Mario Bros and the Tomb Raider films to live up to. But dumb fun it was, and enough of a hit to spawn a sequel and a TV show. Obviously it's far from flawless, but when you're dealing with a director's first big-budget FX oriented movie, one may be inclined to disregard any little niggling problems and focus instead on the potential for improvement, which Anderson most definitely showed.

Event Horizon offered further cause for optimism. I'd say it's probably Anderson's best work; a well-designed, well-shot haunted house movie in outer space, with plenty of jump scares and flashy, gory death scenes. I must confess, the first time I saw it on the big screen I was blown away. However, it doesn't take many repeat viewings to see the innumerable chinks in the armour: the risible dialogue and characterisation; the lazy plotting; the piecemeal lifts from The Shining and the Alien movies. Still, Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill do their usual sterling work in the lead roles, and there's no denying that the movie does look good. As such, it's not too surprising that some people in high places thought Anderson was ready to take on a real big-time project.

And the result of that was - oh dear – Soldier, a film whose principle distinction in the UK was being the highest budgeted movie ($75 million) ever to go straight to video. Despite the presence of everybody's hero Kurt Russell in the lead, and a highly regarded script by David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner), the resulting movie stands tall alongside the likes of Batman & Robin and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as a textbook example of how not to make a mega-budget movie. Incoherent, insipid, tedious, and cheap looking in spite of the price tag, it was really on this movie that people began declaring Anderson to be the worst filmmaker in the world. And if that movie was your only frame of reference, it's easy to see how you could reach that conclusion.

The best thing Anderson ever did. Get it?
Ever did... Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

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Having said that, I know that Anderson's Resident Evil has more than its share of admirers. After all, it's had two sequels to date - both of which, it's important to note, had successful theatrical runs - and launched Milla Jovovich as an action star. (Not to mention turning the former Mrs Besson into the new Mrs Anderson. With those two, Len Wiseman and Kate Beckinsale, plus Darren Aronofsky and Rachel Weisz, it's no wonder so many geeks want to become directors.) It's an enjoyable enough movie, which I've been happy to sit through more than once and will no doubt happily do so again. It just goes back to the crux of the problem with Anderson: while it's not bad, it's not great either. There's an undeniable whiff of compromise about the whole thing, with its lack of proper gore, excess of Matrix-era flash, and in particular the de-emphasised zombies: this was before 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead made walking corpses cool again, after all, so it's not surprising people in high places were worried as to how it would go over with their supposed 'demographic.' Indeed, this is the kind of movie in which you can practically see the executives' notes scrawled on the negative itself, and as a result the whole thing feels more than a bit sterile. The abundance of nondescript males giving nondescript performances doesn't help matters, nor does the attempt to cast Michelle Rodriguez as a pseudo-Vasquez. But a little goes a long way, it seems, and thanks largely to Milla's skimpy red dress/big fuck-off gun combo, and the memorable slice-'n'-dice of Colin Salmon, Resident Evil made big money, kick-started a franchise, and has achieved a kind of minor classic status. And a million embittered bloggers froth at the mouth.

And the vitriol would certainly not stop there, no siree bob. As if a non-Romero Resident Evil wasn't enough, how about the crossing over of two of the most beloved movie monsters of the 1980's? How about 20th Century Fox choosing said crossover over a proposed Alien 5 that Ridley Scott and James Cameron were in talks about? How about then turning the meeting of these two resolutely R-rated franchises into a PG-13?

Yes, Mr Anderson - time to bend over and take some more fanboy rage up the arse.

Once again, the best we can say about Alien Vs Predator is that it's nowhere near as bad as it could have been. Indeed, it's certainly a better film than Freddy Vs Jason, though it may be tamer on the gore front. It delivers well on the monster-on-monster action (the relative absence of human carnage justifying the PG-13), and refreshingly it does so largely with practical FX rather than CGI. I’d say it's at least on a par with Predator 2, and James Cameron has called it the third best Alien movie, a sentiment with which I'm inclined to concur. But after the first two best Alien movies, there's a rrrrrrrrrrreal big fucking drop-off. With the subterranean maze setting it's essentially a retread of Resident Evil, right down to Colin Salmon playing near enough the exact same character, and with the whole Erich Von Daniken aliens-founded-first-human-civilisation shtick, it's regurgitating any number of sci-fi tales of the last half-century. Some fanboys may have been pleased that it largely adhered to the Dark Horse comic in teaming the heroine with a Predator in battle against the Xenomorphs, but Sanaa Lathan is no Ripley, and bringing back Lance Henriksen can only elevate proceedings so far. Still, I'm told it's considerably better than AVP: Requiem, though I couldn't say as I have no intention of seeing that movie. (FX guys turned first time directors - seriously, can anyone name a single instance where that has resulted in a good movie?)

Unsurprisingly, Anderson’s most recent effort Death Race pretty well follows suit in every respect. Let’s do the list. One - pissed off hardcore genre fans: check, insofar as it's a remake (Anderson's first, remarkably) of the much-loved Death Race 2000, with all the satirical overtones and reckless slaughter of innocents removed. Two - lack of basic sensible storytelling: check, as Jason Statham's ex-driving ace is dragged behind bars to wear the mask of Frankenstein, then - er - proceeds to never wear the mask while driving. (Even someone as apathetic about motorsports as myself knows that they put cameras inside the cars.) Three - overall general mediocrity: check-eroony. The driving sequences quickly get repetitive, Statham seems bored, Tyrese just does his 2 Fast 2 Furious routine again (only this time they actually say out loud that he's gay), and Joan Allen looks like she's suddenly found herself on the wrong set and is waiting for someone to say "April Fools!" The end product is neither infuriating nor laughable; it's just bland, too bland to inspire any kind of emotional response beyond indifference.

That feeling of indifference seems to be recurring in Anderson's work. As everything he has come up with - including his stints as writer/producer, with the likes of the Resident Evil sequels and DOA: Dead or Alive - has all wound up being so middle of the road, it's easy to suspect that this guy is thinking of nothing but the pay. But somehow I don't think that's the case with Anderson. Look at the projects he chooses and the casts he assembles. I think this guy does really care about what he's doing, and on some level that comes across in his movies. Why else have I seen all his movies and taken the time to write about them here? Because I'm a glutton for punishment? So I can take my place alongside untold numbers of disgruntled online souls and tell Anderson to fuck off and die? No. I'm writing this because I'm an optimist, and I want the guy to improve. I honestly think he means well, and there isn't a doubt in my mind that he's a genuine, knowledgeable genre fanatic. Sadly, that has not translated to decent movies to date. But I still think there's hope for the guy, if he can only learn to listen less to the studio execs and more to his inner geek, and find some way to inject a bit of soul into his work.

Teacher's final notes: points for enthusiasm, Mr Anderson, but overall - MUST TRY HARDER.