Auteur as grump.
There are few directors whose body of work we admire more than Ridley Scott's. After some shaky early years with such interesting but failed oddities as Alien and Blade Runner, Scott finally showed promise with a little fantastical nugget called Legend, in which Tom Cruise showed he could hunt unicorn as well as dance in his underwear.
But it wasn't until 1992's 1492: Conquest of Paradise that Scott came into his own, and what we like to call The Bludgeoning began. Look at that list of masterworks. It would make Tarkovsky blush: White Squall, G.I. Jane, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, Kingdom of Heaven, A Good Year, American Gangster, Body of Lies, and Robin Hood. Movies like these are why we got into this business (that pays us nothing, as businesses go) in the first place. Let's hope for many more years of soul-shattering, pulse-pounding, ear-splitting, woman-hating, violence-"critiquing" (?) films like these.