The José Luis Alcaine of it all is a large source of my frustration with
Domino. It was clear on
Femme Fatale that De Palma and Alcaine were two peas in a pod, but that film was allowed to go through a responsible post-production process. That film required not only photochemical expertise on the day of shooting, but the time and smarts to dial in on dichromatic shots like Laure's plunge into the river to make the blue/black contrast really kick. There are raw video shots in
Domino (I'm thinking of a specific medium shot of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau atop a building toward the end. It's blue and black. No spoilers.) that have not been graded, where the color temperatures are so undifferentiated that my wife and I had to pause and reposition ourselves in the living room just to see who and what was on screen. There was never a masterpiece in this material, but even Alcaine needs the support of an effective color-spotting session to make his footage really sing.
Mission to Mars may be the best work Steve Burum has done, with rich shadows in stark white environments (not just the "face" room, but also everything on board the spaceships) that add true dimensionality even on a DVD of the film. Further, his use of copper reflectors instead of silver for the bounce light on the surface of Mars are muuuuuuuuuuuch more effective than simply using a red gel over the lens (a la
Red Planet) and speak to his ingenuity and innovation on that show. He does such a good job with textures that the phoneyness of the CG cast member at the end stands out like a sore thumb. He and De Palma aren't buddies, so goes the rumor mill, but
M2M was their last and best collaboration outside of their "usual" style. The log line on that film is that it plays better as a silent movie, which is true for the quality of the dialogue, and the use of Van Halen, but those images are the centerpiece.
It seems to me that younger cinephiles (Gen X and especially millennials, I guess) seem more willing to accept De Palma as he is, as a kind of carnival-ride auteur, rather than have the long fights that older (Boomer) critics seemed to have over his work, debating whether it was shlock or art. Maybe the distance of years, both from De Palma's early films and from the Hitchcock films he so gleefully ripped off/paid homage to, has burnished the former a little bit, made the accusations of plagiarism and such seem a little besides the point.... But personally I have a hard time accepting him as any kind of great director. At best, a maker of great moments.
Gen Xers (like me) got the lion's share of our classic movies from cable and VHS. Like every generation, we were at the mercy of what we were exposed to in those formative years, its broadcast frequency, and who was influencing us. I didn't have a cool video store clerk to point me to Bunuel, Hitchcock, or even Argento. Southeast Ohio was and is not a hotbed of influential film discussion, at least not in the '80s and early '90s. And I didn't have the Internet in 1994. What I did have were beloved-but-slightly-narcissistic Boomer parents who would occupy the first floor for euchre parties, who gave me free reign to watch cable unsupervised upstairs. De Palma was all over that shit in that era. I respect those who got to watch superlative-laden masterpieces first run in a real theater, but that didn't happen for me and more than a lot of others. All of which is another way of saying that I hear you, and your point is well-made, but
Raising Cain made me want to make movies (No joke. Flame on, I can take it.), and De Palma got to me before anyone else. Truth be told,
E.T. got to me first, and I believe in dancing with them that brung you, but De Palma played with time, tone, and taste in a way that still tickles me. His moments beat a lot of "great directors" ouvres. Yeah, I'm that guy.