The problem with the conflict of Burton versus Schumacher is that the two Batman movies were probably the two best films which Tim Burton has ever directed, whereas Batman & Robin was one of the worst 4 or 5 films Schumacher is responsible for (in my opinion Batman Forever was actually not that much worse than Batman Returns and certainly better than Batman). It would be sufficient to consider honestly and impartially Burton's non-Batman films like Beetlejuice or, especially, Mars Attacks, one of the most disgusting and uninteresting films I have ever seen, to see that even when his films clearly don't work Schumacher is still less infuriating than Burton as far as failures are concerned. Personally, I have to attack Schumacher's films like Cousins and The Lost Boys, which some people adore, for being considerably worse than Batman & Robin. I mean, at least Batman & Robin could be counted as some kind of misguided but at least watchable parody (as opposed to the unwatchable Mars Attacks, which I would recommend for torture any day).

Still, I would like to point out that while Schumacher became infamous for his Batman awkwardness, no one who makes films like A Time to Kill or Falling Down can ever be dismissed afterwards as an insignificant or lousy director, whatever he may do for the rest of his life. A Time to Kill is my second favorite courtroom drama of all time, second only to Judgment at Nuremberg, brilliantly portraying the events of the book from an objective side, without sympathizing with the killer and coldly portraying all the people like machines who were programmed to do the only things they could in the situation. A Time to Kill does not advocate murder but only shows a situation which looks perfectly reasonable within the framework of the movie, except that if you look from the outside it becomes very questionable. Anyone who does not understand this paradox as the central theme of that literary adaptation, in my opinion, misses the point of the film. How it was not nominated for Best Picture in 1996 is a mystery to me, since it clearly was superior to every single one of the films considered, including the modern classic Fargo. The fact that A Time to Kill was overlooked while Secrets & Lies, one of Mike Leigh's less impressive films, was nominated shows that there is something wrong with the Academy.

Flatliners and St. Elmo's Fire, while both flawed (repetitively "suspenseful" resurrections and trivial ending, respectively), are also somewhere among my favorite 150 films of all time. 8MM is a standard by which I generally measure all questionable films: "Let's see if it's better than 8MM -- if it is, then I guess it's a good enough movie; if it's worse, then I guess not." Personally I do not abhor Seven and actually like it better, but 8MM certainly does accomplish some interesting things. And films like The Client and Flawless, although less suspenseful than his masterpieces and not quite so interesting to me by their subject matters, still profit from brilliant visual style, eloquent storytelling dynamics and a great deal of character complexity which is apparent in all of Schumacher's better films (even in D.C. Cab). Dying Young and The Incredible Shrinking Woman are somewhat nondescript, so I cannot say much of anything about them, except that Dying Young was actually one of the better films to star Julia Roberts in a romantic role -- I still prefer it to Pretty Woman, Notting Hill, and Runaway Bride.

Overall, Schumacher is not the best director of all time (see Akira Kurosawa, Oliver Stone, Stanley Kramer, Stanley Kubrick, John Sayles, etc.), but he certainly does not deserve to be remembered first and foremost for Batman & Robin -- it is films like A Time to Kill that make him who he really is, and those films cannot be dismissed unless you misunderstand them.