Aronofsky's been hit or miss for me, but at least i can be assured his pictures will be original and something I haven't seen before. I need to go back and watch Requiem for a Dream again. The Wrestler was painfully good. I need to see The Fountain, still. I loved Black Swan, but he didn't hold anyone's hand -- some people just get very confused about what was happening, but I didn't have any issues with that. Natalie Portman's the type of actress that needs a good director to pull a performance out of her, and if she gets it, then she shines; otherwise she can be a bit lost and flat. So I think it says something about Aronofsky, that she really owned that movie.
Fincher's definitely better at mood and visual ambiance. Actually, I felt like the characterization in se7en wasn't bad, in terms of the two leads; I just haven't decided whether Pitt's version of a belligerent, thick-headed detective was at attempt at something atypical or just bad acting. I thought Alien3 had one of the most emotionally shitty openings (in terms of continuity) of any series pic, but the movie itself was in the middle-range in terms of quality... him being brought in to clean up someone else's mess and then having to fight the studio on costs didn't help. Still, I can be assured of some intense, provocative mood and visual in all of his movies.
I'll concede that Inception had a lot of hand-holding in. I prefer my pictures to be more organic; however, since it was consistent throughout, I just consider it a choice by the director to have a more expository story. Compare it to Donnie Darko, another movie with its own sense of what's going on that the viewer somehow has to be informed about to understand the picture; a lot less was explained in the theatrical cut but at a cost of sometimes the viewer not really understanding what was happening (the director's cut was more hackneyed and clumsy, I think).
I didn't really feel like Nolan's The Prestige held the viewers hand at all, and some people really touted The Illusionist more because of that... a movie which, when I just watched it recently, was much more simple, you were just "informed" of what the answers to the puzzles were, and thus maybe it was easier for the average viewer to digest.
I believe there is a difference between disagreeing with the movie made, and thinking a movie had the right idea but failed in execution.
Well, technically, it only failed on execution with YOU. It's not like we're talking about a movie that was panned by the critics and public. And the complaints I've seen typically revolve around Nolan hand-holding the viewers too much in that pic, not about the children motif. This is honestly the first bitch on that point I've read or heard; it seems more to me that you're bothered on a personal level by it for whatever reason, rather than it being a universal criticism.