Lately it seems that the directorial masters have been slumping into mediocrity. Here are several once great directors that are churning out the worst movies of their once illustrious careers.
Dario Argento
This
one should come as no surprise. The director who earned the nickname of the
“Italian Hitchcock” after crafting visual masterpieces like Deep Red, Suspiria and Inferno
managed to throw his credibility down the toilet over the last two decades.
We’ve discussed how this atrocity began on our list of Movies Ruined By the
Director’s Cut. Argento’s film Opera,
beginning as promising as the very best in his filmography, suddenly takes a
face-first nosedive into a bucket of balls with an ending so nonsensical and
pretentiously stupid that it threw all credibility out the window in a matter
of seconds. Such flights of fartsy became the earmark by which film fans would
measure the now sputtering remains of Argento’s career. This was never more
evident than in his avid defense of the truly abysmal and self-indulgent Mother of Tears, an effort that was
supposed to be the capstone of the otherwise singularly impressive Three
Mothers Trilogy (in companion with Inferno
and Suspiria). A filmmaker who once
used gore to trigger tangible reactions of viscera and dread was now relying on
it solely for its cheap effect — maybe he should make a Saw movie. Mother of Tears
is a plodding, convoluted, vacuous singularity of suck. Not even his daughter
Asia’s bodacious breasts could save it. While we’re on the subject, what in the
holy mother of ass is up with that? I mean, yes, your daughter is gorgeous,
Dario, but do you have to film her naked every time you put her in something?
Freud would have a field day with your crazy Skeletor-looking ass. But I
digress. Cut to present day, and the once gifted and truly remarkable visual
stylist worthy of comparison to Mario Bava has become a self-parody with his
newest mockery of the macabre, Dracula 3D.
A film that features a post-Hobo With a
Shotgun Rutger Hauer, looking like he’s either in serious pain from holding
in flatulent laughter, or unabashedly embarrassed to be cast alongside the
worst looking CGI effects this side of a Stephen Sommers picture, and of
course, yet another scene of Asia Argento naked in a bathtub. Those are the two
best effects in the whole movie.
Francis Ford Coppola
Let’s
all just sit back for a moment and mourn this one, because the inclusion of Mr.
Coppola is probably the saddest entry on this entire list. Because this man
made The Godfather Trilogy and Apocalypse Now. Just digest that for a
moment. You are talking about four of the greatest films ever made (or at least
three); absolute titanic examples of the art form of filmmaking. Apocalypse Now is the kind of hell-spun
genius that comes along only once in about fifty lifetimes. It’s downright
perfect. On top of those monuments of magnificence, he also made The Conversation, The Outsiders, and
crafted some of the horror genre’s most exhilarating imagery with his version
of Bram Stoker’s Dracula… even if one
of those images happened to be Gary Oldman dressed like Eddie Izzard if he came
swirling out of a soft serve ice cream machine before getting dusted with a
cloud of cocaine. But then there was Jack:
A Robin Williams vehicle of syrupy saccharine (I say saccharine because it
causes cancer) so corny, manipulative, and bone-crushingly bad, it almost makes
you wish you were watching Patch Adams,
a thought that makes me want to wrap my lips around a glock. If you drove with
the windows down in 1996, you would occasionally hear loud thunderclaps on
clear days, as entire movie theaters full of people across the country
face-palmed in unison. This is a movie so bad that it singlehandedly sank the
career of the guy who created The
Godfather. Ho-lee-shit. Guess how many films Coppola has made since Jack. Five. That’s it. And one of them
was the black hole of science fiction known as Supernova, a movie so slap-chopped by interfering producers that
not one, but three (!!) gifted directors had their names taken off it (Coppola
along with directors Walter Hill and Jack Sholder worked on this first
post-Alan Smithee Hollywood bomb under the pseudonym Thomas Lee). Since Jack, Coppola has mainly focused on
producing, and perhaps that’s for the best. We can only hope that he has one
more masterpiece left in him. His newest oeuvre, Twixt, is available on Netflix streaming, and we will let you
decide for yourself if he’s managed to scrap together some remnants of dignity.
Atom
Egoyan
Canadian
auteur Atom Egoyan first burst onto the cinema scene with the erotic thriller Exotica in 1994 where he enjoyed a Palme
d’Or nomination at Cannes and followed up with The Sweet Hereafter in 1997 where he won three awards at the
prestigious film festival. The upswing for Canada’s most promising director
since David Cronenberg continued to rise with Felicia’s Journey and Ararat,
making Egoyan a force to be reckoned with. A critical darling and arthouse
favorite, Egoyan was well on the way to becoming a great director.
Unfortunately, that all abruptly changed with the inexplicably awful and
miscalculated NC-17 erotic thriller, Where
the Truth Lies. A cinematic misfire so outrageously bad and misguided it
has to be seen to be believed, it successfully derailed the public from taking
Egoyan seriously and further eroded his credibility with the critical
establishment. While Egoyan had something of a comeback with Chloe in 2009, the once great Egoyan now
found his career in continual decline both artistically and commercially. In
recent years films like Devil’s Knot
would reinforce the newly formed notion than Egoyan had devolved into a bad
filmmaker continuing to make films without the audience that championed his
work in the late 1990s. It’s a shame because The Sweet Hereafter and Felicia’s
Journey remain transcendent character studies with fine British actors
starring in them. Felicia’s Journey especially remains a criminally neglected gem,
with a powerhouse performance from the late Bob Hoskins, and is arguably one of
the best and most unique films about a serial killer. Seriously, how did the
once subtle and nuanced director of those films get so wacky with Where the Truth Lies?
Spike Lee
There’s
no denying Spike Lee is one of the most talented filmmakers and surprisingly
solid actors to emerge from the school of Scorsese in the late 1980s. Bursting onto the scene with films like She’s Gotta Have It, School Daze and the mutually celebrated
and controversial classic Do the Right
Thing, the Atlanta, Georgia based auteur represented the most brilliant
voice in independent African American cinema since Melvin Van Peebles or even
Charles Burnett! Always a vitriolic
rabble rouser, Spike Lee’s argumentative firebrand nature was as heated as the
strengths of his films, which seemed to continue to go upward with Jungle Fever, Mo’ Better Blues before peaking with Malcolm X. In a short amount
of time, Lee proved to the filmmaking community he was a force to be reckoned
with. Unfortunately as time went by for
Lee, however, that same antagonistic persona would prove to be the director’s
undoing. In between uttering
controversial remarks, notably taking aim at Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima before turning
over Miracle at St. Anna almost as a
rebuke of those films, critics and audiences couldn’t help but tire of Lee’s
shenanigans and see his arguments as part of the problem instead of a solution. Just as quickly as he rose to fame (or
infamy, depending on your point of view), the young director found himself
fading into irrelevance. Accused from
the very beginning of fanning the flames of hate and violence, Lee’s vitriol
reached a boiling point when he tweeted the home address of George Zimmerman
only to learn later it was incorrect and the occupants had to leave home due to
death threats before filing a negligence suit against the director. While Lee managed to still garner a few more
hits over time, including 25th
Hour and Inside Man, he
successfully managed to undermine his public image and has since been turning
to Kickstarter for funding his projects.
If there’s any indication as to how far the once mighty provocateur has
fallen, it’s with his American remake of Oldboy,
a film so dreadfully miscalculated and mismatched it proved to be the biggest
flop of 2013 and the worst film of his career without question. That said, I’m still of the belief Mr. Lee
still has another good film left in him, if he could just stop giving into
impulsivity and xenophobia for once.
Tobe Hooper
Tobe
Hooper changed the face of horror films forever with one film in 1974, the now
timeless classic The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre. Nothing like it had come before but many pale imitations have
followed and continue to do so. Formidable, impeccable and relentlessly
terrifying, it became the very definition for which the horror genre would come
to be known. Spawning several sequels as well as three modern reboots, Hooper’s
effort solidified his status as one of the most influential filmmakers of all
time. But if you take a good look at Hooper’s career as a whole, interesting as
it is from a schlock fan’s standpoint, there isn’t a whole lot else for the
aged auteur to be proud of. From moving out of the way of Steven Spielberg on Poltergeist to his brief three picture
stint with Cannon Films, resulting in his one other legitimately good film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (serving
as the basis of House of 1,000 Corpses),
the man has had a string of one bad and silly headed horror movie after
another. Where Hooper seems to have a knack for intimidating with his horror
pictures, his science fiction ventures such as Lifeforce, his remake of Invaders
from Mars and Spontaneous Combustion are
unabashed exercises in batty ridiculousness. Worse still, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a film he didn’t even really direct
in the first place are his only genuine moneymakers to name in a long list of
box office failures. Toolbox Murders seemed
like a minor comeback for Hooper, who also has since dabbled into television
and literary work. But beyond that, if you break down the oeuvre of the man
dubbed the most influential horror director of our time, Hooper’s really just a
one-hit wonder. That’s not to say his crap isn’t enjoyable or reasonably well
done. Considering his stature and moments where he’s shown just how well he can
do horror, he’s more than capable of doing better than he’s chosen to. Where
many are quick to pick on John Carpenter’s supposed rise and fall from grace,
remember how many more worthwhile movies are on his roster compared to
Hooper’s. For those of us who were members of the video store generation — you
remember when you actually had to drive there? — we can recall the moment when
it was all over for Tobe Hooper: It was a small release back in 2000 called Crocodile, and it proudly proclaimed
“from the director of The Texas Chainsaw
Massacre” on the cover. When you’re directing the straight-to-DVD knock-off
of Lake Placid, cash in your chips,
because the house has officially taken you.
Neil
Marshall
For a
brief period of time, Neil Marshall was among the top up and coming British
horror directors, having achieved both critical and commercial success with his
low budget indie masterworks Dog Soldiers
and The Descent. Called among other things ‘the best horror
film since Alien’, The Descent promised a skillful,
intelligent and uncompromising director with a singular, intensely controlled
vision. Though only boasting two
features on his resume, Neil Marshall quickly became a director worth paying
attention to. Very swiftly however, that
changed with his attempt at making a big budget, star studded picture, a
post-apocalyptic ode to Mad Max called
Doomsday. While working with the same crew and writers
he’d been with all along, the filmmaker who made mountains out of molehills
with his prior features now produced an overblown mess that amounted to very
little in terms of critical or commercial success. In its worldwide grosses, Doomsday barely broke even and managed
to do considerable damage to Marshall’s reputation. The downfall didn’t stop there with his
medieval historical action film Centurion,
taking in less than half of its budget at the box office as well as taking a
beating from the critics. Although
Marshall has been prolific in directing television including an Emmy nominated
episode of Game of Thrones, he has
had yet to secure feature film work.
With several planned features in limbo thanks to two less than
aesthetically appealing flops, Neil Marshall was a potentially great director
that fell hard. Hopefully one day he’ll
get up to speed again.
Paul
Schrader
Paul
Schrader is too gifted of an artist to be on this list. Having written Taxi Driver and Raging Bull
as well as directed American Gigolo, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and Auto Focus, Schrader is an ingenious
storyteller to learn from and respect.
While every director has fumbled the ball from time to time, Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist among
Schrader’s misfires, for the most part the aged, self-driven auteur has managed
a pretty respectable career. That is,
until he decided directing troubled actress Lindsay Lohan and porn star James
Deen was a sound idea. Co-written
(before being disowned) by Bret Easton Ellis, The Canyons is a hatefully awful excuse for a film Mr. Schrader
needs to take his name off of. While
Schrader’s films have never been box office darlings, the exception with The Canyons besides everyone turning in
dreadful performances is that Schrader either truly believes he’s made a
misunderstood masterpiece or he wants us to believe it so he can’t take the
blame. Around the time Schrader condemned
BBC film critic Mark Kermode as being ‘unfit’ to review The Canyons, I kept thinking of Steven Soderbergh introducing Schizopolis in which he abdicates
responsibility for unspooling an incoherent film. According to Soderbergh and Schrader, it’s
“not the artist’s fault” per se that we fail to get it. It’s not that we didn’t get what Paul
Schrader was trying to do with The
Canyons. The problem is we cannot
accept this as a Paul Schrader film.
Reportedly, Schrader’s wife and colleagues urged him not to proceed with
The Canyons, saying he was “crazy”
for moving forward with a potential career ender. While I’m of the belief that Paul Schrader
still has a great film left in him, he ought to heed his wife’s advice in the
near future.
Ridley Scott
When
we think of Ridley Scott, our tendency is to pine for his earlier masterworks
such as The Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner and Legend. All four films represent the British director
at the height of his creative powers, using massive set pieces and even larger
cameras to tell the epic stories of his characters struggling for survival in a
harsh and unforgiving world. All were
heavy on symbolism, all were intensely dark, and all were impeccably crafted by
a master of design who created back-to-back two of the greatest science fiction
films of all time. Early detractors of
Scott would dub his characters as thinly veiled archetypes at the service of an
equally thin plot, paper cut-outs if you will.
While I’m willing to discredit those claims (particularly in the case of
Blade Runner), I’ve no problem
sharing their views with regard to everything of his that followed Legend.
Gone are the long shots eager to cram as much set design into the frame
as possible in favor of a muddy rapid-fire image you’re not really allowed to
see. Gone are the rich characterizations
that made his earlier work instantly relatable.
Where Alien and Blade Runner were at once commercial as
well as intellectually stimulating, Gladiator
and Hannibal by contrast pander
to the lowest common denominator. To
call Scott a mere shadow of his former self would be too modest, as the now
movie-mogul might be able to command sets as overblown as the ones in Exodus but not with the heart or soul of
the man who gave the world some of the most intelligent and enduring films of
the early 1980s.
M. Night Shyamalan
Very
few directors barrel out of the starting gate with as much promise as M. Night
Shyamalan. Even his biggest detractors — one hell of a long list — still
proclaim The Sixth Sense as a
singular thriller, crafted meticulously by the hands of a born filmmaker. His
followup, Unbreakable, was met with
less admiration by audiences who were — more or less — expecting The Sixth Sense 2: Electric Boogaloo.
But as it does so often, time has told a different story: This unique and
spellbinding comic-inspired thriller is becoming more widely regarded as
Shyamalan’s unsung masterpiece. (I couldn’t agree more.) Then there was Signs, another blockbuster hit despite
much-debated logistical issues that many critics, including Roger Ebert, saw as
unimportant to the permeating themes of the film’s narrative. But then came The Village… and then Lady in the Water… and then The Happening (Crappening?)… and by the
time we got to The Last Airbender,
people were booing at the mere sight of Shyamalan’s name as it appeared in the
teaser trailers for Devil. His last
abysmal failure was the shockingly awful After
Earth, a movie so vacuum-sealed with Hollywood nepotism, they didn’t even
put Shyamalan’s name in the previews. The age-old saying of “how the high and
mighty have fallen” couldn’t possibly have more defining relevance. This is a
man who had the world by the balls, and managed to collapse under the weight of
his own ego. One scene from Lady in the
Water boils it down succinctly: As Bryce Dallas Howard looks deep into M.
Night Shyamalan’s eyes and tells him that his writing “will change the world”,
that’s the equivalent of removing your floating rib so you can fellate yourself
in the dark, behind a curtain of egomaniacal shame. His next film, The Visit, boasts a promising trailer…
just like all his other films. If he has any hope of resuscitating his career,
he’ll need to bust out the shock paddles, an adrenaline needle, and every trick
in the book, because the last person to bring back something this dead was
Jesus.
Oliver Stone
Two-time
Academy Award winning writer-director Oliver Stone is something of an egotistical
bad boy in Hollywood. Always convinced
of his own press clippings and penchant for drama, Stone’s career as a serious
artist in Tinseltown working as an art-house director with access to Hollywood
money and players was solidified with his timeless 1986 Vietnam autobiography Platoon.
Known for his honesty as well as his tendencies towards fictitious
embellishment, Stone’s notoriety continued to rise until the early 90s when his
career peaked with JFK and Natural Born Killers. After NBK,
Stone was among the world’s most important creative visionaries and social
commentators assailing hypocrisies of the past and present. And then came a little known lark called U-Turn, a nihilistic neo-noir with
Joaquin Phoenix consisting of meandering and scene-chewing that provoked
derision from even ardent followers like Roger Ebert. From there, Stone had a minor comeback with
his entertaining football drama Any Given
Sunday which employed his trademark hyperkinetic editing and noise drum
soundtrack. It wasn’t until one of
Stone’s most sought after historical subjects, Alexander, arrived to completely destroy the director’s
career. Overblown and obnoxious, Alexander tanked at the box office and
did even poorer with the critics who were quick to dub Stone ‘at the end of his
rope’. It didn’t help that in the
forthcoming decade, Stone would recut Alexander
several more times to no avail, embarrassing his reputation even further. W was
seen by some as a return to form with regard to the political thriller, except
that unlike JFK and Nixon, according to co-star Richard
Dreyfuss (who has since gone on about his dislike for Stone), Stone removed all
the politics from W until it was this
impotent dud. This hasn’t had any
bearing on Stone’s ego, who once told Quentin Tarantino ‘You make movies. I make films.’ Looking at the provisions, it’s fair to say
which of the two auteurs has maintained relevance and which one hasn’t.
The Wachowskis
The
Wachowskis first burst onto the cinematic scene with their low-budget 1996 lesbian
neo-noir, Bound, and quickly
established themselves as the most technically proficient and skillful
filmmakers since David Fincher.
Confident and daring, the Wachowskis soon tapped into mainstream cinema
and redefined the science-fiction action thriller model with their second
feature, the groundbreaking box office smash The Matrix. Going on to
become the top selling DVD of all time when the format was still in its
infancy, the Wachowskis found themselves on top of the filmmaking world,
establishing a rapport and creative autonomy with Warner Brothers not enjoyed
by a major director since Stanley Kubrick.
They were the talk of Tinseltown with enormous anticipation surrounding
whatever they were prepared to do next.
Some point to their latest effort Jupiter
Ascending as the turning point for their careers when backlash against the
dynamic duo began, but in actuality it started much sooner with the release of
the still controversial Matrix sequels. Despite breaking box office records with both
films, fans of the first film started sensing an ‘emperor with no clothes’ as
it were. Many jumped ship but the
sequels still bared their share of ardent defenders. The release of V for Vendetta, a film they produced and wrote but didn’t direct,
proved to be a financial success for the Wachowskis. But when it came to writing and directing
their own material, everything after The
Matrix sequels began to lose money. Speed Racer still has yet to recoup its
production costs in worldwide sales and while Cloud Atlas did eventually break even with home video sales, the
Wachowskis were garnering the reputation as credit risk. Even so, the Wachowskis maintained a devoted
legion of fans eager to see whatever they had to offer. And then came Jupiter Ascending, which quickly became known as the most colossal
critical and commercial bomb of its kind since Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. A film so shockingly awful, it forced even
the Wachowski’s most dedicated disciples to question the validity of their
careers and body of work as a whole.
Were they as good as we made them out to be to begin with? With the impending release of their foray
into television, Sense8, they may
have a chance to redeem themselves and renew audience interest in their
efforts. For the moment, however, much
like Icarus, they’re a case study of budding talents who flew too high too
quickly before the sun melted their wings.
-Andrew Kotwicki
-Blake O Kleiner