Sometimes a director has to try something new and get out of his comfort zone. Once in a while there's triumph, other times there's disaster. But we should always try and appreciate the effort even if we dont like it.
Unexpected Directors
The Fighter |
Director: David O. Russell
David O. Russell tore up the 1990s with his icky family comedies (Spanking the Monkey, Flirting With Disaster) and the truth-to-power Iraq War I satire Three Kings. He went deep into his unique vision with the difficult, love-it-or-hate-it I Heart Huckabees and Nailed, a tortured production mixing A list stars and health care politics that will probably never be released.
What's the obvious follow-up? A back-to-basics, straightforward and surprise-free sports flick, of course.
Few people disliked The Fighter, but even fewer would have been able to name the director in a blind test.
Unexpected Directors
The Wiz |
Director: Sidney Lumet
Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, 12 Angry Men and The Pawnbroker prove that Sidney Lumet knows the New York streets. Even when those streets turn to overproduced disco-funk yellow bricks.
Yes, just two years after his satirical masterpiece Network, Lumet gave us unintentional laughs as he eased on down into a paycheck with the Diana Ross/Michael Jackson/Richard Pryor/Nipsey Russell vehicle The Wiz.
Unexpected Directors
Popeye |
Director: Robert Altman
Altman spent most of the 1970s weaving tapestries of collaborative, character-driven epics likeNashville, McCabe and Mrs. Miller and M*A*S*H. The 1980s brought a loud, messy, bring-the-kids-and-make-them-cry disaster that was Popeye.
Despite the perfect casting of Robin Williams as the leafy green loving sailor and Shelly Duvall as Olive Oyl, this will always be held as the low benchmark for comic book/strip adaptations.
Unexpected Directors
The Straight Story |
Director: David Lynch
Where are the puffy-cheeked chanteuses in the radiator, stepping on sperm? Where are the backward-talking dwarves? Where's Harry Dean Stanton? (Oh, actually, he's in this.) But still, try finding something that isn't straight about the true tale of Alvin Straight, a G-rated, heartstring-tugging picture about an old man riding a lawnmower across county lines to visit his brother.
Raise your hand if seeing Lynch's name on the credits had you expecting the bartender to hand Alvin battery acid or something instead of "Miller's Lite" at the end.
Unexpected Directors
Music of the Heart |
Director: Wes Craven
Overheard at every single screening of this movie: When are these violin bows gonna' turn into saws and start massacring these schoolchildren?
Unexpected Directors
Pirates |
Director: Roman Polanski
Known for his psychological thrillers laced with sexual edge - but also for his movies (zing!) - Roman Polanski is probably the last person you'd expect to helm a swashbuckling adventure during the days of sail.
But it was the mid 1980s and there was enough cocaine lying around where one could envision a direct line between Knife in the Water and something like this. "Hey, man, the guy knows boats!" Yet no amount of narcotics can explain what New York City delicatessen fresser like Walter Matthau is doing on the seven seas.
Unexpected Directors
The Weather Man |
Director: Gore Verbinski
Hyperkinetic antics? Production design amped up to make your eyeballs bug out? Get the director of Mouse Hunt, Rango and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy!
A middle class cri de coeur about male menopause, career befuddlement and hurled milkshakes? Perhaps this was meant for someone else.
Unexpected Directors
For Love of the Game |
Director: Sam Raimi
With no absurd wide angels or gross things coming in and out of peoples' mouths, you'd be hard-pressed to blindly know that tear-jerker baseball pic For Love of the Game was directed by Sam "Army of Darkness" Raimi. However, the conceit that someone from the Detroit Tigers could pitch a perfect game definitely falls under the umbrella of fantasy.
Unexpected Directors
Canadian Bacon |
Director: Michael Moore
There have been cases of documentary filmmakers making the successful leap to narratives. This ain't one of 'em.
Muckraking populist Michael Moore's attempt to exploit the satirical aspects of his work burnt in its own oils with this forgotten piece of treyf.
One could be kind and call it ahead of its time, envisioning a politician Alan Alda before The West Wing and a war with the Great White North prior to South Park's "Blame Canada." Oh, hell, let's just celebrate this as what finally put Rhea Perlman and G.D. Spradlin in the same film.
Unexpected Directors
New York, New York |
Director: Martin Scorsese
Not a terrible movie (though sure as hell not good), there's a bigger shocker than remembering that this distinctly non-Italians-killing-each-other flick was directed by Martin Scorsese. (Keep in mind that Marty had already helmed Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More, and would later move on to work as diverse as Kundun and The Age of Innocence.)
No, the biggest surprise is that this 1977 musical featuring Liza Minelli is the origin of the timeless classic sung by Frank Sinatra. That's right - the classic that closes out every winning Yankees game is a cover version from this not-as-ancient-as-you-thought flick.
Unexpected Directors
Brewster's Millions |
Director: Walter Hill
This dopey movie (yet another with John Candy) was the 7th of 9 film versions of this "careful what you wish for" fable. (Frankly, it's a miracle Adam Sandler and Dennis Dugan haven't announced their doing an update.)
With the story being such a workhorse, it's no wonder the tough guy action picture director Walter Hill thought it would be a good one on which to flex his family-comedy muscles. Hill, of course, made his bones with the ultraviolent The Warriors and the foul-mouthed cop pictures 48 Hrs.
After this anomaly he went back to form with Red Heat, Last Man Standing and episodes ofDeadwood.
Unexpected Directors
Wise Guys |
Director: Brian De Palma
The true film nerd's filmmaker, Brian De Palma exudes craft with each of his dark, psychological films. Whether blowing our minds with montage and split-screens in Carrie, The Fury, Scarfaceand Sisters or deconstructing the very nature of filmmaking with Blow-Out, Body Double and Obsession, De Palma's resume was a remarkable and unblemished from his early avant-garde pictures in the 1960s until 1986 when he turned in. . . this. An (alleged) mob comedy that climaxes with Captain Lou Albano asking "Who farted?"
So is this movie any good? I've only got two words for you and they are Joe and Piscopo.
Unexpected Directors
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader |
Director: Michael Apted
British director Michael Apted has no specific genre. A renown documentarian (see the 7 Up series and the watchable-even-if-you-don't-like-him Sting doc Bring On The Night) Apted has done thrillers (Gorky Park), action-adventure (The World Is Not Enough), drama (Gorillas in the Mist), great television (Rome) and enthongraphic biopics (Coal Miner's Daughter.)
There's one type of film he hasn't done that much of, though. Cash-grabbing garbage. That changed late last year as he turned in this work of shameless, mid-franchise tripe. Dawn Treaderdidn't even have the decency to have good special effects, but serves to remind us, I suppose, that even an elder statesman with a sterling record has a soft spot for a truck full of money backing up to his front door.
Unexpected Directors
Thelma & Louise |
Director: Ridley Scott
It isn't just that this movie is set in the present - more of Ridley Scott's movies are than you might imagine. And it isn't even that this isn't exactly an action picture - Someone To Watch Over Me is basically a love story and A Good Year is. . .well, no one actually saw that, so I can't say.
What makes Thelma & Louise such an oddity is that it doesn't have the look. There are no shafts of light, no cold cityscapes or harsh interiors. It's as if Scott broke out of the same state-of-mind prison that his characters did. And then followed it up with 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
Unexpected Directors
Jack |
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
A bigger shamo than Fredo.
Unexpected Directors
Memoirs of an Invisible Man |
Director: John Carpenter
This is the movie that Bill Murray saw and said, "Sweet Lord, that will never be me."
This catastrophe isn't just Chevy Chase's fall from grace, but also one of the true great craftsmen of suspense, John Carpenter. Carpenter never fully recovered (In The Mouth of Madness came close to redeeming him) so I'd like to blame it on the insidious alien government taking their revenge after being exposed in They Live.
Unexpected Directors
Finding Forrester |
Director: Gus Van Sant
Gus Van Sant exploded into the 1990s with Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho as one of our finest art house directors and has made his way back there with his (what I like to call) "endurance trilogy" of Gerry, Elephant and Last Days.
For a stretch, though, he was the man now, dog, with two unexpected and (in my opinion) unwatchable pieces of Hollywood tripe Good Will Hunting, which simply felt like a paycheck movie, and Finding Forrester, which truly frightened some of us into thinking he lost his mind.
Unexpected Directors
What Planet Are You From? |
Director: Mike Nichols
The creator of some of our most insightful dramas like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Carnal Knowledge, Closer and Angels in America as well as notable satires like The Graduate, Primary Colors and Charlie Wilson's War (as well as numerous productions of Shakespeare in the Park) made a movie about Garry Shandling's buzzing interstellar penis featuring Ben Kingsley traveling via flushed toilets.
Unexpected Directors
Farenheit 451 |
Director: Francois Truffaut
The central pillar of the French Nouvelle Vague, known for his stylish, often autobiographical character-driven films, baffled everyone by making a big budget international color picture based on a contemporary classic science-fiction novel in English.
More surprising: it was actually pretty damned good.
Truffaut immediately retreated to his comfort zone and not doing anything remotely mainstream or fantastical til he appeared in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind eleven years later.
Unexpected Directors
I Am |
Director: Tom Shadyac
Finally, the connection between Jim Carrey and Noam Chomsky!
Shadyac, the genius behind Ace Ventura and The Klumps, had a near death experience so decided to sink his personal fortune into a documentary no one will see about All The Troubles In The Word.
Sounds like a spiritual sequel to Liar, Liar or Evan Almighty (both Shadyac productions) but I swear it's the truth.
Unexpected Directors
Piranha II: The Spawning |
Director: James Cameron
Even the King of the World had to start somewhere. With flying, killer fish.
Unexpected Directors
Toys |
Director: Barry Levinson
The director of heartfelt, character-driven comedies like Diner, Avalon and Wag The Dog, as well as award-winning flicks like Bugsy, Rain Man and You Don't Know Jack turned in this hyper-stylized, tripped-out mess about the evils of big toy manufacturing.
Mark another one in the Robin Williams column, will ya?
Unexpected Directors
Alien Ressurection |
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
The visually dazzling French director took a trip to Hollywood between City of Lost Children andAmelie, and it was this bloated, confusing, not-very-satisfying entry in the Alien franchise.
Not everything translates well.
Unexpected Directors
The Good Mother |
Director: Leonard Nimoy
After two Star Trek films (one good, the other phenomenal) Mr. Spock set his phasers to mainstream success with mainstream comedies like Three Men and a Baby and Funny About Love.
In between, however, sits this quite remarkable child custody drama starring Diane Keaton, Liam Neeson and Jason Robarts that takes a frank look at sexuality and women's liberation. Most illogical.
Unexpected Directors
The Score |
Director: Frank Oz
Miss Piggy directs Marlon Brando. Robbing banks.
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