Memento is his firm #2, but TDK still prevails.

1. Inception
2. Memento
3. The Prestige
4. The Dark Knight
5. Batman Begins
6. Following
7. Insomnia

I feel like an obvious answer to this that no one mentioned was M. Night Shyamalan. Things literally got worse with every passing movie.

Edit: Just kidding, someone did mention him, but seriously...

The Sixth Sense was fantastic, obvi. Unbreakable and Signs were pretty good. Then things just got bad fast.

Also, if the first batch of reviews on RT of To Rome With Love are accurate, Woody Allen going from Midnight in Paris to that is a solid choice. I'll still see it in theaters though.

I've always been surprised by the divide by critics on a lot of Woody's recent films. I've enjoyed all of them immensely and even if this movie is more You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, it should still be a lot of fun with the cast at hand.

The Village is his best movie, IMO.

Ew.

It's better than the three that followed it, but it still kinda blew.

Add Shankman to the list...


Hairspray
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Rock of Ages

One I just thought of was Joe Wright for Atonement to The Soloist. One of the best films of the decade to one of the worst.

The Soloist is not one of the worst films of the decade. It's very nicely shot. The scenes in the homeless shelter are unsettling and realistic. Downey Jr. gives a good, low-key performance.

Joe wright doesn't belong on this list - - he's consistently overrated - - he hasn't made a good movie yet.

Bradley Witherberry wrote:

Atonement

How depressing!

...only I wish I was describing how this movie made me feel...

...but unfortunately, I'm reporting to you what an abject failure this movie ended up being.



I love this kind of tragic melodrama, but yikes! Joe Wright, the director, sucked any goodness out of every scene with his trite storytelling choices. It is too precious by far. I guess they must have hired him for his pretty pictures, cause it all looked very nice.

One thing's for sure - - it'ain't no Notebook!!! This movie could only dream of being a movie that came by it's emotion as honestly as The Notebook...

The actors in Atonement were adequate, but even Keira Knightley, who has consistently impressed me (except for some unfortunate role choices... q.v. POTC2&3), here shows signs of slipping up - - she was not entirely consistent in her performance. And James McAvoy could rapidly become the new Orlando Bloom if he's not careful - - he's certainly gotta stop taking these effete roles. Oh well, at least he's got his Narnia series work as Mr. Tumnus to fall back on.

This movie is a sad disappointment; it is a great idea horribly squandered.

2 out of 5. (BAD)

Bradley Witherberry wrote:

Pride & Prejudice

An adequate adaptation of the classic novel - I did really enjoy the all the actors, though the chemistry between Miss Bennett and Mr. Darcy was good, not electrifying. The worst part of the movie was the wonky direction - the director had the camera swirling around and the sound mixed in a jumble so you were often disoriented as a viewer - this might be explicable in the Bourne Supremacy, but here was unwelcome to say the least. I'm glad I saw it, but it wasn't a serious challenger to the 1996 BBC miniseries adaptation's crown...

3 out of 5.

Nolan's Inception and TDK top Memento.

I think Memento was ruined for me because I learned about it after watching the Indian remake lol

Agreed about M. Night's alarming overall career trajectory. Literally every movie he's made since The Sixth Sense was worse than the one before it.

In terms of notoriety, Michael Cimino should be up here too. The Deer Hunter blew people away, but mega-bomb Heaven's Gate is largely responsible for bankrupting United Artists. It's developed a small, apologetic following since it's initial relase but the reviews of the initial 3.5 hour cut were so scathing it was removed from theaters and taken back to the editing lab.

I think if we include drops of quality from one single movie to the next, the thread becomes a bit more pointless - Just about every director at some point in his career follows up a good film with a stinker.

It's much more interesting to mention people who used to make more or less consistently good films, and then started to make more or less consistently bad films.

Roland Joffe was the first that came to my mind. Started with amazing Oscar-calibre films like The Mission and The Killing Fields and ended up making B-grade schlock like Scarlet Letter and Captivity.

Shyamalan of course.

And Coppola. While he has done solid work later on, the drop-off from his GREAT period is notable. I haven't seen his latest arthouse projects, thought.

John Carpenter, definitely. Made a bunch of classics, and has since turned out average to awful material.

George Lucas. THX, American Graffiti and Star Wars followed by the prequels (I only hate Phantom Menace, thought, the two others are entertaining).

I'm not familiar with Roeg's and Argento's later output, but they sound like good candidates.

I don't agree with Michael Cimino. His entire filmography is pretty solid, IMHO. He just stopped making movies.

Though one can't argue with the decline in BO/popularity of his films, a simple reading of KJ's review threads will show that it is far from conclusive that Shyamalan is now making bad films.