When a director has a (commercial and/or critical) hit, there is the natural expectation and hope his or her next film will be as great or perhaps even superior. But for every The Godfather/The Conversation and Reservoir Dogs/Pulp Fiction, there's a Taxi Driver/New York, New York and Close Encounters of the Third Kind/1941. Of the precipitous drops, which stand out to you as the most egregious or sad?

A major one in recent years is, I feel, Neil Marshall, the British genre director. His first two films, Dog Soldiers and The Descent, are great. Atmospheric, exciting, well-crafted, and, in the case of The Descent at least, truly frightening. Then he made Doomsday, the godawful Mad Max/Resident Evil clone. He's yet to return to form on the big screen, though he did direct the exciting ninth episode of the second season of Game of Thrones.

Deep breath: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck going from The Lives of Others to The Tourist hurt. Though this one isn't so surprising in retrospect. He was hired because he was a major up-and-coming name in 2007/8, but nothing in The Lives of Others indicated he was the right choice for the type of sexy, whimsical Charade style romp The Tourist hoped to become.

William Friedkin's entire career is defined by these rises and falls.

I disagree with your premise (as do many KJer's)...



I still haven't given up hope for sequels - - I can't wait to see more of the Doomsday universe!

Bully for you and them, now answer the question.

My own candidate for "most precipitous declines in directorial quality" would be Baz Luhrmann.

After starting his career with two world class movies in a row - - Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet - - he proceeded to make one of the best films of all time, Moulin Rouge!.

Unfortunately, he then cranked out a piece of absolute shite - - Australia.

I pray that The great Gatsby will be a return to form, but I fear the worst.

Baz going from Moulin Rouge! to Australia is a very apt choice.

Andrew Stanton from WALL-E to John Carter?

Not Brian de Palma. He has been rather consistent.

Nicolas Winding Refn: From Valhalla Rising to Drive

ly terrible

Of course! Did not mean to imply that he was ever good.

I hate Scarface, Carrie, Mission to Mars, Snake Eyes, The Black Dahlia (one of my favorite books), The Fury, and Mission Impossible. I have taken a vow to never watch one of his films again.

See I always find this hard. Usually when a personal project is made and people love it, its followed by the Director fulfilling a contractual obligation to a studio for financing their other. Also there is this stigma that because the Director is Chief on set, then he's completely to blame which I always find unfair as most never take place with editing, scoring, effects, etc on such films. The way I see it, if a Director is doing two personal projects in a row (Or the big studio film was the one everyone loves and follows it with a stinker personal project) then this holds a little more of a thud. If a good director is doing a hack job for a studio you really just have to ask yourself, was it lit properly and in focus.

If I went on that I'd have to say George Lucas- From Star Wars to Star Wars: Phantom Menace. That one rests surely on his shoulders.

Also Andrew Davis- The Fugitive and then nothing ever happened good for him again. Steal Big Little Steal was a particularly wretched followup of a small film.

You mean directly from one film to another or over the course of a career.

Because if the latter, I've got two prime examples:

Francis Ford Coppola went from making The Godfather movies, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now to...well, whatever he is doing now. Youth Without Youth, Tetro and Twixt...WTF?

Roland Joffe went from two Best Director Oscar noms (The Mission and The Killing Fields) to torture porn Captivity and You and I, a "t.A.T.u.-inspired" teen-lesbian drama starring Mischa Barton. I mean that's just WEIRD.

Scarface is such a fun movie (so 80's, so quotable), Black Dahlia is very good, and Snake Eyes is great.

I agree with you that the rest are stinkers (except for Carrie which I've never seen), but I'd add Femme Fatale and Raising Cain.

Also fun was Phantom of the Paradise.

Also very good was The Untouchables.

Also great was Dressed to Kill.

But his all-time masterpiece is Body Double - - brilliant.


All in all, I think he's quite a good choice for this thread - - his career has been like a yo yo!

To be fair Lecter, Coppola went insane on Apocalypse Now.

I think course of the career is more interesting too. John Carpenter certainly has to be #1 on that list. Almost every film he made up to and including Big Trouble in Little China is some sort of classic. Then to say his best film since then was a pretty sloshy Vampire film is pretty embarrassing. And if Craven never made Scream 1 or 2, he'd be even farther off.

Shyamyalan as well.
Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs were good, Village was awful, Lady in the Water even worse, Happening was laughable bad, Last Airbender was just bleh.

I know. But the fact still stands.

Sadly, as I opined in my review of That's My Boy tonight, I have to regretfully add the name of Sean Anders to this list of shame.

From the heights of comedy perfection with Sex Drive to the middling depths of mediocrity with That's My Boy - - that's precipitous, man - - that's precipitous.

I still find Coppola intriguing. Youth Without Youth is a rather intoxicating and sweeping film, even if it's not hitting those muscular, straightforward power notes films such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now did.

I feel Gun was right about Doomsday. It sucked. I shut it off and didn't finish it. Definitely a big step down from Dog Soldiers and The Descent.

lets not forget christopher nolan who served us the numbing inception after his promising memento.

i'm surprised nobody mentioned dario argento yet who went from flat out masterpieces like tenebre, suspiria and profondo rosso to bottom of the barrel crap like giallo. john carpenter is a very similar sad case. tobe hooper too, who is doing direct to video shit now.

nicolas roeg went from brilliant to just ok, much like coppola. robert altman has quite a few stinkers in his filmography that are rather hard to explain.

dishonorable mentions: steven spielbergs hook - such a brilliant director and such an insanely bad movie. this piece of shit will forever hurt his legacy, at least for me.

I agree with Coppola because after The Apocalypse Now he has done almost nothing that I would consider good. And he has had ton of flops over the years. M Night is a good example to a career that fizzled out fast as well.

I agree on Carpenter and Argento, but disagree on Hooper, simply because he was a one-hit wonder. Aside from TCM he was consistently mediocre/bad. I don't count Poltergeist towards him either, it was a Spielberg film.

Inception is probably the weakest of Nolan's films since Memento, but that says something about the quality of his other films.

Insomnia is easily the worst Nolan film, IMO. Despite a persuasive atmosphere and a solid dramatic performance by Robin Williams.

I think Insomnia, Prestige, and his debut are all about the same quality wise, but there still all solid films.