The great directors' most disappointing films

I enjoyed HUGO a lot. If I have to pick his weakest film, it's NEW YORK, NEW YORK.

Salomé wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

Hitchcock made plenty worse than Topaz, most of them long forgotten.

Any examples? I have to say I enjoy a lot of his less-heralded early Hollywood features.

Of his well known stuff, I'd say 'The Paradine Case' is worse than 'Topaz', which suffers from the confused and unfinished script (and Lou Wassermann) more than anything Hitchcock did wrong. The real stinkers are in Hitch's early days in Britain. I was going to say 'Waltzes from Vienna' in particular, but it's better than I remember. Check it out here (I hope you like Strauss):

https://archive.org/details/Waltzes_from_Vienna

Right. I wondered if you perhaps meant movies like "Saboteur" (which I love).

Now that I think of it, I can't remember anything about THE PARADINE CASE. It wasn't even that long ago I saw it, it's just forgettable.

THE PARADINE CASE and UNDER CAPRICORN were flat-out boring, as well.

However, UNDER CAPRICORN had Jack Cardiff behind the camera, which lead to some excellent camerawork.

I didn't even finish UNDER CAPRICORN. There was a novelty to it for 30 mins, seeing Hitch trying to pull off a costume drama, but as you say it's utterly boring. Waste of a cast too. I'll give points to him for actually trying to do different genres in the 40s. I do think MR. & MRS. SMITH would have greatly benefited if he infused his macabre approach with the screwball formula, rather than actually trying to do a straightforward screwball.

Control wrote:

THE PARADINE CASE and UNDER CAPRICORN were flat-out boring, as well.

The Paradine Case also wasted the immeasurable talents of Alida Valli.

I think the most disappointed I've been from a director I consider great is Michael Mann's Miami Vice movie. It's great on a visual level but outside of that there's not really any real character to the whole film other than being a remake of one of the best episodes of the show (Smuggler's Blues) only much longer and lacking protagonists with actual personality other than just Jamie Foxx playing himself and Colin Farrell playing himself with a moustache.

A runner-up would be Lynch's Inland Empire. I generally find Lynch's stuff not really that hard to figure out but this I can't even begin and I realize it's mostly due to the distracting way the film was shot. It feels more like a YouTube parody of David Lynch than an actual David Lynch film.

Miami Vice had Gong Li and an Adam A500. That was almost enough for me.

The Coen bros are one of my favorite filmmakers, but THE LADYKILLERS was real a chore to watch.

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Makeshift Python wrote:

The Coen bros are one of my favorite filmmakers, but THE LADYKILLERS was real a chore to watch.

It's definitely their weakest but I didn't hate it.

It's hard to hate something that's just aggressively mediocre.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Miami Vice had Gong Li and an Adam A500. That was almost enough for me.

It also had Colin Farrell giving what was perhaps the most coked up performance in movie history.

Don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but Lynch's DUNE is one of the all time great cinematic disasters in my opinion. (Cue Largo's coming in to say it's great.)

I haven't even seen DUNE. When I was going through Lynch's entire filmography for the first time, I intentionally skipped that one because I didn't want to sort out through the various three-hour/four-hour editions and Lynch disowned the film anyway, so I never gave it a shot.

Yeah, I forgot all about Dune. What a shame the Jodorowsky version never got made.

The recent doc about it was one of my fav films of the past year or so.

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Hilly KCMG wrote:

whether or not he counts as a great director, Terence Young's Inchon

Haven't seen that, but I would also make a case for Young's 'The Jigsaw Man'. Probably the most ploddingly dull espionage 'thriller' I've ever sat through.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Hilly KCMG wrote:

whether or not he counts as a great director, Terence Young's Inchon

Haven't seen that, but I would also make a case for Young's 'The Jigsaw Man'. Probably the most ploddingly dull espionage 'thriller' I've ever sat through.

Jigsaw Man had legendary financial problems with cast and crew members being fired and rehired on the set on an almost day to day basis. Some films triumph over such troubled production stories (Skyfall's didn't sound too promising for a long time), but not many.

Perhaps Brainstorm is case of a disappointing film robbing us of a great director. Natalie Wood died midway through filming and MGM thought it could turn a decent profit by closing the production and cashing in its insurance bond. However, the insurers and director Douglas Trumbull insisted on pressing on. The film went on to lose a fortune and also finished a promising film-directing career. (Trumbull, of course, is the genius behind the visual effects for both 2001 and Blade Runner.)

In terms of my original post in this thread: does anyone have an opinion on Carpenter's "The Ward"?
Is it at all worthwhile for me to check it out?
I guess it might be worth it just in terms of completing Carpenter's oeuvre by doing so.

Must admit, I still haven't seen The Ward. I took Carpenter at his word when he said he was burnt out.

Coincidentally, rewatched his Vampires the other night. James Woods is as good as I remembered, Laura Palmer less so.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Must admit, I still haven't seen The Ward. I took Carpenter at his word when he said he was burnt out.

Coincidentally, rewatched his Vampires the other night. James Woods is as good as I remembered, Laura Palmer less so.

The last one of his movies that I rewatched was "Assault on Precinct 13".

Someone should do a proper feminist analysis of the Leigh character.