Eli Roth...he really came on with Cabin Fever (2002), the Hostel (2005-2007) movies, i think he has just gotten worse and worse. his only semi-hit i guess, since, was The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018), which i haven't seen, and certainly wasn't his torture porn he is known for. but, nice to see a successful departure, but his other stuff has been complete crap imo.

Zach Snyder...i loved the fuck out of 300 (2006), Watchmen (2009) was watchable imo. but, i really think he has been such a detriment to the DC Universe and his movies have just sucked.

more to come...

He doesnt direct really anymore, but John Carpenter released nothing but shit for the last 2 decades of his working life. Last good movie he did was In the Mouth of Madness. Everything after that was utter garbage. Shame as he has such an amazing run of movies for many years.

First director I thought of reading the thread title. Hard to think of another Western filmmaker with a more fruitful cinematic decade. In the course of only 10 years he did Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, Christine, Starman, Big Trouble In Little China, Prince Of Darkness.

The latter half of his career is just awful. I recently checked Vampires out on Netflix again, and was astonished by how poorly made it was just on a technical level, and I wondered how he could have exhausted all his talent.

This is it for him. He peaked and went nowhere fast after this one.

Also, John McTiernan. Predator, Die Hard, Hunt for Red October....then Rollerball, Basic...then prison.

I only know him from Die Hard. My #1 of all-time.

Richard Kelly and Tim Burton immediately came to mind. Neil Blomkamp is another possibility.

I know Michael Moore has a lot of haters, but I have always really liked Roger and Me. Then you have Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, which were both not only successful but a major part of the national conversation, like them or not. His films since haven't hit anywhere near that height or prominence.

I prefer Dawn of the Dead to 300. IMO, that’s his only good movie.


The first director that popped onto my mind was Steven Spielberg. As much as I hate to admit it he just hasn’t made anything I’ve truly enjoyed in a long time. If Ready Player One had been made by 1980s Spielberg it could have been fantastic. Instead it was a completely forgettable disappointment.

Robert Zemeckis

I forgot about that one. That I liked too, but certainly departure from original. But it was a very good and well-done remake.

John Woo. He hasn’t made a memorable movie in well over decade. Maybe the Red Cliff movies from 12 years ago was his last memorable work.

F.F. Coppola.

Another one that came to mind was Oliver Stone. I remember we talked about as much in the NBK thread not long ago.

Oh, also Rob Reiner. North aside, he was pretty dependable and directed some modern classics up until the mid-90s. I don't think he has done anything of any relevance since then.

Agreed.

Tim Burton. He did so many classics in the eighties and early nineties. He went too deep down the goth/being artsy for the sake of being weird wormhole and hasn’t made anything really memorable in years.

Also I wouldn’t say he’s a bad director per se, but also Christopher Nolan. I was a big fan of his for a while. It seems like he’s too caught up in trying to make films with confusing plots and dialogue that’s drowned out by music and effects to the point where it’s hard to even know what’s going on. His technique is great as far as how he makes films and who he gets to star, but the quality of the stories he tells has gone down in my honest opinion.

Quentin Tarantino

In the 1990s he was on fire. This crime 90s crime trilogy: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown are all amazing. The stories are all pretty tight and the characters seem well developed and realistic. At that point he was celebrated as a cinematic rock star for good reason. And then he let it get to his head and we get overblown, self-indulgent, movies like Kill Bill, Death Proof (his worst), Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with cartoony characters and situations and absurdly over the top violence. The Tarantino films of the 90s had some level of subtlety and grounded in some level of realism. Michael Madsen's character in Dogs is truly frightening because of how realistically he's portrayed. Christoph Waltz's character in Basterds is essentially a mustache-twirling cartoon character as is DiCaprio's character in Django. In short, any Tarantino film that announces what number of film in his filmography: avoid like the plague.

Robert Rodriguez
Ridley Scott
James Cameron

It's Hostel not Hostiles. FYI

Eli Roth never has been a good filmmaker. Cabin Fever was a nice little horror flick, but nothing special. Hostel as a movive is just garbage which became succesful, because its level of violence. The first part of the movie is softcore porn, the second part torture porn.

Oliver Stone has lost his edge. He had a pretty strong run from Salvador to Any Given Sunday, some of them masterpieces. Since Alexander only his documentaries are worth talking about.
The Wachowskis started big with Bound and The Matrix (trilogy). Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas and Jupiter Ascending are barely watchable, Sense8 wasn't that good either.

Ridley Scott always had his ups and downs. After Alien, Blade Runner and Legend and before Black Rain and Thelma & Louise, he directed Someone to Watch Over Me. Before Gladiator, Hannibal and Black Hawk Down he did G.I. Jane. After The Counselor and Exodus he directed The Martian. With the exception of Someone to Watch Over Me which is forgettable, The Counselor which is his failed attempt to direct a Tony Scott movie and the overly boring Exodus, all of his movies are at least OK.

[QUOTE=Runaway;13850234]
Oliver Stone has lost his edge. He had a pretty strong run from Salvador to Any Given Sunday, some of them masterpieces. Since Alexander only his documentaries are worth talking about.
/QUOTE]
I just watched "JFK" for the first time in a long while and I was struck, -looking back over the last 30 years or so, -how long it's been since Stone directed a movie that I found better than just average. He did have a period of strong, challenging films, which for me ended with "Natural Born Killers".

This. He had a pretty great run in the 80s and 90s, up through Cast Away in 2000, which is a favorite of mine along with Forrest Gump, Romancing the Stone, and the Back to the Future movies.. Then he did those three mo-cap animated movies, none of which are that good. After that, I guess Flight is somewhat well-regarded, though I didn't much care for it. Welcome to Marwen was especially disappointing because I had seen and loved the source material--the documentary Marwencol.

Paul W.S. Anderson wasn't that strong to begin with, but Event Horizon and the first Resident Evil aren't that bad either. The last Resident Evil movies, The Three Musketeers and Pompeii are just bad movies and I'm pretty sure Monster Hunter will be, too.

Bryan Singer went down in quality, too. X-Men: Apocalypse and Jack the Giant Slayer both weren't on the same level as his older movies. Bohemian Rhapsody can't fully be credited to him, since he didn't finish shooting and the director of photography had to step in, before Singer was finally fired.

M. Night Shyamalan

[quote=DWilson;13850238]I would agree EXCEPT that I think his winning streak ended with Nixon (1995). It's a gripping, well-crafted film. This scene alone should be a selling point:

Alex Proyas-started with The Crow and the criminally underrated Dark City. I' Robot was a typical blockbuster, but a commercial success for him. I heard at one point he was going to adapt Paradise Lost with Bradley Cooper as Lucifer/Satan and thought it sounded intriguing. Ultimately , it didn't happen and we got the god awful Gods of Egypt. After watching that, I kind of got the impression his version of Paradise Lost would have been similar with a bunch of CGI demons and angels duking it out with little to no relation to the work of Milton.

Ridley Scott- yeah, I'm on the bandwagon as well. If nothing else, his work is worth watching for the visual entertainment. I noticed if he has a strong script, he can make something great (Blade Runner, The Martian) , but if it's a weak one, it's just good visuals.

Oliver Stone-went from being a great visionary to making what looks like the work of a director for hire.

Brian DePalma- last I checked most of his stuff goes straight to VOD.

It'd be easier to ask which ones have improved

Wanted to comment with a list, but it just feels like piling on since they have all suffered a hit in quality.