Great directors, terrible films: The biggest misses from Hollywood's heaviest hitters

We’re sure there’s an official screenplay in a vault somewhere for five-time Best Director nominee Robert Altman’s 1980 musical, , but you wouldn’t know it from watching this PG-rated live-action adaptation of the classic cartoon about the sailor with a hankering for spinach. Many of the lines delivered by a manic Robin Williams as Popeye are mumbled and probably improvised, and we feel sorry for whomever had to slap together the DVD subtitles. Shelley Duvall is perfectly cast as Olive Oyl, but her spot-on performance can’t keep this sloppy, uneven adventure afloat.

Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win a Best Director Oscar, taking home the trophy for 2008’s . Her big screen follow-up, , was nominated for Best Picture and it’s also worth mentioning that her early films,  and , are fan favorites. This brings us to 2000’s , a time-jumping mystery-thriller about a 19th-century murder and a modern-day woman’s obsession with solving the crime. The soggy production starring Catherine McCormack, Sarah Polley, Sean Penn, Josh Lucas and Elizabeth Hurley is weighed down by its forced sexual tension and an overcooked narrative that jarringly jumps between two time periods. Let this one sink to the bottom and check out Bigelow’s 1987 vampire gem instead!

Writer-director Neill Blomkamp was an exciting breath of fresh air when he burst onto the scene with his 2009 feature-film debut, . His next film, the dystopian action thriller , starring Matt Damon, was thinking-man’s science fiction and another win. Although he stumbled a bit with and its titular corrupted law-enforcement robot, that misfire seems like compared to 2021’s . The supposed supernatural “thriller” about a young woman (Carly Pope) who unleashes demons after she mind-links with her estranged comatose mother is just embarrassing. Critics slammed the movie for its lack of tension, stilted acting, and pixelated special effects in the virtual-reality world, while previous Blomkamp fans found themselves once again praying for a return to form.

James Cameron might have felt like “the king of the world” after won the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, so you can’t blame him for wanting to forget that 1981’s ever happened. Originally hired to be the fishy sequel’s special effects director, Cameron moved into the director’s chair after Miller Drake abandoned the project, leaving him to take the blame for piranhas that not only look 100 percent fake, they can FLY. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far, so Cameron’s feature film debut is best appreciated as a so-bad-it’s-good creature feature. At least Cameron got his worst film out of the way at the beginning of his career, clearing a path for future blockbusters such as ,  and the movies.

John Carpenter is a true master of horror. The man behind , , , , and is not only loved for his atmospheric genre work as a director, but also his minimalistic and memorable film scores. His most recent film as a director, 2010’s , stars Amber Heard as an institutionalized woman terrorized by the ghost of a former inmate. Not only does the movie lack the tension of Carpenter’s best work, you can tell the director’s heart wasn’t in the project because he didn’t even compose the music. After this stinker, Carpenter returned to composing for movies such as the rebooted trilogy and touring like a rock star, playing his synth music live in concert. He has hinted at a return to the director’s chair and, if he does, we hope he goes all in. The Ward shouldn’t be Carpenter’s feature-film directorial swan song.

is the first film by Joel and Ethan Coen for which both brothers share a director credit, and it is also their first remake. That’s all that’s notable in this 2004 misfire, unless you just love watching Tom Hanks chew the scenery, in which case you might find the humor in his hammy performance as classics professor Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr. Almost everyone else agrees that this black-comedy crime-thriller is not nearly as funny as it thinks it is. If you want to experience the Coen brothers at the top of their game, check out , ,  or instead.

Oscar winner Francis Ford Coppola, the iconic director behind trilogy and  set the bar so high that any movie he directs that isn’t an epic drama seems like a massive letdown. This brings us to the 1996 coming-of-age comedy-drama , in which Robin Williams stars as a 10-year-old boy with accelerated aging that makes him look like a 40-year-old man. The premise gives Williams plenty of opportunities to goof around and act like a child, but critics and audiences weren’t laughing. Coppola later reportedly said, “I know I should be ashamed of [the movie] but I’m not. I don’t know why everybody hated it so much. I think it was because of the type of movie it was. It was considered that I had made Apocalypse Now and I’m like a Marty Scorsese type of director, and here I am making this dumb Disney film with Robin Williams.”

The late Wes Craven was a horror master who made genre classics such as , and the first four movies. This is why it’s somewhat surprising that 1995’s didn’t come together as Craven intended, despite having stars such as Eddie Murphy and Angela Bassett on board. Craven reportedly said, “[Murphy] didn’t want to be funny at all. He wanted to play it totally straight, so I couldn’t get the humor into it that I wanted to get into it. But it was an interesting experience. I thought it was a fun little film and it was nice to get a chance to do comedy, but I think the script really hampered it.”

Director Brian De Palma’s Hitchcockian style has served him well in favorites such as , , , and . One movie you won’t find on a list of De Palma’s best work is 1996’s , a neo-noir crime thriller based on the gruesome 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles. Although Mia Kirshner effectively conveys Short’s sadness and loneliness, it’s two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank who throws everything out of whack with her campy performance that one critic describes as a “bisexual praying mantis.” De Palma manages to capture the atmosphere of late 1940s L.A., but the convoluted story and Swank’s distracting performance make this the director’s low point.

The highlights of Richard Linklater’s restless career include , the romance trilogy, , and . One movie you won’t find on that list is , Linklater’s 2005 remake of the classic 1976 comedy . This Billy Bob Thornton-led remake that no one asked for bombed at the box office and got mixed reviews from critics. But we wonder if those same critics would rate the sports comedy even more harshly today given that the original film has aged better than this more-recent remake.

Australian director-writer-producer Baz Luhrmann is an auteur known for his lavish productions, including , , and . With 2008’s , starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, Luhrmann seemed to be aiming for his country’s but he ended up with thinly drawn characters walking around in expensive costumes on expansive sets. Luhrmann’s films are an acquired taste, but even if you have it, you must admit that Australia is not the director’s most satisfying work.

Full disclosure: I actually like David Lynch’s and every single one of his movies. That said, Dune was a notoriously troubled production that cost too much, had too much story for one movie, and featured clunky special effects. When you consider that Lynch is the man behind , , and , a wannabe blockbuster like Dune sticks out like a giant sandworm. Denis Villeneuve tackled in 2021 and the movie received more accolades than Lynch’s version, but Villeneuve was given the breathing room needed to tell the epic story over two movies.

Michael Mann’s signature style is evident in movies such as , , and . His 2006 big-screen adaptation of TV’s Miami Vice also has a stylish look and frenetic action sequences, but leading men Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell lack the chemistry and charisma of their TV counterparts, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. This and the “meh” story make watching Mann’s a hollow experience akin to observing two great actors dodge bullets in a slick production. The TV series aired for five seasons and helped define the style and sound of the 1980s, while the idea of a sequel to Mann’s forgettable movie version seems sillier than one of the pastel suits that Johnson used to wear on the show.

Director Roman Polanski’s is a horror classic about a woman whose unborn child is literally the spawn of Satan, so it probably made sense for the director to dance with the Devil again in . The 1999 horror-thriller stars Johnny Depp as a rare-book dealer who tries to authenticate an ancient tome that purports to hold the secret for summoning the Devil. Unlike in Rosemary’s Baby, there is no real emotional connection to any of the characters, so we’re left with religious mumbo jumbo and Depp running around with a concerned look on his face. The last time we checked, even “elevated” horror movies are still supposed to be scary, right?

The trailer for 1972’s informs us that the titular outlaw played by Barbara Hershey has a “taste for lovin’ and a boxcar for a boudoir.” The premise and tone of Martin Scorsese’s second feature film seems sillier and lighter than later signature movies such as , , and . Produced by cult-film king Roger Corman, Boxcar Bertha was dismissed by most critics as a “training exercise” for future Oscar-winner Scorsese, who went on to become one of cinema’s greatest directors.

Ridley Scott, the director of , , and , is what some of us have instead of church. Given that he has made more than a few of the most seminal sci-fi movies in history, it’s not surprising that putting star Russell Crowe in the 2006 romantic comedy disappointed long-time fans who worship at the temple of Scott. The sappy rom-com tanked with critics and audiences who, shockingly, would rather see Crowe in a Roman arena battling tigers instead of finding love in a French vineyard. So Scott thankfully returned to the action and sci-fi genres where he continues to thrive. In Ridley we trust … just not with romantic comedies.

When one of a director’s early films is so good, every movie after that seems disappointing. This is the curse of M. Night Shyamalan, whose 1999 psychological thriller is unquestionably his masterpiece. Subsequent movies such as , , and often relied on a third-act twist that elicited more groans than thrills. This brings us to 2008’s , a movie starring Mark Wahlberg in which trees revolt against humanity and put something into the air that causes mass suicides. First of all, the idea of trees killing people is laughable, not scary, which is probably not the reaction you want in a thriller. The movie bombed and even made some “Worst Films Of All Time” lists, although more recently some forgiving fans suggested that we should revisit The Happening as a camp classic. In 2019, Shyamalan said about The Happening, “I think it’s a consistent kind of farce humor. You know, like .” So maybe it WAS supposed to be funny? What a twist!

Steven Spielberg has made some of the most acclaimed and biggest blockbusters of the past 50 years, which is why it’s easy to forgive him for 1991’s , a Peter Pan sequel of sorts that Spielberg seemed to direct on autopilot. It’s probably a coincidence that several of the worst movies by great directors on this list star the late Robin Williams, but we’ll let you draw your own conclusions. In 2018, Spielberg told Empire, “I felt like a fish out of water making Hook … I didn’t have confidence in the script. I had confidence in the first act and I had confidence in the epilogue. I didn’t have confidence in the body of it.”

Quentin Tarantino’s “worst” movies are still better than 99 percent of other directors’ best movies. The man behind , , , and has never made a truly bad film. If you were forced at gunpoint (like a Tarantino character!) to pick his worst directorial effort, you’d have to go with his “The Man from Hollywood” segment from 1995’s . The anthology black comedy based on stories by Roald Dahl has four different directors and, to be fair, Tarantino’s segment and Robert Rodriguez’s were reviewed more favorably by critics than those directed by Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell. Since Four Rooms as a whole disappointed critics and bombed at the box office, it’s the only stain on Tarantino’s otherwise killer career.

After directing , three movies and the ambitious , sisters Lilly and Lana Wachowski made the visually stunning space opera starring Channing Tatum as some kind of half-human, half-canine engineered soldier. As stupid as that sounds (and it IS stupid), that’s nothing compared to galactic emperor Balem Abrasax, played by a bonkers and unhinged Eddie Redmayne as some kind of listless royal who’s prone to inexplicably angry outbursts. The film was released one year after , for which Redmayne won a Best Actor Oscar. We’re thinking maybe he should mail the trophy back to the Academy and write an apology to the Wachowskis. Sure, Jupiter Ascending would have crashed even without Redmayne, but the Oscar-winning actor clearly needed a director to reel him in here. Now this expensive misfire can only be appreciated as high camp.

Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis is the man who helmed the trilogy, , and . Pretty impressive résumé, right? This is why his 2022 live-action remake of is so disappointing. This unnecessary remake was criticized for being soulless and inert. The musical fantasy film was nominated for five Razzies, including Worst Picture, Worst Actor and Worst Director. Even if you’re made out of wood, that has to hurt!