Directors Who Lost Their Groove

[Rev. Powell]

Tim Burton is the prime example. He fell off a cliff after ED WOOD.

[Trevor]

Oliver Stone is another one I think lost his mojo. His films since World Trade Center have been a bit blah.

[zombie no.one]

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 (yes, Part 2) are the only Wes Craven movies I enjoy.


Edgar Wright... absolutely love SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ. then THE WORLD'S END was very patchy, SCOT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD was boring, and BABY DRIVER was horrendous.

[Trevor]

LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and THE HILLS HAVE EYES 2 (yes, Part 2) are the only Wes Craven movies I enjoy.


Edgar Wright... absolutely love SHAUN OF THE DEAD and HOT FUZZ. then THE WORLD'S END was very patchy, SCOT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD was boring, and BABY DRIVER was horrendous.

Agreed on Edgar Wright.

[Gabriel Knight]

After seeing the excellent INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY, I realized how lame Steven Spielberg has become. His alien fetish truly ruined his heartwarming style. I'm struggling to recall a recent good movie of his.

[Jim H]

After seeing the excellent INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY, I realized how lame Steven Spielberg has become. His alien fetish truly ruined his heartwarming style. I'm struggling to recall a recent good movie of his.

From what people say, it sounds like he's a huge machine of a director now, one of the things Shia publicly complained about on Crystal Skull.  That is, he's much less hands on for most things, and has a huge crew of assistants doing a ton of stuff under him with him just signing off on much of it.  I suspect that's part of it - when he's personally more involved, like the Fabelman's evidently was, you get better films.

But yeah, the last film of his I personally saw that approached being great was probably Munich, nearly 20 years ago.  I missed Lincoln though.

For my own example - I'd list John Woo.  He's had a couple OK films more recently, but his last film I'd whole heartedly recommend to anyone is Face/Off from 1997.  His Chinese blockbusters have some great moments, but they feel impersonal and overlong.  They're alright, but I don't like them a lot.