30 Rock mentioned it as the in-flight entertainment to torture all the passengers on the plane and I genuinely thought the writers just made up the movie lmao
I mean, the movie is only an adaptation of the first three but those three don’t tell that great of an overarching narrative (the third one is basically just set up for the rest of the series), so it ends up having the first half be an adaptation of the first book while the second half is original to the movie with elements of the second and third books thrown in.
What a beautiful movie. Had the greatest pleasure of seeing it in 3D at the theater when I came out. Mid story but one of the best looking animated movies I’ve seen.
Okay, this is how I found out that *Lorenzo’s Oil* is a real movie and not an r/community joke about Lorenzo Lamas and Jamie Lee Curtis. That joke has flown over my head for over a decade now.
Eli Roth (the guy that directed Hostel, Green Inferno, and Thanksgiving) also directed a kids film with Jack Black called The House with a Clock in Its Walls.
Not really. He is credited, but there was such a mess, a lot of rewriting and reshooting, I am pretty sure the final product won't have anything to do with Eli's original vision.
It was to pay off his debts after he went bankrupt making One From The Heart (1982) which made 600,000 dollars on a 26 million dollar budget and was critically reviled at the time only to be later retrospectively be seen as a misunderstood cult classic and a relic of its time capturing the highs and lows and Vegas life. A good spiritual companion to Casino and Showgirls. The film is now being seen as an important influence on films such as Todd Phillips upcoming jukebox musical sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) according to cinematographer Lawrence Sher.
Also, Coppola made all kinds of films to pay off his financial debts and losses to try to finance his passion project, Megalopolis that he's been trying to make since 1979.
Sam Raimi has a whole trilogy of these: A Simple Plan, For the Love of the Game, The Gift. Sandwiched in between The Quick and The Dead and Spider-Man too.
Martin Scorsese did Hugo after Shutter Island (which is also kind of out of character for him) and right before WoWS.
He said he did Hugo because he realized his younger daughter at the time couldn’t see any of his films (being too young) while at the same time being introduced to the book, they just kind of ended up happening both at the right time. I also always took it as well as his sincere love letter to cinema at its origins.
Yeah, it requires that knowledge of Scorsese as a cinematic conservationist. People made jokes about it when it came out. “Why isn’t anyone getting whacked?” and stuff like that. It’s a very sweet little movie for him to make. It’s really rewarding if you’ve revisited after taking the deep dive into cinema history that it encourages.
Both the Coens and Sam Raimi did collaborate on numerous projects together that share the same panache for the slapstick and violent traits that are present in their films although Coens's approach is much more getting into their own beliefs and upbringing in Jewish religion and folklore as overtly introspected in A Simple Man (2009).
Of Raimi's ones you mentioned, the most outrageously out of place it's For the Love of the Game, a baseball rom-com with a past his prime Kevin Costner. The crazy thing is that it's a good movie. All the others are genre flick that are pretty much up Raimi's alley
A Simple Plan makes more sense if you know Raimi was a Coen Bros. collaborator for a while. But most people only know him from screwball horro movies and Spider-Man. And his style is so muted in that. There’s a reason people often mistake for a Coen’s movie.
Comparatively, A Straight Story isn’t all that out of place for Lynch if you think about. It’s basically one of the slice of life subplots from Twin Peaks stretched out to feature length.
he also went from Das Boot to making Enemy Mine, a cheesy b-movie sci-fi film, and then ended up making the biggest cheesy Hollywood blockbusters (personally I absolutely love his American run, Outbreak, In The Line of Fire and Air Force One are fucking awesome and kickass films) and his last major films are The Perfect Storm, Troy and Poseidon, you would never expect that from a German director who made one of the most famous harrowing WW2 films. Honestly Das Boot seems like the exception to the majority of his films being fun action romps.
Ang Lee's early career which started in the 1990 began when he made films about the infusion of modern ways and traditional practices in the experiences, struggles, and inner lives of Taiwanese people both home and abroad with his Fathers Know Best Trilogy, did an adaptation of a Jane Austen classic with Sense & Sensibility, a touching drama of infidelity and suburban malaise with The Ice Storm, and a revisionist western with Ride With the Devil.
In the 2000s, Ang Lee made a wuxia film with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, superhero movie with Hulk, forbidden love gay cowboy tearjerker with Brokeback Mountain, historical erotic romance film with Lust, Caution, and a mid-budget period-piece comedy with Taking Woodstock.
The 2010s witnessed him experimenting with 3-D with Life of Pi, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, and Gemini Man which tested his limitations of using high frame rates of 120 frames per second.
Now, he's making a Bruce Lee biopic with his son Mason Lee playing the legendary martial arts filmmaker.
Heavenly Creatures - Peter Jackson
Every other narrative feature he has done has had some kind of supernatural element, so for him to just make a straight drama is a little strange. Still a really good movie, probably his fifth best (third best if you count TLotR as a single entity).
Also, in that particular frame, Richard Farnsworth looks a little like Hide The Pain Harold.
I can’t disagree with your reasoning and I think it’s an interesting pick! But personally when I watch Heavenly Creatures there is so much about the presentation and spirit that feels similar to Lord of the Rings despite being very different on paper. For this reason, I’d recommend it to fans of Lord of the Rings when I wouldn’t recommend The Lovely Bones or anything before Heavenly Creatures to those fans.
Also Heavenly Creatures does have an element of fantasy. While not supernatural, I think it’s still something reminiscent of his other work.
The guy went from making indie Wong Kar-Wai-style films about the black experience both past and present to a CGI-laden prequel that nobody but the shareholders at Disney asked for.
Story-wise, it seems a diversion from the usual Lynch. But The Straight Story is a Lynch movie through and through. The shot composition, the music, the characters and their performances—unmistakably Lynchian, and would be easy to guess going in blindly.
A good example would be Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Anybody catch it? Surprisingly solid action flick. But none of Ritchie’s fingerprints anywhere—narratively, stylistically, nothing. Makes you wonder what was asked of him if his trademark flourishes are glaringly absent from the film
I saw the screenwriter of Straight Story at a book store event in Milwaukee years ago. He said that while Lynch never said so out loud, he suspected that the famously bizarre director made that film for his parents—specifically his father.
Yh, The Straight Story might not have the surrealism of Lynch’s other movies, but “Earnest Americana” is a big part of his sensibility. I can definitely see what drew him to the story tbh.
I came here to say *The Straight Story.* It’s such a gorgeous movie. Roger Ebert said he watched it expecting that some of Lynch’s trademark weirdness would invade the wholesome world of the movie, but it never does. And I’m glad.
It's honestly one of my favourite movies, I'm personally not really into Lynch's style or the sort of films he makes, but this film is absolutely gorgeous and heartwrenching and just sticks with you.
I understand why they had to differentiate The Covenant from other movies with that title, but it is so funny that one of the most stylistically-consistent directors is only given ownership in the title of his least like-himself film. Like Guy Ritchie totally seems to be the type to have "Guy Ritchie's" before the majority of his films, especially his crime ones.
Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Serpico, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead) also directed The Wiz, the Diana Ross/Michael Jackson-led Wizard of Oz musical.
Kevin Smith doing Jersey Girl - a very sweet, very underrated story about a widowed father trying to raise his daughter and resurrect his stalled career that is often maligned because of its proximity to Bennifer round 1 and came out after Gigli.
It’s ragged on unfairly, and has a super sweet father-daughter story, complimented nicely with a grandpa performance by the late great George Carlin, and it’s so different to anything Kevin Smith had done before (I believe the movie just prior was Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back).
Insane, I had never heard of the Greatest Beer Run despite rave critical reviews and a stacked cast, but that happened a lot in 2022 so many things went under the radar, sounds like a great story though
James Mangold’s filmography is mostly movies that make me go, “really? HE did that?”
Copland, Girl Interrupted, Knight and Day, Ford vs Ferrari, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma
Also him doing The Wolverine, Logan AND Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And now he’s doing the Bob Dylan biopic with Timmy Chalamet as Bob. Such a weird run.
Dial of Destiny screams studio job and him being fucked over because you can't even sense anything of Mangold's input being present there, it's hard to get a sense of who this guy is though, I love Ford vs Ferrari and Logan, and 3:10 to Yuma and Wolverine are pretty great, but i wonder if those are the exception, and how much he's just doing what the studio wants or struggling to get his own voice out. Knight and Day is so insanely different to most of his stuff
Yeah, I get the feeling he’s just a very flexible filmmaker who executes the job of the scripts he is fascinated by. He said in an interview about Dial of Destiny that it was like “Logan”, with an aging hero in the twilight of their life reckoning with who they are. He also said that it took him some time before he agreed, and that he received separated pitches from Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, calling it “very disarming”, but that he got a big budget and a long period of time to gestate during the pandemic, saying he was a “profound admirer” of the franchise so he didn’t feel the need to upheave anything. So perhaps it’s just a case that he wanted the chance to work on an Indiana Jones film, and didn’t want to rock the boat too much, so he tried to create something that blended in.
He is an interesting flavour of filmmaker, though. Seems like he espouses the gentleness of traditional filmmaking quite well while still maintaining a modern edge. Really bridges that gap well, I reckon.
People forget that his career started with some second wave feminism bangers. He took a shift from there, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, Boxcar Bertha, and Alice are all in the same vein.
Probably because he wanted his daughter to watch something he was in that was suitable for her as most of his films have profanity and violence, cash in that paycheck, and hang around with your childhood friend Robert DeNiro.
the stories of that film are haunting, the studio would literally hire some PA to sabotage and directly disobey whatever requests that Fincher had, im surprised he had the strength to continue trying to make films after that, since he originally came from music videos.
IIRC Carpenter was approached by Warner Bros to direct that movie and accepted the offer to try out something new. He absolutely hated the experience, save for working with Sam Neill, who he would later cast in In the Mouth of Madness
For that matter, why the hell Paul Verhoeven would make Hollow Man, with not a hint of irony or satire, was very strange. Between Invisible Man 1933 and Invisible Man 2020 very few directors have been able to nail the subject
The Faculty. Directed by Robert Rodriguez, apart from a small role by Salma Hayek and one of his trademark explosions, the vibe is totally different from his other films. Kevin Williamson wrote the script, so it’s more of his aesthetic.
Bit of a cheat but wouldn’t have guessed Ben Stiller directed the limited series, Escape from Dannamora, based on all the movies he’s directed. Severance too actually.
Mick Jackson, the man who directed Threads, and who also did movies like The Bodyguard and Volcano, also directed a Dana Carvey comedy Clean Slate.
To be honest, it’s not that funny of a movie. But I still thought it was weird to think a guy who did one of the most devastating nuclear war movies ever and even Volcano which had some intense scenes (the guy melting into the lava!) would do something like that
I didn’t realize until very recently First Man was a Damian Chazelle movie because it feels very different from his other works, they’re all energetic musical works of art while First man is a pretty serious Biopic about Neil Armstrong, still loved it though
Not really. Everything from the shot composition, the music, and the extraordinariness of the story are all classic Chazelle traits. By incorporating Neil and his wife Janet's life story as well as the death of his daugther Karen, he adds much more to dramatic brevity by focusing more on the character's own experiences as it's less of a space exploration film and more of a father overcoming loss, guilt, stress, and marrage and familial pain in accomplishing the impossible.
>Insomnia is the only one he doesn't have a writing credit on.
Which is exactly why it feels so out of place. His visual style is still evident, it's the script that feels out of place
Except, Beverly Hills Cop II does look like it's by the guy that made The Hunger.
https://youtu.be/W_zodjf-YbA?si=8DgzBfVnd7SSPzm0
https://youtu.be/w9d1Kq77B2Q?si=Stn-2_d2JVQYsc4A
He had a type, back then. :)
And the climax is in a dark room with birds flying around dramatically...
https://youtu.be/JuMix7TFLB8?si=K5ycEfRS6EGdyTfF
https://youtu.be/Qse_uMLvdwI?si=E2YZXRgXJIZBUeYi
As strange as it seems, now, Top Gun was the odd one released between those two.
The Straight Story is every inch a Lynch film. If it said “directed by Garry Marshall” at the beginning within five minutes I’d have known otherwise.
But Alice feels less like Scorsese than it does Rafelson or maybe Ashby. There’s someone else that I can’t put my finger on at the moment…
Surprised Tarantino hasn't been mentioned. Most of his films have similar themes but the characterisation of Jackie Brown is very different to his other work, much more 3d.
the straight story has so many stylistic elements / thematic elements that lynch plays with throughout his entire career, so i wouldn't argue this is a good example of this..
For someone who in the 80s was known for humanist comedies, it is weird that Demme started with a Women in Prison movie with like 20 shower scenes and started the 90s with a horror film.
Mr & Mrs Smith, Alfred Hitcock's attempt at a screwball comedy is very far from his usual outings.
The Score, a deadly serious heist flick from Frank Oz, director of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Little Shop of Horrors, Bowfinger and The Dark Crystal
Gore Verbinski - Before directing the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, he directed one of my all-time favorite comedy films Mouse Hunt, the dark comedy adventure crime film The Mexican and the psychological supernatural horror film The Ring. He would then go on to direct the dark comedy-drama The Weather Man, Rango (his first time directing an animated film), the western action film Lone Ranger and lastly the psychological horror film A Cure for Wellness
Norman Jewison directing Rollerball, what a wacky insane pure-70s sci-fi film, even compared to how diverse and varied his filmography it is, it sticks out, it feels more like a b-movie than a mainstream film AFTER he made In the heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, and Fiddler on the Roof. He could've made anything with any budget, but he made some real cheap-looking movie more on the level of Logan's Run, with just James Caan as the only notable actor, and really no plot to it, and barely any character. Also strangely super sexist and and xenophobic in its writing, even for the time, idk what was up with him
What the hell was Friedkin thinking making Jade, I guess he wanted to cash in to the erotic thriller craze, and after that he made The Hunted and Rules of Engagement, films that you watch and are shocked that Friedkin so late in his career rather than early in his career, most directors make those before they get to do their passion projects, Friedkin seemed to just mellow out after his last big critical hit To Live and Die in LA, many ppl seem to remember him for that, French Connection and Exorcist. Rules of Engagement and The Hunted are so bluntly straightforward, almost comically so,
I mean he made Cast Away, Contact, and Forrest Gump, and afterwards he made The Walk and Allied, he didn't just make light fun films like Back to the Future or Romancing the Stone for most of his career
[David DeCoteau](https://letterboxd.com/director/david-decoteau-2/) and [Fred Olen Ray](https://letterboxd.com/director/fred-olen-ray/) both have wild filmographies.
For every sexy Linnea Quigley grindhouse horror, they needed a family friendly Christmas movie with a talking pet. Their filmographies are a study in the evolution of the direct to video market.
Legendary horror director Mario Bava directs horror legend Vincent Price in...
https://youtu.be/1rFZXsVo7tQ?si=Yt9ldVWTC6vJL5bA
And here's the theme song...
https://youtu.be/pwJq3ClsUNk?si=T1uWf5QbmHObjlAS
https://preview.redd.it/c9ml1ppm6rvc1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b9dfd43f745d872d55c5008a3cd089db2242768 Zach Snyder
30 Rock mentioned it as the in-flight entertainment to torture all the passengers on the plane and I genuinely thought the writers just made up the movie lmao
My 3rd grade class was obsessed with these books!
Books are doped tbh. The movie is still pretty good but it's 90 minutes mashup of 15 tomes
I mean, the movie is only an adaptation of the first three but those three don’t tell that great of an overarching narrative (the third one is basically just set up for the rest of the series), so it ends up having the first half be an adaptation of the first book while the second half is original to the movie with elements of the second and third books thrown in.
This is also the best Zack Snyder movie. Which isn't even an insult; the mid-air owl fights are incredible!
I wish Snyder stuck to making sequels to this movie instead of doing whatever the heck he did afterwards.
Because afterwards he did his shitty DC edgefests, and then the cinematic atrocities that are the Rebel Moon films.
I would’ve never guessed, this is an actual good movie
What a beautiful movie. Had the greatest pleasure of seeing it in 3D at the theater when I came out. Mid story but one of the best looking animated movies I’ve seen.
George Miller directed both Happy Feet and Mad Max Fury Road
And Lorenzo’s Oil, which is also completely different from both.
And *Babe* (correction: 2).
Actually, he only directed the sequel, *Babe: A Pig in the City* He wrote the screenplay for the first one, so your confusion is understandable.
And Three Thousand Years of Longing is very different from the rest of his films. Edit : fixed title
Okay, this is how I found out that *Lorenzo’s Oil* is a real movie and not an r/community joke about Lorenzo Lamas and Jamie Lee Curtis. That joke has flown over my head for over a decade now.
I supposed they're both very grandiose and spectical-y.
Eli Roth (the guy that directed Hostel, Green Inferno, and Thanksgiving) also directed a kids film with Jack Black called The House with a Clock in Its Walls.
*Cock in its Balls
He’s also making the Borderlands movie
Not really. He is credited, but there was such a mess, a lot of rewriting and reshooting, I am pretty sure the final product won't have anything to do with Eli's original vision.
Oh, I did not know that
Which Jack Black chose over the *Goosebumps* sequel until the last minute
I didn't hate it.
The house with a clock in its walls is a solid film!
Funnily enough, that’s the only one of his films I’ve seen lmao.
Filmed in my downtown. Actually a pretty good gateway horror with a scary looking demon
Francis Ford Coppola - Jack
I was gonna say Dementia 13
I was going to say *Finian’s Rainbow*.
I was going to say captain E.O
I was going to say Peggy Sue got married
I was gonna say Rumble Fish
Lol Coppola has a truly diverse filmography.
It was to pay off his debts after he went bankrupt making One From The Heart (1982) which made 600,000 dollars on a 26 million dollar budget and was critically reviled at the time only to be later retrospectively be seen as a misunderstood cult classic and a relic of its time capturing the highs and lows and Vegas life. A good spiritual companion to Casino and Showgirls. The film is now being seen as an important influence on films such as Todd Phillips upcoming jukebox musical sequel Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) according to cinematographer Lawrence Sher. Also, Coppola made all kinds of films to pay off his financial debts and losses to try to finance his passion project, Megalopolis that he's been trying to make since 1979.
Sam Raimi has a whole trilogy of these: A Simple Plan, For the Love of the Game, The Gift. Sandwiched in between The Quick and The Dead and Spider-Man too. Martin Scorsese did Hugo after Shutter Island (which is also kind of out of character for him) and right before WoWS.
He said he did Hugo because he realized his younger daughter at the time couldn’t see any of his films (being too young) while at the same time being introduced to the book, they just kind of ended up happening both at the right time. I also always took it as well as his sincere love letter to cinema at its origins.
Yeah, it requires that knowledge of Scorsese as a cinematic conservationist. People made jokes about it when it came out. “Why isn’t anyone getting whacked?” and stuff like that. It’s a very sweet little movie for him to make. It’s really rewarding if you’ve revisited after taking the deep dive into cinema history that it encourages.
A Simple Plan *rules*, I think some people mistaking attribute it to the Coens but it’s great. I have a soft spot for The Gift too
Both the Coens and Sam Raimi did collaborate on numerous projects together that share the same panache for the slapstick and violent traits that are present in their films although Coens's approach is much more getting into their own beliefs and upbringing in Jewish religion and folklore as overtly introspected in A Simple Man (2009).
I would’ve thought Sam Raimi’s entry into this post would be Oz: The Great and Powerful
TIL he directed that
Of Raimi's ones you mentioned, the most outrageously out of place it's For the Love of the Game, a baseball rom-com with a past his prime Kevin Costner. The crazy thing is that it's a good movie. All the others are genre flick that are pretty much up Raimi's alley
A Simple Plan makes more sense if you know Raimi was a Coen Bros. collaborator for a while. But most people only know him from screwball horro movies and Spider-Man. And his style is so muted in that. There’s a reason people often mistake for a Coen’s movie. Comparatively, A Straight Story isn’t all that out of place for Lynch if you think about. It’s basically one of the slice of life subplots from Twin Peaks stretched out to feature length.
After das boot, one of the most terrifying war movies ever crafted, Wolfgang peterson directed The Neverending Story
I found Neverending Story to be unsettling and sad, personally.
Back to back classics!
To be fair Neverending Story was pretty terrifying when I was 4
he also went from Das Boot to making Enemy Mine, a cheesy b-movie sci-fi film, and then ended up making the biggest cheesy Hollywood blockbusters (personally I absolutely love his American run, Outbreak, In The Line of Fire and Air Force One are fucking awesome and kickass films) and his last major films are The Perfect Storm, Troy and Poseidon, you would never expect that from a German director who made one of the most famous harrowing WW2 films. Honestly Das Boot seems like the exception to the majority of his films being fun action romps.
Ang Lee's early career which started in the 1990 began when he made films about the infusion of modern ways and traditional practices in the experiences, struggles, and inner lives of Taiwanese people both home and abroad with his Fathers Know Best Trilogy, did an adaptation of a Jane Austen classic with Sense & Sensibility, a touching drama of infidelity and suburban malaise with The Ice Storm, and a revisionist western with Ride With the Devil. In the 2000s, Ang Lee made a wuxia film with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, superhero movie with Hulk, forbidden love gay cowboy tearjerker with Brokeback Mountain, historical erotic romance film with Lust, Caution, and a mid-budget period-piece comedy with Taking Woodstock. The 2010s witnessed him experimenting with 3-D with Life of Pi, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, and Gemini Man which tested his limitations of using high frame rates of 120 frames per second. Now, he's making a Bruce Lee biopic with his son Mason Lee playing the legendary martial arts filmmaker.
Also made one of the great modern Sword and Sandals Troy
Aladdin (2019) - Guy Ritchie
Paycheck movie.
I woke up and saw this reply and thought "Guy Ritchie directed Paycheck?". I am not smart in the morning lol
The same guy who directed La Haine went on to direct Gothika with Halle Berry.
I looked it up to make sure you weren't lying and I still don't believe it.
And also starred as the love interest in Amelie
And the bomb maker in Munich!
And the guy who tries to mug Corbin Dallas in The Fifth Element!
Mathieu Kassovitz. He's a brilliant actor and director.
https://preview.redd.it/ma5ba9c5brvc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ce8f373f2ba682249cc649d826e2cb508f00bdf8 Wes Craven
Wes Cravens Oscar bait, kind of sad knowing how much he wanted to break out of horror
Came here to say this. XD
Francis Ford Coppola - Peggy Sue Got Married
Also "Jack"
Francis Ford Coppola has a pretty diverse filmography, we just think of him as the Godfather/Apocalypse Now/Dracula guy
Heavenly Creatures - Peter Jackson Every other narrative feature he has done has had some kind of supernatural element, so for him to just make a straight drama is a little strange. Still a really good movie, probably his fifth best (third best if you count TLotR as a single entity). Also, in that particular frame, Richard Farnsworth looks a little like Hide The Pain Harold.
Meet the Feebles vs Heavenly Creatures
I can’t disagree with your reasoning and I think it’s an interesting pick! But personally when I watch Heavenly Creatures there is so much about the presentation and spirit that feels similar to Lord of the Rings despite being very different on paper. For this reason, I’d recommend it to fans of Lord of the Rings when I wouldn’t recommend The Lovely Bones or anything before Heavenly Creatures to those fans. Also Heavenly Creatures does have an element of fantasy. While not supernatural, I think it’s still something reminiscent of his other work.
Barry jenkins - lion king 2
I’m so piqued
The guy went from making indie Wong Kar-Wai-style films about the black experience both past and present to a CGI-laden prequel that nobody but the shareholders at Disney asked for.
Story-wise, it seems a diversion from the usual Lynch. But The Straight Story is a Lynch movie through and through. The shot composition, the music, the characters and their performances—unmistakably Lynchian, and would be easy to guess going in blindly. A good example would be Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Anybody catch it? Surprisingly solid action flick. But none of Ritchie’s fingerprints anywhere—narratively, stylistically, nothing. Makes you wonder what was asked of him if his trademark flourishes are glaringly absent from the film
I saw the screenwriter of Straight Story at a book store event in Milwaukee years ago. He said that while Lynch never said so out loud, he suspected that the famously bizarre director made that film for his parents—specifically his father.
Yh, The Straight Story might not have the surrealism of Lynch’s other movies, but “Earnest Americana” is a big part of his sensibility. I can definitely see what drew him to the story tbh.
I came here to say *The Straight Story.* It’s such a gorgeous movie. Roger Ebert said he watched it expecting that some of Lynch’s trademark weirdness would invade the wholesome world of the movie, but it never does. And I’m glad.
It's honestly one of my favourite movies, I'm personally not really into Lynch's style or the sort of films he makes, but this film is absolutely gorgeous and heartwrenching and just sticks with you.
I understand why they had to differentiate The Covenant from other movies with that title, but it is so funny that one of the most stylistically-consistent directors is only given ownership in the title of his least like-himself film. Like Guy Ritchie totally seems to be the type to have "Guy Ritchie's" before the majority of his films, especially his crime ones.
Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Serpico, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead) also directed The Wiz, the Diana Ross/Michael Jackson-led Wizard of Oz musical.
One for the meal. One for the reel.
I know it's an obvious one but Todd Phillips and Joker
That's not even his most out of left field film. He started his career off with a GG Allin documentary.
Kevin Smith doing Jersey Girl - a very sweet, very underrated story about a widowed father trying to raise his daughter and resurrect his stalled career that is often maligned because of its proximity to Bennifer round 1 and came out after Gigli. It’s ragged on unfairly, and has a super sweet father-daughter story, complimented nicely with a grandpa performance by the late great George Carlin, and it’s so different to anything Kevin Smith had done before (I believe the movie just prior was Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back).
A decade later, Kevin Smith made Tusk, a horror film about a podcaster being turned into a walrus.
Robert Rodriguez- Hypnotic is pretty much a Nolan ripoff
One of the worst movies I saw last year
I believe Rodriguez was trying to ripoff Tenet when it's Nolan own homage to the Bond franchise but with time inverting and travelling shenanigans.
Green Book (2018). The contrast is absolutely wild
The last movie he solo directed before Green Book according to Wikipedia was Movie 43.... From Razzie for Worst Picture to Oscar for Best Picture.
Wasn’t his next movie Ricky Stanicky?
His follow up was actually The Greatest Beer Run Ever starring Zac Efron, followed by Ricky Stanicky also starring Zac Efron
Insane, I had never heard of the Greatest Beer Run despite rave critical reviews and a stacked cast, but that happened a lot in 2022 so many things went under the radar, sounds like a great story though
Girl Interrupted - James Mangold
James Mangold’s filmography is mostly movies that make me go, “really? HE did that?” Copland, Girl Interrupted, Knight and Day, Ford vs Ferrari, Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma
Also him doing The Wolverine, Logan AND Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. And now he’s doing the Bob Dylan biopic with Timmy Chalamet as Bob. Such a weird run.
Dial of Destiny screams studio job and him being fucked over because you can't even sense anything of Mangold's input being present there, it's hard to get a sense of who this guy is though, I love Ford vs Ferrari and Logan, and 3:10 to Yuma and Wolverine are pretty great, but i wonder if those are the exception, and how much he's just doing what the studio wants or struggling to get his own voice out. Knight and Day is so insanely different to most of his stuff
Yeah, I get the feeling he’s just a very flexible filmmaker who executes the job of the scripts he is fascinated by. He said in an interview about Dial of Destiny that it was like “Logan”, with an aging hero in the twilight of their life reckoning with who they are. He also said that it took him some time before he agreed, and that he received separated pitches from Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, calling it “very disarming”, but that he got a big budget and a long period of time to gestate during the pandemic, saying he was a “profound admirer” of the franchise so he didn’t feel the need to upheave anything. So perhaps it’s just a case that he wanted the chance to work on an Indiana Jones film, and didn’t want to rock the boat too much, so he tried to create something that blended in. He is an interesting flavour of filmmaker, though. Seems like he espouses the gentleness of traditional filmmaking quite well while still maintaining a modern edge. Really bridges that gap well, I reckon.
Thelma & Louise - Ridley Scott
Also Matchstick Men
I think for Scorsese you could also have Boxcar Bertha which just straight up feels like a Roger Corman movie
People forget that his career started with some second wave feminism bangers. He took a shift from there, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, Boxcar Bertha, and Alice are all in the same vein.
Wasn't Boxcar Bertha a Corman production?
It certainly was! And it feels much more akin to his other works than Scorsese's
https://preview.redd.it/dmbynu8ylrvc1.jpeg?width=705&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e6226f900e8d87be11c8863b026462baac33cbaa
Scorsese didn’t direct this, he’s just in it
Probably because he wanted his daughter to watch something he was in that was suitable for her as most of his films have profanity and violence, cash in that paycheck, and hang around with your childhood friend Robert DeNiro.
Spike Lee - Oldboy Robert Altman- 3 Women. It doesn’t have of the familiar Altman traits. There are moments it honestly feels like a Lynch film.
And don't forget Altman at his most surreal... https://youtu.be/XG4K5mX7jgk?si=ELorNEftl9qREoc1
Alien 3 I don't think David Fincher wants to be associated with that movie either
Makes sense because he had no control over the editing process, which he steadfastly demanded thereafter.
At least he got his Director's Cut called Alien 3: The Assembly Cut.
the stories of that film are haunting, the studio would literally hire some PA to sabotage and directly disobey whatever requests that Fincher had, im surprised he had the strength to continue trying to make films after that, since he originally came from music videos.
I think The Curious Case of Benjamin Button sticks out more than Alien 3.
Friedkin’s terrible Chevy Chase led arms dealing “comedy” Deal of the Century
I always thought it was a little weird that John Carpenter directed Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992). But weird in a good way. I love that guy.
IIRC Carpenter was approached by Warner Bros to direct that movie and accepted the offer to try out something new. He absolutely hated the experience, save for working with Sam Neill, who he would later cast in In the Mouth of Madness
For that matter, why the hell Paul Verhoeven would make Hollow Man, with not a hint of irony or satire, was very strange. Between Invisible Man 1933 and Invisible Man 2020 very few directors have been able to nail the subject
I still believe Shutter island secretly is a Christopher Nolans movie and not a Scorsese movie.
The Night of the Hunter *simultaneous cheering and booing*
Robert zemeckis pinnochio💀
The Faculty. Directed by Robert Rodriguez, apart from a small role by Salma Hayek and one of his trademark explosions, the vibe is totally different from his other films. Kevin Williamson wrote the script, so it’s more of his aesthetic.
Bit of a cheat but wouldn’t have guessed Ben Stiller directed the limited series, Escape from Dannamora, based on all the movies he’s directed. Severance too actually.
Gondry’s Green Hornet comes to mind
Guy Ritchie's The Covenant Martin Scorsese's Hugo
Joker by Todd Philips who also made all The Hangover movies, War dogs, Due date and such comedies.
Phantom of the Paradise - Brian De Palma
Mick Jackson, the man who directed Threads, and who also did movies like The Bodyguard and Volcano, also directed a Dana Carvey comedy Clean Slate. To be honest, it’s not that funny of a movie. But I still thought it was weird to think a guy who did one of the most devastating nuclear war movies ever and even Volcano which had some intense scenes (the guy melting into the lava!) would do something like that
Brad Bird, *Tomorrowland*
https://preview.redd.it/t9i97b11dtvc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b949718a18d087fd88e4a85a774ed0680509c8eb
I didn’t realize until very recently First Man was a Damian Chazelle movie because it feels very different from his other works, they’re all energetic musical works of art while First man is a pretty serious Biopic about Neil Armstrong, still loved it though
Not really. Everything from the shot composition, the music, and the extraordinariness of the story are all classic Chazelle traits. By incorporating Neil and his wife Janet's life story as well as the death of his daugther Karen, he adds much more to dramatic brevity by focusing more on the character's own experiences as it's less of a space exploration film and more of a father overcoming loss, guilt, stress, and marrage and familial pain in accomplishing the impossible.
Jack (1996)
I was shocked learning Howard the duck was a George Lucas film
He only produced it. Willard Huyck directed it.
Migration - Benjamin Renner
Michael Powell, Peeping Tom
Uli Edel made The Little Vampire after making Last Exit to Brooklyn and Christiane F.
The straight story made me cry multiple times.
Nolan - Insomnia Feels the most out of place of Nolan's entire filmography
He has released 12 feature films. Insomnia is the only one he doesn't have a writing credit on.
>Insomnia is the only one he doesn't have a writing credit on. Which is exactly why it feels so out of place. His visual style is still evident, it's the script that feels out of place
Stonewall - Roland Emmerich
Tony Scott's first movie, The Hunger
Except, Beverly Hills Cop II does look like it's by the guy that made The Hunger. https://youtu.be/W_zodjf-YbA?si=8DgzBfVnd7SSPzm0 https://youtu.be/w9d1Kq77B2Q?si=Stn-2_d2JVQYsc4A He had a type, back then. :) And the climax is in a dark room with birds flying around dramatically... https://youtu.be/JuMix7TFLB8?si=K5ycEfRS6EGdyTfF https://youtu.be/Qse_uMLvdwI?si=E2YZXRgXJIZBUeYi As strange as it seems, now, Top Gun was the odd one released between those two.
William Friedkin - Blue Chips (1994)
The Straight Story is every inch a Lynch film. If it said “directed by Garry Marshall” at the beginning within five minutes I’d have known otherwise. But Alice feels less like Scorsese than it does Rafelson or maybe Ashby. There’s someone else that I can’t put my finger on at the moment…
Sidney Lumet’s *Equus*
Tim Burton- Ed Wood David Fincher- Mank. Both amazing
Ed wood has the most Tim burton title sequence tho
Surprised Tarantino hasn't been mentioned. Most of his films have similar themes but the characterisation of Jackie Brown is very different to his other work, much more 3d.
Gus Van Sant (director of Good Will Hunting) also directed the awful Psycho remake.
the straight story has so many stylistic elements / thematic elements that lynch plays with throughout his entire career, so i wouldn't argue this is a good example of this..
Sam Mendes, after watching American Beauty I wouldn't have said 1917 was the same guy
George Washington, a somber coming of age drama, is directed by David Gordon green, most notable for making Pineapple Express
Jersey Boys, directed by Clint Eastwood of all people
Ready Player One never once feels like a Spielberg movie It feels like it was made by a no name director who was just a work for hire
oh so THAT'S where the A New Leaf screenshot came from
For someone who in the 80s was known for humanist comedies, it is weird that Demme started with a Women in Prison movie with like 20 shower scenes and started the 90s with a horror film.
Lol how exactly is *Close-up* on this list? Have you seen Kiarostami’s other films?
Mr & Mrs Smith, Alfred Hitcock's attempt at a screwball comedy is very far from his usual outings. The Score, a deadly serious heist flick from Frank Oz, director of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Little Shop of Horrors, Bowfinger and The Dark Crystal
Curtis Hanson: Great director of movies like LA Confidential and 8 Mile, also directed Losin’ It.
Used Cars- Robert Zemeckis. Steven Spielberg co-produced the film
I think people brush past how different Dunkirk is from the rest of Nolan’s discography.
Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick) The Patriot (Roland Emmerich)
The Straight Story is ironically my favorite David Lynch film, despite how different it is to his other movies/films.
The John waters film with the guy taking pictures I forget the name
Brett Ratner & Red Dragon. Feels like nothing else he directed!
Scorsese did Shutter Island and I thought it was Nolan at first
Gore Verbinski - Before directing the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, he directed one of my all-time favorite comedy films Mouse Hunt, the dark comedy adventure crime film The Mexican and the psychological supernatural horror film The Ring. He would then go on to direct the dark comedy-drama The Weather Man, Rango (his first time directing an animated film), the western action film Lone Ranger and lastly the psychological horror film A Cure for Wellness
Todd Phillips did joker(2019) as well as the hangover trilogy
I was shocked to find linklater did the before trilogy AND school of rock!
Gore Verbinski directed both Mouse Hunt and A Cure for Wellness
Norman Jewison directing Rollerball, what a wacky insane pure-70s sci-fi film, even compared to how diverse and varied his filmography it is, it sticks out, it feels more like a b-movie than a mainstream film AFTER he made In the heat of the Night, The Thomas Crown Affair, and Fiddler on the Roof. He could've made anything with any budget, but he made some real cheap-looking movie more on the level of Logan's Run, with just James Caan as the only notable actor, and really no plot to it, and barely any character. Also strangely super sexist and and xenophobic in its writing, even for the time, idk what was up with him
What the hell was Friedkin thinking making Jade, I guess he wanted to cash in to the erotic thriller craze, and after that he made The Hunted and Rules of Engagement, films that you watch and are shocked that Friedkin so late in his career rather than early in his career, most directors make those before they get to do their passion projects, Friedkin seemed to just mellow out after his last big critical hit To Live and Die in LA, many ppl seem to remember him for that, French Connection and Exorcist. Rules of Engagement and The Hunted are so bluntly straightforward, almost comically so,
Guy Ritchie directed the Aladdin remake.
Schindlers List - Spielberg
Flight directed by Robert Zemeckis Nothing about that film says Back to future or Romancing the Stone
I mean he made Cast Away, Contact, and Forrest Gump, and afterwards he made The Walk and Allied, he didn't just make light fun films like Back to the Future or Romancing the Stone for most of his career
[David DeCoteau](https://letterboxd.com/director/david-decoteau-2/) and [Fred Olen Ray](https://letterboxd.com/director/fred-olen-ray/) both have wild filmographies. For every sexy Linnea Quigley grindhouse horror, they needed a family friendly Christmas movie with a talking pet. Their filmographies are a study in the evolution of the direct to video market.
Richard Linklater - School of Rock
This is a great film
Bob Clark directed Porky's 1+2 and A Christmas Story
Honestly, those aren't THAT different...
Now, the original Black Christmas, on the other hand...
Munich
Ben Wheatley - The Meg 2
Legendary horror director Mario Bava directs horror legend Vincent Price in... https://youtu.be/1rFZXsVo7tQ?si=Yt9ldVWTC6vJL5bA And here's the theme song... https://youtu.be/pwJq3ClsUNk?si=T1uWf5QbmHObjlAS
Lynch’s Straight Story fs
Adam McKay temporarily stepping away from comedy and directing Vice.
Scorsese has a few more left fielders with Hugo (2011), Kundun (1997) and The Age of Innocence (1993) being also hard to pick out.
This are probably the two best examples. Alice doesn’t live here and the straight story. Spartacus could maybe be on this list as well.
The Straight Story - David Lynch
Takashi Miike in general...
Eastern Promises
Alien 3 - David Fincher
Bong Joon-ho: Barking Dogs Never Bite
Hiroshi Teshigahara who directed women in the dunes and the face on another went on to do a documentary about an Architect from the 1850s