Great musicians have bad songs. Gifted athletes have poor seasons. And talented directors make bad movies. For ten veteran directors with films coming out this year, 2012 is an opportunity to make up for recent disappointments — either films that weren’t very good or didn’t perform very well. In some cases, the directors listed below are directing films after a several year absence from the director’s chair. In any event, I imagine that most of the directors listed below rang in 2012 with their fingers crossed for a chance to wow audiences like they did in the past.
Judd Apatow (This is Forty, opening December 21)
As I detailed in my editorial recently, Judd Apatow’s usual crew didn’t have the same type of spectacular success in 2011 that they enjoyed in previous years. On top of that, Apatow’s last film — the 2010 dramedy Funny People — did less than half the business of Apatow’s first two incredibly successful movies, The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up. So it’s no surprise that Apatow is going to back to what works with This is Forty, a spinoff from Knocked Up featuring the Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, and Jason Segel characters from Knocked Up. This might be a chance for Apatow to re-endear audiences with his brand of humor.
Marc Forster (World War Z, opening December 21)
Marc Forster began building quite a resume with the Oscar-winning Monster’s Ball and Finding Neverland but has yet to equal that success in recent years. His last two films were the disappointing Quantum of Solace — a weak Bond film — and the poorly received Machine Gun Preacher. Luckily World War Z, based on the novel by Max Brooks, has a lot of positive buzz. I’m sure Forster is just hoping the whole zombie thing won’t die out by December.
Taylor Hackford (Parker, opening October 12)
After being nominated for the Oscar for Best Director for Ray, Hackford took a six-year break from filmmaking. He returned with Love Ranch, a monumentally awful film which was a wasted comeback role for Joe Pesci and barely got a release. Parker is a crime thriller starring Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez and is based on a character created by master crime writer Donald E. Westlake. While it doesn’t sound like something that would nab an Oscar, it does sound like something that could be awesome in the usual Statham fashion.
Walter Hill (Bullet to the Head, opening April 13)
The Warriors. 48 Hrs. Alien. Aliens. Four awesome films either directed or produced by Walter Hill. And while Hill has continued to be a successful producer (one of his upcoming productions is Ridley Scott‘s Prometheus), he has not directed a film since the generally poor Undisputed in 2002. Bullet to the Head stars Sylvester Stallone, who is coming off the hit The Expendables (with The Expendables 2 being released later in 2012, too), which definitely raises the profile of the movie.
Lawrence Kasdan (Darling Companion, opening April 20)
I think if I wrote The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, and wrote and directed The Big Chill I would call it a day. I mean, those credits right there are more impressive than entire careers in film — and Kasdan did them all between 1980 and 1983! Perhaps that is why Kasdan hasn’t done much in the 21st century. The last film he directed was the horrid 2003 Stephen King adaptation Dreamcatcher, so Darling Companion — a drama starring Diane Keaton and his frequent collaborator Kevin Kline — will hopefully be a lot better. It’s definitely a small-budget film aimed at an older audience, but that actually might work to Kasdan’s advantage.
Spike Lee (Red Hook Summer, opening TBA)
Spike Lee hasn’t directed a fictional film since 2008’s Miracle at St. Anna, which Lee claimed would be a better World War II film than Clint Eastwood‘s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. It wasn’t. Part of the problem is that Lee isn’t the type of director to pull off a war film, so perhaps that’s why Lee is returning to his roots — literally — with Red Hook Summer. Not only is it set in Lee’s native Brooklyn, but it features Lee reprising his role of Mookie, the character he played in Lee’s critically acclaimed Do The Right Thing, his best film. Lee is signed to direct the American remake of Oldboy — a controversial project to say the least — and could really use some positive goodwill going into that.
Baz Luhrmann (The Great Gatsby, opening December 25)
After winning crowds over with his first three stylistic films, Luhrmann torpedoed his success with 2008’s Australia, an overblown attempt at a Golden Age of Hollywood-style epic, which got mixed reviews (though it was financially successful, particuarly overseas). Perhaps deciding to do a new version of The Great Gatsby wasn’t the best choice as a follow-up — especially since it isn’t being filmed in New York and much of the cast is a great deal older than the characters in the novel. The fact that there’s never been a good version of The Great Gatsby is another issue. Could Luhrmann and his lavish filmmaking style succeed where others have failed?
Sam Mendes (Skyfall, opening November 9)
Mendes had big success with his first two films, American Beauty and Road to Perdition, with the former winning five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and the latter winning one. None of Mendes’ films have won Oscars since (although 2008’s Revolutionary Road was nominated for three). Since his first films, Mendes’ films have received average reviews and consistently less box office success. A Bond movie could go a long way in fixing that free fall, though expectations for Skyfall are quite high after the disappointment of Quantum of Solace.
Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black III, opening May 25)
For the past five years Sonnenfeld has been working in television, directing shows and TV movies after stinking up the joint with the 2006 Robin Williams comedy RV. He reunites with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones for their third Men in Black film. Smith remains a bankable star even though he hasn’t appeared in a film since 2008, but with a budget that is reportedly over $200 million both Sonnenfeld and Smith probably have their fingers crossed about this one.
Oliver Stone (Savages, opening September 28)
Oliver Stone is generally considered an iconic filmmaker, but has never really recovered from the debacle of 2004’s Alexander. His following films — World Trade Center, W., and even the Wall Street sequel Money Never Sleeps — aren’t considered among his milestones. Savages recalls Stone’s previous success with crime-dramas although curiously Stone did not contribute to the script (as he’s done on nearly all of his prior films).
We’ll see how these ten directors do in 2012… hopefully they all have great films on the way!
Recent Comments