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Movie Anomalies By Directors?

Started by MortSahlFan, July 24, 2020, 03:14:56 PM

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MortSahlFan

Richard Brooks "Looking For Mr. Goodbar" - it was so dark and dirty (and didn't like it)

If I hadn't seen the credits, I would have never though it was him, the man who did "Elmer Gantry", "The Professionals", "The Happy-Ending", etc...

Sin Agog

Kurosawa's Russian film Dersu Uzala.  I think I read the source material first, being quite a fan of travel diaries from farflung places, even if it does have a few conflated characters and the like. A.K. clearly related to the eponymous character at that point in his career, a displaced wilderman who doesn't quite fit in amongst his own people, or really people in general.  It doesn't look or feel like anything else in his career, though.  It's got that slightly grainy Russian filmstock, and just a completely different feel.  There were still those pure cinematic moments Kurosawa always nailed, especially that scene of the two of them quickly trying to assemble a shelter/upright tomb before the killing winds come.

I kind of love these anomalous films.  They're often more revealing than anything else they've made.

Dr Rock

The Breakfast Club - John Hughes manages to make one pretty good movie. Oh I suppose he did Planes, Trains & Automobiles, but fork the rest.

El Unicornio, mang

Quote from: Dr Rock on July 24, 2020, 04:01:10 PM
The Breakfast Club - John Hughes manages to make one pretty good movie. Oh I suppose he did Planes, Trains & Automobiles, but fork the rest.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Uncle Buck? He also wrote all the Vacation and Home Alone movies, and gets a free pass anyway for making the best comedy of all time, the aforementioned Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on July 24, 2020, 04:24:54 PM
Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Uncle Buck? He also wrote all the Vacation and Home Alone movies, and gets a free pass anyway for making the best comedy of all time, the aforementioned Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

Weird Science deserves a nod just for Bill Paxton's Chet.

Sebastian Cobb

I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK is quite tonally different to Park Chan-Wooks Vengance/Handmaiden stuff.

Still has glimmers of similarity running through it, but still.

Dr Rock

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on July 24, 2020, 04:24:54 PM
Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Uncle Buck? He also wrote all the Vacation and Home Alone movies,

I care not for these. Especially that little turd Bueller.

El Unicornio, mang


McChesney Duntz

The Straight Story, natch.

There's also The Seven Minutes, Russ Meyer's (failed) attempt at making a mainstream hit about pornography rather than verging on it.




Sebastian Cobb

I'd argue The Elephant Man was far 'less Lynch' than The Straight Story.

They are both great deviations though!

Blinder Data

If we ignore First Knight (and really, we should), Ghost is a big anomaly for Jerry Zucker.

In fact I still can't quite believe the guy who directed Airplane! and Top Secret! managed to pull off a huge box office success with a romcom that contains fantasy elements and creates iconic moments. And what an ending! Top work, Jezza.


phantom_power

Punch Drunk Love. 90 minute fairly straightforward (on the surface) romantic comedy with Adam Sandler

greenman

Huston suddenly moving into low key new Hollywood drama with Fat City.

Brundle-Fly

Big Eyes (2014)  Tim Burton's low key, non-fantasy relationship drama about the painter, Margaret Hearn, and devious husband, Walter.  The only whiff of Burtonesque iconography I can recall is the oddness of slightly spooky images of children with very big eyes and a Danny Elfman score. I liked it.

El Unicornio, mang

From the director of The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, comes...



To be fair, he has mixed it up with quite a few genres in his time

lankyguy95

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on July 24, 2020, 04:24:54 PM
Ferris Bueller's Day Off?
FBDO is great and even if someone doesn't like it, it features the gorgeous Mia Sara. A win either way.

In Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, Eric Cantona plays a version of himself who only the main character can see.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on July 25, 2020, 02:57:26 PM
In Ken Loach's Looking for Eric, Eric Cantona plays a version of himself who only the main character can see.

I was trying to think of a loach film that was out of step.

Land and Freedom for location I guess (personal favourite)

Angel's Share for being mostly a comedy

Icehaven

The Sixth Sense was great but everything else M. Shyamalan has done is shite.

Sin Agog

Quote from: greenman on July 25, 2020, 01:21:22 PM
Huston suddenly moving into low key new Hollywood drama with Fat City.

He's got quite a few odd duck fillums.  I don't know if it's because he's maybe less of an auteur than some people think or what.  I'd say his version of Moulin Rouge was even odder.  I really like it, but it's a strangely muted mash-up between lavish, broad stroke old Hollywood biopic (it's all in 'fabulous Technicolor') and a kind of wispy, floaty, low-key character drama.  It seems like a weird marriage of director and material, but as I said I think it works really well- Ye Gods do I prefer it to Luhrman's take on the same material.  Agent Albert Rosenfield's dad was great as Lautrec.

Rev+

Dune has to be the anomaly for Lynch, surely?  The Elephant Man is almost like his style document, and the Straight Story is unusually gentle, but Dune is the only one that completely sticks out.

Quote from: icehaven on July 25, 2020, 09:33:39 PM
The Sixth Sense was great but everything else M. Shyamalan has done is shite.

Not quite the same thing as he was the screenwriter rather than director, but Stuart Little does look a bit out of place on his CV.

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: icehaven on July 25, 2020, 09:33:39 PM
The Sixth Sense was great but everything else M. Shyamalan has done is shite.

I'm a bit of a Shyamalan apologist. The Sixth Sense holds up pretty well, regardless of its reveal being so ubiquitously known, and I thought Unbreakable was a not-bad sophomore effort - ahead of its time in some ways with its whole "realistic superhero" conceit. Of course, he completely fucked it up a couple of decades later with that Split/Glass crossover, the latter of which is abominably poor and retroactively ruined much of my goodwill towards Unbreakable.

The Village and Signs had all the makings of good creepy horror films. The talent was absolutely there, he's just been incapable of creating satisfying third acts since The Sixth Sense and (arguably) Unbreakable.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: drdad on July 25, 2020, 10:40:09 AM
Robert Altman's Popeye?

It's a definite oddity (though a movie I'm very fond of) though O.C. and Stiggs is equally as strange, a mostly mainstream teen comedy with some rather tedious sexism in it.

Mister Six

#24
Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on July 25, 2020, 02:07:05 PM
To be fair, he has mixed it up with quite a few genres in his time

Joining Big and Vice-Versa on the auspicious l"ist of films that involve a woman raping a child because it's in the body of an adult, except the victim is a boy so that's fine".

Osmium

Good Morning (Ohayou) by Ozu is a particularly light hearted film compared to the rest of his post-war output.

Sin Agog

Quote from: Osmium on July 26, 2020, 02:24:41 AM
Good Morning (Ohayou) by Ozu is a particularly light hearted film compared to the rest of his post-war output.

Also the only one of his (that I've seen at least) with fart jokes.


At the time The Collector was a weirdly modern and bloody dark movie from the ancient William Wyler, the director of Roman Holiday and Ben Hur, who'd immediately go on to make fun, frothy comedies again with Audrey Hepburn and Barbra Streisand.

SavageHedgehog

Music of the Heart; Wes Craven's semi-successful (2 nominations) middle brow Oscar bait film, and the only full film of his that couldn't conceivably be described as "horror", except as snark.

Bronzy


Brundle-Fly

M.Butterfly (1993) by David Cronenberg. The movie adaptation of the famous opera.

I've not seen it but I suspect the titular character doesn't start life as a terrifying animatronic caterpillar designed by Chris Walas.