Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 12:22:15 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Movie Anomalies By Directors?

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

Previous topic - Next topic

Fr.Bigley

Todd Philips-Joker.

Old School, Starsky and Hutch, The Hangover then blast out an instant classic. mind blowing.

Scorcese's 1920's upper-class romance The Age of Innocence. I really like what Winona Ryder does, she plays her character so blandly throughout her performance almost seems wooden, which makes it all the striking when she suddenly steals the show towards the end.

Brundle-Fly

The last Harry Palmer movie. Billion Dollar Brain (1967) Ken Russell

Gloomy espionage thrillers starring Micahel Caine one wouldn't think were his forte but Russell was really a gun for hire at this point as it was only his second feature.

SavageHedgehog

It's also notably nuttier and more OTT than the competitively grounded predecessors, which I've always assumed is partly Russell's touch.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Fr.Bigley on July 26, 2020, 12:39:02 PM
Todd Philips-Joker.

Old School, Starsky and Hutch, The Hangover then blast out an instant classic. mind blowing.

I think instead of "Instant classic" you meant to write "Vaguely okay but massively overrated film".

And I know, I'm being a cunt pointing that out in such a way, but it's a movie I really struggle with, finding it watchable (but flawed) at the time but now I can't believe how many people absolutely adore it.

phantom_power

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on July 25, 2020, 02:02:57 PM
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.

Wasn't Big Fish similarly low-key and non-fantasy?

Adam McKay went from the go-to Will Ferrell improv film director (Anchorman, Tallageda Nights, Step Brothers, The Other Guys, The Campaign) to hard-hitting(ish) financial expose The Big Short. Of course that seems to be the furrow he is ploughing now with Vice as well but at the time it was a bit of a surprise

Eli Roth and The House With the Clocks in the Walls

Noodle Lizard

Quote from: phantom_power on July 26, 2020, 08:07:58 PM
Wasn't Big Fish similarly low-key and non-fantasy?

Big Fish was about fantasy! I think Mars Attacks! is less "Burtony" than that.

Then again, Ed Wood is a bit of a departure for him too in many ways.

Chriddof

Quote from: Fr.Bigley on July 26, 2020, 12:39:02 PM
Todd Philips-Joker.

Old School, Starsky and Hutch, The Hangover then blast out an instant classic. mind blowing.

You're overlooking Hated, his documentary about GG Allin.

I think we've all done well not to nominate Anomalisa.

Sin Agog

I know it's Laughton's only movie, but Night of the Hunter is a pretty anomalous offering compared to the rest of his career.  Just doesn't seem like the type of thing a big old 'project to the galleries' Shakespearian actor would produce.

The auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet serving up Alien: Resurrection

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on July 26, 2020, 12:30:04 PM
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.

The Dead Zone is quite un-Cronenberg too. No body horror/pulp in it really.

Sin Agog

Cassavetes & that lame attempt to recreate Peter Falk and Adam Arkin's In-Laws success, Big Trouble.  He just stepped into an already doomed production, so dunno if you can blame him so much.

prwc

There's Always Vanilla was George A Romero's only foray outside of horror (unless you count an OJ Simpson documentary made around the same time). Unfortunately it's an abject turd so I can see why he never branched out from the genre again.

itsfredtitmus

Quote from: Sin Agog on July 26, 2020, 09:34:12 PM
Cassavetes & that lame attempt to recreate Peter Falk and Adam Arkin's In-Laws success, Big Trouble.  He just stepped into an already doomed production, so dunno if you can blame him so much.
actually thought this was a joke post until I googled it what the hell is THAT

Sin Agog

At least he ended his career on a high note.  Cheers, Falky.  Without you your BFF's final film would have been the much less accomplished Love Streams.

chveik

Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire

SavageHedgehog

Morons From Outer Space (Mike Hodges)

phantom_power

Quote from: prwc on July 27, 2020, 01:57:53 AM
There's Always Vanilla was George A Romero's only foray outside of horror (unless you count an OJ Simpson documentary made around the same time). Unfortunately it's an abject turd so I can see why he never branched out from the genre again.

Knightriders wasn't horror. I think there might be others

dissolute ocelot

Sidney Lumet's The Wiz: director of gritty, realistic thrillers makes a fantasy musical.

Also maybe Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac: darkly comic historical epic from director of angsty, mostly 20th century moral dramas about the poor and marginalised.

Edit: a slightly longer anomaly but legendary genre director Robert Aldrich, best known for westerns, war movies, and crime thrillers, took a sideways step into women's melodrama in the 1960s with Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, The Killing of Sister George, and a couple of others.

MortSahlFan

Quote from: dissolute ocelot on July 27, 2020, 10:50:50 AM
Sidney Lumet's The Wiz: director of gritty, realistic thrillers makes a fantasy musical.

Also maybe Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac: darkly comic historical epic from director of angsty, mostly 20th century moral dramas about the poor and marginalised.

Edit: a slightly longer anomaly but legendary genre director Robert Aldrich, best known for westerns, war movies, and crime thrillers, took a sideways step into women's melodrama in the 1960s with Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, The Killing of Sister George, and a couple of others.
Great examples, especially the first two. Bresson is one of my favorites, but that's the one movie I've never seen of his. I like a handful of Lumet, but never had a desire to see "The Wiz"

Brundle-Fly

Wes Craven's Music Of The Heart (1999).

Wiki
The film is a dramatization of the true story of Roberta Guaspari, portrayed by Meryl Streep, who co-founded the Opus 118 Harlem School of Music and fought for music education funding in New York City public schools. It was director's first (and only?) non-horror film, and also his only film to receive Oscar nominations.

SavageHedgehog

Oi!

Quote from: SavageHedgehog on July 26, 2020, 10:50:43 AM
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.

He did also do a segment of Paris je t'aime and Red Eye is a PG-13 thriller which might stretch the definition of thriller somewhat.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Nicolas Roeg signing up to make a Jim Henson-produced adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches was a pretty jarring gear change. I've only seen it once, 30 years ago, but I enjoyed it. As unlikely as it may sound, Roeg could've enjoyed a parallel career as a director of darkly inventive family films.

Also - obvious one, but it hasn't been mentioned yet - Jerry Lewis' notorious, unreleased holocaust drama The Day the Clown Cried, a film in which the zany slapstick funster leads Jewish children into the gas chambers.

McChesney Duntz

How about Sam Raimi jumping on the Kevin-Costner-baseball-picture bandwagon with For Love of the Game, right in between his two white-trash-people-make-real-bad-decisions-and-horror-ensues masterpieces?

Rev+

Could Peeping Tom be called an anomaly, or was it more a case of someone operating in the spirit of changing times?

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: SavageHedgehog on July 27, 2020, 07:06:07 PM
Oi!

He did also do a segment of Paris je t'aime and Red Eye is a PG-13 thriller which might stretch the definition of thriller somewhat.

Oops, must've missed that. Soz.

We forgot Wes Craven's Newsround (1975) A drama about a children's tv news anchorman who gives up the urban life to live in the country.


prwc

Quote from: phantom_power on July 27, 2020, 09:12:04 AM
Knightriders wasn't horror. I think there might be others

That's me told. Maybe I should give it a look, it can't be any worse than TAV.


Egyptian Feast

Quote from: McChesney Duntz on July 27, 2020, 07:42:12 PM
How about Sam Raimi jumping on the Kevin-Costner-baseball-picture bandwagon with For Love of the Game, right in between his two white-trash-people-make-real-bad-decisions-and-horror-ensues masterpieces?

I had to look up what the other one was and realised I had completely forgotten The Gift was a Sam Raimi film. I never saw it, but that's high praise indeed, so I'll have to check it out. I initially thought of Drag Me To Hell, which came a lot later but fits that description pretty well.

My imagination and Catholic upbringing meant the ending of that film hit me pretty hard, but when I was discussing it with my partner's (CoE/atheist) sons they told me it was weak sauce and implied I was a pussy. Kids these days...Hell's no deterrent any more. It's like a holiday camp to them.