Every director has a bad day at the office, and once in a while, even the greatest cinema auteurs will turn in a movie that’s completely unlike their style that includes none of their trademarks. However, sometimes it can pay off and surprisingly add to the director’s canon.
Other times, filmmakers will make a great movie but it somehow gets lost in their filmography for one reason or another and becomes an outlier in their career. Regardless of whichever category it lands in, these movies were surprisingly created by some the best living directors.
Hannibal (2001) - Ridley Scott
Though Jodie Foster didn’t return for the Silence of the Lambs sequel, Anthony Hopkins did, and given the fact that studios sought to hire the brilliant Ridley Scott to run the ship, it was unlikely that things would go wrong.
Unfortunately, though it did insanely well worldwide, making $350 million at the box office, Hannibal was a critical disaster. Many people forget that it was directed by Scott, and he’s probably totally fine with that.
Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan
There are a lot of reasons why Insomnia is arguably Nolan’s best movie, but it’s easy to forget that the IMAX champion was the man in the director’s chair.
Being free of any high concept about reality or space, not featuring grand musical compositions via Hans Zimmer, and being the only Nolan movie that he didn’t write, Insomnia is a very-grounded-in-reality thriller, featuring amazing performances from Robin Williams and Al Pacino.
Magic Mike (2011) - Steven Soderbergh
With Magic Mike being a fun vehicle for Channing Tatum to flex his stuff in a movie about male strippers, seeing Steven Soderbergh’s name appear when the credits roll is surprising.
Soderbergh is known for dramas and crime movies, such as Traffic and the Ocean’s series, and most relevantly Contagion. However, when it comes to movies about strippers, Soderbergh’s directing is one of the reasons Magic Mike is better than Hustlers.
Alien 3 (1992) - David Fincher
Though it came at the beginning of his career in directing feature-length movies and he hadn’t exactly found his style yet, the thriller movie guru David Fincher directed the third entry in the Alien franchise, which was ill-fated from the very start.
This has since been chalked up to studio meddling (though it still has some great quotes), and it features none of the many trademarks that we know and love Fincher for.
School Of Rock (2003) - Richard Linklater
As Richard Linklater first saw success with the coming of age movie Dazed And Confused, he has since gone on to experiment with the art form of film. He directed Boyhood, for which he only shot a couple of scenes each year for 12 years, as well as the Before trilogy, a set of three romantic films that depict a couple’s relationship with each release being nine years apart.
That’s why it comes as a shock that Linklater directed School of Rock, the Jack Black comedy in which the actor plays one of the most useless movie teachers and it is full of upbeat musical numbers.
Where The Wild Things Are (2009) - Spike Jonze
Before 2009, Spike Jonze had a great partnership with the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, as Jonze directed Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, two absolutely surreal movies full of hypnotic imagery and postmodernist leanings. So it was quite a shock when the director’s next movie was an adaptation of an extremely short children’s book.
There are some threads that connect Where The Wild Things Are to his other movies, such as its whimsy and dream-like nature, but for the most part, people forget that Jonze made a movie between Adaptation and Her.
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban (2004) - Alfonso Cuaron
Marvel Studios have made a habit out of picking up filmmakers who have a few small-budget movies under their belt and throwing $150 million at them to make a high concept blockbuster movie. But Warner Bros. did it long before this by giving Alfonso Cuaron the keys to Harry Potter.
The director made The Prisoner Of Azkaban and it’s largely regarded as the best in the series, but Cuaron doesn’t really get as much credit as he should for it, as it’s under the Harry Potter banner, a series that is much larger than the sum of its parts.
Inside Man (2006) - Spike Lee
Spike Lee made tons of films between the late 80s to the 2000s that depict urban crime, poverty, and race relations, and the movies weren’t afraid to hide those facts. But in 2006, the celebrated director made a blockbuster heist movie starring Denzel Washington.
However, Inside Man still features classic Spike Lee commentaries on race, but though the dialogue is one of the reasons it’s arguably the best heist movies, those commentaries just aren’t at the forefront of the movie.
Hugo (2011) - Martin Scorsese
Being known mostly for his gangster movies, Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest directors in history, and he has been known to step out of his comfort zone, directing religious movies, historical period dramas, and he’s even many music documentaries.
However, Hugo was unprecedented upon its release, as it’s the first children’s movie the director has ever made. It was one of the great films by directors that were box office bombs, and it still features some of Scorsese’s trademarks, which might give it away.
Jack (1996) - Francis Ford Coppola
Being known for two of the greatest movies of all time, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, and the greatest Vietnam war movie in history, Apocalypse Now, it understandably goes unrecognized that Francis Ford Coppola was at the helm of Jack.
The children’s movie follows the titular character, played by Robin Williams, who has a condition that makes him age four times as fast as anybody else, meaning that when his friends are 10, he is 40, and when he graduates college, he’s in his 80s. The movie was critically panned and a massive box office bomb.