“We enjoy your films, specially the early, funny ones.” The classic sentiment people have towards Woody Allen, taken from his (apparently) unintentionally autobiographical Stardust Memories. But isn’t that how we all feel towards one filmmaker or another? They make a couple of great movies, and then somehow lose their way and destroy whatever faith we had in them. People like George Lucas or Peter Jackson, both of whom made three movies which I love dearly, but I inevitably sigh despairingly whenever I see their later work (although the Star Wars prequels and King Kong do have their moments). It might just be nostalgia talking, or a growing grumpiness towards the new and unfamiliar, but everyone has at least one filmmaker who they think didn’t live up to their potential. So it makes it all the richer an experience when you come across a director whose career you had written off, but somehow manages to return to form.
Woody Allen
One of the most prolific moviemakers around, he’s been churning them out for almost fifty years. Now, in that mix there’s sure to be a few duds, but I generally thought that the highs like Annie Hall, Crimes and Misdemeanours, and Love and Death made up for the lesser Allen movies. But it’s not that his career is peppered with mediocre films; they started showing up in the mid 1990s, with Mighty Aphrodite, then Everyone Says I Love You, Celebrity, and so on, need I go on? He had one good one in the midst of it all: Match Point, but he didn’t return to his old form again until Midnight In Paris. A beautiful reflection on nostalgia and speckled with unforgettable cameos, the highlight of which was Adrien Brody’s Salvador Dali. Allen then followed it up with the less than critically acclaimed To Rome With Love, but it had enough moments to hold up as a minor Allen film. And he continued staying in form with last year’s Blue Jasmine. This year’s Magic In The Moonlight is a slight step backwards, but is still cinematically engaging enough to do service to Allen’s filmography.
Quentin Tarantino
Now, this may be a little controversial, so feel free to voice your dissent here: but I think there’s a dip in quality after Pulp Fiction. Jackie Brown, Kill Bills, and Deathproof were just, well okay. They became more about him and his style than the actual movie, and once you got past all of his directorial flair, there wasn’t quite enough going on to warrant being called “great.” Sure, you can make a very valid argument that in cinema, “style is substance,” but even if that is the case, then Tarantino’s style simply wasn’t very substantial. But he came back hard, with his best film to date, Inglorious Basterds (the first ten minutes are pitch perfect), and then followed it up with Django Unchained.
David Gordon Green
With what promised to be an illustrious career with beautiful, lyrical films like George Washington and All the Real Girls, it looked like David Gordon Green was set to be the next Terrence Malick. Then his career went another direction. In succession, he made Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and The Sitter. Now, am I saying that there’s something inferior about these blockbuster stoner comedies, and his earlier, independent lyrical work? Yes. Yes I am. Because his earlier works were the ones he made with passion and gave his all for; the later ones were for a pay check. He says it himself: “My first four films cumulatively made under a million dollars. Pineapple Express, the midnight before it opened, made more than that. That’s inspiring and depressing. On the one hand, you’re like, ‘Fantastic, I got a hit movie coming out.’ And on the other hand you’re like, ‘But what about the ones I’ve slaved over, and poured my heart out to make, and nobody went to see?’” Now he’s stepping back in the right direction with fare like Prince Avalanche and Joe, which although not quite up to where I know he can go, are still better than his in between movies.
Richard Linklater
The guy behind the cult classic Dazed and Confused, as well as indie masterpieces Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, Richard Linklater had it all going his way. Then he made four mistakes: Bad News Bears, Fast Food Nation, A Scanner Darkly, and Me and Orson Welles. The latter two were on the upswing, but it was evident that he had lost his touch. But he went on to make some of the best in his repertoire: Bernie, Before Midnight, and Boyhood. These last three are each brilliant feathers in Linklater’s cap. Bernie proved that he still had his subversive comedic edge – and was able to bury it in a rather disturbing yet endearing pseudo documentary about a real life killer. Before Midnight was the capstone in the Before trilogy, and his most nuanced of the bunch, while Boyhood was so critically acclaimed it might as well be an instant classic. With Boyhood, Linklater has done more than “make a comeback,” he’s made a significant contribution to cinema.
The Coen Brothers
Widely considered some of the best filmmakers currently in the business, they’ve also consistently made some of my favourite movies (Raising Arizona still stands as one of my top comedies), and they’re the second best brother team out there, just behind the Brothers Dardenne. But even they had their dark season: 2002-2005. In that time they made both Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers. Now, to be fair to them, they didn’t write the original screenplay for Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers was a remake, and admittedly, Intolerable Cruelty has its moments, but on the whole they are some pretty bad movies. And it was a long time between their last good movie, The Man From Nowhere, and their segment in Paris, je t’aime, which made the wait rather worrisome. Fortunately, they returned to form with a vengeance, as No Country For Old Men won four Oscars and made the IMDB Top 250 list. Then they stumbled a bit with Burn After Reading, but recovered with A Serious Man, True Grit, and last year’s Inside Llewyn Davis. They’re back. And they’re here to stay. Especially with their upcoming 195o’s Hollywood film Hail, Caesar!