Movie directors can become famous if their work clicks with audiences and their stylistic flourishes are noticeable. Even Michael Bay could be considered an auteur – most moviegoers can tell if they’re watching a Michael Bay movie. Great directors can make dozens of movies and still be best-known for a small handful. Ridley Scott is more famous for Blade Runner than A Good Year.
Most of the time, a director’s less famous work is less famous for a reason (case in point: A Good Year). But every now and then, a renowned filmmaker will helm an incredible movie that, for whatever reason, falls by the wayside. So, here are 10 Underrated Movies By Famous Directors.
Munich (Steven Spielberg, 2005)
Steven Spielberg doesn’t have a lot of underrated movies, because he’s possibly the most famous director in Hollywood, so anything he does is going to attract at least a sizable bunch of moviegoers. Bridge of Spies got a lot of attention, mainly thanks to Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance’s riveting performances, but arguably Spielberg’s finest entry in the spy movie genre is Munich, his dramatization of the Israeli government’s vengeful response to the 1972 Summer Olympics massacre, and one of his lowest-grossing U.S. releases.
Munich masterfully weaves together sound, score, and cinematography around captivating performances to create a truly engaging viewing experience.
Salvador (Oliver Stone, 1986)
It’s possible that American audiences didn’t respond to Oliver Stone’s Salvador because its subject matter – the Salvadorian Civil War – isn’t as well-known as the topics of Stone’s more financially successful movies, such as Wall Street, the Kennedy assassination, and the Vietnam War. Every Stone movie is a political firestorm, and audiences expect that, so if they’re not familiar with the subject matter, they might not turn out.
But Salvador is a movie first and a docudramatic examination of the Salvadorian Civil War second. James Woods stars as a photojournalist, and we see the war chronicled through his eyes, as he struggles to get by and support his family. Stone is a master of film language, framing character development and conveying information through images.
The Beach (Danny Boyle, 2000)
Director Danny Boyle is most widely known for helming Trainspotting and Slumdog Millionaire, and even this year’s Beatles-centric romcom Yesterday. But one of his early greats that often gets swept under the rug is The Beach, starring a young Leonardo DiCaprio as a freelance traveler who sets out to find a fabled beach paradise off the coast of Thailand.
Interestingly enough, this movie was based on a novel by Alex Garland, who would later direct the sci-fi masterworks Ex Machina and Annihilation. The book was adapted for the screen by John Hodge, who has written a bunch of Boyle’s movies.
The Abyss (James Cameron, 1989)
After he created the Terminator franchise and before he took the world by storm with Titanic, James Cameron helmed this horror-tinged sci-fi adventure with richly drawn characters and ever-present tension. The director pioneered underwater visual effects to tell the story of an oil platform crew that gets stuck at the bottom of the ocean, caught between U.S. forces and Soviet subs.
Deep below the surface of the ocean, the crew encounters a sea-dwelling alien species. The Abyss wasn’t as big a hit as Avatar or True Lies, but it’s still one of Cameron’s finest films. The extended cut is even better.
The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2007)
Wes Anderson is famous for his quirky comedies, but his films aren’t always laugh-out-loud funny. The Darjeeling Limited, his little-known tale of three American brothers traveling across India by train, has more than a few laugh-out-loud moments. This is mainly thanks to the comic energy created by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman as the trio of brothers.
They have such palpable chemistry that you genuinely feel their brotherly connection. From a visual standpoint, the gorgeous Indian locations paved the way for gorgeous cinematography. It’s not as groundbreaking as The Royal Tenenbaums or The Grand Budapest Hotel, but The Darjeeling Limited is much better than its gets credit for.
The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006)
Between the genre-altering origin story Batman Begins and its even greater sequel The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan tackled an intimate, small-scale dramatic thriller about rivaling stage magicians performing in 19th century London. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale star as the central duo, who go to increasingly ominous lengths to sabotage each other’s shows.
The cinematography in The Prestige is some of the most breathtaking work done by Nolan and his go-to guy Wally Pfister, while David Julyan’s musical score works beautifully in the context of each scene. This movie is like Black Swan, if you replaced ballet with stage magic.
Raising Arizona (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1987)
After their critically acclaimed directorial debut, neo-noir crime thriller Blood Simple, the Coen brothers wanted their second film to be as drastic a departure from that movie’s dark, gritty tone as possible. So, they made Raising Arizona, a wacky comedy starring Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter as a couple who want a baby, but can’t conceive or adopt, so they kidnap one of a local businessman’s octuplets.
Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg credit Raising Arizona with teaching them how to involve the camera in comedy films as a component of the humor. In the hands of masters like the Coens, Raising Arizona’s slapstick sequences work impeccably well.
Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, 1997)
This is the obvious choice for Quentin Tarantino’s most underrated film, but comparing the attention it gets with the sheer filmmaking craft on display, it’s a no-brainer. Jackie Brown is Tarantino’s first and only adaptation of someone else’s work (the work of Elmore Leonard, perhaps the biggest influence on Tarantino’s writing) and it’s often called his most mature film.
Maybe being beholden to source material reined in Tarantino’s penchant to go off on every conceivable tangent with his screenplays. This technique has yielded great results with his original scripts, but the extra narrative focus in Jackie Brown is clear. Pam Grier shines in the lead role, while Samuel L. Jackson gives one of his all-time most compelling performances in the film.
The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982)
This movie has been getting more attention this year than in previous years because Todd Phillips’ Joker was basically a remake of it, but it’s still underrated compared to Martin Scorsese’s other classics. Scorsese hasn’t made a lot of comedies, but his movies often come with a dark sense of humor.
In The King of Comedy, Robert De Niro plays an aspiring comedian named Rupert Pupkin, who is so desperate to be famous that he talks to cardboard cut-outs of celebrities in his mother’s basement to enjoy the fantasy and is willing to kidnap a talk show host to get his face on TV.
The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
It’s pretty widely accepted that the ‘70s was the best decade for American cinema. Jaws, Star Wars, Taxi Driver, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The French Connection – it was a great time to be a moviegoer. Francis Ford Coppola was a huge proponent of this, helming The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now, three of the greatest movies ever made.
But there’s a fourth film you could add to that list that rarely gets mentioned: The Conversation. Coppola’s paranoid cinematic response to the Watergate scandal and public distrust in the U.S. government is the quintessential conspiracy thriller.
