While a number of directors from the big American cinema revolution of the 1970's (like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen) are still doing regular work in Hollywood, it must be said that quite of the few masters from this era as well as other prolific directors from other epochs of Hollywood have found shockingly little work in the modern day cinematic landscape given how many classics they've delivered in their career. As just a little fun exercise, I've compiled five notable directors, some of whom come from the aforementioned creative boom of the 70's, others who come from other eras of Hollywood, who don't get much in the way of work anymore but totally deserve more high-profile gigs, perhaps from the likes of studios like Netflix, Annapurna or Amazon who are now in the business of financing costly auteur-driven projects that major studios are hesitant to greenlight.
While his daughter and wife are out directing movies now, the man behind The Godfather One and Two and Apocalypse Now has been mostly M.I.A. on the feature film directing scene for the 21st century. After 1997's The Rainmaker, he took a decade-long hiatus and returned to directing with the tiny indie film Youth Without Youth and has seen then only helmed two conventional indie films and a 2015 experimental film. I haven't seen his 21st-century work (which has predominately received mixed reviews though I've seen notable fan bases for each of his 2007-2011 films), so I can't comment on the quality of it, but I'd love to see a guy with as much ambition as Coppola get the chance to make at least one more audacious piece of cinema again.
Versatility, thy name is John Carpenter. Back in the 1970's and 1980's, John Carpenter could create horror movie masterpieces like Halloween and The Thing as easily as he could make giddily fun high-concept action fare like Big Trouble In Little China and They Live! In the 21st century, Carpenter has only directed box office duds like Ghosts of Mars and The Ward, the latter of which received some of the worst reviews of his career. Considering how cookie-cutter so many blockbusters or modern day horror movies can be, I say we bring back John Carpenter into the genre movie scene and let him inject some of his distinctive identity and creativity into our world once again.
Unlike Coppola and Carpenter, who have been relegated to primarily super duper minuscule budgeted fare, Brian DePalma actually has directed a couple of high-profile movies in the 21st century, most notably with the 2000 movie Mission To Mars, the 2006 thriller The Black Dahlia and the well-received 2002 motion picture Femme Fatale. Since his massive box office dud Redacted in 2007, though, he's only directed one movie, Passion, though he apparently has something called Domino coming out in 2018. If you ask me, the guy behind Blow Out is always gonna get my interest when he does a movie so I say it's high time someone gave this guy a hefty check to make the kind of high-profile thriller/action fare he was famous for in the final decades of the 20th century.
He may have garnered four Best Director Oscar nods in 18 years (not that Oscars are inherently equivalent to quality mind you, but that's still not too shabby of a statistic), Peter Weir has been pretty much M.I.A. after his cult classic Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World failed to spawn either the massive box office or sequels studio executives had desired. Since then, he's only directed the 2010 drama The Way Back. While it's not uncommon for a big financial miss to serve as a setback for a filmmaker, it is legitimately odd that such a prolific filmmaker has helmed only one movie in the last 13 years. I say we give Peter Weir a major comeback vehicle, one that, if it turns out even half as good as The Truman Show, could have the potential to be something special.
While I'm sure some internet nerds will cackle in derision at the idea of being at all anticipated for a new George Lucas movie, I'd actually be incredibly intrigued to see one of those "little movies" Lucas was always talking about making once he was done with Star Wars. Who knows if he's even gonna make those prospective feature films now, even five years after he sold off Star Wars to Disney, but would I be at all curious to see what's stewing in the creative mind of George Lucas in his first non-Star Wars directorial effort in over 40 years? H*ck yes!
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