In Laman's Terms: Five Classic Directors Who Deserve A Major Comeback

In Laman's Terms is a new weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

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.

The Very Fabric Of One's Identity Is Pondered Within The Truman Show

Like fellow late 20th century movie star Mel Gibson, Jim Carrey is basically a no-show in the modern day world of pop culture. For a while there, Carrey was unstoppable at the box office and even at the dawn of a new millennium, he managed to crank out hits like How The Grinch Stole Christmas and Bruce Almighty that dwarfed the work of any other comedic actor on the scene financially. And then...it just stopped. I'd personally chalk that up to his public support of the anti-vaxxer movement, which made headlines in 2008 and cast a dark shadow over any future attempts (like his 2008 movie Yes Man) to mine that everyman personality that was at the center of many of his biggest 1990's hits. There was an element naivete to those characters that could be cute and charming at times, whereas his real life naivete was dangerous and ignorant.