Directors doing a great job directing out of their genre

Submitted by Buttholes4Everyone t3_11emlrn in movies

I was thinking about this with a few directors that went outside of their normal genre.

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Jerry Zucker who did Airplane and Top Secret. Joking comedies is also the same guy that did the very well done and polished movie Ghost with Patrick Swayze. There isn't anything about his earlier movies that would hint at the fact that he was a very mature director.

David Gordon Green, who did the incredibly mature movie about coming of age, George Washington, goes off and does Pineapple Express, which in my opinion was a very good comedy. You watch George Washington and to me at least there is nothing there that suggest that this guy should be directing a Seth Rogan movie. But he nailed it.

Kevin Smith did Red State which I though was incredibly respectful for a guy whose fair was dick and fart jokes. I would even say Tusk was pretty decent for cheesy horror.

Jordan Peele some how understood horror better than horror directors.

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Who are some other directors that went outside of their genre and weirdly did a really good job?

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Yeeaaaarrrgh t1_jaevxs0 wrote

Jonathan Demme. There was nothing in his background to suggest that he was capable of delivering Silence of the Lambs. He was mostly lighthearted comedy or documentary. He blew peoples minds when Silence came out.

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garrisontweed t1_jaewg53 wrote

Peter Jackson from Bad Taste,Meet The Feebles to Heavenly Creatures.

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Frangiblepani t1_jaextcx wrote

The Russo Bros were TV sitcom directors then did a great job with what is probably the best Marvel film, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

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AmeliaMangan t1_jaf22th wrote

William Wyler, best-known for directing glossy romances and melodramas during Hollywood's Golden Age (Roman Holiday, Mrs. Miniver, The Heiress, Ben-Hur) took a sharp detour into horror/thriller territory with 1965's The Collector, set in gritty postwar Britain, and it's fantastic. He went back to lighter territory with his subsequent films (How To Steal A Million, Funny Girl), so The Collector really is the big outlier of the bunch.

Similarly, Michael Powell (A Matter of Life and Death, The Tales of Hoffman, The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Col. Blimp, etc) with 1960's Peeping Tom - a film acknowledged as a masterpiece of horror and suspense now, but so utterly reviled at the time it more or less entirely killed his previously-respected career. One reviewer even compared Powell to the Marquis de Sade, which seems a bit much.

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DRUGEND1 t1_jaf3f29 wrote

I think some of the best horror films ever made were directed by not necessarily “horror directors”:

The Exorcist

The Shining

An American Werewolf In London

Alien

…to name a few.

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DaikaijuSokogeki01 t1_jaexbs3 wrote

Stanley Kubrick went from directing war epics and heavy film noirs to pretty effortlessly shifting into black comedies with Lolita and Dr. Strangelove.

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Bomber131313 t1_jaeztmq wrote

But Kubrick doesn't have a genre he specialized in, he was a master of them all.

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giggy_90210_x t1_jaf1f1z wrote

Todd Phillips, from The Hangover to The Joker.

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Bamboom67tt t1_jaevu4j wrote

Akira Kurosawa was known primarily for Samurai action/comedy films, but he did a lot of great dramas and even a couple noir films.

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tgcrazy t1_jaew0xi wrote

Edgar Wright and Gareth Evans both NAILED the horror style

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TheCosmicFailure t1_jaexsiy wrote

Sam Raimi into the super hero genre

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Kylon1138 t1_jaeztcp wrote

Evil Dead II was essentially an Ash led superhero horror film, and even more so with Army of Darkness

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jamesstevenpost t1_jaf15sl wrote

I think Chris Nolan did corporate industrial videos starting out.

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riegspsych325 t1_jaf4gfq wrote

I want to see him go against type and do a comedy. This a guy who shouts MacGruber quotes on set and has professed his love of Talladega Nights. Edgar Wright has called Nolan a "comedy nerd", too. Given the right script and circumstances, I think he'd pull it off

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