Six Films That Atone for Past Cinema Sins

SCREEN

By Matt Prigge

Add Comment | Comments: 1 | Posted Nov. 3, 2009

North by Northwest (1959): Through the ’50s, Alfred Hitchcock was able to wed increasingly heady ideas to pure genre concerns. But with Vertigo, he went too far. The story took a back seat to the themes and the film was considered a disaster. He responded by making the most thoroughly entertaining film he could squeeze out—or, as we know today, a different kind of masterpiece. 

The Fisher King (1991): With one Heaven’s Gate-esque bomb under his belt (the pricey Baron Munchausen ), Terry Gilliam was improbably given a second chance with this off-kilter redemption saga, which played to some of his indulgences—insanity, fantasy, extreme wide angle lenses—without alienating most of the world. Hell, he even directed an actress (Mercedes Ruehl) to an Oscar. 

The Road Home (1999): During the first half of his career, Zhang Yimou fought off government authorities, who correctly caught his films’ digs at Chinese communist authoritarianism. But starting with this G-rated piffle, in which Zhang Ziyi pines and pines for her estranged would-be lover, the director pulled a 180. Now officials so love his politically harmless films, they even hired him to direct last year’s Olympic ceremony.  

The Pianist (2002): In artistic freefall since the, ahem, incident, Roman Polanski shocked the world by making this thoroughly anonymous Holocaust saga, for which he scored a much-deserved Oscar. And he lived happily ever after. Or something. 

Ocean’s 13 (2007): Ocean’s 11 was Steven Soderbergh seeing what it would be like to make purely pleasurable “entertainment.” Ocean’s 12 was Soderbergh aggressively goofing around. It’s Ocean’s 13 that belatedly plays it safe.  

The Box (2009): “Until I have a theatrical hit, people aren’t going to keep giving me chances,” says Richard Kelly, director of Donnie Darko and Southland Tales .