Film's One-Hit Wonders: 30 Directors With Only One Good Movie

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – April 15, 2018

Even the worst directors have one good film in them. Well, at least some of them do. In the gallery above, we've identified 30 filmmakers from the past four decades who have directed at least five features but have managed to receive positive reviews for just a single one of their films.

Michael Bay

The one-time music video director (think Divinyls' "I Touch Myself") turned director and producer of big-budget action pictures has averaged an unimpressive 43 for his 13 features behind the camera. His only green Metascore—and it barely got there, at that—came for his 2007 team-up with producer Steven Spielberg on the first film in what turned out to be an ever-going Transformers franchise.

Bay is also proof that for blockbuster releases, reviews often don't matter. His films have collected nearly $6.5 billion worldwide—a figure that few other filmmakers have matched.

The one good film:
61 Transformers (2007)

Everything else:
41 Bad Boys (1995)
58 The Rock (1996)
42 Armageddon (1998)
44 Pearl Harbor (2001)
38 Bad Boys II (2003)
50 The Island (2005)
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
42 Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)
45 Pain & Gain (2013)
32 Transformers: Age Of Extinction (2014)
48 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)
28 Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)

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