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.

20 of 31

Guy Ritchie

The English director's 1998 debut is considered one of the better British crime films ever made. (At the very least, it's a cult hit.) But it's been all downhill from there for Ritchie, who has since directed some of the worst films of the 21st century (most notably his disastrous 2002 collaboration with then-wife Madonna, Swept Away), even as he's had a few box office hits (his two Sherlock Holmes films).

Up next for the director is a live-action remake of Disney's Aladdin, due in 2019.

The one good film:
66 Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)

Everything else:
55 Snatch. (2000)
18 Swept Away (2002)
25 Revolver (2005)
53 RocknRolla (2008)
57 Sherlock Holmes (2009)
48 Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)
56 The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
41 King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)

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