25 Misfires From Otherwise Great Film Directors

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – April 22, 2018

Last week, we looked at 30 filmmakers who made only one well-reviewed movie over their entire careers. Today, we examine the opposite group: directors who have nearly flawless careers, with only a single misfire (with a Metascore of 60 or lower) standing in the way of a perfect record of all-green scores.

Note that we only looked at directors who have made at least five films since 1980.

15 of 26 photo by 20th Century Fox

Richard Linklater

The one misfire:
57 The Newton Boys (1998)

One of the most prolific filmmakers working over the past few decades, the Texan has received positive reviews for 17 of his 18 (!) films since 1990—a truly impressive feat of consistency. You'll have to go back 20 years to find the one outlier, which fictionalizes the true story of a group of 1920s bank robbers. The Newton Boys was Linklater's first major-studio, big(ger)-budget feature, but critics found it uncharacteristically flat and hollow. He seems to have recovered nicely, though.

Next up for the director: Where'd You Go, Bernadette, an adaptation of Maria Semple's comedic novel due in October.

Everything else:
69 Slacker (1991)
78 Dazed and Confused (1993)
77 Before Sunrise (1995)
62 SubUrbia (1996)
82 Waking Life (2001)
71 Tape (2001)
82 The School of Rock (2003)
90 Before Sunset (2004)
65 Bad News Bears (2005)
73 A Scanner Darkly (2006)
64 Fast Food Nation (2006)
73 Me and Orson Welles (2008)
75 Bernie (2011)
94 Before Midnight (2013)
100 Boyhood (2014)
83 Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
65 Last Flag Flying (2017)

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