5. Alfred Hitchcock - 'Rope' (1948)

‘Rope’ was an experiment in which Hitchcock could tell a story that would unfold via a series of dispelled cuts employed every ten or so minutes to create the illusion of one continuous piece. In brief, ‘Rope’ is a murder plot, whereby the two guilty parties would host a gathering with guests comprised of the recent victims closest friends and family, whom throughout the 80 minute runtime engaged in either small talk about dinner placements or heady themes such as intellectual superiority. Hitchcock actively spent 30 years burying this film.

4. Stanley Kubrick - 'Fear and Desire' (1953)

‘Fear and Desire’ must have been medieval levels of excruciating for him, since it would not be long after he burned the original negative for the film that he would continue, seemingly undeterred by his failure, and become the world’s leading visionary director. When asked to reflect on the piece in a later interview, Kubrick recalled 'a serious effort, ineptly done', a statement agreed upon by critics and audiences at the time, whom quickly forgot the movie once digested.

3. David Fincher - 'Alien 3' (1991)

'Alien' and 'Alliens' are essential masterworks in the horror and action genres whose iconic character has been reimagined across all media from comic books to video-games. Fincher and his crew treated the material as a character study, with the Xenomorph activities occurring in the background so as to elevate the internal struggles of recurring protagonist Ellen Ripley while still providing audiences with a blend of horror and action that the series was known for. Cutting so much of the slower scenes so as to maximize profits, too much characterization was lost and effectively ‘Alien 3’ no longer represented Fincher’s vision. 

2. Quentin Tarantino - 'Four Rooms' (1995)

This is the movie that Tarantino himself referred to as a ‘left-handed movie’ during his Director’s Roundtable Interview. In his right-handed filmography however, Tarantino has always been above all else an expert in captivation, and the way he achieves this in his post-‘Reservoir Dogs’ (1992) career is through the blending of genre. If this is confusing, then it’s really owed to Tarantino’s own inconsistency and all the while this ignores the fact that audiences are paying the price of a movie ticket for any one of these entries, ‘Four Rooms’ included.It isn’t bad, but relative to his other work it feels incomplete, though he wouldn’t admit it directly, for that would let people know it exists at all.

1. Edgar Wright - 'Ant-Man' (2015)

The situation at Marvel is that they need directors creative enough to have a voice but submissive enough to tow the line, and despite being so close to the end of production for ‘Ant-Man’, Edgar Wright ultimately refused to stay in that position. As Wright himself put it in a podcast: ‘I wanted to make a Marvel movie but I don’t think they really wanted to make an Edgar Wright movie.’ Fortunately for fans, much of his input can still be seen on-screen, but despite those flashes of creativity, Wright’s role as director was all too often relegated to figurehead status, and the result meant abandoning the movie altogether and taking his name with it. Fortunately for audiences, the result did not see a marked quality in Marvel movies nor did it embarass Edgar Wright’s career, who has since immersed himself in personal pet project ‘Baby Driver’ to great critical and commercial success. ‘Ant-Man’ may not have been quite what everyone involved hoped it would be, but everyone came out of it for the better.