Movie stars generally love cinema as much as they love acting... or close enough. If all they loved was acting, then they’d dedicate their careers to the stage and not put up with the pesky restrictions that the filmmaking process puts on the rawness of their performance. As a result, a lot of actors end up trying their hand at directing.
Usually when this happens, their search for the perfect lead ends when they look in the mirror. Some actors have directed movies that they didn’t star in, or even appear in, but it’s rare, and unsurprisingly, movies directed by their star are a mixed bag.
Best: Fences (2016) – Dir. Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington’s smartest decision as the director of Fences was honoring the source material, written by August Wilson. It’s a beautiful play that tells its story perfectly, and Washington knew it would be a detriment to Wilson’s work to embellish his words with unnecessary extra scenes. So, the actor-director simply staged the play in a real Pittsburgh neighborhood and put cameras in front of it.
Washington and his co-star Viola Davis reprised the lead roles from the play’s 2010 revival, which earned them both Tony Awards, so they each know their character like the back of their hand and deliver every line with both power and nuance.
Worst: Miss March (2009) – Dir. Trevor Moore & Zach Cregger
Trevor Moore and Zach Cregger from the IFC sketch series The Whitest Kids U’ Know directed, wrote, and starred in Miss March, a truly unfunny "comedy" about a kid waking up from a four-year coma and discovering that his high school sweetheart has become a Playboy Bunny.
Even by the standards of teen sex comedies (the bar isn’t very high), Miss March is painfully crass, swapping out humor for vulgarity.
Best: The Great Dictator (1940) – Dir. Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin directed most of the comedies he starred in — some of the most groundbreaking and essential work in the history of film comedy — but arguably his finest movie is The Great Dictator.
This is the political satire against which all other political satires are judged. Released at the height of the Second World War, The Great Dictator boldly lampoons Adolf Hitler and succeeds beautifully.
Worst: The Postman (1997) – Dir. Kevin Costner
In a post-apocalyptic landscape, a man dons a postman’s uniform to spread joy across a bleak America. That’s the premise of The Postman.
After wowing audiences and critics (and not to mention winning a boatload of Oscars) with his directorial debut Dances with Wolves, Costner got a little indulgent with his overlong follow-up.
Best: Easy Rider (1969) – Dir. Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper changed the course of American cinema with this rule-breaking masterpiece. Hopper and his co-stars Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson actually hit the road on motorcycles and took a bunch of drugs and improvised a lot of their dialogue, so it’s basically a documentary.
The movie’s gritty style, unconventional narrative structure, and bleak ending would go on to influence the “New Hollywood” movement, marked by the fall of the traditional studio system and the rise of auteurs like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola.
Worst: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) – Dir. William Shatner
A handful of Star Trek movies were directed by cast . The fifth one, The Final Frontier, was helmed by William Shatner. The problem with the movie isn’t that Shatner is an incompetent director or a camera hog; the movie simply has a terrible story.
There was infinite potential in the story of the crew of the Enterprise encountering God in deep space, but the movie goes with the most predictable explanation of God’s presence. The Final Frontier is not daring enough to deal with the huge philosophical ideas at play in any depth.
Best: Unforgiven (1992) – Dir. Clint Eastwood
After decades of starring in (and, in some cases, directing) some of the greatest westerns ever made, Clint Eastwood deconstructed the genre in such a poignant way that it made it obsolete.
Whereas the typical western will whitewash its ugly historical context and glamorize brutal violence, Unforgiven is powerful, gritty, and raw, without losing sight of the classical John Ford aesthetic.
Worst: By The Sea (2015) – Dir. Angelina Jolie
This is the movie that appears to have destroyed Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s marriage. Jolie brought a film crew on the couple’s honeymoon in Malta, where they shot a romantic drama she’d written about a failing marriage, and shortly after the movie’s devastating financial and critical failure, they got a divorce.
Whether there’s a correlation is pure speculation, but what’s clear is that By the Sea is not a good movie. It’s shot beautifully by cinematographer Christian Berger, but that’s not enough to offset its very dull storytelling.
Best: Citizen Kane (1941) – Dir. Orson Welles
Widely regarded to be Citizen Kane made more technical strides forward than perhaps any other movie in the history of cinema.
Welles attributed this to ignorance, as he didn’t know the limitations of filmmaking technology, so he envisioned impossible shots and then set about bringing them to life. On top of the technical achievements, the movie also tells a riveting epic tale about the rise and fall of a ruthless newspaper tycoon.
Worst: Freddy Got Fingered (2001) – Dir. Tom Green
Tom Green’s Freddy Got Fingered is gross-out for the sake of being gross, offensive for the sake of offending, and mind-numbingly awful.
The movie exemplifies everything that’s wrong with Green’s comedic style. Aside from simply not being funny, it attempts to provoke without having anything meaningful to say.
