3) Michel Gondry
A French director whose music videos and early feature films have no shortage of pieces of flair, Michel Gondry is one of the most innovative visual stylists working in cinema. However, his commercials and music videos have won more awards than his movies. You know the famous “Bullet Time” special effect from The Matrix, where time is slowed down and the camera whips around so we can see the trajectory of fast-moving objects like bullets? Well, you may not know that Gondry used it in a Smirnoff commercial and a Rolling Stones music video before the Wachowski siblings even greenlit their sci-fi opus.
Gondry is better known for his inventive visual kinetics, although his early films were emotionally poignant affairs, most notably Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. However, with the exception of occasional vibrant documentaries starring Dave Chappelle and Noam Chomsky, his late filmography has been spotty. Be Kind Rewind was a mixed bag, not quite nailing the mesh of heart, humor and hip originality that made Eternal Sunshine such a dazzling trip. Meanwhile, the 2011 superhero comedy The Green Hornet had a few moments of aesthetic creativity, but figuring out what drew Gondry to such subpar material remains a mystery that hero could never solve.
When Gondry tried to restrain his virtuosity, with the Cannes selection The We and the I, it was a failed experiment, a story of inner-city life that would have benefited more from focusing on real people. While it was a good sign that the talented director wanted to stretch by shrinking his visual palette, his recent misfire Mood Indigo looked like a Gondry classic more than it felt like one. The French director should look for good material that could use his expertise rather than keep committing to his own scripts.
