6 Divisive Directors Whose Work Is Always Interesting To Watch

David O. Russell

Few director can claim to receive as divided a reaction as David O. Russell, who has delivered 8 feature length films in 22 years, while another movie – Accidental Love – bears his fingerprints as director, but not his name, due his leaving the project before release.

The director has touched the upper echelons of praise – with three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and three for Best Picture – and has also faced the wrath of audience disapproval on more than one occasion. But his films are nothing if not surprising, in one way or another, and I would not suggest that a franchise opportunity would ever be off the table. Whether it would interest him or not, is another matter.

It could be argued that his feature debut, 1994’s Spanking The Monkey, set the divisive tone for the career of David O. Russell – being a nuanced comedy about a medical student slowly succumbing to oedipal urges, during a summer spent caring for his bedridden mother. A shocking premise to many, it got the ball rolling on a run of films that would consistently push the kind of buttons that make people uncomfortable – temptation and adultery (1996’s Flirting With Disaster), war crimes and torture (1999’s Three Kings), paranoia and existentialism (2004’s I Heart Huckabees), family and addiction (2010’s The Fighter), family and mental illness (2012’s Silver Linings Playbook), ambition and organized crime (2013’s American Hustle), and family and ambition (2015’s Joy). The result is a filmmaking career that is unpredictable and thrilling to watch.