The most forgotten films from acclaimed directors

Steven Spielberg has won Best Director twice, and he’s had multiple movies become the highest-grossing movies of all time. As such, his misfires, like “1941,” often stand out. “Always” isn’t a misfire, though. It’s just a fine fantastical romance movie that happened to come out the same year as “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”

We didn’t necessarily want to include “Who’s That Knocking at My Door” or “Boxcar Bertha” among Martin Scorsese's films. Plus, those have become curiosities in a way other Scorsese films haven't. Even if people remember “The Age of Innocence,” a period costume drama that isn't the most venerated in that genre, it also doesn’t feel like a Scorsese movie, making it easier to forget. Also, there have been enough “Kundun” jokes for that one to stick in people’s memories.

Even not including Alfred Hitchcock’s early British films (which would be unfair; a couple of them are straight-up lost), he was prolific, and there are a few movies with famous faces and released in America that have, honestly, been truly forgotten. “The Paradine Case” came out between “Notorious” and “Rope.” It stars Gregory Peck. There is also a good chance you are hearing of it for the first time.

Kathryn Bigelow made history by being the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar, and the first woman to win an undeserved Best Director Oscar. By and large, we are not fans of her work, but she has had her successes undoubtedly. One of those is not “The Weight of Water,” the one movie we did not remember when looking at her filmography. The psychological thriller made under $400,000 at the box office and it got bad reviews, so that tracks.

Alan J. Pakula had his famed “paranoia trilogy” in the ‘70s, and he also directed movies such as “Sophie’s Choice” and “The Pelican Brief.” His filmography isn’t as banger-heavy as Spielberg or Scorsese, but it is the most forgotten. “Orphans” is not his ‘70s brilliance or his ‘90s pulp, but a forgotten drama based on a play. The reviews seem solid, but the movie did nothing theatrically and has completely disappeared.

There are popular Coen Brothers movies (some of them hits like “True Grit”) and the ones like “The Ladykillers” that people remember as being bad by the Coens’ standards. The early 2000s were kind of a downtime for Joel and Ethan, and they slipped “The Man Who Wasn’t There” into the mix. Now, this is a case where we would say this movie is good, if not in the upper echelon for the Coens. Among the brothers’ movies, though, we’d comfortably wager “The Man Who Wasn’t There” is the least seen and the most forgettable.

Nora Ephron would surely be happy to be remembered by her romantic comedies and her movies with Meg Ryan and not “Lucky Numbers.” When Ephron tried to do dark comedy, it was never good. “Mixed Nuts” is that, but it’s also a Christmas movie, and Christmas movies are forgotten less often. “Lucky Numbers” stars Lisa Kudrow and 2000s-era John Travolta, and thus this woeful film has lost to history.

James L. Brooks has only made seven films. Three were sensations. One starred Adam Sandler. One is “How Do You Know,” which got a lot of “This can’t be Brooks’ last movie, can it?” talk. Then he made “Ella McCay,” the movie that changed cinema forever. Only 1994’s “I’ll Do Anything” has been, to any degree, forgotten.

Ron Howard, by and large, hasn't done small movies or indie stuff. No, he has been a guy who does studio movies and light awards bait, basically anything where a B-/C+ is sufficient. While his 2025 film “Eden” is truly unknown, it’s too early to label that his most-forgotten film. 2003’s “The Missing” is one of the films we didn't remember, and possibly never heard of. And it was his follow-up to “A Beautiful Mind!” He won Best Director for that! By the way, “The Missing” is not a small film. Sony released it, and it had a $60 million budget.

Robert Zemeckis has directed some big box-office successes, such as the “Back to the Future” franchise. Also, “The Polar Express,” which is bad, was a hit, and basically everybody knows it. In the midst of his late-career turn to weird motion-capture animation, he also directed a serious period drama, “Allied.” It even starred Brad Pitt, and yet it sort of came and went, and then Zemeckis made “Welcome to Marwen,” a movie too bizarre to be forgotten.

Nancy Meyers is working on a new movie, which means “The Intern” won’t be her last. However, it may remain her least memorable movie. To be fair, she’s only directed six movies, and five of them are different degrees of successful and popular. Meyers knows her way around a romcom, to be sure, so maybe the issue is that “The Intern” isn’t a romcom.

Ang Lee has two Best Director Oscars. He also directed “Hulk,” and the well-known “Eat Drink Man Woman,” which Lee made in Taiwan before coming to America. “Taking Woodstock,” though, completely fell through the cracks. Did you know Demetri Martin starred in an Ang Lee movie? Hell, did you know Demetri Martin starred in a movie? “Taking Woodstock” was a real misfire and an odd choice for everyone involved.

For a movie named “The Day of the Dolphin” to not ever get talked about must mean it has been forgotten. Mike Nichols never had a low-stakes early career. He came out of the gate with “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and “The Graduate.” Not only is “The Day of a Dolphin” a remarkable movie title, but here is the poster tagline: Unknowingly, he trained a dolphin to kill the President of the United States.” Yeah, it took a lot for this movie not to be remembered.

Maybe “The Devil’s Backbone” is less remembered, but that came early in Guillermo del Toro’s career, long before his Oscar or his good “Pinocchio” adaptation or his terrible “Frankenstein” adaptation. “Crimson Peak” may have gotten forgotten, in part, because del Toro’s next movie was “The Shape of Water.” Also, the Gothic drama is kind of a snooze, especially for del Toro.

In Billy Wilder’s career, “Witness for the Prosecution” came out, then “Some Like It Hot,” and then “The Apartment.” Those are three of the most venerated films of that era, and “The Apartment” won Best Picture. The next year, “One, Two, Three” came out. It’s a frenetic comedy; it stars James Cagney late in his career, and it got good reviews. Maybe it was just hard for the movie to make an impact after three bangers in a row (and Wilder’s next movie was “Irma la Douce”).

We are going to eschew Francis Ford Coppola’s post-Y2K movies, the ones he self-financed and whatnot. Although “Megalopolis” certainly made an impact for a movie few people saw. While Coppola’s best days were behind him, he had a solid ‘80s, and he had some juice left for the early ‘90s. “Gardens of Stone,” though, didn’t make an impact back then and has been completely forgotten since. Maybe it isn’t a good idea to make a Vietnam movie after, you know, you’ve already directed “Apocalypse Now.”

There are a few Spike Lee movies that could be considered; shout-out to “Girl 6,” but there’s a reason to highlight “Miracle at St. Anna.” It came out after “Inside Man,” a big box-office success. That presumably helped him get the chance to make an epic World War II movie set in Italy with no stars in it. It’s an odd movie, not a commercial one, so it flopped with both audiences and critics. And with that, Lee’s momentum was stopped.

Ridley Scott loves to work, and most of his movies, good or mediocre, are known to some degree. One that has been forgotten, though, is “A Good Year.” It’s not an epic, and it doesn’t involve aliens. No, “A Good Year” is a dramedy that was a quickie adaptation of a 2004 book. It did okay in theaters, but has since dropped off a cliff.

Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu has two Best Director Oscars. His latest movie, “Digger” has gotten a ton of publicity and marketing. You might be thinking, “Wow, he’s been working on this for a while since ‘The Revenant’.” That’s because you have forgotten “Bardo,” and that’s okay. “Bardo” came and went in the blink of an eye. Maybe the problem is that Netflix gobbled “Bardo” up, hoping it would be an Oscar player. When it became clear it wouldn’t, the streaming service could easily bury it.

We’re ending with Kubrick because he is the kind of director whose filmography isn't too large and is widely venerated. Even “Barry Lyndon” and “Eyes Wide Shut” get a lot of love now. We could have gone with “The Killing,” his first proper movie, but it's now seen as a noir classic. That leaves “Spartacus,” which was a success at the time, but it’s a sword-and-sandals movie, and it feels a little Old Hollywood (even though Dalton Trumbo wrote it). It’s not the kind of movie people will promote to be reconsidered, and so, as time has gone on, “Spartacus” has become the most forgotten movie in Kubrick’s filmography.