best films from first-time directors? (1 Viewer)

[Christ Reynolds]

i did a few different searches and couldnt come up with this type of topic. so, what are the best movies from first time directors? i can think of a few very good first films, anyone know any more good ones?

wes anderson - bottle rocket
richard kelly - donnie darko
christopher nolan - following
coen brothers - blood simple
david lynch - eraserhead
orson welles - citizen kane
sam mendes - american beauty
sofia coppola - the virgin suicides

many of those are among my very favorites, but i like them all very much. not a bad group of debut films. now the task for you htf'ers is to list the good ones i missed!

CJ

 

[Bruce_S]

bryan singer - usual suspects
chris nolan - memento (not sure)
mel gibson - braveheart
kevin costner - dances w/wolves
clint eastwood - unforgiven

 

[Richard Kim]

As noted above, Christopher Nolan's first film was Following. Mel Gibson first directed The Man Without A Face, and Clint Eastwood directed many films before Unforgiven (Play Misty For Me was his first).

As for my list:

Sam Raimi: The Evil Dead
Cameron Crowe: Say Anything...
George Lucas: THX-1138
Rob Reiner: This Is Spinal Tap
Quentin Tarentino: Reservoir Dogs
Kevin Smith: Clerks

 

[Christ Reynolds]

i left this one off intentionally when i saw public access on imdb. also, i forgot

pi - darren aronofsky

i'm not sure if protozoa counts as a feature.

CJ

 

[Christ Reynolds]

also forgot

spike jonze - being john malkovich

CJ

 

[Ernest Rister]

Orson Welles - Citizen Kane. No brainer.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Christopher Guest, The Big Picture.
Steven Spielberg, The Sugarland Express (this was his first feature film; Duel was made for TV).

As noted in various previous posts, all of the entries on this list except for Costner's are not first films.

M.

 

[Jacob McCraw]

Wes Craven - Last House on the Left
Tobe Hooper - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Eli Roth - Cabin Fever
Robert Rodriguez - El Mariachi
George Clooney - Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
John Singleton - Boyz n the Hood
Allen and Albert Hughes - Menace II Society
Peter Jackson - Bad Taste

 

[Julian Reville]

I watched my laserdisc copy of Sugarland Express again this weekend. What an underated gem. I can't believe this isn't out on DVD yet.

 

[Jose Martinez]

Steven Soderbergh - Sex, Lies, and Videotape

 

[Lew Crippen]

In addition to the very obvious Citizen Kane, mentioned a couple of times already I’d consider the following to be brilliant first films:

·François Truffaut: The 400 Blows
·Mike Nichols: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
·Terrence Malick: Badlands

 

[Alex Spindler]

Most of these have had good follow up films, but some really only had their one good debut. I was quite surprised by the number of films I had previously assumed were debuts but were not (not even counting the TV show and TV film stuff). These are in addition to the excellent debuts already mentioned.

Dumb and Dumber - Bobby and Peter Farrelly (what I consider to be the absolute best 'dumb' comedy ever made)
Airplane! - ZAZ
Zero Effect - Jake Kasdan
Bound - Larry and Andy Wachowski (which I think is their second best film)
House of Games - David Mamet
Tremors - Ron Underwood (perfect B monster movie)
Cube - Vincenzo Natali (his followup Cypher is really quite good)

 

[Jim_K]

John Huston - The Maltese Falcon

 

[ZacharyTait]

The best first film from any director in my opinion is Frank Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption.

 

[Bill Huelbig]

One of my favorites in this category is THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955) directed by Charles Laughton. It's my favorite film made by a director who, sadly, never directed a second film.

--Bill

 

[Lew Crippen]

Good catch Bill--I tend to forget him as a director.

 

[Kevin Leonard]

That was not his first film. If I remember correctly, it was a TV movie called Buried Alive.

 

[Nick C.]

Joan Chen's Xiu Xiu
Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade
Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum
Mamet's House Of Games (oops, Alex mentioned already)
Tony Kaye's American History X
PT Anderson's Hard Eight
Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count On Me

Kubrick's The Killing -- he called it his first feature, discounting Killer's Kiss and Fear and Desire as amateur efforts without studio funding or professional actors

Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World -- first feature after 2 prior documentaries

 

[ChrisBEA]

Tim Burton: Pee Wee's Big Adventure
Lucky Mckee: May
Hampton Fancher: The Minus Man
Michel Gondry: Human Nature
Alex Proyas: The Crow
George Miller: Mad Max
Rob Zombie: House of 1000 Corpses (I'm the one that liked it :b )
M. Night Shyamalan: The Sixth Sense

 

[Guy Martin]

Sixth Sense was actually Shyamalan's 3rd film after Praying with Anger and Wide Awake. Kubrick's debut was the little-seen Fear and Desire which he tried very hard to destroy by buying up all the prints he could.

There was an interesting article in Variety of all places about the obsession in the last decade or so with having a brilliant directorial debut. The article seemed to lament that directors are rarely given a second chance anymore. Now they have to be brilliant out of the gate. The article noted that Scorcese and Coppola among other greats had relatively mediocre first films and developed into the great directors we know and love over a period of several years. They probably would never have been allowed a second film today. Heck, Alien 3 cost Fincher nearly four years. To this day he considers it an act of God that he was offered Se7en at that point.

Curtis Hanson was sighted as one of the few recent examples of a director who started off making good, but undistinguished genre efforts like River Wild and Hand that Rocks the Cradle before really hitting his stride with LA Confidential and 8 Mile.

Are we asking too much when we demand that directors be brilliant from the start?

- Guy

PS

A few for the list:
Shallow Grave - Danny Boyle (feature debut, he did some interesting TV before)
Lion King - Rob Minkoff (he had done some shorts prior)
Metropolitan - Whit Stillman
Cronos - Guillermo Del Toro
The Dancer Upstairs - John Malkovich
Menace II Society - Hughes Bros
Boyz in the Hood - John Singleton
Roger and Me - Michael Moore
Pleasantville - Gary Ross
Toy Story - John Lassiter (feature debut, had done shorts)
House of Sand and Fog - Vadim Perelman (feature debut, had done commercials)
Swingers - Doug Liman
Chicken Run - Nick Park and Peter Lord (feature debut, had done shorts)
Shine - Scott Hicks
Strictly Ballroom - Baz Luhrmann