50 Surprising Films From Great Directors

A Woman Of Paris (1923)

The Director: Charles Chaplin

The Surprise: All eyes were on Charlie Chaplin's then-longest film, only for audiences to be gazumped by a melodrama low on laughs and in which the director stayed behind the camera, bar an uncredited cameo as a porter.

Is It Really So Strange? Chaplin had made no secret of his ambitions beyond slapstick, and had been bringing pathos and drama into his films for a long time (see, especially, The Kid ). However, he would return to playing the famous Tramp in his next film, The Gold Rush , and it wouldn't be until his 1967 swansong A Countess From Hong Kong that he again directed without taking a starring role.

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010)

The Director: Zack Snyder

The Surprise: Blood! Death! Mayhem! …Owls? Having dined in hell with a series of R-rated fanboy films, Snyder threw a curveball by making this decidedly more family-friendly animated movie.

Is It Really So Strange? With 300 and Watchmen based on graphic novels - and halfway to being animated in their screen adaptations - a full-blown "toon" was always on the cards for Snyder. And the film certainly proved he could appeal to a wider audience, paving the way for Man Of Steel .

Elvis (1979)

The Director: John Carpenter

The Surprise: Here's another thing to make you go bump in the night - realising that his made-for-TV biopic was directed by the young B-movie maestro who revitalised genre cinema with Dark Star , Assault On Precinct 13 and Halloween .

Is It Really So Strange? The rationale is simple enough: Carpenter loved Elvis. And the experience of working with a guy who could play a convincing Elvis (namely, Kurt Russell) sparked a perfect union of director and star in a series of pop-culture classics including The Thing and Big Trouble In Little China .

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

The Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

The Surprise: With a growing reputation as the most promising talent of his generation, Paul Thomas Anderson ditched the sprawling canvases and epic ensembles of Boogie Night s and Magnolia to make a 90 minute Adam Sandler comedy.

Is It Really So Strange? This isn't your average Sandler flick, and its off-kilter rhythms and weirdness won Anderson the Best Director prize at Cannes. And after There Will Be Blood and The Master , its focus on a mentally troubled protagonist makes much more sense.

The Straight Story (1999)

The Director: David Lynch

The Surprise: After freaking everybody out with the surreal visions of Eraserhead , Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks , Lynch made this U-certificate crowd-pleaser about an old guy setting off on a road trip aboard his ride-on mower.

Is It Really So Strange? The more whimsical, non-terrifying parts of Twin Peaks indulged Lynch's palpable love for the American eccentric, and Alvin Straight could easily have appeared in that show.

Fast Company (1979)

The Director: David Cronenberg

The Surprise: Having established himself as the master of body horror, the horror director grabbed the wheel of his melodrama about a drag racer battling against his crooked sponsor. It's more Cars than Crash .

Is It Really So Strange? Cronenberg has never hidden his fascination with technology and shoots the vehicular action with the same obsession as he does exploding heads. And the afore-mentioned Crash later managed to bridge the gap between this and his horror output.

Hulk (2003)

The Director: Ang Lee

The Surprise: Ang Lee was the Oscar-nominated, art-house darling who had previously tackled Jane Austen, 1970s suburbia and wuxia action when Marvel recruited him to tell the origins story of a guy who goes green when he gets angry.

Is It Really So Strange? Lee proved he could dazzle audiences in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (and, later, with Life Of Pi ), while his entire career is a case of wilful genre-hopping. Even so, his approach was still too art-house for many, and the next Hulk movie was given to the more multiplex-oriented Louis Leterrier.

Jack (1996)

The Director: Francis Ford Coppola

The Surprise: "From the director of The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now "… a family comedy about a boy who grows up so fast he looks like Robin Williams.

Is It Really So Strange? Jack has always been taken as proof of a titan reduced by financial woes into taking whatever he was given, but it's not that huge a stretch considering the director's career-long interest in families and the coming-of-age themes of Rumble Fish and The Outsiders .

Music Of The Heart (1999)

The Director: Wes Craven

The Surprise: From Krug to Krueger, his C.V. contains some of cinema's most frightening creations - yet apparently Craven harboured a deep-felt desire to tell the true story of a music programme for underprivileged Harlem kids starring Meryl Streep.

Is It Really So Strange? Look again - Craven's filmography in the 1990s is actually one long cry for help to escape the horror ghetto, first by deconstructing Freddy Krueger in Wes Craven's New Nightmare , then by moving into outright comedy with Scream . However, part of the deal to secure funding for Music Of The Heart was that he had to make Scream 3 , a backwards move that prevented a full transition to a non-horror career.

Popeye (1980)

The Director: Robert Altman

The Surprise: By 1980, Robert Altman had already established a reputation for artistic curveballs and unexpected decisions, so it took something really outlandish to surprise people - like, perhaps, a big-budget musical of the E.C. Segar comic strip starring Robin Williams as the spinach-munching sailor?

Is It Really So Strange? Popeye still stands out as a rare attempt to court the mainstream in Altman's C.V., although later studio pics like The Gingerbread Man have slightly taken the edge of its uniqueness.