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Danny Boyle

If you’ve been reading my work on Box Office Prophets for a long time, you probably know that I am no fan of Slumdog Millionaire, the 2008 winner of the Best Picture Oscar. I found the movie to be cloying, sappy, silly, and ridiculous. Still, Boyle, who took home the Oscar for Best Director, is a talent to be reckoned with. In the late 1990s, he broke into the States with Trainspotting, a shocking look into the world of drugs in the United Kingdom. The movie catapulted him and its star, Ewan McGregor, into stardom, but it took Boyle a little longer to solidify his status as a big-time director. After Trainspotting came A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach, two indie films that tried to hit big but failed. With Slumdog Millionaire, though, Boyle’s got himself a nice bit of Hollywood cache.

His next film will be coming out at the end of this year and is assumed to be another Oscar favorite: 127 Hours, a film about the harrowing ordeal a mountain climber has to go through while trapped by a boulder. The lead role is being played by James Franco, and the buzz on the film is pretty high. Though Boyle’s overall career is hit-and-miss (my favorite film of his is Millions, a little-seen Fox Searchlight release from 2006 that was as charming as Slumdog Millionaire wasn’t), he’s a director to watch. Pairing him with a soulful actor like Franco, and a powerful true story to boot, pretty much guarantees Boyle’s name among those listed as the Best Director nominees at this year’s Oscars. The only person standing in his way, I wager, is himself.

Sam Mendes

Debuts don’t get much bigger than they did for Sam Mendes. Though I wouldn’t equate the quality of the film with that of Citizen Kane, another big debut film for its director, Orson Welles, the 1999 Best Picture winner, American Beauty, did a lot for Mendes’ career. Mendes won the Best Director Oscar, and became the hottest name in directing. Though he had an extensive background in theatre, his visual flourishes, the sharp and witty script, and excellent acting, made American Beauty a zeitgeist film, and Mendes close to a household name. His follow-up film, 2002’s Road to Perdition, is his best and, of course, most underrated. In some ways, Mendes hasn’t ever lived down American Beauty; the film doesn’t get the same love it did 11 years ago, and Mendes is best known now for divorcing Kate Winslet (also known as the stupidest thing a person can do).

Still, Sam Mendes’ name does denote an assumption of quality. His filmography is a bit spotty, going from American Beauty to Road to Perdition to Jarhead to Revolutionary Road to Away We Go, but I’ve still got plenty of hope for the man. As of right now, he’s still attached in some form to the next James Bond movie; with the financial woes MGM has been going through, who knows if he’ll still helm the film once the dust clears? If anything, I’d like Mendes to do something a little less Hollywood; it’s rare for a James Bond movie to be helmed by such a distinct auteur. Even Martin Campbell, who helmed GoldenEye and Casino Royale, doesn’t have such a unique vision in his work. Mendes’ presence might hamper the film; then again, he might prove us all wrong. Whatever the case, Mendes is still a force to be reckoned with in American film, despite always seeming a bit too much like a one-hit wonder.

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