10 Great Directors Who Haven't Made Anything Good For Years

6. Cameron Crowe

If ever there's been an example of how making one bad film can undo all the great work you've done in the past, it's Cameron Crowe. Specifically, how the man who picked up 5 Academy Award nominations for his writing and direction of Jerry Maguire, followed it up with Almost Famous, and survived making Vanilla Sky, can now be struggling to get any work at all because of Elizabethtown.

Crowe broke onto the scene in 1996 when he and Tom Cruise tore up the rule book on romantic comedies and came up with one of the most original and honest examples of the genre ever seen. Almost Famous provided a charming balance of nostalgia and wide-eyed teenage fantasy that's yet to be repeated, and even Vanilla Sky, which divided audiences and critics, has started to grow in prominence over time. In 2005 though Crowe penned Elizabethtown, a story of a man who had it all, lost it, but then meets Hollywood's favourite quirky generic female lead, a "manic pixie dream girl".

Somewhere between Jerry Maguire and Garden State, without the charm or originality of either, Crowe's career since has consisted of a music video, two bad documentaries and We Bought a Zoo, a film so deliberately sweet audiences probably left the screen a few pounds fatter and with a gritty lining on their teeth. There's a great filmmaker in there somewhere though, and his next project is vital if he hopes to prove he hasn't lost it completely.