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

4. Joel Schumacher

Depending on how romantically you remember that particular period in cinema, Joel Schumacher is either to thank or to blame for the brat pack. St Elmo's Fire and The Lost Boys might have helped launch the careers of a whole new generation of young actors, but they were also some of the finest films to be released in the 1980s.

Moving Schumacher further up the pecking order for Hollywood's most prestigious gigs, he then picked up a number of decent films before directing Batman Forever and, ultimately, the final nail in the coffin of the loud and brash instalments of the caped crusader's film franchise, Batman and Robin. After that, and presumably getting sick of reading critics calling him names, he more or less gave up and his career since has been a handful of dark dramas and thrillers - one even going straight to DVD.

It would be easy to write Schumacher off as a has-been whose beyond all hope for a comeback, but his direction of two House of Cards episodes shows that there's still a solid director in there deep down. The answer is clearly for him to go for projects which emphasise dialogue and interaction over garish set-pieces, the only question is if he's got the stomach for it anymore.