10 Movies That Blew INCREDIBLE Casts

No matter his many personal controversies, David O. Russell continues to attract crackerjack casts to his movies because it's difficult to deny that he's a skilled filmmaker with a proven track record of directing actors to Oscar-winning performances.

And Russell's latest, Amsterdam, touts one of the finest ensemble casts of the entire year: led by Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington, with supporting turns from Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola, Rami Malek, and Robert De Niro.

Beyond Damien Chazelle's upcoming period film Babylon, no other movie this year will get anywhere close to Amsterdam's amount of prestige talent.

It's a shame, then, that the end result is such a head-scratching mess. Bale, for his part, acts his ass off throughout, yet he's really the only member of the cast who truly gives a strong, unencumbered performance.

One suspects most of the cast signed up due to Russell's clout but ultimately couldn't find their way through the unwieldy script, or Russell simply got complacent and figured that critics and awards voters would eat up whatever he put out.

It's telling that the movie's marketing focused almost exclusively on how many actors of note were in it, rather than trying to concisely outline the film's nebulous narrative.