Even great directors can make turkeys, sometimes without much obvious change in their style or obsessions. Akira Kurosawa's many adaptations of literary classics include both the mind-bending 1950 masterpiece "Rashomon" and 1951's lugubrious, now little-seen "Hakuchi (The Idiot)," with the latter made right after the former.
I don't know that Sion Sono can be described as "great," though he is among the most interesting and ambitious Japanese directors of his generation. I do know that despite its cool title and wham-bang trailer, his overblown action comedy "Jigoku de Naze Warui (Why Don't You Play in Hell?)" is also among his worst films. But then, I found the sequence of endlessly crashing cop cars in "The Blues Brothers" (1980), celebrated by some as a laugh riot, a total bore.
I am evidently in the minority: "Why Don't You Play in Hell?" won the audience award in the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness section, where it had its world premiere.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.