4. “Superman Returns” (2006)
After “X2,” Bryan Singer defected, keen to see if he could pull the same magic with the world’s most famous superhero as he had with Marvel’s mutants, and became the person to direct the first big-screen Superman movie in nearly two decades. It came in the form of a love letter to Richard Donner and his 1978 “Superman” movie, but just a year after Christopher Nolan had reinvented the superhero movie in dark, gritty fashion with “Batman Begins.” Singer’s old-fashioned, mostly sincere homage failed to strike much of a chord with audiences, and a planned franchise never came to pass. This is a shame because for all its problems, it’s a deserving successor to the Donner film, and genuinely loves and understands the character, in sharp contrast to Zack Snyder’s barely-veiled contempt Kal-El in the more recent films. Seemingly a direct sequel to the Reeve era, it sees Superman (Brandon Routh, who was excellent and deserved better than his subsequent career) returning to Earth after years away to discover that Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) now has a son, while Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) is out of prison and plotting afresh. There are absolutely problems here as great as Supes snapping Zod’s neck at the end of “Man Of Steel” — Superman’s absence alone feels like a misunderstanding of the character, as does his vaguely creepy stalking of his former love, and the film is wildly overlong at 155 minutes. But it has a coherent and fully realized Golden Age-type approach with a winning sprinkling of melancholy, Spacey walks the line between campy and threatening nicely, and the spectacle is great, particularly a stunning plane-rescue sequence. It seems to grow in estimation every time the Snyderverse drops another film.
3. “Apt Pupil” (1998)
While technically Singer’s third film, “Apt Pupil” is a perfect example of the difficult second album — a cold, dark, unlikable new direction that drops much of what people loved about the filmmakers’ breakout, and was coolly received by both critics and audiences (here’s Keith Phipps calling it the worst film of the year). It’s undoubtedly a difficult film to love, but it’s a rather fascinating one that stands as the nasty little outlier in Singer’s filmography. Based on a short story from Stephen King (famously, from the same collection, “Different Seasons,” that also featured the stories that inspired “Stand By Me” and “The Shawshank Redemption”), the 1980s-set tale sees a California high-schooler (the late Brad Renfro) discover that his neighbor (Ian McKellen, in the first of a series of collaborations with Singer that would last nearly twenty years) is a former SS member and war criminal, and blackmails him into telling him about how it felt to commit genocide. As it sounds, it’s not a film that’s exactly overrun in sympathetic characters: it’s a dark, grim wallow in the worst of humanity that would make you want to shower afterwards, if the film didn’t have a particularly unpleasant shower sequence. Indeed, it comes close to a sort of fetishism, in a way that’s reminiscent of something like “The Night Porter,” and in a way that’s surely unpalatable to many. But the terrific performances from the actors make it an utterly compelling watch, and it plays better in a post-Columbine, post-4Chan world as a sort of study of the evil of the American teenage boy. In its eccentricities and peccadilloes, it suggests a Singer that might have become a far more difficult, far less mainstream filmmaker if he hadn’t been sucked into the studio tentpole world, and as such, it stands as a film that isn’t great, but that might be the most interesting thing that Singer’s ever made.
2. “X2: X-Men United”
Something of a study in how to pull off a great superhero sequel, and still a high water mark in the genre, Singer’s second “X-Men” movie (called, for reasons that no one quite understands, “X2: X-Men United”) was kind of a blockbuster triumph, and the franchise has been chasing it ever since. From that cracking opening action-sequence, as Alan Cumming‘s Nightcrawler tries to kill the president, teleporting around the Oval Office in a cloud of smoke, it’s a much more confident, rich and exciting film, turning the set-up on its head by forcing the two sides of mutants to uneasily work together, while still giving Ian McKellen‘s Magneto room to plot and scheme. Brian Cox makes an excellent villain (and importantly, a properly motivated one), the new additions mostly work (Shawn Ashmore’s Bobby is always kind of a bore, but Aaron Stanford’s Pyro is much more fun), but aren’t prevalent enough that the film feels as overstuffed as the others, the action is leaps and bounds better than the first film, and more importantly, it still has a soul. Few scenes in these films are as affecting as when Bobby ‘comes out’ as a mutant to his parents (“have you tried not being a mutant?”), an affecting and clearly personal moment that feels like the reason Singer connected with the series in the first place. Just as every sci-fi franchise has chased “The Empire Strikes Back” since, the subsequent X-films have been chasing this film’s mix of big emotion, jokes, romance, kick-ass action, inventive effects and social commentary for over a decade now.
1. “The Usual Suspects”
The mid 1990s saw virtually everybody trying to do the indie crime thing, after the immense success of Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs,” “True Romance” and “Pulp Fiction,” resulting in a heap of mostly awful movies (see our piece on the copycats here).“The Usual Suspects,” Bryan Singer’s second and breakthrough film, has plenty in common with Tarantino’s output: a whip-smart, quotable script, a crew of colorful lowlives, a heist at its centre. But the execution is quite different, and refreshingly so, borrowing from classic noir and Lumet rather than grindhouse, while ending up feeling quite original too. Christopher McQuarrie’s screenplay (which would go on to win him an Oscar) picks up in the aftermath of a bloody gun battle on the L.A. docs, as Customs agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) interrogates the lone survivor, disabled conman Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey, who also won an Oscar). Verbal tells the story of how he was brought together with a number of other criminals, including Kujan’s old nemesis Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) for a line-up, which led to a heist that may be linked to a potentially fictional Turkish crime lord known as Keyser Soze. Like “Planet Of The Apes” or “The Sixth Sense,” the film’s arguably best known for its climactic twist, a beautifully executed rug-pull. But that’s only the cherry on the top of the film’s virtues: it’s a pacy, labyrinthine, gorgeously textured, moody, tense picture stuffed with great performances (Benicio Del Toro became a star despite most of his dialogue being incomprehensible) and tied together by John Ottman’s great score. It’s one of the best crime films in a decade that was full of them, and we hope that Singer comes close to its quality again.
If you’re a Singer completist, there are a few other things to watch, all from the TV world. Most famously, he directed the pilot of “House,” as well as the show’s third episode — the show went on to be a huge hit. 2007 pilot “Football Wives” wasn’t picked up, and neither was the excellent Bryan Fuller-written “Mockingbird Lane,” a riff on “The Munsters.” But “Battle Creek” a cop show from “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan starring Josh Duhamel and Dean Winters, was — Singer directed the pilot there too, but the deeply generic show lasted only a season.