Cinematical

There's bad casting and good casting, to be sure, and sometimes there's strange casting. But sometimes, out of left field, someone agrees to act in a movie with a certain director, and you just can't see the connection. Sometimes this works out, and other times it does not.

1. D.W. Griffith & W.C. Fields, Sally of the Sawdust (1925)
Yes, the great, curmudgeonly comic with the bulbous nose, the penchant for booze and a curdling disdain for children and animals found himself working with the famously Victorian silent-era film pioneer. Griffith's career was on the way down, and Fields' was on the way up, and they met in the middle for this actually rather delightful comedy-drama. Fields occupies the co-starring role (opposite Carol Dempster) as a carnival cardsharp.

2. John Ford & Shirley Temple, Wee Willie Winkie (1937)
Ford had already won his first Oscar when he was assigned to direct the world's most popular movie star in this adaptation of a Kipling story. Ford was a man's man director, an Irish poet with a temperament and a sensibility to match. How would he clash with the sweetie-pie, curly-topped moppet? But no sparks flew; the two got along famously. They worked together again years later in Fort Apache (1948), and the grown-up Temple-Black would go on to say that Ford was her favorite director.

3. John Cassavetes & Judy Garland, A Child Is Waiting (1963)
This dud is considered a black spot on Cassavetes' resume, and devotees usually skip right over it, going from Shadows (1959) to Faces (1968). But it's true; the scrappy, do-it-yourself pioneer of the independent movement once worked with Garland at her most haggard (she completed only one more film before her death of an overdose in 1969). One can only imagine the behind-the-scenes conversations between the two artisans. Burt Lancaster was the co-star.

4. Ingmar Bergman & David Carradine, The Serpent's Egg (1977)
Most Bergman fans cite this film, one of his few English-language efforts, as his worst. And, indeed, it's quite excruciating. Carradine plays a circus acrobat stuck in a gaudy, depressing Post-World War I Berlin. (I admit; I couldn't finish watching this one.)

5. Akira Kurosawa & Richard Gere, Rhapsody in August (1991)
Maybe something about Gere's Zen philosophy impressed Kurosawa when the two got together for this late, minor work from the great Japanese director. The movie is mostly about an old woman (Sachiko Murase) and her various grandchildren, and Gere (playing her half-Japanese nephew) comes to visit midway through the film. He actually manages not to stick out too badly...

6. Paul Thomas Anderson & Adam Sandler, Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
A blessing for both Anderson and Sandler, this extraordinary film gets away from Anderson's Altman-like ensemble pieces and actually gives Sandler something to do (proving that he's really a capable actor underneath all those bad films). Endlessly weird and breathtakingly beautiful, Sandler's character Barry Egan must find a way to correctly channel his intense anger before he can win the heart of the girl (Emily Watson).

7. Amos Gitai & Natalie Portman, Free Zone (2006)
Actually not so weird, since it turns out Portman was born in Israel. This film has received mostly bad reviews, but probably from people who are more familiar with V for Vendetta than Kippur. Gitai is Israel's most celebrated filmmaker, and he puts his considerable talent to good use with Miss Portman's lovely visage. He opens the film with a single shot, lasting several minutes, of Portman's Rebecca looking out the window of a car and fading in and out of crying jags. He allows the light to play on her lips and nose, and the mascara to run down into a feline pattern on her cheeks. From there, the film stays on track as Rebecca and her Israeli driver meet and clash with a Palestinian woman in the title territory.