To my mind, Contact, Cast Away and WLB, along with Roger Rabbit, give us the best look at Zemeckis in full flight. These films deliver solid stories mixed with terrific visual effects and "cleverness", and I doubt he'll equal them. Flight, meh, and The Walk, not bad, but Allied kinda got lost somewhere. I love a director who can push himself, but if feels maybe like Zemeckis is relaxing into just making films that don't push him anymore?

Interesting Hitchcock comparison – What Lies Beneath certainly showed he could spar with the best thriller/mystery storytellers. He'll always be one of my favourite directors thanks to his body of work from I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Used Cars and Back To The Future through to Contact and the aforementioned What Lies Beneath. Flight was quite good too but generally speaking the mo-cap stuff has preoccupied his creativity (too obsessed with this new form like a kid playing with new toy). I wonder if James Cameron has gone the same way (although Avatar was definitely a winner). Problem with Cameron is that it takes him so long to produce new stuff!

I'm not sure what it is, but ever since he went all mo-cap computer movie stuff, his style has just lost its zing. I often think great filmmakers need to be challenged as artists to flourish, and Zemeckis (of all modern greats) appears to be be stuck in a rut just a bit, which is a shame. He still has great films in him I'm sure; The Walk and Allied aren't among them. I always felt Zemeckis was our modern Hitchcock equivalent, only without the stage presence.