You thought Starship Troopers was brilliant?! HEATHEN!
Uwe Boll, hands down, is the worst director alive. Not sure if he qualifies as Hollywood, though. He’s one of the few people that I can think of that get rejected from that taudrey house of sin. Have any of you seen House of the Dead? I never particularly liked the game, but I felt that I had been violated by bad taste.
Let’s not forget Out Of Sight, which is not only the best Elmore Leonard adaptation {against some fairly stiff recent competition}, but made me regard George Clooney as more than just Tom Selleck for the 90’s and made Jennifer Lopez look good. And The Limey was fucking great.
Postscript: Roger Ebert gave a “thumbs up” to the re-edited version of Brown Bunny, surprising even himself.
coughMichael Baycough
While I agree that’s an impressive list of mostly shite films, I actually liked The Rock. A lot. So Bay’s off the hook as well, for me. 
Why the “cough”?
Robert Aldrich would take good ideas and great actors, and then, in movies like *Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and Emperor of the North,*fuck them up with his undiguised contempt for the audience (starting by having them scored by Frank “Theme from the Brady Bunch” De Vol).
The sad thing is that Ebert later saw the recut Brown Bunny and said, “This ain’t so bad!”
Gack. BTW, I saw the blowjob scene online, and it is indeed heavy-duty. That slut really appears to be drinking him down to the last drop, almost gagging on the effluent.
Get a room. Gack.
I gotta toss Renny Harlin into the mix.
I came in specifically to mention him and to link to that story. I couldn’t believe that they handed him Bloodrayne after the mess he made of Alone in the Dark. What a hack.
Verhoeven, Bay, and Schumacher, definitely.
But you never know. Joe Johnston did some really bad hackwork, then came out with October Sky.
I actually love The Long Kiss Goodnight, but that’s because I’m a Shane Black fanboy (he wrote it) and I think Geena Davis is smokin’ hot in it.
I’ve never really enjoyed anything Michael Bay has done. His films seem like something anyone can do.
Everyone else mentioned here, in particular Verhoeven and Shumacher, are at least epic in their failures, rarely boring, and sometimes great.
I prefer the bile that some of their films produce in me to the feeling of blah that Bay gives me.
I have to admit, though, I thought that The Island delivered as an action movie (if not as science fiction).
Bay. For Pearl Harbor. The Song in TA:WP had it exactly right. How could anyone make a boring movie about Pearl Harbor? And yet Bay did. Kind of impressive, almost.
Michael Bay redeemed himself with The Island in my eyes. I liked it a lot.
I can see why you feel that way about Hitchcock, Hilarity, but I disagree wholeheartedly. I don’t find his movies to be that engaging anymore, but he was one of the finest directors to ever head a film. He created a genre.
Why is it sad? I was impressed with Ebert’s willingness to reevaluate the edited version of a film he’d so thoroughly excoriated the first time. (Review link)
As for Gallo being the worst director: Well, I haven’t seen Brown Bunny and probably won’t, but I enjoyed Buffalo 66. It wasn’t good enough to qualify him as a “great” director by any means, but it was definitely strong enough to get him out of the running for Worst.
I’ll second Bay and Verhoeven. And what the heck…I’ll throw in George Lucas, too. He can misdirect just about anyone. Portman has certainly done far better work in other films, and Christensen was quite good in Shattered Glass.
God, Schumacher’s kind of tough for me. Yes, he’s directed a bunch of crap, already nicely encapsulated by others above (throw <i>Dying Young</i> and <i>Phone Booth</i> into there, as well. But he also did <i>The Lost Boys</i> and <i>Tigerland</i>, and I feel I need to cut him a little slack for that.
I was watching that INXS greatest hits video collection and up comes the video for “Devil Inside,” directed by Schumacher. And although I’ve seen it a million times, I was freshly befuddled by what exactly is happening. There’s the threat of a rumble on a boardwalk between leather-clad bikers and tanned blond surfers/skateboarders? And some woman in a leather dress cut all the way up to her hooha? And all the while INXS is playing on a merry-go-round? I still don’t understand.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think we need to hate on Michael Bay. Sure his movies have been mostly junk, but that’s what he’s all about. He unashamedly treats movies as disposable, shallow, popcorn-popping fare. His movies make money, are a spectacle and acomplish exaclty what he intends. Citizen Kane they are not, but e doesn’t try to pretend they are and has never been that director who gets all pissy like a typical artist.
And hell, I enjoyed The Rock, Armageddon, and most of Pearl Harbor. I got exactly what I expected, which in and of itself is more than most directors can accomplish.