Pigeonholed Director

I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.

—Alfred Hitchcock

Essentially the director's equivalent of Typecasting, where certain directors are linked to a certain genre they work in, or are best remembered for one or more certain films.

Examples of Pigeonholed Director include:

• All but two of James Cameron's films are science fiction.
• David Fincher: Expect it to be gritty, stylish, morally murky, and concerning criminal goings-on (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is the only outright exception so far, The Social Network fits the bill aside from the grittiness)
• Steven Spielberg is remembered for tales of childlike innocents or intrepid adventurers (or both) triumphing against an unforgiving world, usually in a sci-fi setting.
• Stanley Kubrick outsmarted genre pidgeonholing by making a classic in every genre, sometimes more. All the same, he's best known for filming with a cold, controlled eye and slow, steady pacing.
• David Cronenberg, despite Playing Against Type in recent years, will always be a pioneer of Body Horror.
• How many non-Thriller films has Alfred Hitchcock done again?
  • Mr. and Mrs. Smith—A Screwball Comedy. (Not that one.)
• Quentin Tarantino doesn't have a genre sterotype, unless "throwback" is a genre. Also, expect characters in his movies to discuss other movies, also for the plot to occasionally stop for a while so people can trade witty banter.
• David Lynch: Mind Screw. Lots and lots of Mind Screw. (The Straight Story excepted)
• Martin Scorsese has become synonymous with (organized) crime dramas, even though he's tried just about every genre you can imagine: musical, romantic comedy, documentary, Biblical epic, costume drama, even a biopic about the Dalai Lama.
• Akira Kurosawa is mostly known for his samurai films in America but also made a number of films about contemporary post-war Japan.
• Michael Bay: Big, dumb, loud, action-heavy, vaguely misogynistic, even more vaguely racist, with thin characters, shakey plots and terrible dialogue, and things go BOOM a lot.
• The Wachowskis: Cyberpunk (or at least dystopia), in a flashy and stylized manner, with a strong anti-authoritarian streak, and a lot of philosophizing. When they tried to do something Lighter and Softer with Speed Racer, audience and critical reception was ugly.
• Terrence Malick: Slooooooow and pretty and introspective.
• Christopher Nolan: Neo-noir, non-linear, psychological thrillers with obsessed protagonists.