Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) once said there are two types of directors: those that bring the same style to every film and those that work with whatever style is appropriate for the material. Michael Maxxis definitely falls into the latter category. His music videos vary wildly from each other, but each one is a near-perfect mix of sight and sound.

One way they differ is in terms of tone. For instance, Black Hole Betty and Addicted are about as grungy and dark as you can get, while Worst Things Beautiful and Complicated are lighter and more fantastical, perhaps romantically melancholic but still essentially upbeat.

Addicted is probably the most well-directed, with smeared lighting effects and hellish, surreal imagery. As P.O.D. rocks out, we see disquieting snippets of a mouth sucking an egg, a half-naked man luxuriating in a pile of fish and a little girl getting her hair cut with a butcher knife. This video is balls-to-the-wall.

Hard Times is kind of like a Rob Zombie video. The floozies and roughnecks are not unlike the ones that populate The Devil's Rejects. Live Again is a mini-epic, and possibly unique in that it uses two different songs by Ours to tell one long story arch. It's about a deformed baby in the 1800s that grows up to be a Frankenstein-like scientist. Check out my takes on Complicated and Worst Things Beautiful here and here.

The one non-music video on the channel is a trailer for a 17-minute film Maxxis directed called Steak and Milk. It's about the love lives of five different characters, and looks to have the Maxxis visual touch. This is a filmmaker to watch.