What does a director do other than telling the actors how to play their parts?!

What does a director do other than telling the actors how to play their parts?

Visual effects? not really, cinematography? nope.

So what could it be?

Actually the director (should they be doing their job fully) has a hand in every part of the production almost, including visual effects and cinematography.
For example, in the Lord of the Rings films, Peter Jackson told his location scout what kind of area he wanted the hobbits to live in. (Learned this stuff watching the extra features DVD) The location scout went out and found a few areas to match what Jackson had said and he approved among those. From there, artists came in and drew hobbiton over a drawing of the area he had chosen. When he liked what they had created on paper he approved it for being built.
The same would go for visual effects. The design team would first bring Jackson a rendering of what they wanted to do and they couldn't move forward to making it until he approved. The original rendering itself was inspired by Jackson telling the design team what he wanted.
All these people of course had ideas on their own and he allowed it or not according to his vision for the film.
Also, the director can often be involved in months of pre-planning, fund raising, casting, location scouting and a bunch of other stuff before the movie shoots, as well as supervising the editing, visual effects, sound and music dubbing for months afterword.
If the director is doing their job, and the film turns out well, they usually deserve a fair amount of respect I think.