Who actually are the best directors?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I'm coming at it from the opposite way Auteur fanboys do, and simply trying to recall directors that have done many films that are up there in my favourites:

David Cronenberg

Shivers, Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly amongst a bunch of sci-fi favourites of mind. Latter day plenty of decent enjoyable films but a proper return to form with A Dangerous Method.

Any common themes? Effects of technology/phenomena both socially and personally- but especially personally. Internal paranoia, inferiority. Definitely anti-establishment and counter-cultural. Often has one off scenes of graphic violence and even taking away the fairly weird Crash, a preoccupation with conflicted/unusual sex.



Nicholas Roeg

Don't Look Now - My favourite film. Delicate, lovestruck and so frightened, tense and sombre
Walkabout - Amazingly shot voyage of discovery, blisteringly tantalisingly wild, primal and utterly different to almost anything
Performance - Stylish, intense and needs to be seen as early as possible in your life to appreciate the freshness it must had had at the time
The Witches - The best Dahl adaptation, and one of the best kids films ever made

Any common themes? Atypical editing, lots of big 70s pans and zooms. In terms of tone, all about immersion within a particular environment.


-------

I'd like to see more Werner Herzog movies too (as well as new wave German cinema in general) and am going to set aside some time to watch a few of the more obvious ones.

...I suppose more boringly, Scorcese and Spielberg would have to be there.

[Mini]

Cronenberg is my favourite, I'll also mention David Fincher. Fight Club is my favourite film, and like Se7en, he'll make something strangely beautiful from dark subject matters. Stunning use of dark colours like green and blue, and those stylish low-angled shots. A genuinely exciting mainstream filmmaker.

[Famous Mortimer]

I know it caused a right old row in another thread, but Fincher for me too.

In slightly less prolific terms, but the only two other directors who I'd go out of my way to see a new thing by, would be Christopher Smith and Philip Ridley.

[El Unicornio, mang]

I'd pick Fincher as a fave too, Alien 3 and Benjamin Button are the only ones that slightly disappointed.

I'd also pick John Hughes, who made some cracking comedies in the 80s (Planes, Trains and Automobiles being his highpoint I think)

Also, Michael Mann. Gone off the boil a bit lately but I'm a sucker for his stylish visuals.

Scorsese will always be my favourite though.

[Dead kate moss]

I just caught Walkabout the other night after wanting to see it for decades. Seen all the Roeg films now. He's awesome.

I'll add Kevin Costner Sergio Leone. A master of cinema, who can use all its power, majesty and unique story-telling framework, and makes movies about cowboys shooting each other which the best subject matter.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Ah yes, can't forget John Hughes. Comedy and teen films shouldn't be discounted here. I guess he was a better writer than director though.


Fincher is a bit inconsistent and I find most of his better stuff hard to love. It seems completely different for other people though.

[Mini]

Wes Craven. Horror with something to say, packed with subtext and politics. Sometimes vicious, sometimes funny, sometimes both. The nightmarish surrealism of Nightmare on Elm Street is genuinely artistic. I'm a complete sucker for the postmodernism of New Nightmare and Scream.

[Smeraldina Rima]

What did you like so much about A Dangerous Method, Shoulders? I liked it too but most people thought it was only alright. I thought A History of Violence was better and Spider is my favourite.

Patrice Leconte has made lots of great films. I haven't seen them all but I was only disappointed by My Best Friend because it had a stupid live Who Wants to be a Millionaire bit.

Les Bronzés, Monsieur Hire, The Hairdresser's Husband, Tango, The Girl on The Bridge, Intimate Strangers and The Man on the Train are all brilliant.

He went from being a slapstick comedy director to making eccentric art house films but both kind are mostly about a desire for intimacy.

[Blumf]

James Cameron, so long as he doesn't get too mawkish, has a pretty good hit rate as a director.

Is Lynch too arty for this thread?

Also, another vote for Cronenberg

[Small Man Big Horse]

...I suppose more boringly...Spielberg would have to be there.

Nah. He's a great action director (at least up til recently, I've issues with both War of the Worlds and Indy 4) but his 'serious' work is extremely average and workmanlike most of the time. I really think he is the most over-rated director of our times, and hate the way so many magazines like Empire worship him like a god.

[madhair60]

john landis because of blues brothers, the thriller video, trading places and the catholic high school girls in trouble part of kentucky fried movie

fucking /thread lads

[El Unicornio, mang]

I understand the criticisms against him, but I think he had a very good run for about 20 years. I'd have to disagree on his serious films too, Munich I thought was a fantastic film.

1971   Duel         
1975   Jaws         
1977   Close Encounters of the Third Kind   
1981   Raiders of the Lost Ark      
1982   Poltergeist (unofficial director)
1982   E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial         
1984   Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom               
1985   The Color Purple            
1987   Empire of the Sun      
1989   Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade         
1993   Jurassic Park      
1993   Schindler's List

[CaledonianGonzo]

D'you mean still working?  Cos if not, then David Lean and Hitchcock.  Maybe Kubrick.  Maybe Miyazaki?

I also like peak period Spielberg a lot.

[Stone Cold Jane Austen]

I don't have a single 'favourite' film, but I do, rather nerdishly, keep a list of films which I deem to be 'perfect'. There's a handful of directors with more than one entry, which acts as a kind of Best Director list:

4 Films:
Alfred Hitchcock: Psycho, North By Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window.

3 Films:
Sidney Lumet: 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, The Hill.
Martin Scorsese: Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The King Of Comedy.

2 Films:
Stanley Kubrick: 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange.
Robert Altman: MASH, Short Cuts.
Quentin Tarantino: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction.
Oliver Stone: Natural Born Killers, JFK.
The Coen Brothers: The Big Lebowski, Fargo.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Incidentally, Roger Ebert recently did a blog about best films/directors, and included a best director list from Sight & Sound that was compiled based on the favourite films of other directors:

1. Orson Welles
2. Federico Fellini
3. Akira Kurosawa
4. Francis Ford Coppola
5. Alfred Hitchcock
6. Stanley Kubrick
7. Billy Wilder
8. Ingmar Bergman
9. Martin Scorsese
9. David Lean
9. Jean Renoir

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012/04/post_5.html

[CaledonianGonzo]

I was actually just popping back in to make quick mention of Billy Wilder as well.

Edit: Seeing Fellini on that list, does anyone want to make a case for him?  I can't be the only one that finds La Dolce Vita an overlong meander.  Should probably geta round to watching 8^1/2 again at some point, though.

[Jerzy Bondov]

I just wrote a post to mention Billy Wilder and the red box alerted me to the fact that I'd been beaten to it. Well, he's still the best.

[madhair60]

re: landis

also killed a kid and got away with it, has to be worth something

[Brand New Guy]

And 'An American Werewolf In London', though I feel you must have deliberately omitted it, such is its stature in my head. In fact, it came through the door from Lovefilm this very morning!

[madhair60]

Oh yeah I forgot that.  How could I forget that?  Agutter!  "Agutter" good look at her tits in that film.

[Steve Lampkins]

What exactly is the crossover point between good directing (other than directing actors?), good cinematography (framing shots?), and editing. Maybe also score/set design. It sometimes seems the director gets all the glory.

I didn't make my point properly there, but whatever.

[Mini]

It is easy to unfairly obscure the work of editors and cinematographers and so on. But a lot of directors, like Fincher, play a significant role in every aspect of production. Cronenberg films tend to look like Cronenberg films, because it's all very much his vision. Not forgetting the hand Howard Shore plays.

[biggytitbo]

8 Hitchcock - Frenzy, The Birds, Psycho, Rear Window, North By Northwest, Rope, The Lady Vanishes, 39 Steps
8 Spielberg - Murder By the Book, Duel, Jaws, Raiders, Temple of Doom, Schindlers List, Minority Report, War of the Worlds
6 Woody Allen - Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, Love and Death, Annie Hall, Manhatten, Zelig
5 Scorsese - Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Casino
5 Kubrick - Spartacus, Lolita, 2001, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut.
5 Roy Wars Baker - A Night to Remember, Quartmass and the Pit, Asylum, Vault of Horror, Monster Club.
5 Terry Gilliam - Holy Grail, Time bandits, Brazil, Baron Muchaeson, 12 Monkeys.
4 Dario Argento - Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, Phenomena
4 James Cameron - Terminator, Aliens, Terminator 2, Titanic
4 Billy Wilder - Ace in the Hole, Some like it Hot, The Apartment, Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
3 Oliver Stone - Salvador, JFK, Nixon

I can't think of anymore, so GO AWAY.

[baptist]

Coen Brothers

Fargo, Big Lebowski and No country for old men.

Fantastic!

[EB Farnum]

Paul Thomas Anderson - Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood
Joel & Ethan Cohen - Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country For Old Men, True Grit
Mike Leigh - Naked, Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake, Another Year
Akira Kurosawa - Rashomon, Seven Samurai,  Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Kagemusha, Ran
Christopher Nolan - Following, Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception
Clint Eastwood - Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, Changeling, Gran Torino.
Darren Aronofsky - Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler, Black Swan
Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, Shutter Island

*edit* I totally missed the point of this thread. I ended up listing directors who I believe have made good films instead of listing directors who have made films that rank amongst my all-time favourites. And from the 45 films I blurted out, only 5 are rock solid contenders (There Will Be Blood, Fargo, No Country For Old Men, Secrets & Lies and Pi).

[BlodwynPig]

Lynch - all his films
Herzog - all his films that I have seen
Kim Ki-Duk

[kitsofan34]

Paul Thomas Anderson has made four films that I very much enjoy, including There Will Be Blood (one of my very favourites), Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love (I liked it, ok?!) and Magnolia. I'm rather confident his next film, "The Master", will also be excellent.

[non capisco]

Quentin Tarantino: Pulp Fiction.

I rewatched Pulp Fiction recently for the first time since the mid 90s and it doesn't really put a foot wrong UNTIL Tarantino puts his own mug on screen and delivers one of the worst, most horribly self-conscious performances I've seen in any film you care to name. I forgot just how excruciating it is watching him stumbling over his own dialogue and repeatedly saying 'dead n**ger storage'. The film really never recovered for me after that. Thank fuck it's towards the end of the film and thank fuck he decided not to play Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs after all.

[Sam]

There is a big difference between saying you think a director is good because you like their work and appreciating the actual craft of the director, especially with regard to film grammar. To continue with the language analogy, the average cinema-goer is woefully illiterate.

I think jimmy Cameron movies are fairly shit and it causes me grief to ponder why someone would spend years and millions on technical aspects and then scrawl piss poor dialogue on some toilet paper 3 minutes before shooting. Whilst I wanted to see the Avatar that had years spent on a script and minutes on effects, and while I must condemn the writing as atrocious he is clearly a master director.

I think the Coens should be mentioned. 'a serious man' is ridiculously well crafted. I stroked my chin throughout and wasn't entertained as in, say, True Grit or Hudsucker but the virtuosity in direction was abudantly apparent.

Finally, the other key players in the film must not be underestimated. Auteur theory has some thruths, taken loosely, and clear themes can be traced in most directors of note, but it's a collaborative medium.

Cinematograhy is criminally underappreciated. I wonder how many empire readers who spaff out their directors lists can name 25 cinematographers as easily as they can directors.

Turning to my obligatory Malick mention, one of the reasons he is a genius is that even the legendary cinematographers bow to him. Cf. Almendros describing how hands on, inspirational and technically savvy malick was on Days of Heaven; lubezki phoning John Toll in a panic because Malick was taking him places he'd never been.

[Retinend]

regarding the idea of "Autership", I have personally watched Mike Leigh and Spike Lee's films like this and have found it worthwhile.