Who actually are the best directors?

[Serge]

Kieslowski has made so many films that I love, but for the Three Colours trilogy alone, he's up there for me. David Fincher and Christopher Nolan are probably my favourite living directors, closely followed by the Coens and Wes Anderson. All of them definitely stamp something of themselves onto each film, however undefinable it may be.

Oh, and yer Kubrick, of course.

[Rev]

I know I've bored people on here about this before, but I really can't understand the love for Christopher Nolan.  It's not that I think he's bad, because he isn't, it's just that he's been canny about his career and is in an odd position of having one foot in the mainstream and one foot out, achieving what Cronenberg has always been shooting for in a much more successful way.  Even his two best films are visually flat, frequently dull, and overlong.

I was going to start a thread like this a little while back, but coming from a more pessimistic angle.  Look at the people who've been nominated so far:  hardly young bucks, are they?  The sad truth is that people like Gilliam and Lynch might only have one film left in them, and that's if they can get funding.  Nolan aside, there seems to be a real absence of 'capital-D Directors making their mark and becoming ones to watch.

[Blumf]

I know I've bored people on here about this before, but I really can't understand the love for Christopher Nolan.

I think your second paragraph answers it. Nolan is the best of the mainstream current gen.

Would people go along with the idea that Nolan is the new Ridley Scott? Competent, sometime good, but missing something.

[phantom_power]

Hal Ashby had a great run in the seventies, and Robert Altman directed loads of great films in amongst the chaff

[Mini]

I'm not sure about Nolan. I loved Memento but Inception annoyed the fuck out of me. If we're looking for directors who make idea-packed sci-fi films, I'd choose Duncan Jones instead. Only 2 films so far but both are great, in fact Moon is genius. I genuinely can't wait to see what he does next.

[Famous Mortimer]

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.

Don't ever change, Sam.

[CaledonianGonzo]

It's cinema for people who hate cinema!

[vrailaine]

Punch Drunk Love (I liked it, ok?!)

I absolutely adored it.

Does Miyazaki count? I never know quite how animation direction works, gotta be radically different, right?

Wong Kar Wai and that Koreeda guy have made some gems.


Because of how much I loved take shelter and how good shotgun stories was despite the budget, I'm gonna list him as the newish director I'm expecting the most from.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

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

I don't really think you can ever explain the nudity in Walkabout without coming across like a perv but the sequence with her writhing in the lake like a nymph is one of the most beautiful things ever.

[yorkshirecynic]

I'll second Aranofsky. Requiem for a Dream is such a brutal film.

[confettiinmyhair]

I'm not sure about Nolan.

'Insomnia' made my mind up about Nolan. At first I was wary of the hype, but that film represents how to best use your setting, it's visually stunning.

I think I would consider David Fincher to be my favourite director, because he makes a mean motion picture, taking you on a ride and stimulating your senses through subtle and not so subtle image bombardment.

[Cohaagen]

One thing I find with Nolan is that he appears to be utterly humourless, a failing which, in a director, is frankly unforgivable. Also, while I've railed a bit against the practice of criticising people on the basis of their supporters (see Hunter S Thompson for example), the otherwise lazy term "fanboy" perfectly describes a lot of his followers. Obnoxious, petulant, pig-ignorant, and fawning to the point of sycophancy, I would happily fly over a convention full of them in a helicopter and let rip with the door gun.

[Famous Mortimer]

There were some jokes in "Memento". And I think you're confusing "humourless" with "doesn't have comedy in his films" - there may not be many belly laughs, but there's humour when it's needed. It's a criticism I've heard a lot on the forums, and it's something I've never particularly understood - the films I've seen aren't humourless.

And, as always, "fanboy" = "fan of something I dislike".

[El Unicornio, mang]

There's definitely humour in his films, right off the top of my head the "worth a try" after kissing Juno girl in Inception and "pencil trick" in Dark Knight springs to mind, and Tom Hardy's character is funny throughout. Don't really get that criticism at all.

[Jerzy Bondov]

I like the policeman whose job it is to go 'holy shit!' and 'oh this is not good!' during the exciting car chase in The Dark Knight. I find that man quite funny, and I think there's a similar character at some point in Batman Begins.

[Cohaagen]

And I think you're confusing "humourless" with "doesn't have comedy in his films"

No, I'm not.

And, as always, "fanboy" = "fan of something I dislike".

Except I never said I disliked him. I actually think he's pretty good as a director of technically accomplished genre pictures that take themselves incredibly seriously.

In this case "fanboy" = internet creeps who organise concerted (and successful) campaigns to bump Nolan's films up the IMDb Top 250 rankings by rating them 10/10 and near rivals like The Godfather/II, Shawshank, Pulp Fiction 1/10.

[Mini]

I'd agree with 'humourless', but I'd add 'takes himself too seriously.' Inception is such a mire of a film. Compare him to Fincher, who deals with incredibly dark subjects but always with a sense of humour.

[Squink]

In this case "fanboy" = internet creeps who organise concerted (and successful) campaigns to bump Nolan's films up the IMDb Top 250 rankings by rating them 10/10 and near rivals like The Godfather/II, Shawshank, Pulp Fiction 1/10.

That just seems utterly pointless. IMDB is useful for things, but surely no one takes it seriously as some kind of authority on film?

[Famous Mortimer]

Except I never said I disliked him. I actually think he's pretty good as a director of technically accomplished genre pictures that take themselves incredibly seriously.

I think you could have damned him with fainter praise, but you'd have struggled.

In this case "fanboy" = internet creeps who organise concerted (and successful) campaigns to bump Nolan's films up the IMDb Top 250 rankings by rating them 10/10 and near rivals like The Godfather/II, Shawshank, Pulp Fiction 1/10.

What is it that makes Nolan's fans so much worse than all the other people, the ones you've refused to call "fanboys" down the years?

[kitsofan34]

The Godfather.
The Conversation.
The Godfather Part II.
Apocalypse Now.

To make those four masterpieces in a lifetime would be impressive. For Francis Ford Coppola to make those films in succession is an immensely impressive feat.

[El Unicornio, mang]

That was a pretty unbeatable run of films. Shame he's not been up to much since then though, although I thought there were sparks of his magnificent style in Dracula (which suffered from miscasting more than anything, visually I think it's wonderful), Rumble Fish (seriously underrated) and Youth Without Youth.

[Cohaagen]

I think you could have damned him with fainter praise, but you'd have struggled.

Not really, and certainly not my intention. I would guess that technically accomplished genre movies account for the great majority of my own favourite pieces of cinema.

What is it that makes Nolan's fans so much worse than all the other people, the ones you've refused to call "fanboys" down the years?

The behaviour described above isn't illustration enough? I can't think of any other director - not even Peter Jackson or James Cameron - who has attracted a cadre of nerdy young men so slavishly devoted to shining his peter that they will organise campaigns to rush-attack hostile critics or spam IMDb scores. IMDb ratings are down there with football and Philippines ferry disasters on my give-a-fuck-ometer readout, but you don't need to have anything more than a passing interest in the matter to be dismayed and faintly appalled by that sort of display. A big group of them also began a campaign to get TDK nominated for Best Picture Oscar, building a website and even writing to lobby the Academy, only to find the grapes decidedly sour when it inevitably failed (typical quote: "Nolan is bigger than the Academy anyway").

There is nothing wrong with being passionate about things - I love the Alien movies and action films - and in an age of cultural archness I find instances of sincerity reassuring, but I cannot identify with or even understand a level of devotion that inspires organised internet oddness, makes people throw insults (sometimes racial and homophobic) at critics and moviegoers not in thrall to Cultus Nolan, and renders them seemingly unable to communicate their critical feelings in anything other than hyperbolic gush with messianic overtones.

Ultimately this is not a big deal for me, but you asked me to elaborate and I have. It's not something that keeps me awake at night, put it that way.

[Mini]

Yeah I once wrote a thing about The Dark Knight Rises where all I really said was that Christian Bale's Batman voice was stupid and Inception was annoying, and I got 40 comments, pretty much all telling me that I was an "absolute fucktard". I was just happy that 40 people had read something I'd written!

[Lord Mandrake]

More Wes Anderson.

[Dark Sky]

There were some jokes in "Memento". And I think you're confusing "humourless" with "doesn't have comedy in his films" - there may not be many belly laughs, but there's humour when it's needed. It's a criticism I've heard a lot on the forums, and it's something I've never particularly understood - the films I've seen aren't humourless.

And, as always, "fanboy" = "fan of something I dislike".

I find Nolan terribly po-faced and humourless.  I know there's "jokes" in his films, but the whole tone of them is of complete bleak coldness.  Which fits his characters and stories, I know, I just find it repetitive when it's in every film which all take themselves so incredibly seriously.  Also I have a problem with his writing seeming almost misogynistic...he can't write female characters, and so many of his films have female characters featuring solely as some kind of impossible, unattainable goal, mysterious and beautiful and incomprehensible...and completely without character.  They appear only to look stunning/distressed/angry, not people in their own rights.  Or else they're just blank two dimensional beings, like Ellen Page's 'character' in Inception.

I do wonder what I'd think of him if he directed scripts written by someone else.  If he were to co-write something with a woman, that could be interesting.

Plus I can't help but look at something cold and unemotional like Inception, and compare it to, say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which - with a similar concept - is warm, witty, and wears its heart on its sleeve (Kaufman having managed to get away from the coldness of Malkovich and Adaptation himself by then).  And visually Chondry's Eternal Sunshine so much richer, so much more exciting and inventive than Nolan.  Nolan's the only director I know who can make imagery such as a street folding in on itself seem boring.

[Mini]

I find Nolan terribly po-faced and humourless.  I know there's "jokes" in his films, but the whole tone of them is of complete bleak coldness.  Which fits his characters and stories, I know, I just find it repetitive when it's in every film which all take themselves so incredibly seriously.  Also I have a problem with his writing seeming almost misogynistic...he can't write female characters, and so many of his films have female characters featuring solely as some kind of impossible, unattainable goal, mysterious and beautiful and incomprehensible...and completely without character.  They appear only to look stunning/distressed/angry, not people in their own rights.  Or else they're just blank two dimensional beings, like Ellen Page's 'character' in Inception.

I do wonder what I'd think of him if he directed scripts written by someone else.  If he were to co-write something with a woman, that could be interesting.

Plus I can't help but look at something cold and unemotional like Inception, and compare it to, say, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which - with a similar concept - is warm, witty, and wears its heart on its sleeve (Kaufman having managed to get away from the coldness of Malkovich and Adaptation himself by then).  And visually Chondry's Eternal Sunshine so much richer, so much more exciting and inventive than Nolan.  Nolan's the only director I know who can make imagery such as a street folding in on itself seem boring.

I'm with you there, Inception had no female characters. Ellen Page was there to have stuff explained to her for the purposes of convoluted exposition and to look pretty, and Marion Cotillard was some intangible load of boring, and there to look pretty.

And the humour thing is interesting: Nolan films have some jokes, but no humour; Fincher films have few jokes, but a lot of humour. There's a difference there. Nolan films just feel so painstakingly self-important.

[biggytitbo]

I'd have Clint for Tightrope, Unforgiven and especially Perfect World, a scandalously underrated film.

[biggytitbo]

How could I forget Richard Lester,meh deserves it for the wondrous Hard Days Night, which virtually invented a whole language of filmmaking, but also the great Robin and Marion and the best Superman film, Superman 3.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Do films always need humour? I'm quite a fan of musicians and filmmakers who take themselves deadly seriously. Anyway, compared to his peers, Nolan's films aren't that serious, I find them pretty lighthearted for the most part. They're certainly not in Gaspar Noe or Terrence Malick territory.

the best Superman film, Superman 3.

lol

[Famous Mortimer]

El Unicornio makes a good point, and it's strange how people never criticise Bergman or Dreyer or whoever for being humourless (or indeed Noe or Malick). Maybe it's that he makes big budget "mainstream" films rather than arthouse stuff. Don't know, but he seems to be the only director who gets described that way. And I don't see it as as big a minus as some of you lot do, either.

And I thought Eternal Sunshine...wasn't that much kop. That whole family of films, him and Jonze, I just find unsatisfying and I'm very glad all films aren't "warm and witty" that way.