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i think John Lasseter and Brad Bird warrants to be in this list. Sure, it just animation, but they still directing 'it'.

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Actually, yeah, that's a great point. Brad Bird definitely deserves to be up there.

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Hayao Miyazaki

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WHAT???Dude what are you talkin about???

There is such a cheesy greatness with his work.
He makes classics...

There was a cheesy greatness with his work... until he started getting serious business about Star Wars.

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I almost forgot about Michel Gondry. The man is a wizard. He can coax great performances out of his cast and conjure mind-blowing SFX without any computer help at all. And Gondry can write really well, too.

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I agree with you there.

I love one of his quotes, "I'm a good dreamer, but i have trouble sleeping."

Just to add another on my list, he would be Hideo Kojima. He's the one in charge of the Metal Gear game franchise, creator and director. What Watchmen is to comic books, Metal Gear is the equivalent of Watchmen to the games industry.

Directors does not only applies to movies, right?

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Say what you will about Stanley Kubrick, but most of his movies are on the AFI's top 100 list. He had to have done something right. . .

Spartacus

A Clockwork Orange

Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb

Full Metal Jacket

2001: A Space Odyssey

Personally, I really enjoyed these movies. . .some more than others of course. . .

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Part of Stanley Kubrick's legacy is that he was one of the first popular directors to really think - and work - outside 'the box.' I personally think modern moviemaking has surpassed his, but from a historical aspect, his movies were landmarks, and that's usually good enough for movie critics to rank them highly.

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Wow. Interesting thread. I've held back on posting because I have mixed emotions on directors in general. Some are brilliant. Some, usually writer/directors, achieve genius. Most are shephards... a talent in and of itself, but not necessarily an overly creative one.

Stanley Kubrick-I'm not exactly a fan. Hated Clockwork and thought 2001 was ham-handed tripe. But what do I know?

Quentin Tarantino-Overrated. Uses European film devices as if he created them. Nothing new here.

Eli Roth-Goth/Emo horror is still just horror. Boring. Hostel sucked. No substance at all. No fun. Yuck.

Richard Kelly-Donnie Darko was a retread. Nothing new. Acted like he thought of the time warp. Added nothing to it.

Robert Zemeckis-CONTACT! Great movie.

Steven Spielberg-Indiana Jones is the least of his great works. Schindler's List was perfect. Minority Report was wonderful. AI, while flawed, is a classic exploration of classics. Beautiful.

M. Night Shyamalan

SIXTH SENSE was wonderful. Olivia Williams performance at the restaurant was one of the single greatest performances in the history of film. A hard scene to write. An almost impossible scene to pull off for the actors. Willis and Williams were genius. I believed every second... every time I watched it. Brilliant. Was she pissed... or grieving? It works both ways. Freaking brilliant work. Olivia Williams is a wonderful actress deserving of far more acclaim than she's gotten. Great in Peter Pan. Phenomenal in The Man From Elysian Fields... GREAT movie.

UNBREAKABLE... I wanted to love this movie. But it's a cheat. Once you break it down, it amounts to this: Act I takes up 90% of the movie. Act II is 3 minutes long. Act III is told in text in the final moments. This movie is a failure to understand/embrace the most basic elements of storytelling. Interesting premise. Crappy execution.


SIGNS was utterly stupid. Imagine that you are allergic to water. You want to invade another planet. You pick one that is 3/4 covered with the water which can kill you and where every inch of it sees rain. In spite of the fact that the inhabitants haven't gone 30 minutes without a war, you decide to attack WITH NO WEAPONS other than some lame gas that emits from your wrists or something. AND... to really prove your idiocy... you go NAKED.

These aliens are idiots.

But Mel Gibson's scene with his dying wife made me cry and was, itself, worth the price of admission.

THE VILLAGE was awesome. Great story. I want to do things with Bryce Dallas Howard that are inappropriate for discussion in this forum. Her cheated turn as Gwen Stacy really ruined Spidey 3. More Gwen might have save it.

So, anyway, I'm mixed on M. Night. I'm putting off Lady in the Water. I want to like it.

I'd disagree about Unbreakable. It's an origin story in its purest form - it's all about self-discovery, not his acts as a hero.

The rest I'd actually agree with, though.

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I absolutely loved Lady In The Water. I watched it a second time last night. Wonderful film with a heart.

I don't get to do this often on this forum, so I'd better jump at the opportunity. Vyn, I agree with you 100%. After seeing Signs I wanted to punch myself in the face repeatedly until I forgot who my mother was. Really poor story telling. M. Knight brought new meaning to the term "suspension of disbelief"

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The suspense in Signs was pretty excellent, though.

Rorsach: I can't sympathize with Lady in the Water. Relied far too heavily on special effects and cheap entertainment.

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I thought I should chime in here

Martin Scorsese-His films always leave me feeling with a different way of looking at the world. They stay with me. I always feel such passion coming from each shot. He's one of the few directors who can squeeze something decent out of a crap or average script (i.e. The Color of Money). Fantastic direction of actors too and one of the few truly visual directors out there. A real master.

Paul Thomas Anderson-This man just keeps outdoes himself with every film he makes. I haven't seen Hard Eight but Boogie Nights was fantastic, Magnolia was even better, perhaps a tad overblown and melodramatic but very, very powerful, Punch-Drunk Love, for what it aspired to be, it's a wonderful work of art, each frame is beautiful and it captures the feeling of being love so well, albeit in such a surreal way. Now, There Will Be Blood, that's a masterpiece. So many great things about it. Perhaps his only problem is that he allows his influences to linger so much on his work but that's a sign of someone who is truly in love with film. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Steven Spielberg-He has been kind of incosistent with his new work. I loved Indy 4, Munich, Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can. But I thought War of the Worlds, The Terminal, A.I. were very problematic. He seems to be struggling between disturbing the audience or leaving them with a happy ending and I think that that struggle ended up making Minority Report, War of the Worlds and A.I. lesser films than what they could have been. But for me, the man is a true visionary. His films have an amazing attention to detail and nuances. He knows how to thrill an audience and how to tell a story. A friend of mine criticized him for making "easy films" but I don't think they are. They are just accessible because he truly knows how to reach an audience without pandering to them with sex or violence in the way so many other studio pictures do. He has contributed some true classics to film.

Stanley Kubrick-I find his films to be a little difficult to watch. The only one that I can say I can have full enjoyment of is Dr. Strangelove and maybe The Shining but then again, I don't think that his movies are meant to be easy. I am always amazed at the economy of his storytelling (which is kind of frustrating that his films border on being overlong) but at the attention to detail in his filmmaking.

Alfonso Cuaron-Probably the only man, who has decorated a sex comedy (Solo con tu Pareja) with so many visual and artistic flourishes. His worst film, Great Expectations, is a masterpiece on a purely visual level. Had the screenplay lived up to the level of its director, it would have been a modern adaptation to honor Dickens. The fluidity of his camerawork allows the viewer to be involved within the world of the film. He is perfect at capturing the little moments in life, specially those of childhood. With Children of Men, he has created a great film but I feel like he has yet to make his true masterpiece and I think that with each film,he is getting closer.

Francois Truffaut-I always find his films to be so much fun to watch. This is a man who didn't go to Film School but instead fell in love with a medium and learned the craft by watching and criticizing and then went ahead and played with it. There is a certain simplicity and humor to his work. I don't think anyone has ever acted badly in any of his work, every role is so perfectly cast and thanks to his voyeuristic style, we feel like we are watching just some slices of life in the lives of his characters.

And that's all for now. Will post more later.

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david lynch, scorsese and kurosawa are all up there for me...

...but the majority of my favourite films, including a lot of the british new wave, were and are not big names.

richard lester
dziga vertov
tony richardson
john schlesinger
and of course wim wenders.

...and yes, i do love tarrantino movies.

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I'm surpised there is one name I have not seen mentioned yet. Mel Brooks.

Blazing Saddles, Young Frankienstien. Pure comic genus

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