Great list moviegique
Wyler, yeah so many goodies, I also liked Dodsworth and Little Foxes - and one that is not often talked about, but I adore The Good Fairy, a romantic comedy with some cute performances from Margaret Sullavan, Herbert Marshall, and others.
Murnau, along with those mentioned, City Girl is a favorite of mine.
Okay, after being reminded of some directors I left out, here’s my corrected list of favorites:
Sidney Lumet, Vincente Minnelli, David Lynch, P.T. Anderson, Mel Brooks.
Honorable mention: Fritz Lang, Robert Altman, Ernst Lubitsch, Werner Herzog, Mike Nichols.
I might vacillate over some in the top five, wanting to swap them at various times with others, but here’s my list at the moment.
Honorable Mentions
Maya Deren
Werner Herzog
Fritz Lang
Rose Troche
The Coen Brothers
Bong Joon-ho
So is Kon for Ichikawa or Satoshi?
This is for Satoshi Kon.
Figured it was Satoshi, but didn’t want to assume. Wish they could have finished his last planned film.
First mention for the Coen’s?
You have good taste their Sandy (so you don’t just gad about the house all day, but watch some wonderful movies)
Nice to see Deren get a mention, never heard of Rose Troche. I named Shepitko in my Hon mentions, but another women director who deserves a shout-out is Agnès Varda.
And I’ve liked some late Cronenberg - Map of the Stars, Cosmopolis, Eastern Promises… though admittedly I’m in the minority with the first 2 (I graded Cosmopolis 4.5 out of 5, the avg LB rating is 2.9)
No particular order:
Alfred Hitchcock
William Wyler
Howard Hawks
Roger Corman
John Carpenter
Also mentioned:
Stanley Kubrick
Sidney Lumet
Sergio Leone
Quentin Tarentino
John Ford
And:
Terence Fisher
Orson Welles
Howard Hawks
Christopher Nolan
Mario Brava
Thanks for joining in Raymond, nice list and nice call on Terence Fisher
Agreed! And while she’s probably better known for acting and for directing television stories, I have always loved the work of Ida Lupino.
A good call indeed.
Throwing my two cents in, I’ll go with the following:
Most of my favorites have already been mentioned, but I would like to give a special nod to Billy Wilder. He seems often overlooked among American film directors, but his list of major films is amazing:
Double Indemnity
The Lost Weekend
Sunset Boulevard (either the funniest horror movie or the scariest comedy ever made)
Sabrina
Stalag 17
The Seven Year Itch
Some Like it Hot
The Apartment
And he had some less successful, but still very enjoyable films like Ace In The Hole and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
He was also a very talented writer as well.
And another director/writer whose work, I suppose, has been reevaluated in recent years – Woody Allen. The work, separate from the controversy around the man himself, definitely merits appreciation, in my book. Just among his better films are unique items such as
Love And Death
Annie Hall
Manhattan
Zelig
Broadway Danny Rose
The Purple Rose of Cairo
Hannah and Her Sisters
Radio Days (I love that movie!!!)
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Sweet and Lowdown
Midnight In Paris
He’s had his share of stinkeroos too, but the above list is a pretty solid legacy of work.
John Huston – perhaps not really a standout stylist as a film director, but he was a master storyteller. And what stories he shared with us –
The Maltese Falcon
The Treasure of The Sierra Madre
Asphalt Jungle
The African Queen
The Man Who Would Be King
Prizzi’s Honor
The Dead
and while I personally cannot stand Annie, as long as there are kids – and especially as long as there are theater kids – that movie will endure (which is more than can be said of Cats)
Jacques Demy, if for nothing more than this opening sequence:
Rarely has a movie pulled me into its world so quickly, smoothly and seductively.
Yeah, Huston and Wilder were another couple who made trimming the list to five torcha!
Well, you’re welcome, that’s very nice of you (and GustavLongtorso earlier) to say. Being a movie nut, I’m glad of its success, and everyone here has made it so.
You bring a lot of winning talents to the table. Allen is one of the finest screenwriters/filmmakers out there, I’d add Blue Jasmine to the list if only for getting to see Blanchett’s incredible performance as a Blanche Dubois type (I so wanted to fly to NY when she was doing Streetcar on stage, and just couldn’t make it happen. So that was the next best thing)
Wilder? Sunset BLVD and The Apartment are two of my all-time favorites. There’s also this little semi-doc, experimental gem in his filmography titled People on Sunday, that I discovered on Criterion.
An intriguing aspect of the film is the young filmmakers who created it - a group that would soon bring their talents to Hollywood. You have Brothers Curt and Robert Siodmak and co-director Edgar G. Ulmer (MSTies have seen his Amazing Transparent Man), collaborating with future Oscar winners Billy Wilder (script) and Fred Zinnemann.
Bearing in mind that my favorite directors is in no way a list of the greatest directors…and in no particular order…
And many honorable mentions: Spike Jonze, Milos Forman, Frank Capra, Robert Zemeckis, John Landis, Paul Thomas Anderson, Blake Edwards, Richard Attenborough, Stanley Kubrick, Christopher Nolan, Norman Jewison, Brad Bird, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Chaplin, Elia Kazan, Rob Reiner, Hayao Miyazaki, John Ford, Billy Wilder, Christopher Guest and yes, Woody Allen.
Oh, wow. In no particular order:
Buñuel is amazing. I had the great good fortune to see screenings of Un chien andalou and L’age d’or at a special surrealism exhibition at the Toledo Museum many decades ago (we shan’t discuss standing in front of an original Dalí and openly weeping, but it was an unbelievable experience) and while I don’t think either film was meant to be understood, both were incredible to experience.
Curt might be known to Bridget & Mary Jo fans as the director of Bride of the Gorilla. And to classic Sci-Fi fans as the novelist of Donovan’s Brain.
Directors in no particular order plus my five favourite films of theirs.
Steven Spielberg
Alfred Hitchcock
John Carpenter
Edgar Wright
Chia-Liang Liu aka Lau Kar-leung
I love my Hong Kong action films so I’m going to represent here with the last spot. There was a variety of contenders including John Woo, Sammo Hung, Woo-ping Yuen, Hark Tsui, Stephen Chow and while I almost went for King Hu, I think I have to give the nod to Chia-Liang Liu. He directed some of the most iconic kung fu flicks of all time with a fine eye for combining classical Chinese martial arts with cinematic flair, oftentimes with his brother Chia-Hui Liu (Gordon Liu) in the starring role. He was also the choreographer for other great films not directed by him including One-Armed Swordsman and Master of the Flying Guillotine aka One-Armed Boxer II.
Five favourite films:
Honourable mentions: Bong Joon-Ho, Damien Chazelle, Danny Boyle, David Fincher, James Cameron, Coen Brothers, James Whale, Kar-Wai Wong, Kurosawa Akira, Ridley Scott, Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano plus loads of others I’ve undoubtedly forgotten lol.
Hahaha, time to dumb it down a notch:
Sam Raimi (yup)
Martin Scorsese
Robert Rodriguez
George Miller (for so many reasons)
John Carpenter
I went for directors who “name alone” would force me to at least view the film.
Hell, I gave serious consideration to Raimi, too. He’s probably the only guy still working I will go see just for him, at least up until that Oz abomination.
John Carpenter gets a lot of love here, and I think it’s warranted.
I’m downright ashamed I didn’t think of Miller.