My Top 20 All-Time Favourite Directors

These are my personal choices based on a combination of:

• how much I simply enjoy watching their movies, all critical considerations aside;
• the uniqueness of their voice and/or their innovative filming style; and
• their impact on other filmmakers and the industry in general.

The movies listed are the ones I love most.

Enjoy!


1. Martin Scorsese
Only ahead of Spielberg by an inch, there's just something about the depth, tone and subject matter of his films I dig most. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, After Hours, Goodfellas, Casino, Bringing Out The Dead, Gangs of New York, The Departed, Hugo, the miniseries The Blues, and TV's Boardwalk Empire. What a guy!

2. Steven Spielberg
Dream maker. Trail blazer. Spiritual surrogate father. The one who made me fall in love with movies! Duel, Jaws, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, The Color Purple, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, Munich.


3. Alfred Hitchcock
Spellbound, Notorious, Rope, Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie.


4. Ridley Scott
Alien, Blade Runner, Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, G.I. Jane, Gladiator,  Hannibal, Matchstick Men, American Gangster. Still to come: Prometheus!

5. David Fincher
Se7en, Fight Club, Alien 3, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

6. Quentin Tarantino
Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds.

7. Clint Eastwood
Play Misty For Me, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Firefox, Heartbreak Ridge, Bird, Unforgiven, Absolute Power, Space Cowboys, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Changling, Gran Torino, and Invictus. He also composed music for 18 of his films, including Honkeytonk Man, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and Gran Torino. This was all after he acted as some of my favourite characters in other people's movies, including The Man With No Name, Dirty Harry and Philo Beddoe!

8. Sidney Lumet
The ultimate class act. 12 Angry Men, Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Murder on the Orient Express, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The Verdict, Prince of the City, and Before The Devil Knows Your Dead. (P.S. Read his book, Making Movies. Classic!)

9. Joel Coen (of the Coen Brothers)
Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou, No Country For Old Men, Burn After Reading.

10. Christopher Nolan
Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Inception, and the soon-to-be-released The Dark Knight Rises.

11. Woody Allen
Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex, Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah & Her Sisters, New York Stories, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Mighty Aphrodite, Sweet & Lowdown, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Midnight in Paris. 

12. Stanley Kubrick
Spartacus, Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket.

13. Peter Weir
Gallipoli, The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, The Mosquito Coast, Dead Poets Society, Fearless, The Truman Show, Master & Commander.

14. Nora Ephron
Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Julie & Julia.

15. Paul Thomas Anderson
Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood.

16. David Cronenberg
Scanners, Videodrome, The Dead Zone, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Crash, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method.

17. Francis Ford Coppola
The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather 2, Apocalypse Now, The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Peggy Sue Got Married, and Tucker. (I wanted to put Dracula on the list, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. Thanks a lot, Keanu Ryder!)

18. Sophia Coppola
The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation.

19. Jonathan Demme
Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, The Manchurian Candidate, Rachel Getting Married.

20. Ron Howard
Splash, Cocoon, Willow, Parenthood, Ransom, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon.

*        *       *

I had to cut it off somewhere, but here are my second and third lines:

• Walt Disney (Although more creator-innovator than director, I simply couldn't forgive myself if I didn't get him in here somewhere. Pure genius, true hero, inspiration beyond words.)
• Brian De Palma (Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible, Snake Eyes, 8mm)
• James Cameron (The Terminator 1 & 2, Aliens, The Abyss, Titanic, Avatar)
• George Lucas (American Graffiti, The Star Wars saga. *Note: A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Lucas was much higher up on my list. At least up until 1999!)
• Oliver Stone (Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, JFK, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, Any Given Sunday) 
• Terry Gilliam (Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Time Bandits, Brazil, Adventures of Baron Munchausen, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus) 
• Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Heavenly Creatures, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong, The Hobbit)
• Steven Soderbergh (Sex, Lies & Videotape, Out of Sight, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven, Erin Brokovich, The Limey)
• Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, Good Will Hunting, Elephant, Paranoid Park, Milk) 
• David Lynch (TV's Twin Peaks, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Wild At Heart, Mulholland Drive) 
• Rob Reiner (This is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men, Sleepless in Seattle, The American President, Ghosts of Mississippi, Primary Colors) 
• Terrence Malick (Dirty Harry, The Thin Red Line, The Tree of Life)
• Lars von Trier (Antichrist, Melancholia)
• Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy 1 & 2, Pan's Labyrinth)
• Alfonso Cuaron (A Little Princess, Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien)
• Robert Redford (Ordinary People, The Milagro Beanfield War, A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show)
• Sidney Pollack (Jeremiah Johnson, Three Days of the Condor, Absence of Malice, Tootsie, Out of Africa, Presumed Innocent, The Firm, Sabrina, plus a string of faves as producer)  
• Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Sense & Sensibility, Brokeback Mountain)
• Luc Besson (Nikita, The Fifth Element, Leon the Professional, Transporter, Unleashed)  
• Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire, 28 Days Later, 127 Hours)
• Robert Zemeckis (I Want to Hold Your Hand, Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, Cast Away)  
• The Wachowski Brothers (The Matrix) 
• Nancy Meyers (Something's Gotta Give, It's Complicated, The Holiday)
• Carl Reiner (Oh God!, The Jerk, The Man With Two Brains, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid) 
• Frank Capra (Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, It's A Wonderful Life)