Best Ever Directors [Poll][Deadline July 23rd]

[Mercury]

Blindness overcame me in my hasty attempts at outrage. I am sorry, bad seed.

And while my top 4 is firmly in place with my Mount Rushmore of film makers (Kurosawa, Linklater, S. Ray, Wilder) i think he may fall right outside that esteemed bubble. I have a feeling I may have him higher than almost all of my fellow BEA movie lovers. Maybe he's a bit saccharine and sentimental, but few directors have ever so consistently knocked me out with so much emotion. I think Spielberg mastered how to make his films capture wonder and awe like no one else. I can watch close encounters and ET over and over and I'm always blown away by how damn exciting and downright wonderous they are. Plus his dramatic classics are amazing, specifically Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan and Munich. I adore him. And yes I'm super excited about The BFG.
_________________
-Ryan

ONLY 4% of people can understand this chart! Come try!

My Fave Metal - you won't believe #5!!!

[badseed]

Yeah, I'm considering raising him a bit. I've always been a Scorsese>Spielberg guy as far as the big name guys of their generation go but I think I may possibly switch teams. I don't know, they're pretty close, but I think Spielberg has the edge. Comparing my top 10s (minus The Last Waltz because I'm not comparing a concert film with a Spielberg epic):

1. Raging Bull = Schindler's List
2. Jaws > Goodfellas
3. Taxi Driver > Lincoln
4. Jurassic Park > The Wolf of Wall Street
5. Munich > After Hours
6. Raiders of the Lost Ark > The Departed
7. Close Encounters of the Third Kind > Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
8. Shutter Island > Saving Private Ryan
9. ET > Mean Streets
10. The Last Temptation of Christ > The Color Purple

So yeah, Spielberg owns IMO. I can probably bump him up a bit. Not likely top 30 though. But that's me. I like dark, fucked up movies with picturesque black and white cinematography and/or nauseating graphic nudity. Haha.

[Applerill]

My favorite Spielberg projects are Boom Blox and the Lego Moviemaker Starter Kit.

[nutso42]

Martin Scorsese appeared at number 100 on my first draft, but he quickly fell off, and that ranking was due solely to his work on The King of Comedy. I find Scorsese to be possibly the single most overrated director in history (The Aviator was among the worst films I've ever seen, and I couldn't even finish Wolf of Wall Street). Hugo and the Departed were both tolerable, but beyond that it's just TKOC for me.

Spielberg has at least directed three films I love, plus a great number that were good or decent (favorites being Last Crusade, Duel, and Lincoln)

Anyway, top 100....
(EDIT: for giggles, here's my favorite film from each director in parentheses)


1. Akira Kurosawa (Ikiru)
2. Alfred Hitchcock (Rear Window)
3. Luis Bunuel (The Exterminating Angel)
4. Orson Welles (Transformers 2. I mean, Citizen Kane)
5. Terry Gilliam (Brazil)
6. Charlie Chaplin (CIty Lights)
7. Andrei Tarkovsky (Stalker)
8. Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal)
9. Shane Carruth (Upstream Color)
10. Billy Wilder (Sunset Blvd)

11. Frank Capra (Arsenic and Old Lace)
12. Satyajit Ray (The Music Room)
13. Fritz Lang (Metropolis)
14. Werner Herzog (Fitzcarraldo)
15. Federico Fellini (8 1/2)
16. Chantal Akerman (Jeanne Dielman)
17. Alain Resnais (Last Year Marienbad)
18. Jacques Tati (Playtime)
19. Masaki Kobayashi (The Human Condition III)
20. Jean Renoir (Une Partie de Campagne)

21. William Wyler (How to Steal a Million)
22. Stanley Kubrick (Dr Strangelove)
23. David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia > Brief Encounter )
24. Stanley Kramer (Judgment at Nuremberg)
25. Jean Cocteau (Blood of a Poet)
26. Hal Ashby (Harold & Maude)
27. Wocjech Has (The Hourglass Sanatorium)
28. Jan Svankmajer (Alice)
29. Stanley Donen (Charade)
30. Henri Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear)

31. Kar Wai Wong (In the Mood for Love)
32. Marcel Carne (Les Enfants du Paradis)
33. Miklos Jancso (The Round-up)
34. Erich von Stroheim (Greed)
35. Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather Part II)
36. Roy Andersson (A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence)
37. Gregory LaCava (Stage Door)
38. Jonas Mekas (As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty)
39. Haifaa al Mansour (Wadjda)
40. Vittorio de Sica (Bicycle Thieves)

41. Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman in the Dunes)
42. Maya Deren (Meshes of the Afternoon)
43. Francois Truffaut (Story of Adele H)
44. Don Hertzfeldt (It's Such a Beautiful Day)
45. Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies)
46. Agnes Varda (Cleo From 5 to 7)
47. George Cukor (My Fair Lady)
48. Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful)
49. Michel Hazanvicius (The Artist)
50. Woody Allen (Stardust Memories)

51. Jean Luc Godard (Contempt)
52. Roman Polanski (The Pianist)
53. Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso)
54. Adam Elliot (Mary and Max)
55. Jean Vigo (L'Atalante)
56. Mario Bava (Blood and Black Lace)
57. Asghar Fardhi (A Separation)
58. Luchino Visconti (The Leopard)
59. George Roy Hill (The Sting)
60. Michelangelo Antonioni (L'Avventura)

61. Buster Keaton (Sherlock Jr)
62. John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath)
63. Wes Anderson (Grand Budapest Hotel)
64. Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation)
65. Blake Edwards (The Party)
66. Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands)
67. Terence Young (Wait Until Dark)
68. Sergio Leone (A Fistful of Dollars)
69. FW Murnau (Sunrise)
70. Peter Lord (The PIrates! In an Adventure with Scientists)

71. Mike Nichols (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)
72. Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville)
73. Michael Haneke (Amour)
74. Brad Bird (The Incredibles)
75. David Lynch (Elephant Man)
76. Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men)
77. Pete Docter (Up)
78. Richard Linklater (sorry Mercury. But look how high S. Ray is!!)
79. Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby)
80. Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor)

81. Clint Eastwood (Pale Rider)
82. Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
83. Anthony C Ferrante (Sharknado)
84. Aleksandr Sokurov (Hamlet)
85. Carl Th Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc)
86. Kenneth Branagh (Henry V)
87. Abbias Kiarostomi (Taste of Cherry)
88. Louis Malle (these five should all probably be higher. Whatevs)
89. Mikio Naruse (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs)
90. Robert Redford (Quiz Show)

91. Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption)
92. Jon Favreau (Iron Man)
93. Ed Wood Jr (Plan 9 From Outer Space)
94. Joss Whedon (Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog)
95. Jean Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children)
96. Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain)
97. Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day)
98. Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3)
99. Andrew Stanton (Wall-E)
100. Rob Reiner (The Princess Bride)

[Hayden]

[Kool Keith Sweat]

Here's my submission:

1. Peckinpah
2. Malick
3. Scorsese
4. Kurosawa
5. Shinoda
6. Coens
7. Innaritu
8. Hellman
9. Lynch
10. Kubrick

[nutso42]

[FatalIn10sity]

[badseed]

[nutso42]