Favorite Movie Directors?

Put down as many as you want. Here is my Top 20 in order.

Vittorio De Sica
Robert Bresson
Frank Capra
Akira Kurosawa
Ken Loach
Mike Leigh
Ingmar Bergman
John Cassavetes
John Huston
Elia Kazan
Robert Altman
Billy Wilder
Aki Kaurismaki
Sidney Lumet
Stanley Kubrick
John Ford
Sam Peckinpah
Paul Mazursky
Alfred Hitchcock
Abbas Kiarostami

 

Ridley Scott
Coen Brothers
Francis Ford Coppola
Sophia Coppola
Roman Polanski

 

Martin Scorsese
Spike Jonez
Alfred Hitchcock

 

How did you like "Knife in the Water"? I loved it even more than Chinatown!

 

You know....not my favorite, but I do like some of the shots (cinematography) and techniques he uses. One can definitely see his talent in his first feature film.

 

John Hughes

 

Martin Scorsese
Francis Ford Coppola
Quentin Tarantino
Alfred Hitchcock
The Coen Brothers
Stanley Kubrick
Sergio Leone
Christopher Nolan
Steven Spielberg

 

John Carpenter
Francis Ford Coppola
David Lynch
Paul Thomas Anderson
Wes Anderson
Alfred Hitchcock
Orson Welles

 

Familiar thread theme.

 

I’ll limit myself to 30. These are all directors whose work I know and love across their entire careers:

Orson Welles
Sam Peckinpah
Billy Wilder
Kenji Mizoguchi
Mikio Naruse
Yasujirō Ozu
Luis Buñuel
Nicolas Roeg
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Woody Allen
Stanley Kubrick
Shohei Imamura
Andrei Tarkovsky
Michelangelo Antonioni
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Fritz Lang
Lindsay Anderson
Powell & Pressburger
Peter Watkins
Krzysztof Kieślowski
Roman Polanski
Robert Altman
Wes Anderson
Don Siegel
Seijun Suzuki
Werner Herzog
François Truffaut
Ingmar Bergman
Akira Kurosawa
Alan Clarke*

*Clarke’s best work was for television, but I can’t leave him out, as I love everything he ever did.

 

Off the top:
Orson Welles
David Lynch
Anthony Mann
Guillermo De Torro
John Ford
Coen Brothers
Sam Fuller
Guy Maddin
Budd Boeticher

 

I loved the script, and especially the tension.

 

David Lean
Martin Scorsese
Terence Malick
Orson Welles
Akira Kurosawa
Stanley Kubrick

 

Hitchcock
Cronenberg
Kubrick
Del Toro
Welles
Nolan
Scott
Truffaut
Kurosawa
Tarkovsky
Scorsese
De Palma
Spielberg
De Sicia
Lean
Mann
Curtiz
Fisher
Lang
Allen
Fassbinder
Hallstrom
Coppola
Soderbergh
Coen brothers
Murnau
Gilliam
Wilder
Huston


Are just a few...

 

Has to be Alfred Hitchcock of all time. Quentin Tarantino then, and Damien Chazelle recently, plus Paweł Pawlikowski very much recently.

 

Amazing to see all these lists without a mention of Renoir. My list would be Ford, Renoir, Sturges.

 

Alfred Hitchcock
Billy Wilder
Martin Scorsese
Stanley Kubrick
Francis Ford Coppola
Fred Zinnemann
Quentin Tarantino
Elia Kazan
David Lean
George Stevens
William Wyler
Vincente Minelli
Orson Welles
Sidney Lumet
Robert Altman
Woody Allen
Marlon Brando (OK, 1 film, but it was a masterpiece !)
Francois Truffaut
Akira Kurosawa
Mike Nichols
John Huston

 

Alfred Hitchcock
David Lynch
Ernst Lubitsch
Yasujiro Ozu
Paul Thomas Anderson
Michael Curtiz
John Ford
Seijun Suzuki
Orson Welles
Coen Brothers
Jim Jarmusch
Preston Sturges
Akira and Kiyoshi Kurosawa

 

Ford
Welles
Hitchcock
Hawks
Truffaut
Wilder
Allen
Murnau
Almodovar
Powell and Pressburger
Fellini
Lumet
Chabrol
Bergman
Tourneur
Mann
Lately - Wes Anderson, The Coens and Del Toro

 

Big fan here, also. Didn’t make my top 30, but still one of my favourite modern-day Japanese directors.

Naomi Kawase is another fave.

 

I own a few of his films, but I’m not a big enough fan for him to make my top 30. Not a massive fan of French cinema in general.

Conversely, I am a big fan of the Czech New Wave, but no one director made it onto my list. That’s just the nature of these things.

 

I like Movies. I rarely care who the Director is....

 

Cameron Crowe
Hayao Miyazaki
Steven Spielberg
Brad Bird
Joe Wright

Miyazaki and Bird are both animation directors but masters of the craft.

 

Ingmar Bergman was the best. Kubrick is my second favorite (who btw was a big fan of Bergman's.)

All others come after, among whom I admired Hitchcock, Ford, Antonioni, Lean, and Coppola for his seventies work. Truffaut was also very good. And Fellini, although I tend for the last decade or so to prefer Antonioni to him.

 

An excerpt from Bergman's Persona, perhaps his best film: