Favorite Directors

bendk

bendk

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I am going to be all over the board on this thread: all time favorites, newer directors whose work I look forward to, or any director who happens hold my interest for a while.

I'm only going to name seven that so others can drop some names.

(In no particular order)

Alfred Hitchcock Psycho, Shadow of a Doubt, Rear Window, Strangers on Train
Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, Raging Bull, Goodfellas
Francis Ford Coppola - Apocalypse Now, The Godfather films
Quentin Tarantino - Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
David Lynch - Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive
Ridley Scott - Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator
Stanley Kubrick - A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Paths of Glory, The Killing


Newer Directors

Brandon Cronenberg - Possessor, Infinity Pool
Robert Eggers - The Witch, The Lighthouse
Ari Aster - Midsommer, Hereditary
Alex Garland - Ex Machina, Annihilation
 
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I find it fun and rewarding listening to directors who have such a deep knowledge of film. And usually you get some great recommendations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psV-DcsnU1Y
 
REALLY like Ari Aster's stuff. I got a subscription to the Criterion Collection specifically so I could watch the footage of directors and actors talking about their cinematic influences. Really rich stuff. Thanks bendk for the link!
 
A few

Woody Allen
Claude Chabrol
Kinji Fukasaku
François Ozon
Douglas Sirk

I don't necessarily care for Jim Jarmusch's work, but I do try to watch everything he releases.
 
I am only listing the directors whose entire filmography I have seen:
Alex Garland
Ari Aster
Darren Aronofsky
David Lynch
E. Elias Merhige
Guillermo Del Toro
Jennifer Kent
Katsuhiro Otomo
Martin McDonagh
Robert Eggers
Sergio Leone
Terry Gilliam
 
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Re: A few

Zaharoff said:
Woody Allen
Claude Chabrol
Kinji Fukasaku
François Ozon
Douglas Sirk

I don't necessarily care for Jim Jarmusch's work, but I do try to watch everything he releases.
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Big Woody Allen fan. I think he fell victim to cancel culture.

I really liked Jarmusch's Paterson, and especially Dead Man. I even had the BFI Film Classics book on this film.
 
miguel1984 said:
I am only listing the directors whose entire filmography I have seen:
Alex Garland
Ari Aster
Darren Aronofsky
David Lynch
E. Elias Merhige
Guillermo Del Toro
Jennifer Kent
Katsuhiro Otomo
Robert Eggers
Terry Gilliam
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Just to mention a few of your picks.

Aronofsky can be great: Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Black Swan. I haven't seen The Whale yet.

Thank you for reminding me of Jennifer Kent. I haven't kept up with her. I was lucky enough to see The Babadook at the theater. It was a small art house theater. It was sold out. They were setting up folding chairs to accommodate the crowd. (yes, it was that small). I don't usually enjoy sardine seating, but the audience was fine. It was initially scheduled to play for a weekend. It ended up playing for 3 straight weeks. The big chains didn't show it in my area. They screwed up.
I was lucky enough to get in on the Kickstarter for her Babadook pop-up book. I think it cost me $80. I just checked eBay and they are very expensive now.
 
Off the top of my head:

Ingmar Bergman
Akira Kurosawa
William Friedkin
John Carpenter
Robert Eggers
David Lynch
Ben Wheatley
Peter Greenaway
Guillermo Del Toro

I'm sure I'm forgetting many others
 
Everyone has just about covered my favourites, particularly Bergman, Aster, Woody Allen, Lynch, Tarantino and Kubrick. Just a couple to add.

Lars von Trier
Guy Maddin
 
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Just to comment on a few mentioned.

Guillermo del Toro. The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth, and Nightmare Alley. I don't have many books on directors or films (outside of a few inexpensive BFI Classics) but I bought this one from Centipede Press. It wasn't that expensive. Try getting it now. Ouch.

Ben Wheatley has made some unique films: The Kill List and A Field in England. Sightseers was fun. I found it hilarious and strangely believable. I saw his last film In the Earth. I found it to be truly nightmarish and what I have always suspected to be true. When you start hugging trees, I don't think you are long for this world. Reece Shearsmith was in it. (he was also in A Field in England). He went on to record three audio books by Robert Aickman for Audible.

Ingmar Bergman. I've watched quite a few Bergman films. My favorite is probably The Seventh Seal. There was a scene in The Virgin Spring that I feel is one of the most violent I've ever seen on film. At least that is my recollection. Hour of the Wolf is great.

Wes Anderson. I love his films. I started way back with Bottle Rocket. The last digital move I bought was The Grand Budapest Hotel. It was on sale on VUDU for $5. I've watched Rushmore a few times. I love the overall message. I still haven't seen Isle of Dogs. There are two nice books on his films that I get from my library from time to time: Accidentally Wes Anderson by Wally Koval and The Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller Seitz.
 
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Lucile Hadzihalilovic

TLO member cnpappas recommended the movie Earwig. It sounded intriguing so I joined MUBI for a month to watch it and a few episodes of Lars von Trier's Kingdom Hospital. It was well worth it. The movie Earwig is unusual, very dark and atmospheric. I was hesitant to watch it because it had a disclaimer of animal cruelty. I didn't enjoy the scene, but it's survivable, and nothing really bad happens. And even though I still find much of the movie inscrutable (I even read the short novel by the recently deceased Brian Catling) I enjoyed the film very much. So much so that I watched three other movies by the same director, Lucile Hadzihalilovic: Mimi, Innocence, and Evolution. I enjoyed all of the films. She has a unique aesthetic. Subdued and strange. I will definitely look for more of her work in the future. And get this, she collaborates with and is married to Gaspar Noe! I bet there's some interesting table talk come dinnertime.

P.S. If you get the DVD of Innocence, I highly recommend the extra of the young girl actor describing scenes from the film.
 
Many greats mentioned. Based on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Salem's Lot I'll add Tobe Hooper. What a fine director! Such a feeling and grasp for the essentials of atmosphere. Somewhat similar to John Carpenter, ... less smooth, but perhaps more interesting? Carpenter is really powerful, so that's a tough one.

Oh, and I guess you already mentioned George A. Romero. Dawn of the Dead, my god what a film. Delicious blend of horror and the homely cozy. (I suppose I must be a real consumer to find a shopping mall "homely". I think it is the hideout compartment above the ceiling that does it.)
And Day of the Dead, .... Mmmm, yummy!

David Cronenberg - The Brood. What a devil of a film!
Terence Fisher - director of many great Hammer films.
Ray Harryhausen - master fantasist. Especially the Cyclops of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is a very bizarre visual experience.
Jan Troell - The Emigrants, The New Land, Flight of the Eagle.
 
For me great direction often goes hand-in-hand with the optimal handling of incidental music (whether parts of an original score or selections from existing recordings) to maximize the emotional intensity of what we're being shown. (Sometimes, of course, this may mean no music is heard at all.)

Kubrick was one great genius at this. There's a reason the soundtracks to 2001 and Clockwork Orange are still almost as highly regarded as the movies themselves.

And think of how much of Psycho's power is derived from Hitchcock's judicious use of Bernard Herrman's amazing score.

Incidentally, I suspect it was mostly Tobe Hooper's effective use of the great Jerry Goldsmith's score for Poltergeist that fooled a lot of people into thinking that movie was all the work of Spielberg.

And John Carpenter's The Thing would still have been a very good movie without Ennio Morricone's fantastic contribution, I'm sure, but I don't think it would have anything like the wide and lasting appeal it still does today. Great music used well can be as integral to the character of a movie as the very characters themselves.

Even that unrivaled masterpiece of horror that is George Romero's original Living Dead trilogy draws a great deal of its power from clever sound design and smart use of stock recordings and original music. Have you ever noticed, for instance, that his zombies actually sound dead (as opposed to, say, the type popularized by contemporary media ripoffs like The Walking Dead, et al, all of which seem to be attempting impressions of a catarrhal cat coughing up a particularly stubborn furball)? That's the kind of attention to detail I look for in my movies.
 
David Cronenberg is hit and miss for me, but he has created some interesting work. I did buy the book Children of the New Flesh: The Early Work and Pervasive Influence of David Cronenberg
by Chris Kelso (Author), David Leo Rice (Editor) not too long ago. I've dipped into it and it has already justified the price. It has homage stories from Brian Evenson, Gary J. Shipley, and others. (I've read the two mentioned and they are very good). It also has reminiscences from various people. I've read the ones by the novelist, Patrick McGrath, and the one by Tim Lucas, creator of Video Watchdog and author of Throat Sprockets, among others. He wrote a book on his film The Brood. The book also contains interviews, etc.
Some of Cronenberg's earliest work is on YouTube: Crimes of the Future (1970), and others listed under the title Cronenberg Short Films.

I liked the introduction that Cronenberg wrote for Susan Bernofsky's translation of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

The Paris Review - David Cronenberg on The Metamorphosis
 
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Think mine have already been said but I'll go one step farther.

Jordan Peele directs My Work Is Not Yet Done
Darren Aronofsky directs A Voyage to Arcturus
Ava DuVernay directs The Thing on the Doorstep
Del Toro directs At The Mountains of Madness (obviously)
David Lynch directs Ravissante
Greta Gerwig directs Malpertuis
Ari Aster directs Fall of the House of Usher
Wes Anderson directs Little, Big

:)
 
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Michael said:
Think mine have already been said but I'll go one step farther.

Jordan Peele directs My Work Is Not Yet Done
Darren Aronofsky directs A Voyage to Arcturus
Ava DuVernay directs The Thing on the Doorstep
Del Toro directs At The Mountains of Madness (obviously)
David Lynch directs Ravissante
Greta Gerwig directs Malpertuis
Ari Aster directs Fall of the House of Usher
Wes Anderson directs Little, Big

:)
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That's a great idea! I am going to give this some thought. I can think of one right now: Alex Garland directs Blindsight.
 
Animation directors :
Brothers Quay
Gyorgy Kovasznai
Keita Kurosaka
Nikolai Serebryakov
Ideya Garanina
Nina Shorina
Allison Schulnik
Jiri Barta
and the guy who did Burning Buddha Man. There will be a bunch more late soviet/post soviet animation directors whose names would be harder to track down, I can't remember them all.

David Lynch
Shinya Tsukamoto
Ken Russell
Michael Powell
Brian De Palma
Cronenberg
Mario Bava
Argento
Refn
Tobe Hooper
George Miller
Zulawski
Sammo Hung
Paul Thomas Anderson

might be forgetting a bunch
 
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Paul Schrader.

Probably known best for his screenplay Taxi Driver directed by Martin Scorsese, he has directed some great films of his own: Light Sleeper, Affliction, Auto Focus, and The Card Counter to name a few.
His most recent film Master Gardener releases in less than two weeks.
 
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