top 10 directors/10 fave films by each director
 

what are your 10 favorite directors, and the five films you lvoe the most and feel best exemplify said director's vision?

me:

Sam Peckinpah:
The Wild Bunch
Strawdogs
The Getaway
Pat Garret abd Billy the Kid
Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia

David Lynch:
Blue Velvet
Eraserhead
Mulholland Drive
Lost Highway
Wild at Heart

Akira Kurasawa:
Seven Sumurai
I Live in Fear
Throne of Blood
High and Low
The Hidden Fortress

David Cronenberg:
Crash
Dead Ringers
Videodrome
The Naked Lunch
Eastern Promises

Werner Herzog:
Aguirre, The Wrath of God
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
Nofeseratu the Vampyre
Strozek
Signs of Life

Jim Jarmusch:
Dead Man
Down by Law
Stranger than Paradise
Ghost Dog
Mysterey Train

Alfred Hitchcock:
Vertigo
The Birds
Psycho
Stranger on a Train
The Wrong Man

Roman Polanski:
Rosemary's Baby
Chinatown
Death and the Maiden
What?
Frantic

Martin Scorcese:
Raging Bull
Taxi Driver
The King of Comedy
Goodfellas
The Departed

The Coen Bros:
Blood Simple
No Country for Old Men
Miller's Crossing
Fargo
Raising Arizona

Jean-Pierre Jeunet:
Foutaises
Delicatessen
Amelie

He is probably the only director I can think of as critically untouchable, I picked my favourite three.

I'm surprised you've not got Mean Streets in that list. Definitely my favourite film of his, along with Taxi Driver.

I watched Gangs of New York again the other day. I saw it at the cinema the first time around, and absolutely loved it. Watching it on TV afterwards I really didn't enjoy it at all though. A rare case of a film that really must be seen at the cinema. Alien's another one like that.

I don't have time for five films by ten directors but, off the top of my head, here's ten I could happily watch over and over again (and often do):

[Edited after some re-thinking]

Mean Streets
Stranger than Paradise
Saturday Night Fever
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Annie Hall
The Big Heat
Assault on Precinct 13
Duel
The French Connection
Basket Case

Jan Svankmajer

Faust
The Room (Byt)
Dimensions of Dialogue (Can't remember the Czech title offhand)
The Death Of Stalinism in Bohemia
The Ossuary (Kostice??)

Mario Bava

Rabid Dogs
Shock
Danger Diabolik
Blood And Black Lace
A Bay Of Blood

Jean Luc-Godard

Au Bout De Souffle
Alphaville
Le Mepris
Weekend
British Sounds (a "banned" documentary)

Dario Argento

Tenebrae
Suspiria
Inferno
Profondo Rosso
The Bird With The Crystal Plumage

John Carpenter

The Thing (sheer genius)
Assault On Precinct 13
Dark Star
Halloween
The Fog

Sergio Leone

Once Upon A time In The West
Once Upon A Time In America
The Dollars Trilogy.

John Waters

Hairspray
Pink Flamingoes
Female Trouble
Desperate Living
Multiple Maniacs

Andy Warhol/Paul Morrisey

Trash
Flesh
Chelsea Girls
Screen Tests (not all of them, mind)
The Velvet Underground And Nico footage he shot

Terry Gilliam

Time Bandits
Jabberwocky
Monty Python And The Holy Grail
Twleve Monkeys
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas

Fritz Lang

M
Metropolis
Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler
The Big Heat
Testament of Dr Mabuse

'gangs of new york' had potential to be his best film, great story, amazing sets, beautiful costumes, sharp editing, ridiculous battle scenes, and, DANIEL DAY LEWIS. DDL is the best actor alive, he makes movies that would be otherwise weak, amazing (the ballad of jack and rose, last of the mohicans, my left shoe, in the name of the father, etc...). but it dissapointed for a variety of reasons. first, the studio chopped the shit out of this film, it should have been way more brutal and violent, actually, scorcese's most violent film, but in the wake of 9/11, they made scorcese get rid of a lot of the gore. also, cameron diaz was totally miscast, she was abysmal. dicaprio, was also horrible (though this was the film when he started to show promise, he was excellent in the aviator and especially the departed, scorcese has made him the great actor he should have always been), and the scenes between the two were almost embarassing. the scenes between dicaprio and day-lewis, were funny because day-lewis completley up staged him every time, that said, its still a good movie.

i do love 'mean streets', but i love it more as a film that gave a glimpse of how brilliant scorcese was, but i dont feel it is nearly the best representation of his talent. also, there was too much keitel and not enough deniro. to me, it wasnt untill 'taxi driver' that scorcese proved he was gonna be one of the best ever.

this feels like homework right now...

God, I really hated "Gangs Of New York" when it came out - overlong, by and large miscast with some textbook wooden acting (ues, I'm looking at you, DiCaprio and Diaz), boring in long stretches, and lumbered with one of the worst soundtracks I think I've heard in a mainstream Hollywood film, which is saying something. I don't think I've bothered seeing a Scorcese film since.

I pretty much agree with everything you say about GoNY. Although I actually think Di Caprio made a very good job of what was a very difficult role to play. DDL steals every scene but it's sort of made easy for him with a character like Bill. Di Caprio's character gave him far less space to move around and I think he did real well in the circumstances. I definitely agree though that he really came into his own in The Departed: a film I'm not entirely convinced by (Jack Nicholson is dreadful) but Di Caprio really is fantastic in it.

Cameron Diaz was definitely miscast and there's clearly no chemistry between her and Di Caprio. Her character just seems to have no real purpose in the film, to the point where it becomes rather like an extended cameo.

I do think the film works a lot better in the cinema though. It has a grandeur about it which makes details less evident than they are when watching at home.

I didn't know that the studio toned down the violence post 9/11, interesting.


That'd be my top five for Carpenter as well - although I might put Assault at the top.

The Thing has a bleakness about it which is simply awesome. Definitely his darkest film. I just think Assault is about as close to perfection as he ever got. Supposedly it had a modest critical reception in the US when it was released but when French critics saw it, they immediately deemed Carpenter a genius. I can see what they meant. It's just perfect in the same way that Spielberg's Duel is perfect.

There are moments in The Fog which are the match of anything he's ever done, but I feel that the film sort of runs out of puff in the last half an hour. Brilliant but anybody else's standards though.


The more I think about Mean Streets the more i just love it. From the opening shot of Keitel in bed to the climax with the mafio boss watching The Big Heat on TV, I just can't fault it. In many ways it's a sort of antidote to the Godfather: little upstarts, doing pointless deals in cheap-shit restaurants and tiny dive bars instead of big-wigs flexing political muscle in large mansions. you can see how it informed almost everything Scorsese has done since, but IMO, he's never matched it. An absolutely amazing film. And Keitel is just a revelation in it. Probably my favourite character in any film.

"You don't fuck with the infinite." Brilliance.

Stanley Kubrick:

2001: A Space Oddessy
A Clockwork Orange
Dr. StrangeLove
Barry Lydon
Paths of Glory

I just don't really get the whole Leone thing at all. I couldn't stand Once Upon a Time in America. The Dollars trilogy is OK, but they all seem to sort of bleed into one film - to the point where all I can really remember is ponchos.

I like your choices, put together.
Never saw any Svanmajer film though, but I remember a picture from Alice and it looked interesting.
I've linked him with Ladislas Starevitch for some reason.

My own would have :

Jean Renoir - La règle du jeu / Le fleuve
David Lynch - Mulholland Drive / Eraserhead
Jerzy Skolimowski - Deep End / Moonlighting

probably
Alain Resnais - Providence / Mélo
George A. Romero - Martin / Dawn of the Dead

and
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau - Nosferatu / Sunrise
John Boorman - Deliverance / Leo the Last / Point Blank

and maybe Argento and Waters too

That's a classy list. La Regle du Jeu clearly warrants a top spot but it's not a film I find myself watching over again. But yeah, it, 8 1/2 and Citizen Kane are about as good as cinema gets in lots of ways. And yet I can honestly say that I never want to ever have to sit through Citizen Kane ever again.

I've never seen Deep End, but it's a film I keep looking out for. For some reason it has no distributer in the UK, despite officially being a 'British' film.

Martin is a film I watch probably more than any other by Romero. In many ways it's his least typical movie but I love its simple gloominess.

I'm slowly coming to think that Argento is among the most overrated filmmakers there is. I like bits of lots of his films but haven't yet seen one which is good throughout.

I'm disappointed by the lack of Eyes Wide Shut.

I think that, in terms of his overall career, he's made a few decent films followed by a whole bunch of godawful super-size turkeys. I didn't like "Opera" at all, and the whole point of "The Stendhal Syndrome" seemed, well, pointless. As for his "classic period", I personally do like a lot of this, but will admit that a lot of that comes from Argento's sense of art direction, which although not original (taking a lot of his cues from Mario Bava), still is striking and very "painterly", in a way. I have to admit that directing actors is not one of Argento's stronger points - look at Michael Brandon's rather wooden performance in "Four Flies On Grey Velvet", for example. Still, when all is said and done, I still rate Argento overall for his early work.

On a footnote, I only wish that Michaele Soavi hadn't had to retire to look after his son, and been given full creative control (i.e. No D Argento mentoring/interfering!) on at least one film. Now that would have been quite something, I reckon.

Re Leone - the "Dollars" film have been over-lionised a bit, but me still like 'em. Mind you, their visual look inspired Fields Of The Nephilim. Argh!!!

Good point about Soavi. Dellamorte Dellamore is a great film. Stagefright was a bit meh, but even there you could see he had something.

I dunno. I like Argento but I increasingly find watching even his 'classic' stuff a bit tiresome. Suspiria is amazing for the first and last half an hour but it just sleepwalks through the middle section. I actually think the idea behind the Stendhal Syndrome was a really good one, but it was so badly executed as to be almost unwatchable. Even so, i do have a weird soft spot for it. For me, Deep Red is probably the most all around successfull film he's made but even that declines into almost total incoherency during the middle.

Haha re the Nephilim influence. Absolutely!

I haven't seen that yet, but I am disappointed by the lack of Full Metal Jacket.

I started out with a top ten that included "The Killing" ", "Lolita", Killer's Kiss" "Full Metal Jacket" and "Eyes Wide Shut", but most people are posting thier top five.

Did you not like Inland Empire? I thought it was his best. (Haven't seen Blue Velvet, though.)

Then you don't know your Lynch.

If by "know", you mean looked at his work for anything but entertainment, then you're right.

I'll just say 10 with my favorite film by each:

scorsese - taxi driver
tsukamoto - tokyo fist
miike - izo
lynch - wild at heart
fukui - pinnochio 964
ferrara - bad lieutenant
cronenberg - videodrome
leone - once upon a time in the west
henenlotter - brain damage
kaufman - class of nuke em high

Derek, I thought that "EWS" was horrible! I saw it in a cinema in Berlin in 1999 (when it came out, and was so bored, I ended up following the German subtitles instead. Mr Cruise and Ms Kidman had zero sexual chemistry, which pretty much ruined the entire raison d'etre of the film. And 3 hours??? Mein Gott, Christus weint!

I think eyes wide shut is one of the worst films ever made...

Yeah, Eyes Wide Shut is pretty terrible. I'm not a massive fan of Kubrick at the best of times but that really was awful. I suppose the fact that it wasn't properly finished excuses it a bit, but even so..

I like your list but I find this one difficult as it is a remake of a hong kong film called infernal affairs. i would have had kundun , casino or bringing out the dead in it's place but hey it is your list.

Aww, I loved Eyes Wide Shut, but I can understand why people don't like it.

My neighbour was one of the women in the orgy scene in that film. Never quite looked at her in the same light after that.

Derek: I believe there's a pretty good horror festival that happens in Edinburgh every year. Have you had a chance to check it out?

Is it this:
http://www.melies.org/festival.asp?ID=20

I hadn't heard of it till now. I'll need to go to it when I can figure out how to travel to Edinburgh cheaply (don't drive).

in no order,

anderson - boogie nights
gilliam - the fisher king
kubrick - the shining
tarantino - kill bill
spielberg - raiders of the lost ark
coen - raising arizona
fincher - fight club
scorcese - the departed
rodriguez - desperado

i cant think of a number ten so for now,

lucas - the phantom menace

where are the great female directors? streisand? that one with nolte is pretty good.

Inland Empire was the only Lynch fil I found to be tedious, and ultimately pointless. It basically was the third in the trilogy of his "women in trouble", behind mulholland drive and fire walk with me. but, after 8 watches, i still have no clue what the fuck it means. mulhlland drive was confusing, but when you figured it out, it was like wow, brilliance. i never got that epiphanie with inland empire (and how the fuck could you watch that movie for pure entertainment). fire walk with me is soooo underrated though. ive watched it thre days straght, and i really love it. i thought twin peaks as a whole was lynch's best work. bob/leland, the man from another place, the black lodge, all terifying ideas. and sheryl lee was amazing, especially for someone with no acting experience.

The film, Fires Walk with Me is really underrated I think. Probably because most people think of it as just a tv series spin off. But it really is a great movie. Definitely one of his best.

i'm speechless. in fact i'm not, but i'm going to hold back what i really think.

The fact that you chose that, and you're in your mid thirties. I dunno. I sort of don't know what to say. You were joking right. i mean please say you were.

one thing i will say about inland empire, laura dern, wow.

Movies are a visceral experience as well as an intellectual one. If it has a good story, that's great, but there are other reasons for watching them. For me, the plot in Mulholland was by far the worst part of the movie (after figuring it out on my own, discussing it with my friends, and then reading "official" explanations). It was just a desperate cry for meaning in an otherwise plotless idea. With Inland Empire, he unintentionally admitted that he was full of shit. And you know what, he still claimed there was some logic behind it. If you look hard enough at the stars, you'll see contellations. But there's really nothing between the stars. I watch Lynch for brilliant isolated scenes and sensory complexity, not a "good story".

Michael Haneke
Jörg Buttgereit
Akira Kurosawa
David Lynch
Sergej Eisenstein
John Carpenter
Samuel Fuller
David Cronenberg
Andrei Tarkovsky
Martin Scorcese
Pedro Almodóvar

etc, etc.

So many of my favorite movies are not representative of the director's overall body of work that I couldn't begin to do this.

The Man Who Fell to Earth is absolutely brilliant, but the other Nicholas Roeg movie I watched was incredibly cheesy and B quality.

Even with Kubrik, Felini, or Lynch I'd be stretching to pick 5 movies when I really only love three or four. I could probably pick 5 by Jarmusch and yet I would call him my favoriter director.

I did really like Inland Empire massively though. My wife is way more into Lynch than me, and she fell asleep during it, but I watched the whole thing and was spellbound. It struck me as the culmination of everything Lynch had done so far, and was incredibly funny towards the end. I can totally see why people would get bored with it, it just connected for me.

If you want to give Roeg another chance (well, if TV does...), I'd recommend Witches, a film for kids that is highly enjoyable and fresh. Far from his other work - and I liked Performance.

repressed demons, regret, hatred, fantasies, jealousy, those are meaningless ideas? you can have as many isolated scenes as you want, but if the story sucks than fuck it. lynch always has a good story to back up his work, with the exception of inland empire.