Directors I Generally Enjoy
Submitted by Cosgrove on Tue, 02/15/2005 - 12:06
Tags:
- Woody Allen (Annie Hall)
- Robert Altman (McCabe & Mrs. Miller)
- Paul Thomas Anderson (Punch-Drunk Love)
- Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal)
- Robert Bresson (A Man Escaped)
- Mel Brooks (Young Frankenstein)
- Luis Bunuel (The Exterminating Angel)
- Tim Burton (Beetlejuice)
- Charlie Chaplin (Modern Times)
- Joel [and Ethan] Coen (Barton Fink)
- Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now)
- David Cronenberg (Videodrome)
- Carl Dreyer (Vampyr)
- Atom Egoyan (Exotica)
- Larry Fessenden (Wendigo)
- David Fincher (Fight Club)
- Terry Gilliam (Brazil; note that I'm only considering his solo work)
- Michael Haneke (Funny Games)
- Werner Herzog (Lessons of Darkness)
- Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho)
- Peter Jackson (Dead Alive)
- Buster Keaton (Sherlock, Jr.)
- Krzysztof Kieslowski (A Short Film About Killing)
- Takeshi Kitano (Fireworks)
- Stanley Kubrick (A Clockwork Orange)
- Akira Kurosawa (Throne of Blood)
- Neil Jordan (The Crying Game)
- Lloyd Kaufman (Tromeo & Juliet)
- Richard Linklater (Before Sunset)
- David Lynch (Blue Velvet)
- Guy Maddin (Cowards Bend the Knee)
- Louis Malle (Zazie Dans le Métro)
- David Mamet (The Spanish Prisoner)
- Anthony Mann (Winchester '73)
- Michael Mann (The Last of the Mohicans)
- Russ Meyer (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!)
- Takashi Miike (Visitor Q)
- Tsai Ming-liang (The River)
- Kenji Misumi (Samaritan Zatoichi)
- Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbor Totoro)
- Michael Moore (Roger & Me)
- Trey Parker (South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut)
- Sam Raimi (Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn)
- George A. Romero (Dawn of the Dead)
- Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas)
- Steven Soderbergh (Traffic)
- Seijun Suzuki (Fighting Elegy)
- Jan Svankmajer (Alice)
- Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction)
- Paul Verhoeven (RoboCop)
- Lars Von Trier (Dogville)
- Orson Welles (Citizen Kane)
- Billy Wilder (The Apartment)
Author Comments:
Well, you can't hate everyone. If you told me that a new film by any of the above people would come out tomorrow, I'd run to the box office.
Titles in parentheses represent my favorite film from said director; I'm using the AJDaGreat three-film minimum rule, which seems like a reasonable guideline.
Cloned From:
The scope is wide and therefore not very personal... why wouldn't you try to narrow that list to, say, twenty directors ? Have fun :)
Not a bad idea...
Actually, I disagree. If you kept it to twenty, would people like Russ Meyer (whom I knew you liked), Mel Brooks (I didn't know), Jan Svankmajer (ditto) and Lloyd Kaufman (What th-) be on the list? For me at least, it's more personal because of the wide scope.
Actually, three of those four would stay (I probably wouldn't keep Brooks, in light of the fact that he hasn't made a funny film in at least ten years).
And yes, I think Lloyd Kaufman is an unheralded trash genius. Go on and laugh.
To be fair, Brooks has only directed one film in the past ten years - Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and that was in 1995. I just assumed he had retired after Dracula.
Well, okay, that's a good point. But even before that, his films were getting awfully scattershot. I mean, I like "Spaceballs" and "Robin Hood: Men in Tights", but there's a lot of dead air in both films.
I agree. I was mainly just nitpicking.
Excellent list.
Bergman, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Chaplin, Fincher, Lynch, Burton, Scorsese, ...
P.S.: I hope that McCabe & Mrs. Miller is better than the two Altman-films I have seen...
It's better than most films I've seen by anyone, let alone Altman.
You have Wilder, this pleases me.
wow someone who doesn't hate punch drunk love... i'm so relieved to find out i'm not the only one who loves it.
Best full-length film of the decade so far, if you ask me.
I love it too. Do most people dislike it? I wasn't aware of that...
Johnny Waco
maybe not most... but too many... i've definitly heard it was terrible many times.
I think a lot of people didn't know how to take it. And there's always the people who are thrown by the presence of Adam Sandler. And of course, those who are just heathens and prefer House of Wax. :) Count me among those who love this film.
well the people who hated probably either wanted sandler to do that billy madison thing again, or couldn't take sandler seriously as an actor... and that seems to account for a whole hell of a lot of people.
I think you're right. My theory for why he's so good in this film has nothing to do with his acting talent, because I don't think he has much (though he is one of my guilty pleasures). I think the director managed to harness a few of the aspects of Sandler that also happen to appear in his comedy: explosive rage contrasted with a vulnerable shyness and self-effacement. It was a pleasure to watch those elements create a character with such depth.
as far as bunuel goes if you haven't seen simon of the desert or viridiana i suggest you do, i think they are both better than the exterminating angel... although they might be tough to get your hands on... belle de jour and discreet charm of the bour. are great as well but you've probably seen those as they are more popular and readily available.
I have seen (and, indeed, own) "Simon of the Desert". It's excellent, true, but it's still not "The Exterminating Angel". I'll admit that "Angel" may have an edge, being it was the first Bunuel I ever saw, but then again maybe it's just astonishing.
"Viridiana" was on Turner Classic Movies the other night (as was "Nazarin", another Bunuel I haven't seen). I'm still pissed at them for not calling me and letting me know about it... :-)
haha... i was lucky enough to tape all 8 hours of bunuel tcm had to offer... not that it matters because i'm content with my taped off of tv version but how did you come to own simon of the desert? as far as i can tell it's not available... out of curiousity of course, i probably just overlooked it.
i'll also forward this question i asked the only other listologist i could find to have simon of the desert ranked highly to you...
I was curious what your thoughts on the ending of Simon of the Desert were?... alot of people that have seen it like to say something like it was an attack on the 60's youth... i think that is ridiculous, is it just me or does it make more sense that the whole film was a setup for the comedic statement that although religious suffering may seem heroic and simon may look like a great man, it was all really in vain, because all he was fighting off was some rock and roll and dancing teens. your thoughts?
To answer the first question, there was a VHS sell-through copy out several years back of the film (through Xenon Entertainment, I believe, who appears to have done a whole slew of Bunuel -- I also picked up their tape of "Diary of a Chambermaid"). It looks like it's gone out of print, sadly; I think Janus Films has the rights to all that stuff, though, so maybe there'll be a Criterion disc in "Simon"'s future.
And it's been a while since I've seen it, but the ending to me seems a classic Bunuel joke on religious fanaticism -- the Devil tries to tempt Simon through traditional means, but when that doesn't work the Devil then sweeps Simon into the present day to show him the futility of his martyrdom. He may be suffering for his beliefs, but nobody will care or remember it.
that is an interesting way to look at it, i guess i never saw it as time travel... Like i said i saw the ending as what he was fighting all along, not that the future wouldn't remember him, but that what religious people of the time were calling "sin" was something(dancing teenagers) not worth fighting against, showing the futility of his heroism that way. that despite his heroic fight against the temptation of the devil, that like most people, he never took the time to realize just what he was fighting against and how ridiculous it was to resist it blindly.
Richard Linklater is my hero.
It's kinda scary how good he is.