aki kaurismaki
bruno dumont…i loved la vie de jesus and then got lazy
francis ford coppola…i’ll admit it, i’ve never seen the godfather
werner herzog…although i suspect that they aren’t all strozek
claire denis
i say these, but when worse comes to worse and i can’t decide what to watch i will probably just put on a woman is a woman…again. there is something to be said for comfort food.
comfort food is the reason it seems like i’ll NEVER catch up on certain directors! and i’m especially intimidated when they have a huge body of work. that’s why i have to pick and choose pieces from careers or movements or styles. there’s too much out there, and i’m too impatient to stick with one thing all the way through (or maybe too disinterested).
godard and hitchock are two of my favorite filmmakers, and i still have yet to even come close to seeing every single thing they did. but i’m fine with that. i’ve seen all their landmark works multiple times. the rest i’ll just absorb leisurely as life goes on. no rush. i’ve got a lifetime (hopefully).
Troy-Love Strozek but Fitzcarraldo and Aquirre Wrath of God are even better.
I would like to catch up on Jacque Rivette but too many are not available here. Especially want to see Celine & Julie Go Boating.
definitely Fassbinder.
a few more Godard
at least another dozen of Bergman’s
more Fassbinder
more Rohmer
all of Bresson
Zhang Ke Jia – I saw The World on DVD what seems like a few years ago, and the film has haunted me ever since. But somehow I never saw another of his films, though Platform has been on my damned Netflix queue for ages, now.
hey Witkacy I’m watching Platform as we speak. Also Still Life is amazing.
Eeenywhoo, for me it’s:
Ozu
Chabrol
Rohmer
Pressburger &Powell
Satyajit Ray
Visconti
I have only 3 more of Welles’s 11 features to see plus I want to watch Don Quixote than I have seen them all. I have 6 more films directed by Chaplin to have seen them all. The only directors I have seen all of their work are Kubrick, Scorsese, and PT Anderson. The director I have seen the most films by but due to the monster filmography of his I haven’t even come close to seeing them all is Hitchcock. Some favorite directors of mine that I haven’t seen nearly enough of are Bergman, Fellini, and Kurosawa. I have only seen one film by Godard (Breathless, but I just bought Contempt), I have only seen one feature from Bunuel (Belle de jour, but I just bought The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), and I have never seen a film by Mizoguchi (but I just bought Ugetsu). So those directors and so many more.
I’ve barely seen anything by Bergman, Herzog or Kurosawa. Plus, I need to see more Hitchcock, and I want to see Berlin Alexanderplatz soon. Oh, and Almodóvar and Buñuel.
Luciano Ercoli
Rohmer
Bergman
(…great looking Criterion box-sets)
Bela Tarr, Melville and Ophuls.
Bergman
Renoir
S. Dali
Kurosawa
Godard
De Palma
Dardenne
Rohmer!
There is a neglected Italian film director named Francesco Rosi who has made such films as “Salvatore Giuliano,” “Hands Over The City,” (both on Criterion), “Three Brothers,” “Christ Stopped at Eboli,” “Illustrious Corpses,” “The Mattei Affair” and “The Moment of Truth” among others. He is definitely worth studying.
I need to catch up on Godard. I have a pile of his films I bought on the cheap (some for as little as €2,49) a few years back that I really must sit down with.
For those that have mentioned Rohmer, there’s a nice R2 set from Arrow that includes 8 of his finest inc. all of his Comedies & Proverbs films. I think the only overlap with the Criterion box may be Chole in the Afternoon, and it has some great stuff in there – The Aviator’s Wife, Pauline at the Beach, The Green Ray, and so on.
@ Troy – definitely try to see Flanders, L’Humanite and the much-panned 29 Palms.
@ Steve – Rivette is quite a hard one to catch up with… if you are multi-region there are quite a few good deals on his films in R2 land at the moment, inc. Celine & Julie. I think I have most of the easily-obtainable R2s, and also the R1 of Joan the Maid and the R3 Divertimento, but he is not the easiest director to seek out.
@ Howard, above. Eboli is quite an interesting film, but the R2 from Infinity has misleading info on the cover as it hints that it’s the full version, but in fact the running time listed includes the extras, and in fact the film is the truncated 2.5 hr cut. Still worth it if you can pick it up cheap.
So far I’ve done the best with Mann and Kurosawa. I would say Herzog, Ozu and Mizoguchi have become top priorities, but I also might want to throw Roberto Rossellini in there.
This year…hmm.
More:
Walsh
Yoshida
(early) Ford
(80s) Godard
(everything) Renoir
Doillon
Stahl
Since I recently saw Bicycle Thieves, I want to delve more into the Italian Neorealism movement of the post-war era, so I’m going to be checking out some more Fellini, De Sica, Rossellini and Vosconti. I also want to check out a few more Kurosawas I haven’t seen, as well as Ozu, some more Godard and some more Bergman and Lean.
I still have lots of films I own and need to watch. Along with all of the directors I already love and haven’t nearly seen all the pictures o, mostof which have already been named, I will just say that I need to catch up on an an entire national tradition of great cinema, that of the Italians. I will admit I’m not at all versed in anything but a few of the Spaghetti Westerns.
I’ve been a jack of all trades and master of none, but i’d be delighted if more films by Youssef Chahine, Hiroshi Shimizu, Naruse, Raul Ruiz and Manoel de Oliveira became available- oh and how about some Bulgarian classics?
i’m more into catching up on genres, or national films or styles. its just hard for me to stay with one director all the way through. i get antsy.
right now, i’m on a screwball comedy kick. i just saw “the lady eve” for the first time. i liked it, and i think it actually has a better closing line than “some like it hot”. or, at least, the joke behind it is MUCH funnier. next up i want to check out hitchcock’s “mr and mrs smith” for the first time.
More Manoel de Oliveira,
more Pedro Costa
and how about some Mario Camus?
Satyajit Ray,George Cukor,Kira Muratova,Lino Brocka to begin with and the rest of Angelopoulos and Melville…
Which directors don’t I need to catch up on?
Akira Kurosawa- Only seen Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Sanjuro
Francois Truffaut- Only seen The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim
Orson Welles- Only seen Citizen Kane
Fritz Lang- Only seen M
Kenji Mizoguchi- Only seen Ugetsu
Jean Luc-Godard- Only seen Breathless, Contempt, and Pierrot Le Fou
Jean Renoir- Only seen Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game
Robert Bresson- Only seen Pickpocket and Au Hasard Balthazar
Werner Herzog- Only seen Aguire: The Wrath of God
Rainer Werner Fassbinder- I have not seen anything by him.
That turned into more of a confession, than anything else, but its ok because my answers have changed since 4 months ago. Since then I have seen every Welles and Chaplin feature, I have seen much more by Bergman, Kurosawa, and Fellini, I have seen 3 Godard films, I have seen 4 Bunuel films, and I have seen 2 Mizoguchi films. So I am slowly making progress.
I still want to catch up on Chantal Akerman, although the film of hers I most want to see, “The 80s,” is going for over a hundred dollars used on VHS.
Still want to see more Werner Herzog.
I feel like I should see more Ozu and Mizoguchi, but I’m not as pumped up for it as much as I feel dutiful towards them. Ditto the Russian silent films like Kino-Eye, Arsenal, and Storm over Asia.
Lately I’ve been wanting to dive into as much Andre Techine as I can. I also want to see the Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes Criterion box set from a Japanese director (postwar) whose name escapes me now. And more Seijun Suzuki.
Also- Thomas Vinterberg, Laurent Cantet, Tim Roth, Erick Strand.
And of course there are a lot of directors whose (best) work is still next to impossible to get — Kluge, Werner Schroeter, Hugo Fregonese, Roberto Rossellini, Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, and others probably even rarer still.
I’ve started on Tarkovsky and Bergman, as well as Fellini and Bertolucci, and throw in a little Welles and Hitchcock.
Upcoming is Mizoguchi, Maddin, and a few interesting one-offs.
My goal for this year is to greatly expand my film vocabulary and to focus on important films and directors. It’s off to a good start.
Justin Biberkopf
My list would be-
Kurosawa
Chantal Akerman
Cassavetes
Werner Herzog
Anthony Mann
Marco Bellocchio
Ozu
Mizoguchi