In no particular order:
Michelangelo Antonioni
Tsai Ming-Liang
Stan Brakhage
Yoshishige Yoshida
Andreizj Zulawski
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Pedro Costa
Philippe Garrel
Shuji Terayama
Andrei Tarkovsky
Also: Jean-Luc Godard,Kenneth Anger,Alexander Sokurov,Jacque Rivette,Hiroshi Teshigahara,Hou Hsiao-Hsien,Apichtong Weerastakhul,Nicholas Ray,Charles Laughton,Pier Paolo Pasolini,Danielle Arbid,Theo Angelopoulos,Jacques Rivette
Mine previous:
1. Andrei Tarkovsky
2. Carl Th. Dreyer
3. Orson Welles
4. Robert Bresson
5. Stanley Kubrick
6. Alfred Hitchcock
7. Akira Kurosawa
8. Ingmar Bergman
9. F.W. Murnau
10. Werner Herzog
Revised:
1. Andrei Tarkovsky
2. Carl Dreyer
3. Orson Welles
4. Kryzsztof Kieslowski
5. Stanley Kubrick
6. Robert Bresson
7. Alfred Hitchcock
8. Akira Kurosawa
9. F.W. Murnau
10. Werner Herzog
Out: Bergman
1. John Cassavetes
2. Sergio Leone
3. Woody Allen
4. Jim Jarmusch
5. Jean-Luc Godard
6. Sergei Eisenstein
7. David Lynch
8. Brian De Palma (How dare I?)
9. Sidney Lumet
10. Johnnie To
This list could change though, it’s not set in stone. Today, this is my list.
Roger – I wouldn’t put De Palma on my list, but it’s sort of refreshing to see someone out there that loves him that much.
John Ford,
Yasujiro Ozu,
Kenji Mizoguchi,
Jean Renoir,
Max Ophüls,
Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
Clint Eastwood,
Frank Borzage,
Leo McCarey,
Roberto Rossellini
Luis Bunuel
John Ford
Roberto Rossellini
Budd Boetticher
Jean Renoir
Mikio Naruse
Joseph H. Lewis
Max Ophuls
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Jean-Luc Godard
1. Orson Welles
2. Stanley Kubirck
3. Merrian C. Cooper
4. Alfred Hitchcock [for those who are wondering, I’m not posting director Alfred Hitchcock out of obligation, I’m posting this because I happened to be one of the many admirer of his films. No further explanation is necessary.]
5. Cecil B. DeMille
6. F.W. Murnow
7. Akira Kurosawa
8. Victor Erice
9. Sergio Leone
10. Fritz Lang
Chill,Octavio.People who talk agressivly about imposing their taste on themselves are clearly scared of getting criticism because they wouldn’t know how to answer.
“I wouldn’t put De Palma on my list, but it’s sort of refreshing to see someone out there that loves him that much.”
The reason I put him on my list is because not only do I love his so-called “good” films, I also love his failures. I think that because he’s always shooting for the top and putting everything he can into his films, it makes them more interesting than another director’s masterpiece (not any director, but you get my drift). For instance, I don’t think Raising Cain, Snake Eyes or Redacted could be labeled Great Cinema by any stretch of imagination, but because he’s always pushing everything out on the edge (sometimes even falling off) that makes everything he does special in its own way. De Palma always sets the bar high, maybe higher than he can reach, and I think that’s something to be admired.
De Palma’s got balls. I like balls.
I will say this about Brian DePalma: It took balls to take one of the most famous and compelling Hollywood stories and create The Black Dahlia out of it.
I’m surprised they didn’t take away his DGA card for that film.
Malick
Kubrick
Kurosawa
Miyazaki
Leone
Wong Kar Wai
Bresson
Hitchcock
Aronofsky
Tarkovsky
after seeing all his feature films, brian de palma is one of my very favorite directors because he has incredible range, both in genre (black and slapstick comedy, cops and gangsters, horror, war, drama, musical – there’s hardly a genre he hasn’t approached) and quality, with films ranging from classic to downright embarrassing. and like roger said, he is always pushing the edge. i especially appreciate how he has brought sleaze into mainstream movies (scarface and snake eyes are especially smarmy). it’s easy to hate de palma, but he has an immense amount of talent that he exhibits even in his worst films. a good example is the masterful tracking shot that opens bonfire of the vanities.
nine more:
rainer werner fassbinder
paul verhoeven
paul thomas anderson
martin scorsese
chan-wook park
orson welles
peter weir
sam peckinpah
jacques tati
While my tastes are always fluid, my top 15 or so directors seems to stay more or less intact. These have been the usual suspects for quite some time for me.
1 Terrence Malick
2 Rainer Werner Fassbinder
3 Akira Kurosawa
4 Stanley Kubrick
5 Jean-Luc Godard
6 Robert Altman
7 Federico Fellini
8 Ingmar Bergman
9 Woody Allen
10 Sam Peckinpah
11-15: Pedro Almodovar, Michelangelo Antonioni, Luis Bunuel, Howard Hawks, Sergio Leone
Jean-Luc Godard
Michelangelo Antonioni
Satyajit Ray
Andrei Tarkovsky
Akira Kurosawa
Federico Fellini
Ingmar Bergman
Stanley Kubrick
Louis Malle
Francois Tuffaut
Also Hitchcock, Welles, Ozu, Rohmer, Rivette, Ghatak, Allen, Coppola, Altman, Scorsese, Yang, HHH, Kar-Wai.
I think people hate De Palma because he showed such promise early in his career and in my opinion, that promise was never fully realized. I hate that he never made an unequivical masterpiece. He’s used his talent to make some truly awful films and unlike someone like Scorsese, he doesn’t have that crowning achievement that he can point to. My favorite film of his is Sisters but that movie doesn’t even touch Taxi Driver.
De Palma has become the poster boy for great filmmakers gone bad. And the fact that he does have some talent with camera only makes the pain greater.
1. Stanley Kubrick
2. Hiroshi Teshigahara (should’ve made more, but the trilogy with Abe and Takemitsu towers over most other movies I’ve seen)
3. Akira Kurosawa
4. Robert Bresson
5. Martin Scorsese
6. Kenji Mizoguchi
7. Jean-Pierre Melville
8. Masaki Kobayashi
9. Werner Herzog
10. Francis Ford Coppola
1. Ingmar Bergman
2. Andrei Tarkovsky
3. Federico Fellini
4. Akira Kurosawa
5. Jean-Luc Godard
6. Carl Th Dreyer
7. Michelangelo Antonioni
8. Vittorio De Sica
9. Robert Bresson
10. Luis Bunuel
I am so glad to see so many people putting Fassbinder on their list!
R. W. Fassbinder, for his politicized theatricality
Robert Altman, for his ensemble portraits
Jean Renoir, for his wit
Yasujiro Ozu, for his sense of domesticity
Luis Bunuel, for his antic intelligence
David Lynch, for his ability to paint dreams
Andrei Tarkovsky, for his sense of cinema
Ernst Lubitsch, for his comic finesse
Orson Welles, for his struggle
John Cassavetes, for his psychology
though any of the above have all the above qualities.
As of 9/18/2009 the top 10 in no particular order: 1 Mizoguchi 2 Ozu 3 Kurosawa 4 Rossellini 5 Bresson 6 Borzage 7 Hitchcock 8 Ford 9 Tarkovsky 10 Renoir
>>I will say this about Brian DePalma: It took balls to take one of the most famous and compelling Hollywood stories and create The Black Dahlia out of it.<<
I’m no supporter of DePalma and BLACK DAHLIA is one of the few films I almost walked out on, I loathed it that much (I was with friends, so I just scrunched lower & lower & lower in my seat). But, to be fair, the movie is based on a novel, not on the actual murder case – which is unsolbved in any case & thus presensts a slight problem to film-makers: it lacks an ending. I read the novel later & the film is a fair compression/adaptation of it. Which is to say that, it, too, is junk.
I don’t get why people think The Black Dahlia was that horrible.It had some good.surreal sequences,even though the screenplay was utter crap.But then again, who said Ellroy was that good of a writer in the first place?
De Palma is better than Coppola,Scorsese or Lucas/Spielberg, because he’s got more balls than all of ‘em, and more fury,rage or even talent(He filmed some of the best camera-shots ever commited to celluloid).
So stop “hating” him for some failures he did(Redacted was a masterpiece, and I can debate this all day), and start worrying/hating/talking shit about some arrogant fuckers who think people haven’t seen movies in their lives, like Tarantino or Soderbergh, and others who think cinema is equal to marketing, like Bay,Spielberg or Lucas.
My Favorites
Classics: Chaplin, Welles
Masters: Kubrick, Bergman
English Speaking Contemporary: Scorsese, F.F. Coppola, Woody Allen,Lynch
Asian Geniuses: Kurosawa,Wong Kar Wai, Kitano, Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee
Nubies but Goodies: Wes Anderson, Tarantino, Cohen Brothers
Female: Sophia Coppola, Isabel Coixet, Jane Campion
Spanish Speaking Contemporary: Almodovar, Cuarón, Iñarritu, Amenabar.
Anime: Miyasaki, Satoshi Kon
Portuguese: Mereilles
Italian: Sergio Leone, Guiseppe Tornatore
French: Jean Pierre Jeunet
1. Andrei Tarkovsky
2. Robert Bresson
3. David Lynch
4. François Truffaut
5. Woody Allen
6. Ingmar Bergman
7. Fritz Lang
8. Jean-Luc Godard
9. Stan Brakhage
10. Federico Fellini
I’m writing my list based on directors that I keep watching his movies or will always be interested to see what they release next. I guess they are the 10 to for me. Funny how some of them aren’t my favourite directors but I do watch a lot of their films or repeat watching their films.
Stanley Kubrick
Alfred Hitchcock
Luis Buñuel
Jasujiro Ozu
John Ford
Sergei Eisenstein
Vittorio De Sica
Mike Leigh
Woody Allen
Pedro Almodóvar
Sorry, but I also have to mention Carlos Reygadas. I am interested in whatever he makes so he should be in this list.
1. AKIRA KUROSAWA 2. LUIS BUÑUEL 3. SERGEI EINSENSTEIN 4. KENJI MIZOGUCHI 5. FERNANDO DE FUENTES 6.STANLEY KUBRICK 7. RIDLEY SCOTT 8. ANDRZEJ WAJDA 9. ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI 10. GEORGES MELIES. En el caso del 1 al 6, en estricto orden de preferencia y porque conozco la totalidad de sus obras. En el caso de Scott, de quien he visto tambien todas sus peliculas, quizas sea exagerado ponerlo en esta lista, dada el irregular nivel de su filmografia, sin embargo, para mi, BLADE RUNNER es una de las mejores peliculas de la historia, y eso lo hace un director importante, a mi juicio. En el caso de los Polacos, si bien apenas conozco la mitad de la filmografia de cada uno, lo ya visto hasta hoy no me ha decepcionado, y me hace correr a ver cada pelicula suya que no conozco.Cuestion de sentimentalismo en el caso de Melies, ya aque si bien ninguna de sus peliculas suele figurar entre las mejores de la historia, fue el quien abrio esta maravillosa caja de Pandora que el dia de hoy llamamos CINE.
Robert Altman
Brian DePalma
Alfred Hitchcock
Akira Kurosawa
Fritz Lang
David Lynch
Sam Peckinpah
Satyijit Ray
Preston Sturges
Orson Welles
Luis Bunuel
Ingmar Bermang
Lars Von Trier
Carl Th. Dreyer
Robert Bresson
Federico Fellini
Quentin Tarantino
Jean Luc Godard
Andrei Tarkovsky
Stanley Kubrick
All in all, it’s very classic:
Alfred Hitchcock,
Otto Preminger,
Stanley Kubrick,
Steven Spielberg,
Woody Allen,
Clint Eastwood,
Milos Foreman,
Howard Hawks,
Sergio Leone,
Stephen Frears,
And my most respectful and sincere apologies to the ones who would have made my top 20:
Sam Peckinpah,
Federico Fellini,
Sidney Lumet,
Michael Cimino,
John Boorman,
Michael Mann,
Ridley Scott,
Takeshi Kitano,
Jean-Jacques Annaud,
Vincente Minelli,
1. Alfred Hitchcock
2. Francois Truffaut
3. FW Murnau
4. Erich von Stroheim
5. Jean Renoir
6. Ingmar Bergman
7. Michelangelo Antonioni
8. George Stevens
9. Billy Wilder
10. John Ford
Nathan M.
John Ford
Martin Scorsese
Howard Hawks
Robert Bresson
Alfred Hitchcock
Billy Wilder
Akira Kurosawa
Ernst Lubitsch
Woody Allen
Louis Malle
When I make a list like this, I’m always reminded that I’m ultimately more concerned with individual films than I am with directors. In fact, only three of these directors have films in my top ten. So, there you go.