who are yer favorite movie directors?

i think terry gilliam is brilliant.he has directed "time bandits","12 monkeys",& "brazil" to name a few.

plus i grew up watching "monty pythons flying circus" reruns on PBS,perhaps explaining my tendency towards snarkasm.

alfred hitchcock is also one of my faves.so many classics...

"north by northwest" is my all-time hitchcock fave.

The Cohen Brothers, Stanley Kubric, Clint....Unforgiven was great...."he dont look like no damn killer".

Not a movie but whoever directs the HBO series Deadwood is a total genius, probably my favorite TV/movie series ever.

And whoever made all those 60's English MI5 movies with Michael Cain and the like.

Up till The Village - I liked the work of M. Knight Shymalan but it went down hill from there.

Zack Snyder - "300" and the upcoming "The Watchmen". Looks like he translates the comicbook genre very well.

Not many have the consistency of style and success like Hitchcock. But to name a few, Ridley Scott, Peter Weir, Alan Pakula, James Ivory.

Stanley Kubric,alfred hitchcock,Steven speilberg,george lucas,martin cosaracy,

redile scott,william wyler, Cecil B. DeMille,shaker kapoor...

Quentin tarantino!

Among others . . .

Quentin tarantino!

Among others . . .

Yes,dave i forgot his name...he does things quite differently & i like it !

Alfred Hitchcock

Francis Ford Coppola

Steven Spielberg

George Lucas

John Ford

This image was made on the set of "Long Voyage Home"

Aloha

Dewd - Did you ever see "Jabberwockey", Gilliam's first film? I laughed my butt off then (1977), but am afraid it might be unwatchable now.

Goodfellas and Casino suck me into the worlds Scorsese creates like no other films.

Trying to untangle David Lynch movies is a lot of fun, and he has some of the best individual movie sequences ever.

I'm also starting to enjoy the scary imagination of Guilermo del Toro. "The Devil's Backbone" is his best-overlooked film.

Ron Howard

Alan Ball (American Beauty)

Kubric,Kubric,Kubric.......Will the next Kubric please stand up?

Stanley Kubrick - YES. So many people slighted his film adaptation of Stephen King's novel, The Shining. They didn't "get" 2001: A Space Odyssey and protested at A Clockwork Orange. The problem is that most people don't like to leave the cinema with only a subconscious inkling of what is happening inside their heads. There is little closure with a really good movie.

terry i did so "jabberwocky" & was very puzzled by it.

The problem with "Jabberwocky" is there was so much blood and gore (for shock and laughs), that it overshadowed a smart message similar to "Brazil".

Tim Burton

Ray Harryhausen

Peter Weir

If Gilliam directed "Brazil",he has to be a great Director,because that was one insanely devious masterpiece.I am fairly certain I saw that guy at a distance but he's gone.Does anyone know who directed "Jesus's Son"?That was another tip of the melting iceberg.

John Ford is the best.

Also like Kubric. Really get his movies.

And Clint Eastwood is really good.

Bubba, it was Alison Maclean, 1999.

I forgot to mention Fred Zinnemann, or just plain Fred Z.

And Luc Besson.

Aloha

I find most directors somewhat inconsistant. I suppose the most consistant for me is Tim Burton, but that is because I DON'T like any of his films, so I can hardly call him a favourite. Gillian has done some great films, but also the likes of Baron Von Munchausen, that I was not keen on. I don't like many of Scorcese's recent films. John Carpenter seems to have gone downhill. Ridley Scott has made good and bad films, although I like most of his brother's films. I like most offerings from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. I quite like Sam Raimi's directorial style, although not all of his films or TV work are that good. Michael Mann has also done good and bad. Guilermo del Toro has been good up to now. Kubrickis responsible for some directorial masterpeices, but not all of his films shared the vision and daring, exhibited by the likes of The Clockwork Orange. Ron Howards films are OK, but don't really excel in their direction. I love Peter Jackson and Gore Verbinski's attention to detail, but they both lack the flair and artistry of people like Tarantino and Zack Snyder. Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron and Oliver Stone have all made some great films, yet others that I can't even watch. I quite like most of the Farrelly Brothers films, but I wouldn't say that they are fantastically well directed. David Lynch films are generally interesting, in that he makes no effort to explain himself. I think Toby Hooper is worth a mention for creating some of the best Horror films of the 70's, likewise William Friedkin's directing of The Exocist and French Connection were both very inspired, but he was far from prolific. Speilberg, on the other hand is truely prolific and, whilst none of his films have been directed badly, I'm not really a great fan of most of his work. Other noteworthy directors include Spike Lee and Kevin Smith, as well as others already mentioned.

Werner Herzog - how could I forget Herzog?

Films like Fitzcarraldo, Stroszek, Aguirre Wrath of God and his remake of vampire classic Nosferatu - all absolute mad genius.

Mostly starring the incomparably insane Mr Klaus Kinsky (Natashas dad I think) in a series of ever more desperate situations.

Not to be missed is the Les Blank documentary Burden of Dreams about the making of Fitzcarraldo, deep in the Amazon Rainforest, in which Kinsky approaches the local Indians who are working as extras on the film and asks them to murder Herzog....stranger than fiction.

I agree with most of these picks... but I didn't see the Coen brothers? I like their stuff.

BUT, I have to say I'm surprised this list went this far without mention of Akira Kurosawa. ....Rashomon, Seven Samurai...

edit: Ooops, I see Jonathan threw in the Coen Brothers...

Also not mentioned - David Cronenberg. "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises", his two latest films, are also his most accessible for a general audience.

Dear Bill

yes,even Akira Kurosawa is very popular here,but once i brought his DVD the movie 7 sumurai when i switched the system on i saw a low resolution B&W movie with few japanese trying to work for their fedual lord,after a huge storm.

Immedietly i fell asleep i did not know what happened.but i never tried to see the missed portion onceagain.

May be iam not that mentally mature to understand the directors perspective on life.i would say it was the basis from where the magnificient 7 the hollywood blockbuster took its origin..

But i love the magnificient 7 movie though..

Love,

Kris

This is great stuff.I watched Baron Von Munchausen with my youngest son and found it rather amazing.I can see how it would not make main stream.

Whose favorite 12 films are these:The Good,the Bad and the Ugly,Rio Bravo,Taxi Driver,His Girl Friday,Rolling Thunder,They All Laughed,The Great Escape,Carrie,Coffy,Dazed and Confused,Five Fingers of Death and Hi Diddle Diddle?

Also, has anyone seen Grindhouse?Does anyone know anything about Inglourious Basterds?

Sam Peckinpah?

Corey - I agree with you 100%. I think good directors (and good actors) seem to "pay" for the freedom to make excellent movies by making alternately great art movies followed by so-so box office hits. Movies that are both aren't as common as we'd like. Even some movies we think of as popular classics were financial failures when released.

Burton's "Planet of the Apes" is the most heinous example that comes to mind. Some actors (Nick Cage?) do this back-and-forth and get stuck doing only the high-paying gigs.

I remember taking my landlady to see David Lynch's Wild at Heart when it came out in 1990 in London's Leicester Square. We sat in the front row at my insistence, as I recall, though I had no idea how graphic it would turn out be. The scene where Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern happen upon a car crash is still pretty vivid. It's one of those films I tell myself I need to watch again now that I'm older.

Dear Bill

yes,even Akira Kurosawa is very popular here,but once i brought his DVD the movie 7 sumurai when i switched the system on i saw a low resolution B&W movie with few japanese trying to work for their fedual lord,after a huge storm.

Immedietly i fell asleep i did not know what happened.but i never tried to see the missed portion onceagain.

May be iam not that mentally mature to understand the directors perspective on life.i would say it was the basis from where the magnificient 7 the hollywood blockbuster took its origin..

But i love the magnificient 7 movie though..

Love,

Kris

Precisely right about the Magnificent 7 copying Seven Samurai. But I will say, if you are not used to reading the dialogue with a movie, it will put you to sleep fairly fast not matter who's movie it is! (I saw a LOT of ART films in my 20's and once you can read fast enough to get the gist of whats happening, you can almost anticipate the lines and concentrate on the actors and action.)

What I CAN'T stand are those films of the old English gentry folk and butlers and crap.... I would say I don't like movies where the location never changes, but I liked the old movie "12 Angry Men" .

What about Robert Wise for his 60's classics, West Side Story and one of my favorite films, The Haunting.

What I CAN'T stand are those films of the old English gentry folk and butlers and crap....

Bill,

Are you referring to those regurgitations that strive to capture the "tweediness" of the English landed gentry? The 2008 adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's 1945 classic novel, Brideshead Revisited is one such example. An irrelevant pastiche of a bygone era! Some of the older films from the late 30's and 40's are quaint though, because they reflect the times.

Another surprise absence for me is John Woo. Whilst his films are not masterpieces in terms of style or creativity, he does do action better than many directors.

Peter Sellers was supposed to play the role of Kong in Strangelove but could not nail the Texas accent necessary for the scene. Welcome Slim Pickens.

YouTube movie clips from Dr. Strangelove