Harold Ramis John Landis John Hughes Kevin Smith Jim Abrahams/Jerry Zucker/David Zucker Quentin Tarantino Francis Ford Coppola Mel Brooks James Cameron Stanley Kubrick
Okay I'll add Mel Brooks, Guillermo del Toro, and M. Night Shyamalan to my list. But that's it! Tim Burton Barry Sonnenfeld Guillermo del Toro M. Night Shyamalan Mel Brooks OH AND... Jay Chandrasekhar Hell yes.
Ya know... I liked his Batman work, but for a director to make it to my favorites list, he needs to have made more than one or two movies that I like.
Memento is one of the best movies ever, and The Prestige is one my favorites. Insomnia isn't that bad either.
Stanley Kubrick Martin Scorsese Coen Bros. Mel Brooks Quentin Tarantino Wes Anderson Alex Cox David Lynch Ramis, Landis, Apatow, Chandrasakar (sp?), and so many others already mentioned . . .
baz luhrmann - visuals tim burton - visuals and characters guillermo del toro - storytelling judd apatow - dialogue/ad-lib
No list is complete without John Ford (Stagecoach, The Searchers, How Green Was My Valley, The Grapes of Wrath) Others not mentioned: Howard Hawks (Red River, Rio Bravo, Bringing Up Baby, Sergeant York) Sydney Pollack (3 Days of the Condor, etc.) Michael Cimino (if for no other reason than The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate) Robert Zemeckis (So many entertaining and innovative films: Cast Away, Back to the Future, Contact, Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) Dario Argento (Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebre, Opera) Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Sands of Iwo, Flags of Our Fathers, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River) Terrence Malick (Badlands (great music), The New World, The Thin Red Line) David Lean (Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai - perhaps the greatest three picture stretch by any one ever) George Lucas (yes, George Lucas. THX-1138, American Graffiti, and Star Wars - if he just knew how to leave well enough alone he would be more highly regarded as a director) Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, F for Fake, Magnificent Ambersons) Robert Wise (extremely versatile; Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Andromeda Strain,The Sand Pebbles, The Haunting, The Sound of Music, West Side Story, The Day the Earth Stood Still) William Friedkin (somewhat inconsistent but when he was on...The French Connection, The Exorcist, To Live and Die in L.A.)
Imagine I am forgetting a few but off the top of my head: Stanley Kubrick Coen Bros Jean Renoir Clint Eastwood Michael Mann Orson Wells John Huston Krzysztof Kieslowski David Lynch Tarantino Spielberg Akira Kurosawa Martin Scorsese Sergio Leone Francis Ford Coppola Fritz Lang Henri-Georges Clouzot Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Have to add Ron Howard and Clint Eastwood to my list. Also want to say that there are many GREAT film directors that I didn't list like Orson Welles, John Ford, etc. but my list consists of people that have directed my favorite films.
Kubrick Spielberg Kurosawa Ridley Scott Scorcese Michael Mann Nolan Woody Allen Chaplin Eastwood Hitchcock Leone Cameron (and he's a top-notch screenwriter, too)
