Your favourite Director?

As mentioned on another thread I would have to vouch for Sidney Lumet, despite the fact he has made some very average films in the last two decades.
In the sixties he was responsible for films which rose above 99% of drama I have ever watched including.

12 Angry Men.(you all know it)


The Pawnbroker(Rod Stiegers performance is amazing)


The Hill(if you haven't seen this, try and get hold of it-tough and uncomprimising)

His films tend to have a gritty masculine quality(apart from the Wiz!!) with characters have to make tough moral choices.
The Seventies and early eighties saw him continue to make films that earned respect.

Serpico

Dog Day Afternnon(Pacinos best?)

NetWork("I'm mad as hell..")

Prince of The City(I haven't seen this:eek: and some people say its his best!!
Have any of you watched it?)

The Verdict-A lot of people weren't enamoured by this courtroom drama but I don't care, I loved it.

Yes a lot of his stuff has been hit and miss but if you left behind 5,6,7 great films you would pop your clogs a satisfied filmmaker.

Kubrick,Kazan and all the boys are masters but I am going to give the nod to
young Sidney.

Prince of the City is very good. Like with Serpico he focuses on corruption in the NYPD.

Loved most of the films you list, there is only one man for me however and thats Scorsese.

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Originally Posted by stojkovic

...there is only one man for me however and thats Scorsese.

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I've never gotten the appeal of Scorsese. For me, Goodfellas and Raging Bull are way overrated. Cape Fear and The Departed are remakes of already highly regarded films. Taxi Driver is good, but no one's ever going to sell me the idea of sitting down to watch Gangs of New York. What does that leave? Casino?

Kubrick is up there for me. I haven't seen everything he made, but near enough. Only Clockwork Orange didn't sit with me, though I can see what he was trying.

I'll limit myself to active directors, so I can apply the criterion: whose films do I keep an eye out for?

He's kind of the flavour of the month for a lot of people, but Nolan's interesting - Memento is good, The Prestige is great. Insomnia is very good. The Batman films are very cool too. I must try to get hold of Following.

Spielberg's still got it. A bit up and down, but mostly good films.

Del Toro is worth a look. I'm looking forward to seeing what he'll do with The Hobbit.

Robert Rodriguez is a bit one-note (well, I assume except for his films for kids - it would be a bit odd if they were similar!), but makes cool movies.

Don't really have a favourite director but Unforgiven is one of my favourites and Clint Eastwood is supposed to be a very good director with Million Dollar Baby and Mystic River.

John83 the Memento isn't good it's ******* brilliant! I'd definitely recommend the Following. It isn't very long but you could tell from that one movie that Nolan could tell a story and he hasn't had one duff or average movie since.

Spike Jonze is another director I love - he has been a bit lazy of late but I believe he has a movie out next year.

Michael Mann is another (Miami Vice was a hiccup!).

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Originally Posted by John83

I've never gotten the appeal of Scorsese. For me, Goodfellas and Raging Bull are way overrated. Cape Fear and The Departed are remakes of already highly regarded films. Taxi Driver is good, but no one's ever going to sell me the idea of sitting down to watch Gangs of New York. What does that leave? Casino?

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Agree with you about Gangs of NY but no way are Raging Bull and Goodfellas over-rated.

Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas were era defining movies. Some may not age well but then alot of movies don't. The latter three are listed in most Top 100 films of all time.

Its all a mater of taste I suppose (I cant stand Woody Allen) but there are not many directors out there who can compare with Scorsese's body of work.

I'm a Scorsese fan. He's directed one of the the best black comedies ever in After Hours too. He has arguably made one of the best films of each of the last 4 decades (Taxi Driver - 70s, Raging Bull - 80s, Goodfellas - 90s, The Departed - 00s).

My favourite film of all time is Dog Day Afternoon though. Shame Lumet went soft

PT Anderson
Sam Mendes
Fernando Meirelles

3 of my favourites from the last decade or so

Sidney Lumet - Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, 12 Angry Men

Kubrick - all his movies really:)

Scorsese - again most of his stuff is top drawer

Spike Lee - love the way he puts lots of hidden political stuff in all his movies

N Roeg

M Leigh

ken Loach - Kes is the saddest movie i have ever seen

Shane Meadows - the new kid on the block

I think Spielberg and Eastwood are a bit overrated. Speilberg hasn't done anything recently that has blown my mind
Eastwood either, i think his last rake of movies are sentimental trash

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Originally Posted by Ruben Sosa

I think theres a lot of people saying who they think is critically number one instead of just naming their own personal favourite.

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What makes you think they aren't people's favourites?

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Originally Posted by John83

Robert Rodriguez is a bit one-note (well, I assume except for his films for kids - it would be a bit odd if they were similar!), but makes cool movies.

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Agreed , but its a great note :) I hope Machete will be as good as the trailer it was based on!

The point I was making was why owuld you think that it wasn't the poster's taste? Am I not supposed to love the films of Scorsese because critics do?

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Originally Posted by Ruben Sosa

I think theres a lot of people saying who they think is critically number one instead of just naming their own personal favourite.

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well as a fella who has well over a 1000 dvds etc, any of the directors i have mentioned are the ones that i genuinely love:)

oh by the way Hueston is another one - The treasure of the sierra madre is one of the best movies of all time:)

I should add Leone to my list actually - watched For A Few Dollars More again last night. So bloody good...

As an aside: a digitally remastered, slightly longer cut of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is going to be in the IFI next month.

David Lean, Akira Kurosawa, Billy Wilder, Krystoph Kieslowski, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Mike Leigh, Stanley Kubrick, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Some of them are for many films, some for only a few, and in Kubrick's case, for one only - Paths of Glory.

Peckinpah deserves a mention for something as seminal as THE WILD BUNCH and
for the wonderful CROSS OF IRON.The critics didn't like THE GETAWAY because they felt he was commercially compromised but I thought it was highly entertaining.
Billy Wilders best film for me was THE LOST WEEKEND.

Carol Reed, obviously for THE THIRD MAN but more for ODD MAN OUT which is IMO head and shoulders over any film which has a Storyline relating to Ireland.

John Woo, well his Hong Kong stuff anyway.
Also Katsuhiro Otomo, if only for Akira and Steam Boy.
Guillermo del Toro could make a movie for a tenner, and it would look better than Transformers
The Broken Lizard guys are good for a laugh
David Fincher is warped in the best possible way
Danny Boyle
I tend to get excited about a director's new film, rather than who stars in it.

Martin Scorsese - Goodfellas is one on my favourites, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and Casino are great too, although I'm not too mad about his recent work and his unhealthy obsession with Leonardo Di Caprio.

James Cameron - for the first 2 Terminators

John Carpenter - The Thing is another favourite of mine, criminally overlooked when it came out, probably because of the bad timing of coming out at the same time as the hugely overrated E.T., although it was gathered a bit of a cult following recently, enjoyed most of his other work too

The Thing is deffo a joy to behold.....as is E.T.:o

i'd say kubrick for me, people are turned off by his cold eye but his images are spectacular and are burned into my mind. francis ford coppola would be up there and kieslowski (osuran i think mentioned), orson welles, alfred hitchcock and andrei tarkovsky would be the others on my desert island. love some of peckinpah, ingmar bergman, david lynch, and carol reed's stuff too, must also mention some love for ridley scott, paul ws(?) anderson, terrence mallick, roman polanski, godard.. ..and small bits of blood-soaked joy for david cronenberg, george romero, early peter jackson, and dario argento. ah yes must have some splatter!