Well I really like his two movies Gone Baby Gone and The City.
On IMDB they rate 7.9 and 8.0 for an average 7.95, he also co-wrote both of them as well as Good Will Hunting (8.1).
Better than 7.9 / worse than 7.9 ratings for a few favorites of mine, counting only real movies:
Ben Affleck 2/0
Martin Scorcese 10/26
Clint Eastwood 7/24
Hitchcock 14/42
Wilder 9/17
So who am I missing?
The Town.
To be honest, I have no idea what the rest of your post is about with the ratings thing, but to answer the question in the Subject line, no, of course not. Not yet. He does have the capacity, the talent, to be on a list with those directors. He’s a fine director now, and will one day be a great director.
Christopher Nolan? 5/2
ETA: Counting only real movies, that’d be 5/1. (The Following was a $6k budget, 69 min “concept movie” more than a “real” movie. But that’s nitpickable, so a definition of “real” movie would be great.
Charles Laughton is usually considered to be the only director of The Night of the Hunter and it’s usually considered to be his only film. It has a rating of 8.2. If you look at the IMDb though, it’s claimed that Robert Mitchum directed a few scenes in the movie, and it’s claimed that Laughton directed a few scenes in The Man on the Eiffel Tower.
Slight nitpick: Affleck did indeed write Good Will Hunting (with Matt Damon), but Gone Baby Gone and The Town are screenplay adaptations of works not original to him (Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane and Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan, respectively). I know this only because I’ve read both authors but have not yet read those novels.
That said, yes - Affleck has shown a talent for directing, although so far it appears he’s selecting his material carefully to stay within the Boston realm with which he’s comfortable. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’d be interesting to see him try a different milieu.
I don’t agree with a lot of IMDB ratings, but here’s a couple more directors:
David Fincher: 4/4
Ridley Scott: 3/16 +1 at 7.9 exactly
Stanley Kubrick: 9/4
Which seems to be an excellent plan. Gulliermo del Toro’s directing career was nearly smothered in the crib by working too far out of his comfort zone early on. I’m not saying a director shouldn’t stretch. but if you work where you feel comfortable and with people you relate to, you stand a good chance of producing decent work.
It seemed to work well for John Hughes, Peter Jackson and Stanley Kubrick.
Point taken (seemed to work pretty well for Woody Allen, too, I guess).
Well, he has started working in other places recently, to better effect than staying home.
If Ben Affleck does nothing more than tell Boston stories, he can have an excellent career. I did find it amusing that the trailer mentioned “the director of Gone Baby Gone” but did not mention him by name. I suspect some people thought it had been directed by Clint Eastwood.
Quite believable since Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River as well as Shutter Island are all from novels by Boston novelist Dennis Lehane. Each features a slap in the face twist at the end. I know people who hate each of them because they fail to have neat, happy endings.