Just finished watching Sunshine State directed (and written by) John Sayles… it’s yet another great addition to his catalogue of fine films. With that in mind, here are some of my favorite directors and some of the films that make them my favorites:
John Sayles - Sunshine State, Eight Men Out, Matewan, Brother From Another Planet and Lone Star
Akira Kurosawa - The Seven Samauri, Ran, Kagemusha, Rashômon and Yojimbo
John Carpenter - Dark Star, Halloween, Big Trouble in Little China, The Thing, Escape From New York and Assault on Precinct 13
Francis Ford Coppola - Dementia 13, Godfather (1 & 2), Apocalypse Now and Rumblefish
Terry Gilliam - Brazil, Time Bandits, Monty Python & The Holy Grail and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
John Houston - Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon and The Man Who Would Be King
Some other definitely worth a mention…
Sam Peckinpah
Alfred Hitchcock
Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Stanley Kubrick
Richard Lester
Joel & Ethan Coen
Sergio Leone
Martin Scorsese
Bruce McDonald
Fritz Lang
If I was on a desert island and could only have the complete filmographies of 10 directors, I think those 10 would probably be:
Luis Bunuel (El, The Discreet Charm of the Bougeoisie)
Stanley Donen (Singin’ in the Rain, The Pajama Game)
Howard Hawks (Rio Bravo, Only Angels Have Wings)
Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo, North by Northwest)
Chuck Jones (Duck Amuck, Past Perfumance)
Buster Keaton (The General, Seven Chances)
Fritz Lang (Scarlet Street, Metropolis)
Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu Monogatari, Sisters of the Gion)
Michael Powell (Black Narcissus, The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp)
Eric Rohmer (Chloe in the Afternoon, The Marquise of O)
So many of my favorites have already been mentioned (Kubrick, Hitchcock, Peckinpah, Ford, et al, but there’s one notable omission from the list: Roman Polanski. If all he’d ever done was make Chinatown he’d be one of my favorites. But add Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, Rosemary’s Baby, The Fearless Vampire Killers and now The Pianist. He’s a giant.
Oh, and let’s add Fredrico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni to the list as well.
Takashi Miike - I’ve only recently discovered this Japanese auteur an I’m discovering he can really make sensational movies. The first 5 and last 10 minutes of Dead or Alive is some of the most inventive filmaker I’ve seen in a long time. Ichi The Killer is quite simply a sensational gangster movie and Audition left me cowering behind the sofa.
David Fincher - Alien3, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room. I love this guy’s style of filmaking. Fight Club is especially wonderful. I consider him a toned down & slightly less inventive than Miike but still capable of wonderous things.
Robert Altman - Has done an awful lot of crap in his career but when he is on form he is outstanding. The Player, Short Cuts, McCabe and Mrs Miller are my favorites.
John Woo - I love his pre-American films when he had more freedom. The Killer, Hard Boiled and A Better Tomorrow are 3 of the finest action/gangster films ever made.
James Cameron - Directs action and special effects better than most. T2 and True Lies are terrific action films.
Peter Greenaway - Studied Fine Arts at university and it shows. Outstandingly beautiful films to look at. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover and Prosperos Books ar career highlights.
Stephen Frears - The Grifters and High Fidelity are superb films. Seems to work very well with John Cusack in my opinion
Billy Wilder alone will do me on a desert island -
The Front Page (1974)
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)
The Fortune Cookie (1966)
Irma la Douce (1963)
The Apartment (1960)
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)
The Seven Year Itch (1955)
Sabrina (1954)
Stalag 17 (1953)
The Big Carnival (1951)
Sunset Blvd. (1950)
A Foreign Affair (1948)
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Double Indemnity (1944)
Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
