Greatest Active Film Directors
Entertainment Weekly recently came out with a list of its “25 Greatest Active Film Directors.” It’s a horrible list. The ordering, the omissions – it’s borderline offensive. As a public service, I have both corrected EW’s list and expanded it to the top 50. Seriously, no need to thank me.
You can see EW’s list at their website here, or, if you hate the whole irritating slideshow format, you can just see the whole list one on page here (via my new favorite blog /film).
This is, it should be noted, a pretty tough task. On the one hand, you want to credit directors with long, impressive careers, even if those careers have tapered off a bit as they’ve gotten older. But on the other hand, you want to recognize directors who clearly have talent but who just haven’t made many movies yet. So you’ve got to balance your Lifetime Achievement Award winners against your promising up-and-comers. And how do you compare somebody like Ridley Scott, who has made some modern classics like Blade Runner and Alien but also some clunkers like G.I. Jane and A Good Year, against somebody like Steven Soderbergh, who hasn’t made anything as perfect as Blade Runner but who has had a much more consistent run of movies that are good-to-great?
So, okay, it’s tough, and my list probably isn’t quite perfect – but EW’s list is still indefensible and embarrassing.
50 Greatest Active Film Directors
1. MARTIN SCORSESE
Greatest Hits: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, The Departed
2. DAVID LYNCH
Greatest Hits: Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive
3. JOEL & ETHAN COEN
Greatest Hits: Blood Simple, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Though?, No Country for Old Men
4. WOODY ALLEN
Greatest Hits: Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors
5. STEVEN SPIELBERG
Greatest Hits: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, Munich
6. SIDNEY LUMET
Greatest Hits: 12 Angry Men, Fail-Safe, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, The Verdict, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead
7. SPIKE LEE
Greatest Hits: She’s Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, 25th Hour
8. PAUL THOMAS ANDERSON
Greatest Hits: Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, There Will Be Blood
9. QUENTIN TARANTINO
Greatest Hits: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2
10. GUS VAN SANT
Greatest Hits: Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, Gerry, Elephant, Last Days, Paranoid Park, Milk
11. MIKE NICHOLS
Greatest Hits: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, The Birdcage, Primary Colors, Closer
12. STEVEN SODERBERGH
Greatest Hits: sex, lies, and videotape; Schizopolis; Out of Sight; The Limey; Erin Brockovich; Traffic; Ocean’s Eleven
13. JONATHAN DEMME
Greatest Hits: The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married
14. RIDLEY SCOTT
Greatest Hits: Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator
15. ROMAN POLANSKI
Greatest Hits: Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby, The Pianist
16. PAUL GREENGRASS
Greatest Hits: The Bourne Supremacy, United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum
17. DARREN ARONOFSKY
Greatest Hits: Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler
18. ANG LEE
Greatest Hits: The Ice Storm; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Brokeback Mountain; Lust, Caution
19. DAVID FINCHER
Greatest Hits: Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
20. DANNY BOYLE
Greatest Hits: Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire
21. BRAD BIRD
Greatest Hits: The Incredibles, Ratatouille
22. CHRISTOPHER NOLAN
Greatest Hits: Memento, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight
23. SPIKE JONZE
Greatest Hits: Being John Malkovitch, Adaptation
24. PEDRO ALMODOVAR
Greatest Hits: All About My Mother, Volver, Talk to Her
25. WES ANDERSON
Greatest Hits: Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic
26. DAVID CRONENBERG
Greatest Hits: The Fly, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises
27. ALFONSO CUARON
Greatest Hits: Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men
28. SAM RAIMI
Greatest Hits: Evil Dead, Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, A Simple Plan, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2
29. JUDD APATOW
Greatest Hits: The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up
30. TODD FIELD
Greatest Hits: In the Bedroom, Little Children
31. ALEXANDER PAYNE
Greatest Hits: Election, About Schmidt, Sideways
32. TIM BURTON
Greatest Hits: Beetle Juice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, Ed Wood, Big Fish
33. SOFIA COPPOLA
Greatest Hits: The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation
34. MICHEL GONDRY
Greatest Hits: Human Nature, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep
35. ANDREW STANTON
Greatest Hits: Finding Nemo, Wall-E
36. CLINT EASTWOOD
Greatest Hits: Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima
37. MICHAEL MANN
Greatest Hits: Manhunter, Heat, The Insider, Ali, Collateral
38. FERNANDO MEIRELLES
Greatest Hits: City of God, The Constant Gardener
39. CAMERON CROWE
Greatest Hits: Say Anything…, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, Vanilla Sky
40. STEPHEN FREARS
Greatest Hits: Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen
41. NOAH BAUMBACH
Greatest Hits: The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding
42. BAZ LUHRMANN
Greatest Hits: Romeo+Juliet, Moulin Rouge
43. GEORGE CLOONEY
Greatest Hits: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind; Good Night, and Good Luck
44. JON FAVREAU
Greatest Hits: Elf, Iron Man
45. BRIAN DE PALMA
Greatest Hits: Carrie, Scarface, The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible
46. KEVIN SMITH
Greatest Hits: Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma
47. PETER JACKSON
Greatest Hits: the Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong
48. RON HOWARD
Greatest Hits: Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, Frost/Nixon
49. JAMES CAMERON
Greatest Hits: The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic
50. SAM MENDES
Greatest Hits: American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Revolutionary Road
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 22 February 2009 at 1:12 pm:
I respect your knowledge in this area, but Clint Eastwood ought to be higher on your list. He has been consistently good. I lost Judd Apatow’s stuff and I respect comedy, but that genre of comedy does not use the full abilities of film. More serious movies try to do so. Eastwood makes those kinds of movies. Also, Gran Turino should be on his list of Greatest Hits.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 22 February 2009 at 1:13 pm:
I would also argue that Burton should be higher. He has had a substantial impact on our culture.
Comment by Brian Pierce on 22 February 2009 at 3:36 pm:
You actually pinpointed two of the ones that were most difficult for me to rank. With Eastwood, he’s made a string of movies that are definitely good (though Space Cowboys was pretty crappy), though few are really great. Unforgiven, I guess, is a classic, and I’m just biased against it because I’m not a huge fan of westerns. Also, I haven’t seen Gran Torino. But, yeah, I could see bumping him up a bit. (Incidentally, I read he’s making a movie about Nelson Mandela starring Morgan Freeman, which I’m pretty excited about.)
I totally stand by Judd Apatow’s ranking. It’s true he doesn’t do a lot of camera movement, but that’s what makes him such a great director – he knows that comedy (especially his kind of comedy) works best with the least distraction, and he’s very good at just doing simple, still shots and letting the performances be the center of attention. Sometimes being a great director lies in embracing simplicity.
Burton was VERY tough. He DOES have a huge impact on our popular culture, but at the same time, he’s sort of a hack. I’m a little handicapped because I haven’t seen what’s supposed to be his best movie, Ed Wood, so there’s that. But Edward Scissorhands is a great, original movie, and that’s kind of it. Not that some of his other movies aren’t good – they are, but he’s supposed to be this visionary, original director, when really most of his movies are remakes or adaptations or sequels or what have you. He also totally bastardized Planet of the Apes, which is hard to forgive.