30 Day Movie Challenge Day 10: Your Favorite Director

[Chris Beveridge]

There are a lot of modern directors that I really enjoy, whose works will draw me in no matter what they do just to see what they come up with. I’ve long enjoyed Joss Whedon’s work and I definitely enjoy the slate of films James Cameron has developed over the years. Ridley Scott has his […]

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[Sigma UFO]

Re: 30 Day Movie Challenge Day 10: Your Favorite Director

Stanley Kubrick is a solid answer to the question. So would be Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder and Michael Curtiz. Leaving Hollywood, there is Mario Bava and John Woo.

Of currently active directors, I would put Paul Thomas Anderson on top.

But for overall, it has to be John Huston. Not really an auteur, he was an artistic chameleon, always finding the right tone for each new project. From The Maltese Falcon to The Dead, I can't think of any directors who filmed as many great films.

[bctaris]

Re: 30 Day Movie Challenge Day 10: Your Favorite Director

It almost feels like I have to have a favorite director for each decade, or generation. In some kind of order from the 50s: Wilder, Kubrick, Peckinpah, Allen, Tarantino, Fincher, PTA, Jonze, Anderson, and a dozen in between. So I think I can only go for current favorite still making movies now, and I think that has to be Wes Andersen. I bought into his idiosyncratic aesthetic early, and I have enormous appreciation that he's has simply been gone deeper and deeper with it, but managing each time to do it with a different type of story. The Grand Budapest Hotel managed somehow, while the richest example of his style--nearly all sound-staged scenes, almost no locations--to be his best yet. I really like to say that a director's latest is his or her best.

[Hitsugi Amachi]

Re: 30 Day Movie Challenge Day 10: Your Favorite Director

I'm not sure I can narrow it down to one. There's a shortlist of directors whose work has my attention, many already mentioned: Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, Quentin Tarantino; and a few not: John Ford, Martin Scorsese, and Clint Eastwood (as an actor…meh; as a director, he has done some very interesting work).

[General Hentai]

Re: 30 Day Movie Challenge Day 10: Your Favorite Director

I love John Ford's work, and also Akira Kurosawa's films. True story: Kurosawa agreed to direct the Japanese portion of the film Tora! Tora! Tora! because he'd been led to believe that Ford would be directing the American side. When he learned this wasn't the case, he left the production. Kubrick is great as well, and there are others out there worthy of praise. One should not forget the versatility of Spielberg, who has committed the grave sin of appealing to the masses.

But my favorite is someone not mentioned: Hitchcock. My Lord, the pantheon of incredible movies astounds even today. Rear Window. Psycho. Strangers of a Train. Vertigo. North by Northwest. Just naming 5, and you can probably think of several more. Definitely a messed up man, but utterly brilliant as a film crafter.