Top 25 Film Directors

[Albino Rover]

25. Darren Aronofsky

First on the list is one of America's most exciting and original visionaries, a master of dark cinema.

A Harvard graduate, Aronofsky came to prominence with a very unusual debut film, Pi: a completely non-linear, black-and-white thriller/character drama focused on the dangerous nature of loneliness and paranoia. The film was very low-budget, costing $60,000 to make, and Aronofsky raised a large part of the cash from $100 donations from friends- he eventually paid each of them back $150.

From Pi came another obsession-destruction story that still chills its viewers almost fifteen years on. Requiem For A Dream is a piercing drama about the social and medical extremes of different forms of drug addiction, and Aronofsky couldn’t have portrayed it better, using a wealth of visual tricks beyond his years. He was 31 when he made the film.

After Requiem, Aronofsky turned down the chance to direct Batman Begins, in order to work on mind-bending, multidimensional romance-fantasy-drama The Fountain, again adding new tricks to his toybox. Unlike his first two films, The Fountain split critics and audiences, but it's undeniably fascinating, original and extraordinarily-shot.

His most commercial film to date is probably the 2008 drama The Wrestler, a superb portrayal of personal battles in work, love and health, made in a completely different style from Aronofsky’s previous films and told in a much more straightforward and linear fashion.

Perhaps his most ambitious project to date is the 2010 psychological drama Black Swan, a film about deliberate loss of innocence, search of the self, jealousy, rivalry and sexuality set against the New York ballet scene, visually contrasting light with dark with intricate and impossible camerawork, which makes for a spectacle throughout the film, from the opening scene to the last. It is one of the best and most appropriately directed film of this decade so far.

Aronofsky is only 45 but already he’s established himself as very inventive, diverse, philosophical and true to his ideas.

His sixth film, Noah, is to be released at the end of this month.

[Co.Down Hibee]

The Wrestler is an excellent film right enough,never heard much about the other stuff though.

[EdgarusQPFC]

The Wrestler is an excellent film right enough,never heard much about the other stuff though.

Agree, as a big Wrestling fan and really interested in the behind the scenes aspects of it, i found the film delightful, one of the best ive seen.

The ex forced me to go see Black Swan at the cinema "f**k sakes, a ballet movie?" Naturally was my response. Fast forward 20 minutes in and i was glued to the screen, its an astounding Thriller. Really keeps you interested throughout, never a dull moment and plenty of shocks. Portman getting herself off while in her knickers and lezzing up with Mila Kunis certainly helps

[forehead7]

f**k, I probably should've had him in my list. Didn't realise he'd only made 5 films, I figured he had a bigger back catalogue but I'd just never heard of them. I might seek The Fountain out since it's the only one I've not seen.

[Christophe]

Seen all of Aronofsky's work, love it all bar The Fountain which was a bit of a slog.

I'd order them:

1. Requiem For A Dream

2. Black Swan

3. pi

4. The Wrestler

5. The Fountain

Massively looking forward to Noah, which looks absolutely epic.

[Albino Rover]

24. Sam Peckinpah

Famous for unreserved and often prolonged scenes of immoral behaviour, he pulled no punches and split audiences with a new age of westerns and thrillers. The opinions of Peckinpah’s films may be mixed but he’s undeniably a master of his trade and a pioneer of some aspects of cinema we see today.

His first two films were PG-rated westerns Ride The High Country and Major Dundee, but Peckinpah came to prominence with the first of his dark westerns, The Wild Bunch, which as well as being a tense and well-directed epic starring many great actors was loaded with bloody violence, was the first film to show an exit wound and was dangerously close to receiving an X rating.

145 people are shot dead in the picture.

The Wild Bunch disturbed some western fans but for others it was an exciting escalation of the violence already inferred in previous gun-slinging westerns. In any case Peckinpah’s savage visuals opened the floodgates to a new scale of cinema action in all genres, although it’s seldom been bloodier.

He made his name with plentiful barbarism but also dealt with lighter matters with films like The Ballad Of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner, which showed he could recreate his visual expertise with soft-boiled material, although between those films, in 1971, he returned to what he’s famous for.

He almost got the X-rating for The Wild Bunch, but he surely got it for Straw Dogs, a tense, shocking and extremely disturbing thriller, based on an American couple who relocate to Britain. It was released in the same year as A Clockwork Orange and Dirty Harry and created more controversy than either.

He made a great number of films throughout the 1970s including The Getaway, Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia and Cross Of Iron, all of which are honoured as great pieces of work to this day.

He also had forgettable works like The Killer Elite, Convoy and his last film, The Osterman Weekend, but the good and great by far outweigh those held in lower regard.

30 years after his death, he's possibly better remembered for the content of his films than his work behind the camera, but it has to be emphasised that he was just as iconic as an artist as he was a gore-merchant. His recurring themes of brutality and savagery including pillaging, murder and rape are usually portrayed at least partially against a backdrop of innocent townsfolk, women and children, making those themes not just exploitation or indulgence but a matter of philosophy, questioning morality of humanity, something we now see violence used for in every genre, even romance and comedy.

[EdgarusQPFC]

Seen all of Aronofsky's work, love it all bar The Fountain which was a bit of a slog.

I'd order them:

1. Requiem For A Dream

2. Black Swan

3. pi

4. The Wrestler

5. The Fountain

Massively looking forward to Noah, which looks absolutely epic.

Only seen The Wrestler and Black Swan so far, but if they are anything to go by then ill definitely give the rest a shot. There's been reports that Aronofsky has been battling the studio regarding the final cut of Noah after alot of negative opinion by Christian Groups. Hope that doesn't ruin the film, cause usually when the studio stick their nose in, it kills a film.

[Albino Rover]

23. Wes Anderson

Not afraid of including silliness in his movies, he’s the king of quirky comedy and has mastered a very unusual and distinct appearance to all his films.

His name is stamped on every scene he makes; from screenplay to costume design everything is a misfit, but together everything seems to fit perfectly. And that’s no coincidence, because he’s so meticulous with his camera angles, use of symmetry, lighting, colours and trademark Futura Bold font that he’s created an instantly recognisable brand.

Who else could that be?

After meeting Owen Wilson at university, Anderson worked with him on a short film called Bottle Rocket, which ending up getting a spot at the Sundance Film Festival and subsequently received funding for a feature-length film. The film was a cult hit, and since then the cult has grown bigger with each film Wes has made.

Eccentric high school comedy Rushmore was released in 1998 to much more recognition and praise. He followed it up with his first massive ensemble piece, dysfunctional family affair The Royal Tenenbaums, and things got more bizarre with underwater adventure The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

The Darjeeling Limited, like Tenenbaums, brought a more serious element of family drama and soul-searching into the comic proceedings, but his next film, an imaginative take on Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox as an animated heist movie is perhaps his funniest and most accessible work so far.

Runaway-scouts comedy Moonrise Kingdom, as well as being a very charming childhood love story, ensured more farce and slapstick amongst a constellation of formidable actors in unlikely roles, and ridiculous costumes, and The Grand Budapest Hotel promises to be of the same hysterical nature, combining the usual Anderson mayhem with a very unusual murder mystery. It comes out on Friday.

His great writing whimsically blends the weird and the wonderful, but his very precise direction of the camera and the cast brings that writing to life masterfully. There’s almost a storybook feel to all his films, and his fantasies may be child-like but there’s a maturity about Anderson the director to be respected.

[captainkev]

23. Wes Anderson

Not afraid of including silliness in his movies, he’s the king of quirky comedy and has mastered a very unusual and distinct appearance to all his films.

His name is stamped on every scene he makes; from screenplay to costume design everything is a misfit, but together everything seems to fit perfectly. And that’s no coincidence, because he’s so meticulous with his camera angles, use of symmetry, lighting, colours and trademark Futura Bold font that he’s created an instantly recognisable brand.

Who else could that be?

After meeting Owen Wilson at university, Anderson worked with him on a short film called Bottle Rocket, which ending up getting a spot at the Sundance Film Festival and subsequently received funding for a feature-length film. The film was a cult hit, and since then the cult has grown bigger with each film Wes has made.

Eccentric high school comedy Rushmore was released in 1998 to much more recognition and praise. He followed it up with his first massive ensemble piece, dysfunctional family affair The Royal Tenenbaums, and things got more bizarre with underwater adventure The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

The Darjeeling Limited, like Tenenbaums, brought a more serious element of family drama and soul-searching into the comic proceedings, but his next film, an imaginative take on Dahl’s Fantastic Mr. Fox as an animated heist movie is perhaps his funniest and most accessible work so far.

Runaway-scouts comedy Moonrise Kingdom, as well as being a very charming childhood love story, ensured more farce and slapstick amongst a constellation of formidable actors in unlikely roles, and ridiculous costumes, and The Grand Budapest Hotel promises to be of the same hysterical nature, combining the usual Anderson mayhem with a very unusual murder mystery. It comes out on Friday.

His great writing whimsically blends the weird and the wonderful, but his very precise direction of the camera and the cast brings that writing to life masterfully. There’s almost a storybook feel to all his films, and his fantasies may be child-like but there’s a maturity about Anderson the director to be respected.

Funnily enough I watched Rushmore for the first time last night. Superb film. If I was to do my list again today he would have been on it. Can't wait to go see the Grand Budapest Hotel on friday.

[forehead7]

#5 on my list, I'm big on Wes Anderson. His comedy just hits me every time. I haven't seen Fantastic Mr Fox. Tenebaums and Steve Zissou are fantastic, the former is right up there with my favourite comedies.

[yoda]

A good start with those three.

I didn't have Aronofsky on my list (he might have made my shortlist of 20) but he's a talented director, The Fountain aside. That said, I think Noah looks horrendous. I'm surprised he didn't break the top 20, IIRC he's always appreciated on here.

I've only seen two or three of Peckinpah's films (The Getaway and The Wild Bunch stick out) and I enjoyed them. I'm reluctant to watch Straw Dogs but it is a film I need to see. I hadn't even considered him but it is somewhat refreshing to see a director from a previous generation in the list at this point. My selection was dominated by 'new' directors - I've a couple of omissions I am regretting - and I imagine the overall list will be along similar lines.

I want to hate Wes Anderson. He's quirky and very 'hipster', and I should hate him with a passion. As it is, he's a talented director and although it takes me two or three viewings to appreciate his work, he's worthy of a place in this list (although I expected higher). His use of music is terrific. Fantastic Mr. Fox was on Film4 last Sunday - it's arguably one of the 'best made' (for want of a better phrase) films of the 2000s. Deeply unsettling though.

[Christophe]

Fantastic Mr Fox is on Film4 again tonight guys, timely. I shall be watching, it is excellent.

[Co.Down Hibee]

very good film, i always thought it was the Coen Brothers who had done it, may have to look at some more of Andersons work.

[captainkev]

Fantastic Mr Fox is on Film4 again tonight guys, timely. I shall be watching, it is excellent.

Thanks for the heads up, got this on record now. Was never a fan of the book when I was growing up so I wasn't interested in this when it came out but I'm going to give it a watch due to having watched Life Aquatic, Rushmore and Tenenbaums recently.

[Albino Rover]

22. Bill Forsyth

Scotland’s most significant shot-caller, this man seldom failed to capture the hearts of those who see his films. Even when dealing with mature issues like unemployment, heartbreak and home-sickness, Bill Forsyth never concentrated on the negatives but acknowledged and made light of them and it’s that good intention and spirit that’s made his films friendly favourites all over the world. He sees the light in all his characters, and even the serious consequences in his plots are always ironed out by plentiful humour and social justification, making even the wrong-doers forces of good.

He grew up in Glasgow and left school to make documentaries for small production companies. He did it for many years, but his calling was always something more creative.

His first film, That Sinking Feeling, is a depiction of depressed, unemployed teenagers in late seventies Glasgow, made into a comedic and very charming heist movie. Like so many independent filmmakers Forsyth was desperate for funding, and he wrote hundreds of begging letters to companies all over Britain. A few of the big companies like Tennents and William Hill put up small amounts but one of his big targets, A.G. Barr, turned him down, which provoked Forsyth to rewrite the ending of the film with an anti-Irn-Bru twist. His stars were some of the shiniest gems of the Glasgow Youth Theatre who, along with almost everybody else who worked on the film, worked for nothing. The 1983 re-dub for its release in America cost more to make than the film itself.

Forsyth’s second work, Andrina, is a lost film- it hasn’t been seen since it was aired by the BBC in 1980, but his next film, Gregory’s Girl, has now been seen and loved all over the world. It’s universally admired as one of the best portrayals of care-free teenage life, going to school, friendships and the simplification of young love; it even offers a unique perspective on life with the age and gender-reversal among the characters, but no one from outside Scotland can appreciate in full how well it captures the idealism of the Scottish new town, the authentic Scottish humour and the primitive importance of football. Bill was loyal to the stars who made That Sinking Feeling happen, and cast the main four boys in the film, alongside Dee Hepburn, Claire Grogan and a few recognisable Scottish faces in cameo roles.

Local Hero offered a completely different view of Scotland, bringing an American to a North Sea village community in the plot, and bringing Scottish cinema to America with the film. Critics and audiences across the world were forced to look at Forsyth's humour, drama, stunning location shooting, complex characters and thought-provoking themes, and for the first time take Scotland seriously.

Comfort And Joy was a grown-up look at the personal life of the city professional, the psychology of getting dumped and the middle-aged desperation to find meaning in life, set against a backdrop of Glasgow’s ice cream wars of the 1980s. It was also possibly his goodbye letter to Scotland: his best-loved and longest-lasting films are the ones he set at home- but to develop his career Forsyth felt he had to go further afield.

Three years after Comfort And Joy, he went to Canada to make 1950s comic drama Housekeeping, his first film with predominantly female leads, based on a novel by Marilynne Robinson. He took a long time to adapt the book into a film but it was very well received, and was his gateway to direct big-budget American crime comedy Breaking In, but this was perhaps the first sign that Hollywood wasn’t for him.

Forsyth is a great writer and director but he’s probably about as naive as filmmakers get, and ultimately that was his downfall. He had high hopes for another big-budget film, Being Human, but Warner Bros made massive changes to his original design, and after being creatively impeded by producer interference for the last time, Forsyth disowned the film, and was put off making any more.

He came back in 1999 with Gregory’s Two Girls, which showed the awkward, naive nature of the teenagers continuing into adulthood, which (if nothing else) is a reassuring thought to young people unsteady about growing up, and a monument to Scottish art in what proved to be an important year for the country.

In 2009 he was reportedly working on a new script, but in the last five years nothing more has come of it. He turns 68 this year, and as interesting as it may be to see his impression on modern life, perhaps it’s better left to the imagination.

He’s still regarded as a wonderful filmmaker by this generation, but in his prime he was much more than that: Bill Forsyth was a huge part of our national identity in a time of the poll tax and miners’ strikes and, without fully intending to, put Thatcher-era Scotland on the map. On an artistic level he not only made Scotland's first film masterpieces but single-handedly kick-started the biggest wave of Scottish film movement.

[Ludo*1]

Only ever seen Gregory's Girl and wasn't a fan I must say. Never heard of Forsyth either. Will have to look more into him.

[Bold Rover]

Forsyth is the first of my ten to appear. I've. Nothing to add to Albino's splendid synopsis.

[Co.Down Hibee]

Local Hero was a wonderful film as was Comfort and Joy,

[Albino Rover]

21. James Cameron

Having made the first ever $100 million and $200 million dollar movies, and broken more box-office records than any other director, many seem him as as much a money-maker as a movie-maker, but he’s always put creation before anything else in his life, and he has 4 divorce papers' worth of testament to that. He's also always been driven by ongoing development of equipment, pushing technological boundaries for the last 30 years and investing millions in state-of-the-art versions of 3D, underwater and remote-control filming equipment. But it wasn't always like that.

At 22 he was a truck driver in rural Ontario, writing science-fiction. Apparently when he saw Star Wars his first reaction was being was pissed off someone thought of it before him, but since then he’s had a few original ideas of his own.

He studied special effects, both at USC and by watching Star Wars over and over again, and during that time he built a fully-functioning robot, which he put it in a short film he made in 1978, called Xenogenesis. In light of the film he got his foot in the door with the small production companies and found work in production design and special effects for some sci-fi films in the early 1980s.

Once he was in it didn't take him long to build up a reputation, and after his special effects work on aquatic thriller Piranha, Cameron was invited to direct the sequel, but he was fired halfway through shooting in the Cayman Islands. The story goes that after losing the job as director he was invited to assist with filming and editing, but he came down with food poisoning for a few days, during which he had a nightmare about an invincible cyborg coming from the future to kill him.

The big studios loved the script for The Terminator but no one trusted Cameron to direct the film. He knew it could be his big break so eventually he sold the screenplay to Pacific Western Productions for $1 just so that he could direct it himself. It was a low budget film but it was an instant hit and selling the rights to the script for a dollar proved to be one of the wisest moves in Cameron's career. The next year he married the head of Pacific Western Productions.

After The Terminator (and despite Piranha 2) Cameron made his reputation as "King of the Sequels", writing and directing the horrific and sweat-inducing Aliens, silencing some producers and crew members who were cynical of him despite not having seen any of his work. Then he followed it up with one of the most thrilling and entertaining, and by far the most visually outstanding film of its time, Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Both of those films still rank among the best and most influential sci-fi masterpieces of the modern era, and both made a fortune at box-office. Between those came a very ambitious and expensive underwater suspense thriller, The Abyss, and a marriage to Kathryn Bigelow.

Cameron teamed up with Arnold Schwarzenegger one last time to make True Lies, a film which didn’t take itself as seriously as his previous films, but was still an ambitious production, full of the same special effects and just as expensive as Terminator 2. Its legacy hasn't been as lasting as some other Cameron films but it was pure entertainment, and audiences loved it.

Technologically he trumped everything done before him with Titanic, a film whose effects are still massively impressive and effective 16 years on. On paper it was unlikely an epic, romantic disaster movie could work, but he made it work, and it's already a classic film that everybody has seen and is familiar with; from the "King of the World" scene to the hypothermic climax it's one of the most iconic films ever made and, of course, one of the most financially rewarding. After Titanic Cameron seemed to have gone on a bit of a hiatus, but in fact he kept himself very busy, not only getting married twice (to Linda Hamilton in 1997, then to his current wife, Suzy Amis, in 2000) but also beginning an apparent obsession with deep sea exploration, making some experimental and very interesting documentaries like Ghost Of The Abyss and Aliens Of The Deep, in IMAX.

Cameron had also begun another obsession: over that time he had been working at a new scale of something which in previous generations had been nothing more than a gimmick. After 12 years with no feature films, with his invention of the Fusion system, he brought a new generation of 3D to cinema, introducing its effect with a film which is not only a visual spectacle but the first true 3D experience. In 2009 he brought us Avatar, and with it he broke every box-office record he set with Titanic, but more significantly than that, he showed us how well this new kit works. It's only been used on a handful of films so far, but it's as close to the true 3D effect as anyone has come.

Since then he has announced three Avatar sequels to be filmed back-to-back in 2015, as well as the possibility of a Hiroshima project based on a Japanese survivor Cameron met just days before the man's death, and a live-action version of Battle Angel Alita, to indulge his Japanese manga fascination.

He also recently became only the third man (and first solo) to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, and had a newly-discovered breed of Venezuelan frog named Pristimantis jamescameroni, in honour of his continuing work for the environment.

The exploration really hasn't stopped since he was that 22-year old Star Wars-influenced trucker; he’s become a pioneer in developing much of the technology and many of the special effects we see today, and in doing so has shaped the current generation of big-budget filmmaking. He’s always aimed to push the possibilities of film to its limits and time and time again has amazed the world with the visuals of every film he’s made. He's done so much with technology and money that it's easy to forget the fundamentals, but the science means nothing without the art, and that always requires a director who can capture action, realise the story and involve and entertain their audiences- and he can certainly do that. James Cameron may spend a lot of time and money making new tools, but he's always kept the old ones sharp.

[EdgarusQPFC]

Cameron is the first of my list to be mentioned. Its no secret that Aliens is my favorite film of all time, followed closely by Terminator 2. Great write up Rover.