21 Directors

 Choosing your favourite directors is a tough task, because the natural instinct is to run to favourite films and pick the man behind them. However, as I've learnt whilst thinking on it, a lot of my favourite films are by directors who's entire repetoire I don't enjoy all that much, so to come up with the top dogs I decided they needed at least 3 classics on the list, but then changed that to 4 due to the length of list, as such, it saw evictions such as Jonathan Demme, Oliver Stone, Paul Verhoeven, Jacques Audiard and Ben Affleck. There's probably some other glaring omissions, but for now, this'll have to do.

As per the natural order, a new breed of successors are moving up through the ranks, and these are the guys who'll no doubt be taking topspots in years to come...Rian Johnson, Gareth Edwards, Park Chan-Wook, Steve McQueen, Neil Blomkamp, Martin McDonagh, Zack Snyder, Guillermo del Toro, Richard Ayoade, Michael R. Roskam, Edgar Wright and Eran Creevy.

 

1. Michael Mann – Heat, Collateral, Miami Vice, Public Enemies

2. Quentin Tarantino –Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained

3. Francis Ford Coppola – The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation

4. David Fincher – Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network

5. Wes Anderson – Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited, Moonrise Kingdom

6. Chris Nolan – Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Inception

7. PT Anderson – Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will be Blood, The Master

8. Danny Boyle – Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine

9. Ridley Scott – Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, American Gangster

10. John Hillcoat – The Proposition, The Road, Lawless

11. James Cameron– Aliens, Terminator, Terminator II: Judgement Day, Avatar

12. Steven Spielberg – ET, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, Munich

13. Stanley Kubrick – A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey

14. Coen Brothers – Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, True Grit

15. Kathryn Bigelow– Point Break, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty

16. Sam Mendes – American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Skyfall

17. John McTiernan – Die Hard, Predator, The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard with a Vengeance

18. Robert Zemeckis – BTTF, BTTF Part II, BTTF Part III, Forrest Gump

19. Sergio Leone – A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Once Upon a Time in the West

20. Roman Polanski –Chinatown, Frantic, The Ghost, Carnage

21. Clint Eastwood –Unforgiven, A Perfect World, The Bridges of Madison County, Mystic River