Top Twenty Directors Part 1: C.C.C Issue #49

Top 20 Film Directors (Part 1)

As a film fan, it’s impossible not to acknowledge the first credit that almost always pops up the second a movie fades to black and the end credits roll. Of course, I’m talking about the director.

There are so many incredible directors that have inspired me, entertained me, scared me, made me laugh, made me think, or made me feel varying emotions, I had to expand this list to a double feature just to cover all of my favourites. And that’s the key here: this is not a definitive best directors of all-time—many of these directors probably never show up on most film buff’s favourites lists.

These are my personal favourites, for varying reasons that I’ll get into, and the order is not very strict, especially on this first list. I’m not trying to compare these directors and their bodies of work, I’m just discussing them one at a time.

Honourable mention: Rob Reiner.

Rob Reiner came very close to making it onto this list, but I can’t go on without quickly mentioning why he almost made it. He directed two of the best Stephen King movie adaptations (Stand By Me and Misery), which are also two of my favourite movies of all-time, plus the mockumentary This is Spinal Tap (which only gets funnier with each viewing) and When Harry Met Sally (one of the best rom coms ever). He’s done some great work, but weighing the amount of quality films he’s done against the amount of great work from all these other directors, it doesn’t quite get him in there. Still, check out the movies I mentioned, they are all worth your time.

20. Guillermo Del Toro

This Mexico-born director started his career by making the Spanish-language horror movie The Devil’s Backbone, and since then has alternated between English and Spanish films, with projects spanning several genres, but he’s found perhaps his greatest success in the dark fantasy genre with Pan’s Labyrinth: one of the greatest fantasy films of all-time. His favourites of mine are the two Hellboy movies, which I think are still among the best superhero movies ever, and his homage to Japanese giant monster movies, Pacific Rim. His movies might not always be critical favourites (his latest, Crimson Peak, seemed to be loved by as many people who hated it), but he always delivers a visual spectacle and never loses the sense of humanity or fun. My only complaint is he tends to jump around from project to project, and as a result, there are some big gaps between when his films are released, but once he’s decided on a project and officially starts filming it, that’s enough reason to get excited.

19. Martin Scorsese

I know, it’s probably blasphemous to place who the majority of film fans (and filmmakers) consider one of the greatest directors this close to the bottom of the list—the lesser of two list, no less—but guess what? Get real, deal with it. It’s not like I’m saying I don’t like Martin Scorsese. He’s a master of the gangster genre, a genre I’m not a big fan of, but movies like Goodfellas, Casino, and Gangs of New York are so well made, I love them, despite how I feel about gangster movies as a whole. And that’s the key to why I think he’s among the greatest directors working today, his movies are always well-made, even if they don’t always hit home with critics or audiences. I loved Shutter Island, even though most viewed it as one of Scorsese’s weaker films, and despite Raging Bull being a difficult watch, it’s also another incredible entry in his filmography. Even though the subject matter of his movies doesn’t always pique my interest, I totally get why most people place him so high up on the list of all-time greatest; he is just that good.

18. Wes Craven

Despite not limited to just directing horror movies, Wes Craven will be forever known as one of the masters of the genre, and for good reason. He first came on the scene with the brutal low-budget The Last House on the Left, and while that movie, along with his next one, The Hills Have Eyes, are both considered two of the scariest movies of the 1970’s, it was 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street that cemented his status as one of the top horror directors ever. Years later, after the slasher genre became saturated and the Elm Street franchise he’d kicked off became stale, he reinvigorated both with the meta-sequel New Nightmare, which is often overlooked, because everyone goes straight to his next movie, Scream, which functioned as a scary slasher movie and a satire of the genre. Though he later directed all three Scream sequels, plus some other original movies like People Under the Stairs and Red Eye, nothing would come close to the originality of his earlier work. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of Craven’s films, and when listening to him talk in interviews, you really get a sense of how intelligent this man was—something I think not enough casual movie-goers are aware of. It’s a shame we lost him last year, but his legacy will live on for generations to come, thanks to his creative genius.

17. Frank Darabont

Before he became a movie director, Frank Darabont broke into the film industry as a screenwriter, with credits including Nightmare on Elm Street 3, The Fly II, and The Blob remake. While not all of those are standout pieces of work, early in his career, he wrote and directed a short film based on the Stephen King short story “The Woman in the Room”, which eventually led to Darabont adapting another of King’s stories, “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”, only it would be called The Shawshank Redemption, and it would be a feature-length film. Unfortunately, the brilliance behind Shawshank wasn’t fully recognized until after its release (despite critics initially loving it, and it was nominated for seven Academy Awards but didn’t win any). The Shawshank Redemption is easily among my favourite movies of all-time, and Darabont followed it up with another fantastic (though not quite as good) Stephen King adaptation, this time of The Green Mile. While the third movie to round out Darabont’s unofficial Stephen King trilogy, The Mist, wasn’t as well received, I would still consider him the best Stephen King adapter (next to Rob Reiner, of course). Also, while it isn’t a movie, Darabont had a huge hand in bringing The Walking Dead to TV: a show that’s broken many Cable TV records and has found continued success, even though he left after only the first season. Anything that has Frank Darabont as a credit— whether writer, director, or both—has my interest. 

16. David Cronenberg

There are no two words I’ve heard associated more with David Cronenberg than “Body” and “Horror”. Cronenberg is famous for excelling in the science fiction and horror genres early in his career with films constantly dealing with biological terror (“Body Horror”), such as Shivers, The Brood, Scanners, and Videodrome, but it was his remake of The Fly that first brought him to my attention. The Fly is surely one of the best horror remakes ever made—I do appreciate the original in its own way, but looking back on both movies, the remake has aged considerably better, thanks not only to incredible practical effects, but a tragic and unique love story, directed extremely well by Cronenberg. Other horror movies he’s well known for include Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch, and the Stephen King adaptation The Dead Zone, but in the later part of his career, he’s shifted focus to more dramatic films, like Crash, A History of Violence, and Eastern Promises. While these later films have had less impact in the world of cinema, he continues to be a hard-working director, and the amount of work he contributed to the horror genre, especially the sub-genre of body horror, is undeniable. As a fellow Canadian interested in working in the same medium and in the same genre, I see Cronenberg as a big inspiration. 

15. Sam Raimi

I first discovered who Sam Raimi was after the immense disappointment of Spider-Man 3. Someone told me he was returning to his roots as a horror director with his next film, Drag Me to Hell, which seemed odd to me. The guy who directed all three Spider-Man movies was originally known as a horror director? Indeed he was, and as I became more of a horror movie fan and delved into the genre, I saw more of Raimi’s films, and realized how much sense it made that he had went on to direct the Spider-Man films. He has a very particular style, with as much focus on horror as on comedy, and it’s obvious he’s not afraid to take risks. The story of how he made his seminal supernatural horror comedy, The Evil Dead, is fascinating in and of itself, but the movie itself is still a horror classic, and the sequels, Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, were even better, and made the series into one of the best trilogies ever. But it doesn’t stop there; he also directed the superhero-horror-thriller Darkman, which combined his purposefully-cheesy horror skills with the superhero genre, surely lending to his eventual involvement with Sony in brining Spider-Man to the big screen, and while Spider-Man 3 was, as already mentioned, a disappointment, he still made two awesome Spider-Man movies, plus revived Evil Dead for television with Ash vs. Evil Dead just last year.

14. David Fincher

David Fincher went from directing music videos to directing a huge first feature film project: the third movie in the Alien series, and he’s actually since disowned the film, claiming the studio prevented him from completing the vision he originally had. The movie is very dark and definitely not as good as Alien or Aliens, but it wasn’t without some merit, and Fincher recovered well; practically all of his films since his unfortunate debut have been solid hits with critics and (mostly) with audiences. He’s crafted dark, challenging movies like Se7en, Zodiac, and Fight Club, as well as the story of how Facebook came to be, The Social Network, which is ten times more interesting than it should have been, given the subject matter. His most recent film, Gone Girl, was both a critical and financial hit, and at this point, I’m excited by whatever movie he’s going to direct next. Though his films are often dark, they’re also incredibly well directed, look fantastic, and always original (well, maybe except The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo).

13. John Landis

When you seek out the best werewolf movies of all-time, you can’t avoid finding An American Werewolf in London, simply because it is one of the best ever made, and is my personal favourite. John Landis, a director who’s worked as everything from stuntman to dialogue coach to actor to writer, showed the world what many consider the greatest werewolf transformation ever put on screen in that movie, but that’s not all. He also showed the world John Belushi (well, those who weren’t already familiar with him from SNL) in Animal House, perhaps one of the greatest comedies of all-time, and The Blues Brothers, which is among the greatest movies adapting an SNL skit. John Landis doesn’t have as many stand-out credits to his name as some of the directors I’ve discussed up to now, but the films I’ve just mentioned are so well done and incredibly fun (well, American Werewolf is fun and horrifying), and he’s so interesting to listen to in interviews, that he’s a director who can’t be over-praised. He’s intelligent, funny, and a film fan who was lucky enough to leave his own pieces of history in the medium he’s such a fan of.

12. John Carpenter

John Carpenter is, simply put, an inspiration in the world of horror directors. He made one of, if not the, most classic slasher movies—1978’s Halloween, starring then-unknown actress Jamie Lee Curtis—on a super low budget, and contributed greatly to the influx of slasher movies in the 80’s. Then, he remade The Thing From Another World (just called The Thing) which is even better than original, and like Halloween, stands as one of the scariest movies of all-time. Unfortunately for Carpenter, many of his films didn’t find immediate success (such as The Thing) and would later become cult films. But it doesn’t change the fact that his movies are awesome, and he wasn’t limited to just horror. He directed lots of great sci-fi and action movies in the 80’s, like Escape from New York, Big Trouble in Little China, and They Live, the latter of which combines humour and horror and action. While his 90’s films weren’t as beloved (In the Mouth of Madness, Vampires, Village of the Damned) they still had that classic Carpenter flavour, but he will always be remembered for his outstanding work in the genre of horror—in particular his ability to build suspense, multitask (he frequently wrote, directed, edited, created music, and much more for his films) and, most importantly, scare the shit out of us.

11. John McTiernan

Rounding out three John’s in a row, John McTiernan never became a household name. But here’s the thing about him: he’s actually the best 80’s action movie director of all. What is he responsible for, exactly? If not for him, people probably wouldn’t know the name John McLane, or the alien species Predator. McTiernan directed the original Predator, released in 1987, which is widely considered one of the best action movies from that era. It continued Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hot streak of action hits, introduced the invisible intergalactic hunter simply referred to as “The Predator”, and spawned a franchise that continues to this day (as of right now there have been two Predator sequels, two crossovers with the Alien franchise, and a Predator reboot/sequel is on its way). But then the very next year, McTiernan made an action hero out of Bruce Willis in Die Hard, and unlike Schwarzenegger, this was everyman’s hero; just an average New York cop who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. McTiernan didn’t do much more directing that’s noteworthy after Hunt for Red October in 1990, but he did come back to do Die Hard with a Vengeance, the third Die Hard film, which is arguably the best of the sequels. He may not have directed a ton of great stuff, but McTiernan’s work in the action genre still makes him one of my favourites (it’s just too bad we’ll probably never see him do anything that great ever again).