i didn't get to join in bc my phone is so shitty it won't let me post and i have been nowhere near my laptop so in tldr form:
1. Alfred Hitchcock (2399.5 points; 28 votes; 2 first-place votes)
Somewhere in my top ten. The first half of Psycho is one of my favourite films ever, I lose interest a little once she shows up at the motel, all a little too gothic for me. I like the headlit luridness of the office scenes where vivian leigh is being ogled by the oilman and the weird shot that flies over phoenix and right through the venetian blinds. I do think laura mulvey has it right that all his films are about ogling (im paraphrasing). the cruel, obsessive way the camera carves up people. He has many terrible films. that awful one with shirley mclaine where people keep finding the same dead body, often his films seem really bored.
2. Orson Welles (1957 points; 24 votes)
kane is as good as its supposed to be. i wish somebody would find the rest of ambersons. lady from shanghai is fabulous. i think the standard narrative about failed promise is about right, so many of his films seem crumpled under some half-forgotten ambition.
3. Stanley Kubrick (1920 points; 21 votes; 4 first-place votes)
I like the shining. everything else i've seen is pompous and dull. he should have made more horror films.
7. Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1812.5 points; 22 votes)
one of my favourite things in fassbinders films, of which i've seen most i think, is the loud sound of rustling costumes. this is especially a feature of bitter tears of petra von kant and women in new york. in women in new york, all the sets are built on the same theatre stage, so even though the scene changes there is a creaky floorboard in the same place which you hear in every shot. margit carstensen is my favourite of his leading ladies, and martha is his funniest film.
9. Luis Buñuel (1662 points; 20 votes; 1 first-place vote)
Bunuel's films sort of baffle me. I took a friend to see his version of wuthering heights and he has never forgiven me.
11. Jean-Luc Godard (1647.5 points; 20 votes; 1 first-place vote)
coulnd't be arsed with all that nouvelle vague bollocks, but from weekend on his films are inconsistently interesting. i love the one where isabelle huppert is a really bored prostitute/agricultural worker
12. Robert Altman (1546 points; 19 votes)
come back to the five and dime and nasheville
13. Martin Scorsese (1533.5 points; 20 votes; 1 first-place vote)
blonde ladies wearing white. he persisted with this for so long i can't believe he never found it embarrassing. have never even heard of most of the films he's made this century.
15. Jean Renoir (1447.5 points; 17 votes; 1 first-place vote)
i've only seen a couple of films by him but hated both.
16. Fritz Lang (1438 points; 18 votes)
classic if only for gloria grahame throwing coffee in someone's face.
19. F.W. Murnau (1352 points; 17 votes)
My favourites are the american films, city girl in particular has incredible vignettes that are formal, german, expressionistic whilst being american naturalistic and pastoral. there is a brief shot of waitresses laughing, a low table lamp turned to spotlight a character appearing out of darkness.
21. Chantal Akerman (1289.5 points; 16 votes; 1 first-place vote)
my highest vote to place (my #2). About as good a filmmaker as I can imagine. My favourite is a tv documentary, basically a south bank show episode, she made about pina bausch that is so disillusioned and bleak about its subject. the last few seconds are hilarious. I don't think Jeanne Dielmann towers above her other films, although it is hard to imagine a film that could so successful bring together so many of the themes of 2nd wave feminism in such a sharpened way. Also love la Captive, I saw it at the London gay and lesbian film festival and it bored the audience to laughter. I saw her speak once and she was very very funny.
24. Abbas Kiarostami (1224 points; 15 votes; 1 first-place vote)
I haven't seen enough films by him, but ten and close-up are two of my favourite films of all time. ten is a film that is also about mania akbari's great love of cake. me and my boyfriend call her mania for cakes. as beautiful and dreyer's joan of arc.
26. Joel & Ethan Coen (1211.5 points; 15 votes)
horrible dull and cruel films
29. Alain Resnais (1052 points; 15 votes)
His first three films obviously. Muriel most of all, very funny, incredibly sad. the french streets and squares named after the dead.
32. Nicholas Ray (952.5 points; 13 votes)
Johnny guitar is my favourite. I love the flat in born to be bad which is meant to be a fabulous apartment owned by a wealthy couple but just seems like a cramped duplex. In a lonely place, on dangerous ground, a woman's secret. rebel without a cause makes my eyes hurt from rolling though.
34. Terrence Malick (872 points; 11 votes)
badlands is a perfect film, but would have been terrible without sissy spacek I think. tree of life is so awful I can't believe anyone was fooled by it.
35. Satyajit Ray (834.5 points; 11 votes)
i saw some bad documentaries by ray once, including one about a traditional indian dancer which was so unbearable I had to leave the cinema. I feel like his films are about the same vague grandeur as john ford's. it leaves me completely cold.
37. Mike Leigh (827 points; 11 votes)
always thought i'd hate his films, but their actorliness and the depth of character he aspires to lifts them. i think his shrieking harpy characters are misogynistic, and his best comedies (nuts in may, abigail's party) seem to really hate women. On the other hand topsy turvy and vera drake are completely original, and vera drake in particular manages to handle the many layers of social hypocricy around abortion in an amazingly fine grained way. Its sort of uniquely a film about public health.
38. Steven Spielberg (824.5 points; 11 votes)
no
40. Wong Kar-wai (799 points; 11 votes)
I mean, i really like these films but they are just somebody's instagram account
41. Nicholas Roeg (783.5 points; 10 votes)
terrible awful films. with the exception of don't look now.
42. Chris Marker (775 points; 10 votes; 1 first-place vote)
marker was a real gateway drug for me, definitely a big source of many of the filmmakers i got interested in later, but his very french complacent bourgeois radicalism and epicurianism starts to seem a little silly eventually.
45. Michael Haneke (726 points; 10 votes)
for the french films. especially code unknown.
46. Preston Sturges (724.5 points; 9 votes)
i love love love mary astor in the palm beach story and i really made a go at sturges a couple of years ago but they're just not as good as you want them to be. lots of charmless male leads also.
53. Carol Reed (607.5 points; 8 votes)
I love the third man, but odd man out is so clueless about belfast that it makes me very sceptical of vienna. the one with the butler is p tedious.
55. Maya Deren (598.5 points; 8 votes)
my bf likes to watch meshes of an afternoon every year for his birthday. the best film ever made about the suburbs.
69. Frederick Wiseman (513.5 points; 6 votes; 1 first-place vote)
the best living director I think. My favourites are state legistlature and high school ii. I think the '90s were his best decade.
73. Richard Linklater (495.5 points; 7 votes)
parker posey was very funny in dazed and confused but I don't think that merits #73
99. Claire Denis (367.5 points; 5 votes)
Beau travail is the sexiest postcolonial film studies dept movie of all time.
101. D.W. Griffith (365.5 points; 5 votes)
I mean I know, racism, but that bit out on the ice floes.
― plax (ico), Saturday, 20 January 2018 13:00 (six years ago) link