June 2023

ASTEROID CITY (2023)

      Since his first features, “Bottle Rocket” and “Rushmore” in the late 1990s, Wes Anderson keeps finding new ways to present his off-center stories and quirky characters.

      His newest doesn’t disappoint in its creativity: it’s a stage play—shot against a one-dimensional, cartoon-like backdrop of the sun-drenched Arizona desert—about a 1955 gathering of young stargazers and their parents that is interrupted by a brief visit by an alien.

     But unlike the fast-talking, unflappable and distressingly serious characters of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014) and “The French Dispatch” (2021), the odd-ball collection in “Asteroid City” doesn’t have much of interest to say and their stories go nowhere.

     Just after arriving in town, Augie (Jason Schwartzman, the star of “Rushmore and Anderson’s longtime collaborator), the pipe smoking father of a teen son (a contestant in the young scientist contest) and three young daughters, meets Midge (Scarlett Johansson), a morose move star and her daughter, another science fair competitor.

      Along with Anderson regulars Jeffrey Wright (a pompous general), Tilda Swinton (the scientist in charge) and Willem Dafoe (a Method acting teacher), the illustrious cast also includes Tom Hanks as Augie’s father-in-law, Adrien Brody as the play’s intense director, Edward Norton as the playwright, Bryan Cranston as the play’s stage manager-narrator, Matt Dillon as the town’s car mechanic, Steve Carell as the hotel manager and Margot Robbie as an actress in another play. “Asteroid City” is the definitive example that all the stars in Hollywood can’t save a pedestrian script.

     Turns out the film’s most endearing performances are given by Augie’s three little girls, Andromeda, Pandora and Cassiopeia, played by the Faris sisters.

     Anderson has fun poking fun at the 1950s and the film offers occasional moments of droll humor, but there’s not enough there to leave much of an impression.

 

FIG LEAVES (1926), FAZIL (1928) and A GIRL IN EVERY PORT (1928)

     Few filmmakers were more responsible for establishing Hollywood as the capital of smart, well-made entertainments than Howard Hawks, whose output during movie’s Golden Age spans every genre.

     Among his films during the 1930s and 40s are the gangster tale “Scarface” (1931); screwball comedies “Twentieth Century” (1934), “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), “His Girl Friday” (1941) and “Ball of Fire” (1942); the adventure “Only Angels Have Wings” (1939); the war picture “Sergeant York (1941), the Western “Red River” (1948); and two Humphrey Bogart classics, “To Have and Have Not” (1944) and “The Big Sleep” (1946). All of these rank among the best of its genre.

       (On the subject of great filmmakers, you can find my recently compiled lists of directors’ 10 best, and sometimes 20, pictures, including Hawks and Wes Anderson and dozens of others spanning more than 100 years of filmmaking, posted on this site under “Directors’ Best Films, Ranked.” The lists reflect my ranking of the works I’ve seen of each filmmaker and, like all opinions, are subject to change on a daily basis.)     

      Hawks’ career started in the early 1920s as a screenwriter before he earned a shot at directing. I recently discovered three of his silents on YouTube.

     “Fig Leaves,” the director’s second film, shows his skills in satirizing the age-old conflicts between men and women, a theme than runs through his entire career. The film begins in the Stone Age, with a Flintstone-like couple settling into the rut of life. An inter-title near the start of the film states: “The only honeymoon in eight million years not at Niagara Falls is nearing a conclusion.”

        Papier-mâché dinosaurs and leg-propelled buses enliven the first act of the film set in the Garden of Eden before it fast-forwards to modern times where Adam’s clothes-obsessed wife Eve becomes enthralled with a pretentious fashion designer. The typical mix ups that would propel romantic comedies for the next 100 years ensue.

     George O’Brien, who was much better the next year in F. W. Murnau’s masterpiece “Sunrise,” plays the thick-headed Adam while Olive Borden’s Eve is the stereotypical Hollywood housewife, a trickster who always ends up back in her husband’s arms. (Later in his career, Hawks went a long way to turn that cliché on its head.)  

      More fascinating is “Fazil,” which displays the era’s prejudices against Islamic beliefs but, to its credit, puts a multi-dimensional Arab man at the center of a Hollywood film.

      Of course, Prince Fazil is played by the very Anglo Charles Farrell (among the most popular silent stars, mostly as Janet Gaynor’s co-star), who falls in love with a French woman during a visit to Venice. Fabienne (played by Norwegian star Greta Nissen) marries him, but then discovers a very different world when they return to his desert outpost; she’s more prisoner than wife.

      The picture grows more melodramatic as most silent romances do, but Farrell and Nissen are both memorable as this culture-crossing couple.

      A better picture, among Hawks’ best, is “A Girl in Every Port.” Dominating this first-rate production is Victor McLaglen, who later became a regular in John Ford films, winning a best actor Oscar for “The Informer” (1936). He plays Spike Madden, a hard-drinking, womanizing sailor who finds a girl and a bar fight in every port. But he keeps losing his girlfriends to slick fellow sailor Bill (Robert Armstrong, best known for “King Kong”), which provides both the comedy and the fisticuffs throughout the picture.

     Seeing McLaglen’s performance in this silent and the similarly themed “What Price Glory” (1926), it’s clear he would have been a much bigger star if not for the coming of sound, when he became primarily a supporting player.

     Spicing up “A Girl in Every Port,” is one of the most charismatic actresses of the era, Louise Brooks, playing an alluring circus girl, who flirts with both sailors. The next year she would give one of the silent era’s defining performances as Lulu in the G.W. Pabst’s “Pandora’s Box.”

    A couple of future stars show up uncredited: Myrna Loy and William Demarest.

 

MASTER GARDENER (2023)

     Walking into a Paul Schrader movie is like turning into an unfamiliar, dark alley: what lurks at the far end remains a mystery until it erupts into violence or opens into sunshine.

      There’s a bit of both in his latest, the third film in his recent trilogy about troubled, introspective men who stand outside contemporary norms. Though not as powerful or transcendent as “First Reformed” (2017) or as disturbing as “The Card Counter” (2021), the writer-director’s new study of a loner (all offshoots of his masterful script for “Taxi Driver”) takes place at a Louisiana mansion where Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton) serves as head gardener for the huge, lush property.

       Sigourney Weaver plays Mrs. Haverhill, the owner, who rules her kingdom with quiet ruthlessness and treats Narvel (occasionally calling him “sweet pea”) as her surrogate slave. The order of things is disrupted when Haverhill brings on her niece Maya (Quintessa Swindell), a mixed-race young woman as an apprentice gardener on Narvel’s staff.

     Even though it’s contemporarily set, the metaphors are hard to miss as the Old South, with its lingering white supremacy, struggles to find a place for the Black woman.

     Like Travis Bickle with Iris, Narvel acts as savior for Maya, who is hooked up with drug dealers, something she inherited from her addicted mother. While the story arc doesn’t reach the metaphysical heights of “Taxi Driver,” it takes the darkest road to the inevitable Schrader salvation.

     Edgerton (“The Great Gatsby,” “Loving”) gives a less showy performance than either Ethan Hawke or Oscar Isaac did in Schrader’s two previous films (though all three, like Travis, dryly narrate as they write in their journals) but he’s perfect for this role; a man whose sordid past colors every line he speaks.

     Swindell, of the TV series “Trinkets,” holds their own, especially in a contentious scene with her character’s aunt, while the talky script gives Weaver the juiciest role she’s had in years. Her Haverhill has both the cool civility of a Southern matriarch and the cold arrogance of nobility. A constant presence in Hollywood for the past 44 years, starting in 1979 with her unforgettable heroine in “Alien,” Weaver has brought intelligence and strength to every role.

      Schrader, a critic of contemporary films and its audience, remains an outsider who somehow finds a way to make his kind of movies. Though his name (as director-for-hire) has been attached to some bad films, the 76-year-old has produced one of the most interesting filmographies of the last 50 years--“American Gigolo” (1980), “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985), “Patty Hearst” (1988) and “Affliction” (1997) were his best of last century—not to mention his scripts for Martin Scorsese. And, considering his last three pictures, he’s still going strong.                                          

 

YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (2023)

      I’ve never warmed up to Nicole Holofcener’s group-therapy films—“Lovely & Amazing,” “Friends with Money”—inevitably struggling to gather much sympathy for her characters as they fret over life’s minor downturns. Sure, I do the same thing, but please, don’t make a motion picture about it.

      Her latest won me over as it’s clear in “You Hurt My Feelings” that the writer-director sees the foolishness and wasted emotional energy in the ways Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who starred in one of the director’s best, “Enough Said”) and Don (Tobias Menzies, who played the middle-aged Prince Phillip in “The Crown”) face their problems.

     I’m also pre-disposed to appreciate the farcical skills of Louis-Dreyfus, maybe the greatest TV comedian of the past 30 years. She plays a writing teacher who is working on a novel after publishing a memoir of her childhood (she was yelled at!). Holofcener takes digs at both the glut of tear-filled memoirs and the too-often worthless writing classes.

     Her husband is equally ineffectual as a therapist who starts to doubt himself when he overhears dismissive comments from a patient.

       The big dilemma comes when Beth eavesdrops on a conversation in which her husband admits that he never liked her unpublished novel, even after a dozen readings.

     The film explores the role of lying and uncritical support, especially between married couples. Unfortunately, the couple’s best friends (played flatly by Michaela Watkins and Arian Moayed) add little to the story, except to reinforce the notion that too many people are not very good at their chosen professions.

     Jeannie Berlin, an Oscar nominee 50 years ago for “The Heartbreak Kid,” brings some senior humor to the film as Beth’s spunky mother.

 

THE NORTH STAR (1943)

       Even during an existential conflict with Hitler and Fascist aggression, many Americans were uncomfortable with an alliance with the communist Russia.

      Thus, President Franklin Roosevelt “suggested” that playwright Lillian Hellman write a semi-documentary script about a simple rural Soviet Union community that comes under German occupation. What producer Samuel Goldwyn turned it into was not quite what Hellman imagined (though the film earned her condemnation during the congressional hearings a few years later). The first third of the picture is nothing short of a pageant of idyllic life and bountiful crops in a Ukrainian village populated by ridiculously happy citizens—all scored by Aaron Copland. This while Joseph Stalin was literally starving Ukrainians by the thousands by redirecting food to his troops.

     Dana Andrews and Anne Baxter play the leaders of a small group of comrades who are outside of town when the Germans roll in and then fight their way past the Nazis to deliver guns to a militia of Ukrainians.

      Back in the village, Dr. Kurin (Walter Huston) debates ethics with the German doctor (Erich von Stroheim, of course), who is taking blood from children to use for injured Nazi soldiers.

       During the war years, Hollywood studios regularly filled screens with propaganda, but the lengths “North Star” goes to paint Russia as Shangri-la lacks anything resembling subtlety.

     What distinguishes this film, beyond the sincerity of the cast, is the high-profile artists involved: beyond Hellman, Goldwyn and Copeland, Ira Gershwin wrote the lyrics to the folk songs, master production designer William Cameron Menzie served as associate producer, legendary cameraman James Wong Howe shot the film and two-time Oscar winner Lewis Milestone directed.

       While now remembered as a film that the HUAC used to label Hollywood as being too cozy with Communists, in 1943 it earned six Oscar nominations and certainly doesn’t flinch in its portrayal of the inhumane brutality of the Third Reich. 

 

MARLOWE (2023) and PEEPER (1975)

      As pleased as I was to see the return of Raymond Chandler’s legendary detective to the big screen, I am positive that the number of contemporary filmgoers who recognize the name Philip Marlowe wouldn’t fill the smallest theater of a 16-screen facility.

    But the bigger problem, even with a first-rate director (Neil Jordan), an Oscar-winning screenwriter (William Monahan, “The Departed”) and a veteran movie star in the title role (Liam Neeson), turns out to be that the picture fails on almost every level, filled with dubious motivations, unexplained relationships, a hard-to-follow plot and a Marlowe who seems well past retirement age.

    Based on the 2014 novel “The Black-Eyed Blonde” by John Banville, the movie, set in 1930s Los Angeles, sends the world-weary private eye on a manhunt for Nico Peterson (Francois Arnaud), a movie studio flunky who had an affair with Clare Cavendish (Diane Kruger), the daughter of a famous movie star Dorothy Quincannon (Jessica Lange).

     Marlowe quickly determines that Nico was killed in a recent car accident and just as quickly figures out that the questionable death was staged. The script bounces the detective between Clare and Dorothy, who both treat this 70something Marlowe as a potential lover. 

        Danny Huston and Alan Cumming, playing the bad guys behind the plot’s rather creaky scheme, inject some energy that is sadly lacking from either Neeson or Kruger. Marlowe is so underplayed that he almost seems like a supporting player in his own movie.

     Lange, of course, steals every scene she’s in, even as her character says little of consequence. And the wonderful Irish actor Colm Meaney shows up in the final act though he was clearly needed right from the start.

     Jordan, responsible for some of the best British films of the 1980s and ‘90s (“Mona Lisa,” “The Crying Game,” and “The End of the Affair”) lets the disorganized plotting overtake what should have been a story about an aging detective looking for morality in a corrupt city. Or, at least, an entertaining exercise in nostalgia.

      I’d like to report that another private eye picture set in L.A. and starring a UK star, “Peeper” captures what “Marlowe” fails to, but it’s just as bad. I’d never heard of this Michael Caine-Natalie Wood comic crime picture until it showed up on FXM, which shows, commercial-free, an unusual collection of films from all eras.

     Scripted by W.D. Richter (“Brubaker”), from a novel by Keith Laumer, and directed by Peter Hyams (“Capricorn One,” “2010”), the film wastes its high-profile leads in a storyline that liberally pilfers from Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” and Chandler’s “The Big Sleep.”

     Caine plays Tucker, a Brit relocated to Southern California after World War II, who accepts a vague request from a very loud, insistent Eastern European immigrant (Michael Constantine) to find the daughter he gave up for adoption decades ago. Soon Tucker forces his way into a wealthy family’s home where he holds a pointless conversation with an overweight man sitting in a high-backed bamboo chair (Thayer David as the Sydney Greenstreet character), eyes the sexy older daughter (Wood in the Lauren Bacall role) and argues with the younger daughter (Kitty Wynn). All the characters in the film act as if they’ve read the script instead of reacting to the events in the moment.

      Veteran crazy man (on and off screen) Timothy Carey plays a thug who spends the movie chasing Tucker for no discernable reason, while Wood pretends to romance Tucker for equally unexplainable reasons. The extent of the satire never goes beyond plagiarizing great writers of the past.

     The most interesting aspect of the picture is the opening credits, which are recited by a Bogie imitator (Guy Marks) as he stands at the end of a long, dark alley. If there is another film with spoken credits, I’ve never seen it.

    Nothing that follows comes close to the cleverness of those first few minutes. 

     

MARIUS (1931), FANNY (1932) and CÈSAR (1936)

      Four decades before “Star Wars” and “The Lord of the Rings,” French playwright Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille Trilogy was adapted into one of the era’s most acclaimed trio of movies.

     Beautifully filmed on the docks of the French city of Marseille, this simple, heartbreakingly honest story (combined in the 1961 American film “Fanny”) explores themes of responsibility, staying true to one’s principles and the enduring power of love. 

     The life-changing decision faced by Marius Olivier (Pierre Fresnay), the son of bar owner César (Raimu), is center stage in the first film, directed by Hungarian immigrant filmmaker Alexander Korda. Setting the mood and pacing for the entire series, “Marius” introduces the community and relationships: lifelong friends Honore Panisse (Fernand Charpin) and Cesar, who never stop arguing; the young beauty Fanny (Orane Demazis), who they’ve all known since she was a child; the comedy asides of dockworker Felix (Paul Dullac) and Fanny’s hysterical mother (Alida Rouffe).

     In “Fanny,” the girl left behind is the focus as Marius has gone to sea and she finds herself pregnant. (This plot turn kept the films from getting released in the more puritanic U.S.)  But the much older widower Panisse, a successful store owner, steps up and marries Fanny, knowing Marius is the father of her expected child and that she still loves the young man. Marc Allégret, who had a long career in French cinema, directed the middle film.

    In one especially funny and poignant scene, Fanny reads a letter from Marius, who is on a ship doing scientific exploration, to César, who over-reacts to every revelation.

      The final chapter, made four years later and directed by playwright Pagnol, is about Fanny’s now teenage son who carries Panisse’s name, learns that Marius, who has returned from sea, is his real father. “César” brings the many spokes of the story together in an upbeat, but unblinkingly real conclusion.    

      Beyond the elegant, down-to-earth screenplay, what stands out in this trilogy is the acting of Raimu, who has been called by no-less than Orson Welles as cinema’s greatest actor. Born Jules Muraire, he was a French dance hall star early in the century, but only dabbled in film before starring in the 1929 stage production of “Marius” at age 46. His performances in the three Pagnol films elevated his reputation. Raimu remained one of the most acclaimed and beloved French performers until his death in 1946.

     Fresnay later had roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934) and Jean Renoir’s “The Grand Illusion” (1937), while Demazis continued to work in film into the 1980s.

     Pagnol emerged from the trilogy as one of France’s leading literary and cinematic figures, later directing into the 1950s, including “The Baker’s Wife” (1938) and “The Well-Diggers Daughter” (1940) while continuing his work as a playwright and novelist. “Jean de Florette” and “Manon of the Spring,” based on his scripts, were among the most acclaimed French films of the 1980s.

 

PHOTOS:

Scarlett Johansson and Jason Schwartzman in “Asteroid City.”  (Focus Features)

Director Howard Hawks

Tobias Menzies and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “You Hurt My Feelings”  (FilmNation Entertainment)

Laim Neeson digs through the underbelly of L.A. in “Marlowe.”  (Parallel Film Productions)

     

 

 

 

 

Directors’ Best Films, Ranked

 

                     Orson Welles, behind the camera. (RKO Pictures)

WOODY ALLEN: 1) Annie Hall (1977); 2) Manhattan (1979); 3) Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); 4) Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); 5) Stardust Memories (1980); 6) Husbands and Wives (1992); 7) The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985); 8) Interiors (1978); 9) Midnight in Paris (2011); 10) Love and Death (1975); 11) Broadway Danny Rose (1984); 12) Radio Days (1987); 13) Zelig (1983); 14) Blue Jasmine (2013); 15) Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008); 16) Deconstructing Harry (1997); 17) Sweet and Lowdown (1999); 18) Match Point (2005); 19) Bullets Over Broadway (1994); 20) Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)        

ROBERT ALTMAN: 1) Nashville (1975); 2) McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971); 3) The Player (1992); 4) M*A*S*H (1970); 5) Images (1972); 6) The Long Goodbye (1973); 7) 3 Women (1977); 8) Gosford Park (2001); 9) Vincent and Theo (1990); 10) Buffalo Bill and the Indians or: Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976); 11) California Split (1974); 12) Fool for Love (1985); 13) Secret Honor (1984); 14) Short Cuts (1993); 15) Kansas City (1996); 16) Thieves Like Us (1974); 17) A Prairie Home Companion (2006); 18) Countdown (1968); 19) Brewster McCloud (1970); 20) Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)

WES ANDERSON: 1) Rushmore (1998); 2) The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014); 3) The French Dispatch (2021); 4) Bottle Rocket (1996); 5) Moonrise Kingdom (2012); 6) The Royal Tenenbaums (2001); 7) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004); 8) Asteroid City (2023); 9) Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009); 10) The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

HAL ASHBY: 1) Shampoo (1975); 2) Being There (1979); 3) The Last Detail (1973); 4) Coming Home (1978); 5) Harold and Maude (1972); 6) Bound for Glory (1976); 7) The Landlord (1970); 8) 8 Million Ways to Die (1986); 9) The Slugger's Wife (1985); 10) Lookin' to Get Out (1982)

ROBERT BENTON: 1) Nobody’s Fool (1994); 2) The Late Show (1977); 3) Kramer vs. Kramer (1979); 4) Places in the Heart (1984); 5) Twilight (1998); 6) Bad Company (1972); 7) The Human Stain (2003); 8) Billy Bathgate (1991); 9) Feast of Love (2007); 10) The Still of the Night (1982)

INGMAR BERGMAN: 1) The Seventh Seal (1956); 2) Through a Glass Darkly (1962); 3) Persona (1967); 4) Cries and Whispers (1973); 4) Wild Strawberries (1957); 6) Fanny & Alexander (1983); 7) The Virgin Spring (1960); 8) Smiles of a Summer Night (1955); 9) Scenes From a Marriage (1973); 10) Autumn Sonata (1978); 11) Face to Face (1976); 12) The Silence (1963); 13) Winter Light (1963); 14) Hour of the Wolf (1968); 15) Shame (1968); 16) After the Rehearsal (1984); 17) Sawdust and Tinsel (1953); 18) The Passion of Anna (1970); 19) Saraband (2005); 20) The Magician (1959)

BERNARDO BERTOLUCCI: 1) Last Tango in Paris (1973); 2) The Conformist (1971); 3) The Last Emperor (1987); 4) 1900 (1977); 5) The Sheltering Sky (1990); 6) The Spider's Stratagem (1970); 7) Besieged (1999); 8) Stealing Beauty (1996); 9) The Dreamers (2004); 10) Before the Revolution (1964)

PETER BOGDANOVICH: 1) The Last Picture Show (1971); 2) Saint Jack (1979); 3) Paper Moon (1973); 4) Texasville (1990); 5) What's Up Doc? (1972); 6) The Cat's Meow (2002); 7) Mask (1985); 8) Targets (1968); 9) Nickelodeon (1976); 10) The Thing Called Love (1993)

JOHN BOORMAN: 1) Point Blank (1967); 2) Hope and Glory (1987); 3) Deliverance (1972); 4) The General (1998); 5) The Tailor of Panama (2001); 6) Beyond Rangoon (1995); 7) The Emerald Forest (1985); 8) Excalibur (1981); 9) Hell in the Pacific (1968); 10) Where the Heart Is (1990)

RICHARD BROOKS: 1) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958); 2) Elmer Gantry (1960); 3) In Cold Blood (1967); 4) The Professionals (1966); 5) Sweet Bird of Youth (1962); 6) Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977); 7) The Blackboard Jungle (1955); 8) Deadline U.S.A. (1952); 9) The Brothers Karamazov (1958); 10) The Happy Ending (1969)

CLARENCE BROWN: 1) The Human Comedy (1943); 2) Anna Karenina (1935); 3) Ah, Wilderness (1935); 4) The Yearling (1946); 5) Anna Christie (1930); 6) Intruder in the Dust (1949); 7) National Velvet (1945); 8) Of Human Hearts (1938); 9) Sadie McKee (1934); 10) A Woman of Affairs (1928)

LUIS BUNUEL: 1) The Exterminating Angel (1962); 2) Belle de Jour (1967); 3) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972); 4) Viridiana (1961); 5) That Obscure Object of Desire (1977); 6) Los Olvidados (1950); 7) Un chien Andalou (1928); 8) Nazarin (1959); 9) Tristana (1970); 10) The Milky Way (1970)      

FRANK CAPRA: 1) It’s a Wonderful Life (1946); 2) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939); 3) Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); 4) It Happened One Night (1934); 5) Meet John Doe (1941); 8) You Can’t Take It With You (1938); 7) Lost Horizon (1937); 8) Lady for a Day (1933); 9) The Miracle Woman (1931); 10) State of the Union (1948); 11) Forbidden (1932); 11) Platinum Blonde (1931); 12) The Strong Man (1926); 13) The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933); 14) Arsenic and Old Lace (1944); 15) Rain or Shine (1930); 16) Pocketful of Miracles (1961); 17) Broadway Bill (1934); 18) American Madness (1932); 19) Dirigible (1931); 20) Flight (1929) 

 JOHN CASSAVETES: 1) A Woman Under the Influence (1974); 2) The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976); 3) Husbands (1970); 4) Love Streams (1984); 5) Faces (1968); 6) Shadows (1960); 7) Gloria (1980); 8) Minnie and Moskowitz (1971); 9) Too Late Blues (1962); 10) Opening Night (1978)

CHARLES CHAPLIN: 1) City Lights (1931); 2) The Gold Rush (1925); 3) The Great Dictator (1940); 4) The Kid (1921); 5) A Woman of Paris (1923); 6) Modern Times (1936); 7) The Immigrant (1917); 8) One A.M. (1916); 9) The Pawnshop (1916); 10) Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

JOEL AND ETHAN COEN: 1) The Hudsucker Proxy (1994); 2) Blood Simple (1985); 3) Fargo (1996); 4) The Big Lebowski (1998); 5) No Country for Old Men (2007); 6) A Serious Man (2009); 7) The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021); 8) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000); 9) Inside Llewyn Davis (2013); 10) Miller's Crossing (1990)

FRANCIS COPPOLA: 1) The Godfather (1972); 2) The Godfather Part II (1974); 3) Apocalypse Now (1979); 4) The Conversation (1974); 5) The Godfather Part III (1990); 6) Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988); 7) Rumble Fish (1983); 8) The Rainmaker (1997); 9) The Rain People (1969); 10) Youth Without Youth (2007); 11) The Outsiders (1983); 12) The Cotton Club (1984); 13) Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992); 14) One From the Heart (1982); 15) Tetro (2009); 16) Megalopolis (2024); 17) Gardens of Stone (!987); 18) Peggy Sue Got Married (1986); 19) You’re a Big Boy Now (1966); 20) Twixt (2011)

GEORGE CUKOR: 1) The Philadelphia Story (1940); 2) A Star Is Born (1954); 3) Holiday (1938); 4) Little Women (1933); 5) Gaslight (1944); 6) Dinner at Eight (1933); 7) Camille (1937); 8) David Copperfield (1935); 9) The Royal Family of Broadway (1930); 10) Born Yesterday (1950); 11) Adam’s Rib (1949); 12) My Fair Lady (1964); 13) The Women (1939); 14) What Price Hollywood? (1932); 15) A Double Life (1947); 16) Pat and Mike (1952); 17) A Bill of Divorcement (1932); 18) Romeo and Juliet (1936); 19) Travels With My Aunt (1972); 20) The Actress (1953)

MICHAEL CURTIZ: 1) Casablanca (1943); 2) The Breaking Point (1950); 3) Angels With Dirty Faces (1938); 4) The Sea Hawk (1940); 5) Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942); 6) Mildred Pierce (1945); 7) The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); 8) The Sea Wolf (1941); 9) Captain Blood (1935); 10) Life With Father (1947); 10) Bright Leaf (1950); 12) The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939); 13) Four Daughters (1938); 14) Dodge City (1939); 15) The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936); 16) The Mad Genius (1931); 17) Jimmy the Gent (1934); 18) My Dream Is Yours (1949); 19) Young Man With a Horn (1950); 20) Kid Galahad (1937)

BRIAN DE PALMA: 1) Casualties of War (1989); 2) Blow Out (1981); 3) Mission: Impossible (1996); 4) Dressed to Kill (1980); 5) The Untouchables (1987); 6) Carrie (1976); 7) Scarface (1983); 8) Obsession (1976); 9) Carlito’s Way (1993); 10) Hi Mom! (1970); 11) Femme Fatale (2002); 12) Body Double (1984); 13) Sisters (1973); 14) Black Dahlia (2006); 15) Snake Eyes (1998); 16) Mission to Mars (2000); 17) The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990); 18) Passion (2013); 19) Redacted (2007); 20) Greetings (1968) 

CLINT EASTWOOD: 1) Unforgiven (1992); 2) Mystic River (2003); 3) Million Dollar Baby (2004); 4) Letters from Iwo Jima (2006); 5) The Outlaw—Josey Wales (1976); 6) Bird (1988); 7) Absolute Power (1997); 8) Flags of Our Fathers (2006); 9) American Sniper (2014); 10) Breezy (1973); 11) Gran Torino (2008); 12) Sully (2016); 13) White Hunter Black Heart (1990); 14) Richard Jewell (2019); 15) A Perfect World (1993); 16) Blood Work (2002); 17) Invictus (2009); 18) The Bridges of Madison County (1993); 19) High Plains Drifter (1973); 20) True Crime (1999)

BLAKE EDWARDS: 1) Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961); 2) Victor Victoria (1982); 3) Days of Wine and Roses (1962); 4) S.O.B. (1981); 5) Experiment in Terror (1962); 6) The Pink Panther (1964); 7) 10 (1979); 8) The Party (1968); 9) A Shot in the Dark (1964); 10) Gunn (1967) 

FEDERICO FELLINI: 1) 8 ½ (1963); 2) La Dolce Vita (1960); 3) La Strada (1954); 4) Amarcord (1975); 5) I Vitelloni (1953); 6) Fellini Satyricon (1969); 7) Nights of Cabiria (1957); 8) Juliet of the Spirits (1965); 9) City of Women (1981); 10) And the Ship Sails On (1984)

DAVID FINCHER: 1) Seven (1995); 2) The Social Network (2010); 3) Zodiac (2007); 4) Mank (2020); 5) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011); 6) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008); 7) Gone Girl (2014); 8) Fight Club (1999); 9) Alien 3 (1992); 10) The Game (1997)

VICTOR FLEMING: 1) Gone With the Wind (1939); 2) The Wizard of Oz (1939); 3) Bombshell (1933); 4) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941); 5) Captains Courageous (1937); 6) Test Pilot (1938); 7) Red Dust (1932); 8) Treasure Island (1934); 9) The Virginian (1929); 10) The White Sister (1933)

JOHN FORD: 1) The Grapes of Wrath (1940); 2) How Green Was My Valley (1941); 3) My Darling Clementine (1946); 4) Stagecoach (1939); 5) The Searchers (1956); 6) She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949); 7) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); 8) They Were Expendable (1945); 9) The Informer (1934); 10) Young Mr. Lincoln (1939); 11) The Quiet Man (1952); 12) Rio Grande (1950); 13) The Whole Town’s Talking (1935); 14) The Fugitive (1947); 15) Drums Along the Mohawk (1939); 16) The Iron Horse (1924); 17) Arrowsmith (1931); 18) The Long Voyage Home (1940); 19) Mister Roberts (1955); 20) Mary of Scotland (1936)  

MILOS FORMAN: 1) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975); 2) Amadeus (1984); 3) The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996); 4) Ragtime (1981); 5) The Fireman’s Ball (1968); 6) Valmont (1989); 7) Man on the Moon (1999); 8) Hair (1979); 9) Taking Off (1971); 10) Goya’s Ghosts (2007)

JOHN FRANKENHEIMER: 1) The Manchurian Candidate (1962); 2) The Iceman Cometh (1973); 3) The Train (1965); 4) Seven Days in May (1964); 5) Ronin (1998); 6) Birdman of Alcatraz (1962); 7) Seconds (1966); 8) The Gypsy Moths (1969); 9) 52 Pick-Up (1986); 10) All Fall Down (1962); 11) The Fixer (1968); 12) The French Connection II (1975); 13) I Walk the Line (1970); 14) The Young Savages (1961); 15) Grand Prix (1966); 16) The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996); 17) Reindeer Games (2000); 18) The Extraordinary Seaman (1969); 19) Year of the Gun (1991); 20) The Young Stranger (1957)

STEPHEN FREARS: 1) The Queen (2006); 2) High Fidelity (2000); 3) Dirty Pretty Things (2003); 4) The Grifters (1990); 5) Prick Up Your Ears (1987); 6) Dangerous Liaisons (1988); 7) Philomena (2013); 8) The Hit (1985); 9) My Beautiful Laundrette (1986); 10) The Van (1997)   

SAM FULLER: 1) Pickup on South Street (1953); 2) The Steel Helmet (1951); 3) The Big Red One (1980); 4) Park Row (1952); 5) House of Bamboo (1955); 6) Fixed Bayonets! (1951); 7) Shock Corridor (1963); 8) The Crimson Kimono (1959); 9) The Naked Kiss (1964); 10) Underworld, U.S.A. (1961)

JEAN-LUC GODARD: 1) Breathless (1959); 2) Contempt (1963); 3) Vivre Sa Vie (1962); 4) Le Petit Soldat (1963); 5) Alphaville (1965); 6) Weekend (1967); 7) Les Carabiniers (1963); 8) Band of Outsiders (1964); 9) Pierrot le Fou (1965); 10) Hail Mary (1985)

HOWARD HAWKS: 1) Red River (1948); 2) The Big Sleep (1946); 3) Only Angels Have Wings (1939); 4) His Girl Friday (1940); 5) Scarface (1932); 6) Ball of Fire (1941); 7) Rio Bravo (1959); 8) To Have and Have Not (1944); 9) Bringing Up Baby (1938); 10) Sergeant York (1941); 11) Twentieth Century (1934); 12) Air Force (1943); 13) El Dorado (1967); 14) Barbary Coast (1935); 15) A Girl in Every Port (1928); 16) Monkey Business (1952); 17) The Road to Glory (1936); 18) Today We Live (1933); 19) The Criminal Code (1931); 20) The Dawn Patrol (1930) 

GEORGE ROY HILL: 1) Slap Shot (1977); 2) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kind (1969); 3) The Sting (1973); 4) Slaughterhouse Five (1972); 5) Period of Adjustment (1962); 6) The World According to Garp (1984); 7) A Little Romance (1979); 8) The Great Waldo Pepper (1975); 9) The Little Drummer Girl (1984); 10) Funny Farm (1988)  

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: 1) Vertigo (1958); 2) Notorious (1946); 3) Rebecca (1940); 4) Rear Window (1954); 5) Psycho (1960); 6) The Lady Vanishes (1938); 7) Foreign Correspondent (1940); 8) North by Northwest (1959); 9) The 39 Steps (1935); 10) Shadow of a Doubt (1943); 11) Spellbound (1945); 12) Suspicion (1941); 13) Strangers on a Train (1951); 14) To Catch a Thief (1955); 15) Saboteur (1942); 16) The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934); 17) Sabotage (1936); 18) Blackmail (1929); 19) The Birds (1963); 20) Marnie (1964) 

RON HOWARD: 1) The Paper (1994); 2) Frost/Nixon (2008); 3) Rush (2013); 4) Apollo 13 (1995); 5) Night Shift (1982); 6) A Beautiful Mind (2001); 7) Parenthood (1989); 8) Cocoon (1985); 9) The Da Vinci Code (2006); 10) Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

JOHN HUSTON: 1) The Maltese Falcon (1941); 2) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); 3) The Asphalt Jungle (1950); 4) Key Largo (1948); 5) Prizzi's Honor (1985); 6) The Dead (1987); 7) Under the Volcano (1984); 8) The Night of the Iguana (1964); 9) The Man Who Would Be King (1975); 10) The Red Badge of Courage (1951); 11) The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972); 12) The African Queen (1951); 13) Moby Dick (1956); 14) Fat City (1972); 15) Moulin Rouge (1952); 16) Beat the Devil (1954); 17) The Misfits (1961); 18) Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957); 19) In This Our Life (1942); 20) Wise Blood (1980)

JIM JARMUSCH: 1) Stranger Than Paradise (1984); 2) Paterson (2016); 3) Down by Law (1986); 4) Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (2000); 5) The Dead Don’t Die (2019); 6) Coffee and Cigarettes (2004); 7) Broken Flowers (2005); 8) Mystery Train (1989); 9) Only Lovers Left Alive (2014); 10) Night on Earth (1992)

NORMAN JEWISON: 1) In the Heat of the Night (1967); 2) The Hurricane (1999); 3) Moonstruck (1987); 4) A Soldier’s Story (1984); 5) And Justice for All (1979); 6) Fiddle on the Roof (1971); 7) The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966); 8) Jesus Christ, Superstar (1973); 9) Agnes of God (1985); 10) The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

ELIA KAZAN: 1) On the Waterfront (1954); 2) A Streetcar Named Desire (1951); 3) A Face in the Crowd (1957); 4) Baby Doll (1956); 5) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945); 6) East of Eden (1955); 7) Gentleman's Agreement (1947); 8) Panic in the Streets (1950); 9) America, America (1963); 10) Viva Zapata! (1952)

STANLEY KUBRICK: 1) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964); 2) Paths of Glory (1957); 3) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); 4) Full Metal Jacket (1987); 5) The Killing (1956); 6) A Clockwork Orange (1971); 7) The Shining (1980); 8) Eyes Wide Shut (1999); 9) Barry Lyndon (1975); 10) Lolita (1962)

AKIRA KUROSAWA: 1) Seven Samurai (1954); 2) Rashomon (1951); 3) Ran (1985); 4) Ikiru (1952); 5) Throne of Blood (1957); 6) Kagemusha (1980); 7) Stray Dog (1949); 8) Yojimbo (1961); 9) Dersu Uzala (1975); 10) The Lower Depths (1957)

FRITZ LANG: 1) M (1931); 2) Fury (1936); 3) Scarlet Street (1945); 4) The Big Heat (1953); 5) You Only Live Once (1937); 6) Metropolis (1926); 7) Woman in the Window (1945); 8) Clash by Night (1952); 9) The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1932); 10) While the City Sleeps (1956)

DAVID LEAN: 1) Lawrence of Arabia (1962); 2) Great Expectations (1946); 3) The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957); 4) Oliver Twist (1951); 5) A Passage to India (1984); 6) Breaking the Sound Barrier (1952); 7) Ryan’s Daughter (1970); 8) Doctor Zhivago (1965); 9) Brief Encounter (1945); 10) Blithe Spirit (1945)

ANG LEE: 1) Sense and Sensibility (1995); 2) Brokeback Mountain (2005); 3) The Wedding Banquet (1993); 4) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000); 5) Lust, Caution (2007); 6) The Ice Storm (1997); 7) Eat Drink Man Woman (1994); 8) Life of Pi (2012); 9) Taking Woodstock (2009); 10) Ride with the Devil (1999)

SPIKE LEE: 1) Do the Right Thing (1989); 2) Clockers (1995); 3) Crooklyn (1994); 4) Summer of Sam (1999); 5) Malcolm X (1992); 6) 25th Hour (2002); 7) She's Gotta Have It (1986); 8) Mo' Better Blues (1990); 9) Inside Man (2006); 10) BlacKkKlansman (2018)

MIKE LEIGH: 1) Naked (1993); 2) Life Is Sweet (1991); 3) Another Year (2010); 4) High Hopes (1989); 5) Secrets and Lies (1996); 6) Career Girls (1997); 7) All or Nothing (2002); 8) Vera Drake (2004); 9) Topsy-Turvy (1999); 10) Mr. Turner (2014)

BARRY LEVINSON: 1) Diner (1982); 2) Rain Man (1988); 3) Wag the Dog (1997); 4) Bugsy (1991); 5) Tin Men (1987); 6) An Everlasting Piece (2000); 7) The Natural (1984); 8) The Humbling (2014); 9) What Just Happened (2008); 10) Avalon (1990)

RICHARD LINKLATER: 1) Dazed and Confused (1994); 2) Before Sunrise (1995); 3) Before Sunset (2004); 4) Before Midnight (2013); 5) School of Rock (2003); 6) Me and Orson Welles (2009); 7) 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood (2022); 8) Boyhood (2014); 9) Bernie (2012); 10) Slacker (1991) 

ERNST LUBITSCH: 1) Trouble in Paradise (1932); 2) The Shop Around the Corner (1940); 3) Design for Living (1933); 4) To Be or Not to Be (1942); 5) Ninotchka (1939); 6) The Smiling Lieutenant (1931); 7) The Love Parade (1929); 8) The Oyster Princess (1919); 9) Heaven Can Wait (1943); 10) One Hour with You (1932)

SIDNEY LUMET: 1) Network (1976); 2) Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962); 3) 12 Angry Men (1957); 4) Dog Day Afternoon (1975); 5) The Verdict (1982); 6) Serpico (1973); 7) The Pawnbroker (1965); 8) Prince of the City (1981); 9) The Hill (1965); 10) Q&A (1990); 11) Fail-Safe (1964); 12) Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007); 13) Running on Empty (1988); 14) Murder on the Orient Express (1974); 15) Daniel (1983); 16) The Deadly Affair (1967); 17) Find Me Guilty (2006); 18) The Fugitive Kind (1959); 19) Power (1986); 20) Night Falls on Manhattan (1997)

DAVID LYNCH: 1) Blue Velvet (1986); 2) Mulholland Dr. (2001); 3) The Elephant Man (1980); 4) The Straight Story (1999); 5) Wild at Heart (1990); 6) Eraserhead (1978); 7) Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992); 8) Lost Highway (1997); 9) Inland Empire (2006); 10) Dune (1984)

JOSEPH L. MANKIEWICZ: 1) All About Eve (1950); 2) A Letter to Three Wives (1949); 3) Julius Caesar (1953); 4) Five Fingers (1952); 5) People Will Talk (1951); 6) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947); 7) Escape (1948); 8) Sleuth (1972); 9) Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); 10) No Way Out (1950)

ANTHONY MANN:  1) The Naked Spur (1953); 2) Raw Deal (1948); 3) T-Men (1948); 4) God’s Little Acre (1958); 5) Winchester ’73 (1950); 6) Reign of Terror (1949); 7) Man of the West (1958); 8) Men in War (1957); 9) The Far Country (1955); 10) Bend of the River (1952) 

MICHAEL MANN: 1) Heat (1995); 2) The Insider (1999); 3) Ferrari (2023); 4) The Last of the Mohicans (1992); 5) Thief (1981); 6) Collateral (2004); 7) Manhunter (1986); 8) Ali (2001); 9) Public Enemies (2009); 10: Miami Vice (2006)

PAUL MAZURSKY: 1) An Unmarried Woman (1978); 2) Blume in Love (1973); 3) Enemies, A Love Story (1989); 4) Harry and Tonto (1974); 5) Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986); 6) Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969); 7) Tempest (1982); 8) Moscow on the Hudson (1984); 9) Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976); 10) Scenes From a Mall (1991)

LEWIS MILESTONE: 1) All Quiet on the Western Front (1930); 2) Of Mice and Men (1939); 3) Pork Chop Hill (1959); 4) The Front Page (1931); 5) The Racket (1928); 6) The General Died at Dawn (1936); 7) The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946); 8) Mutiny on the Bounty (1962); 9) A Walk in the Sun (1945); 10) Rain (1932)

VNCENTE MINNELLI: 1) An American in Paris (1951); 2) The Bad and the Beautiful (1952); 3) Meet Me in St. Louis (1944); 4) The Band Wagon (1953); 5) Lust for Life (1956); 6) Home from the Hill (1960); 7) Madame Bovary (1949); 8) Gigi (1958); 9) Cabin in the Sky (1943); 10) Some Came Running (1958)

MIKE NICHOLS: 1) The Graduate (1967); 2) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966); 3) Carnal Knowledge (1971); 4) Charlie Wilson’s War (2007); 5) Catch-22 (1970); 6) Silkwood (1983); 7) Working Girl (1988); 8) The Birdcage (1996); 9) Postcards from the Edge (1990); 10) Closer (2004)

CHRISTOPER NOLAN: 1) Oppenheimer (2023); 2) Interstellar (2014); 3) Memento (2001); 4) Batman Begins (2005); 5) Insomnia (2002); 6) The Dark Knight (2008); 7) The Dark Knight Rises (2012); 8) Dunkirk (2017); 9) Inception (2010); 10) The Prestige (2006)

ALAN J. PAKULA: 1) All the President’s Men (1976); 2) Klute (1971); 3) The Parallax View (1974); 4) Sophie’s Choice (1982); 5) Orphans (1987); 6) Starting Over (1979); 7) Comes a Horseman (1978); 8) Presumed Innocent (1990); 9) The Sterile Cuckoo (1969); 10) The Devil’s Own (1997)  

SAM PECKINPAH: 1) The Wild Bunch (1969); 2) Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973); 3) Ride the High Country (1962); 4) Straw Dogs (1971); 5) The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970); 6) Junior Bonner (1972); 7) Cross of Iron (1977); 8) The Killer Elite (1975); 9) The Osterman Weekend (1983); 10) The Getaway (1972)

ARTHUR PENN: 1) Bonnie and Clyde (1967); 2) Night Moves (1975); 3) The Miracle Worker (1962); 4) Little Big Man (1970); 5) The Missouri Breaks (1976); 6) Mickey One (1965); 7) Four Friends (1981); 8) Alice’s Restaurant (1969); 9) The Chase (1966); 10) The Left-Handed Gun (1958)

ROMAN POLANSKI: 1) Chinatown (1974); 2) The Pianist (2002); 3) Repulsion (1965); 4) Knife in the Water (1962); 5) Macbeth (1971); 6) The Ghost Writer (2010); 7) Rosemary’s Baby (1968); 8) Tess (1980); 9) Carnage (2011); 10) Oliver Twist (2005)

SYDNEY POLLACK: 1) Tootsie (1982); 2) They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969); 3) Three Days of the Condor (1975); 4) Absence of Malice (1981); 5) Jeremiah Johnson (1972); 6) Out of Africa (1985); 7) The Way We Were (1973); 8) The Firm (1993); 9) The Electric Horseman (1979); 10) The Yakuza (1975)

OTTO PREMINGER: 1) Laura (1944); 2) Anatomy of a Murder (1959); 3) Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950); 4) Advise and Consent (1962); 5) The Man with the Golden Arm (1955); 6) Exodus (1960); 7) The Cardinal (1963); 8) Whirlpool (1949); 9) The Human Factor (1979); 10) Carmen Jones (1954)

BOB RAFELSON: 1) Five Easy Pieces (1970); 2) The King of Marvin Gardens (1972); 3) Mountains of the Moon (1990); 4) The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981); 5) Blood and Wine (1997); 6) Black Widow (1987); 7) Head (1968); 8) No Good Deed (2002); 9) Stay Hungry (1976); 10) Man Trouble (1992)

NICHOLAS RAY: 1) Rebel Without a Cause (1955); 2) Johnny Guitar (1954); 3) In a Lonely Place (1950); 4) They Live by Night (1949); 5) The Lusty Men (1952); 6) On Dangerous Ground (1951); 7) Bigger Than Life (1956); 8) Born to Be Bad (1950); 9) Bitter Victory (1958); 10) Party Girl (1958)  

CAROL REED: 1) The Third Man (1950); 2) The Fallen Idol (1948); 3) Odd Man Out (1947); 4) Outcast of the Islands (1951); 5) The Way Ahead (1945); 6) Night Train to Munich (1941); 7) Our Man in Havana (1960); 8) Oliver! (1968); 9) The Key (1958); 10) The Man Between (1953)

 JEAN RENOIR: 1) Grand Illusion (1937); 2) The Rules of the Game (1939); 3) La Bete Humaine (1938); 4) Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932); 5) French Cancan (1956); 6) The River (1951); 7) The Southerner (1945); 8) The Golden Coach (1954); 9) La Chienne (1931); 10) The Woman on the Beach (1947)

MARTIN RITT: 1) Hud (1963); 2) The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965); 3) Sounder (1972); 4) The Long Hot Summer (1958); 5) Hombre (1967); 6) Norma Rae (1979); 7) The Great White Hope (1970); 8) The Front (1976); 9) Paris Blues (1961); 10) Cross Creek (1983)

ALAN RUDOLPH: 1) Choose Me (1984); 2) Welcome to L.A. (1977); 3) Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994); 4) Trouble in Mind (1985); 5) The Moderns (1988); 6) The Secret Lives of Dentists (2003); 7) Afterglow (1997); 8) Breakfast of Champions (1999); 9) Songwriter (1984); 10) Remember My Name (1978)

DAVID O. RUSSELL: 1) Flirting with Disaster (1996); 2) Silver Linings Playbook (2012); 3) The Fighter (2010); 4) American Hustle (2013); 5) Three Kings (1999); 6) Joy (2015); 7) Spanking the Monkey (1994); 8) Amsterdam (2022); 9) I [Heart] Huckabees (2004); 10) Accidental Love (2015)

JOHN SAYLES: 1) Limbo (1999); 2) City of Hope (1991); 3) Lone Star (1997); 4) Matewan (1987); 5) Eight Men Out (1988); 6) Passion Fish (1992); 7) Sunshine State (2002); 8) Baby, It’s You (1983); 9) The Brother from Another Planet (1984); 10) The Secret of Roan Inish (1995)

JOHN SCHLESINGER: 1) Midnight Cowboy (1969); 2) Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971); 3) Darling (1965); 4) Far from the Madding Crowd (1967); 5) The Day of the Locust (1975); 6) Marathon Man (1976); 7) Cold Comfort Farm (1996); 8) A Kind of Loving (1962); 9) The Falcon and the Snowman (1985); 10) Madame Sousatzka (1988)  

PAUL SCHRADER: 1) Affliction (1998); 2) First Reformed (2018); 3) Patty Heart (1988); 4) The Card Counter (2021); 5) American Gigolo (1980); 6) Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985); 7) Master Gardener (2023); 8) Auto Focus (2002); 9) The Comfort of Strangers (1991); 10) Cat People (1982)

MARTIN SCORSESE: 1) Taxi Driver (1976); 2) Raging Bull (1980) 3) Mean Streets (1973); 4) Silence (2016); 5) GoodFellas (1990); 6) The Last Temptation of Christ (1988); 7) The King of Comedy (1983); 8) Casino (1995); 9) The Wolf of Wall Street (2013); 10) The Departed (2006); 11) The Age of Innocence (1993); 12) Killers of the Flower Moon (2023); 13) The Irishman (2019); 14) New York, New York (1977); 15) Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974); 16) The Color of Money (1986); 17) Gangs of New York (2002); 18) The Aviator (2004); 19) After Hours (1985); 20) Cape Fear (1991)

RIDLEY SCOTT: 1) Alien (1979); 2) Black Hawk Down (2001); 3) The Martian (2015); 4) Blade Runner (1982); 5) Gladiator (2000); 6) Thelma & Louise (1991); 7) All the Money in the World (2017); 8) House of Gucci (2021); 9) Body of Lies (2008); 10) Napoleon (2023)

DON SIEGEL: 1) Dirty Harry (1971); 2) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956); 3) The Shootist (1976); 4) Charlie Varrick (1973); 5) Madigan (1968); 6) The Verdict (1946); 7) Private Hell 36 (1954); 8) The Lineup (1958); 9) The Beguiled (1971); 10) Coogan’s Bluff (1968)

STEVEN SODERBERGH: 1) Traffic (2000); 2) The Limey (1999); 3) Erin Brockovich (2000); 4) sex, lies and videotape (1989); 5) King of the Hill (1993); 6) Contagion (2001); 7) Out of Sight (1998); 8) Ocean’s Eleven (2001); 9) Solaris (2002); 10) Logan Lucky (2017)

STEVE SPIELBERG: 1) Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977); 2) Schindler's List (1993); 3) Jaws (1975); 4) E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982); 5) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981); 6) The Post (2017); 7) Saving Private Ryan (1998); 8) Lincoln (2012); 9) West Side Story (2021); 10) Bridge of Spies (2015); 11) The Fabelmans (2022); 12) War Horse (2011); 13) Empire of the Sun (1987); 14) Catch Me If You Can (2002); 15) Minority Report (2002); 16) Munich (2005); 17) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984); 18) Jurassic Park (1993); 19) Amistad (1997); 20) War of the Worlds (2005)

JOSEF VON STERNBERG: 1) The Scarlet Empress (1934); 2) The Last Command (1928); 3) Shanghai Express (1932); 4) Morocco (1930); 5) Blonde Venus (1932); 6) The Blue Angel (1930); 7) Underworld (1927); 8) Crime and Punishment (1935); 9) An American Tragedy (1931); 10) The Docks of New York (1928)

GEORGE STEVENS: 1) Giant (1956); 2) Shane (1953); 3) A Place in the Sun (1951); 4) The More the Merrier (1943); 5) I Remember Mama (1948); 6) Vivacious Lady (1938); 7) Gunga Din (1939); 8) Swing Time (1936); 9) The Diary of Anne Frank (1959); 10) Alice Adams (1935); 11) The Talk of the Town (1942); 12) Woman of the Year (1942); 13) Annie Oakley (1935); 14) A Damsel in Distress (1937); 15) Penny Serenade (1941); 16) Vigil in the Night (1940); 17) The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); 18) The Only Game in Town (1970); 19) Quality Street (1937); 20) Bachelor Bait (1934)

OLIVER STONE: 1) Platoon (1986); 2) Born on the Fourth of July (1989); 3) Nixon (1995); 4) JFK (1991); 5) W. (2008); 6) Salvador (1986); 7) Natural Born Killers (1994); 8) Wall Street (1987); 9) World Trade Center (2006); 10) The Doors (1991)

PRESTON STURGES: 1) Sullivan’s Travels (1941); 2) The Miracle of Morgan Creek (1944); 3) Hail the Conquering Hero (1944); 4) The Lady Eve (1941); 5) The Palm Beach Story (1942); 6) Unfaithfully Yours (1948); 7) The Great McGinty (1940); 8) Christmas in July (1940); 9) The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949); 10) The Great Moment (1944)

QUENTIN TARANTINO: 1) Pulp Fiction (1994); 2) Inglourious Basterds (2009); 3) Reservoir Dogs (1992); 4) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019); 5) Jackie Brown (1997); 6) Django Unchained (2012); 7) The Hateful Eight (2015); 8) Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004); 9) Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003); 10) Death Proof (2007)

FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT: 1) The 400 Blows (1959); 2) Jules and Jim (1961); 3) Day for Night (1974); 4) The Story of Adele H. (1975); 5) Shoot the Piano Player (1960); 6) The Last Metro (1980); 7) Stolen Kisses (1968); 8) The Man Who Loved Women (1977); 9) Two English Girls (1972); 10) The Wild Child (1970)

GUS VAN SANT: 1) Milk (2008); 2) To Die For (1995); 3) Drugstore Cowboy (1989); 4) Good Will Hunting (1997); 5) Last Days (2005); 6) Promised Land (2012); 7) My Own Private Idaho (1991); 8) Elephant (2003); 9) The Sea of Trees (2016); 10) Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018)

KING VIDOR: 1) The Big Parade (1925); 2) Street Scene (1931); 3) The Crowd (1928); 4) The Fountainhead (1949); 5) Stella Dallas (1937); 6) The Citadel (1938); 7) The Champ (1931); 8) Hallelujah (1929); 9) War and Peace (1956); 10) La Boheme (1926)  

RAOUL WALSH: 1) White Heat (1949); 2) The Roaring Twenties (1939); 3) High Sierra (1941); 4) They Drive by Night (1940); 5) The Big Trail (1930); 6) Gentleman Jim (1941); 7) What Price Glory (1926); 8) They Died with Their Boots On (1941); 9) The Thief of Bagdad (1924); 10) Pursued (1947)

PETER WEIR: 1) The Truman Show (1998); 2) The Year of Living Dangerously (1983); 3) Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003); 4) Witness (1985); 5) Dead Poets Society (1989); 6) Gallipoli (1981); 7) The Mosquito Coast (1986); 8) Fearless (1993); 9) Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975); 10) Green Card (1990)

ORSON WELLES: 1) Citizen Kane (1941); 2) Touch of Evil (1958); 3) The Magnificent Ambersons (1942); 4) Chimes at Midnight (1967); 5) Othello (1952); 6) The Lady from Shanghai (1948); 7) The Stranger (1946); 8) Macbeth (1948); 9) The Trial (1963); 10) Mr. Arkadin (1955)

WILLIAM WELLMAN: 1) The Ox-Bow Incident (1943); 2) The Public Enemy (1931); 3) A Star Is Born (1937); 4) The Story of G.I. Joe (1945); 5) Nothing Sacred (1937); 6) Roxie Hart (1942); 7) Yellow Sky (1948); 8) Wings (1927); 9) Battleground (1949); 10) Westward the Women (1951); 11) Beau Geste (1939); 12) Beggars of Life (1928); 13) The Purchase Price (1932); 14) So Big! (1932); 15) Wild Boys of the Road (1933); 16) Track of the Cat (1954); 17) The High and the Mighty (1954); 18) Lafayette Escadrille (1958); 19) Stingaree (1934); 20) Call of the Wild (1935) 

WIM WENDERS: 1) Wings of Desire (1988); 2) Paris, Texas (1984); 3) Perfect Days (2023); 4) An American Friend (1977); 5) Until the End of the World (1992); 6) Don’t Come Knocking (2006); 7) Alice in the Cities (1974); 8) The State of Things (1982); 9) Hammett (1982); 10) The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971)

BILLY WILDER: 1) Sunset Boulevard (1950); 2) Some Like It Hot (1959); 3) Double Indemnity (1944); 4) The Big Carnival (1951); 5) The Apartment (1960); 6) Witness for the Prosecution (1957); 7) Stalag 17 (1953); 8) The Fortune Cookie (1966); 9) The Lost Weekend (1945); 10) One, Two, Three (1961); 11) A Foreign Affair (1948); 12) The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970); 13) Sabrina (1954); 14) Irma La Douce (1963); 15) The Seven Year Itch (1955); 16) Five Graves to Cairo (1943); 17) The Front Page (1974); 18) Love in the Afternoon (1957); 19) The Major and the Minor (1942); 20) The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)

ROBERT WISE: 1) The Set-Up (1949); 2) West Side Story (1961); 3) The Body Snatcher (1945); 4) The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951); 5) The Haunting (1963); 6) The Desert Rats (1953); 7) I Want to Live! (1958); 8) Blood on the Moon (1948); 9) The Sound of Music (1965); 10) The Sand Pebbles (1966)  

SAM WOOD: 1) A Night at the Opera (1935); 2) For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943); 3) Kings Row (1942); 4) The Pride of the Yankees (1942); 5) Our Town (1940); 6) A Day at the Races (1937); 7) The Devil and Miss Jones (1941); 8) Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939); 9) Kitty Foyle (1940); 10) Whipsaw (1935)

WILLIAM WYLER: 1) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946); 2) The Letter (1940); 3) Dodsworth (1936); 4) The Heiress (1949); 5) Detective Story (1951); 6) Dead End (1937); 7) The Little Foxes (1941); 8) Wuthering Heights (1939); 9) Roman Holiday (1953); 10) The Westerner (1940); 11) Ben-Hur (1959); 12) Jezebel (1938); 13) The Desperate Hours (1955); 14) These Three (1936); 15) Mrs. Miniver (1942); 16) The Big Country (1958); 17) Funny Girl (1968); 18) Friendly Persuasion (1956); 19) Come and Get It (1936); 20) How to Steal a Million (1966)

ZHANG YIMOU: 1) Raise the Red Lantern (1992); 2) To Live (1994); 3) Ju Dou (1991); 4) The Story of Qiu Ju (1993); 5) Coming Home (2015); 6) House of Flying Daggers (2004); 7) Hero (2004); 8) The Road Home (2001); 9) Red Sorghum (1988); 10) Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) 

FRED ZINNEMANN: 1) From Here to Eternity (1953); 2) High Noon (1952); 3) The Member of the Wedding (1952); 4) A Man for All Seasons (1966); 5) Act of Violence (1949); 6) Julia (1977); 7) A Hatful of Rain (1957); 8) The Sundowners (1960); 9) The Nun’s Story (1959); 10) Oklahoma! (1955)

ROBERT ZEMECKIS: 1) Back to the Future (1985); 2) Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988); 3) Used Cars (1980); 4) Forrest Gump (1994); 5) Cast Away (2000); 6) Back to the Future, Part II (1989); 7) Flight (2012); 8) Contact (1997); 9) Romancing the Stone (1984); 10) Allied (2016)