25 Best Active Directors

List creator: kamapuaa Created on: August 31, 2004 - 2:05 PM PDT Description: Favorite movies from my 25 favorite directors still in the game. Ranked by director.

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	movie title	related list	average rating	MPAA rating	watch	rent	buy
	In the Mood for Love (Criterion Collection) (2000)
#1 Wong Kar Wai - Everything he makes is excellent.
	Needing You (2000)			Not Rated
#2 Johnny To - he's done great films in about 8 different sub-genres. Will make the best movie ever, eventually - you heard it here first.
	Blue Velvet (1986)
#3 David Lynch. Wish the DVDs had chapter breaks though.
	Fargo (Special Edition) (1996)
#4 Coen Brothers.
	Audition (1999)			Not Rated
#5 Takashi Miike.
	Bombay (1995)
#6 Mani Ratnam - operates within the Tamil/Bollywood framework, but is smarter at it.
	Kids Return (1996)			Not Rated
#7 Takeshi Kitano. His films are thoroughly stylized, but make you realize how much more stylized other directors are.
	Pulp Fiction (1994)
#8 Quentin Tarantino - I hope his blog is real because I love it.
	The City of Lost Children (1995)
#9 Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Maybe "Amelie" was better, but it was missing his signature Mousetrap sequences that I love so much.
	Kiki's Delivery Service (Special Edition) (1989)
#10 Hayao Miyazaki.
	Naked Lunch (Criterion Collection) (1991)
#11 David Cronenberg - his revulsions and sense of pulp work wonderfully with the source novel.
	Farewell My Concubine (1993)
#12 Kaige Chen.
	Annie Hall (1977)
#13 Woody Allen.
	Millennium Actress (2001)
#14 Satoshi Kon - arguably better than Hayao Miyazaki, and more adult.
	To Live (1994)			Not Rated
#15 Yimou Zhanh - "House of Flying Daggers" is supposed to be great.
	The Godfather (1972)
#16 Francis Ford Coppola. The wedding sequence to this movie is amazing. It's slowly been downhill since then.
	Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002)			Not Rated
#17 Guy Maddin - for being such a weird auteur, his stuff is surprisingly watchable.
	M*A*S*H (1970)
#18 Robert Altman.
	Unforgiven (1992)
#19 Clint Eastwood. A strong personal style I admire even if I'm not completely sold on.
	Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
#20 Steven Spielberg. I love to hate this director, who makes well-made movies without any soul, but plenty of smarminess and pretention. His early stuff is great though.
	Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998)
#21 Karan Johar - Takes Bollywood masalas to their logical (as it were) conclusion. Probably best used as a producer, as in "Kal Ho Naa Ho."
	Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985)
#22 Tim Burton. Probably beats Coppola for the career-tanking award.
	Roger & Me (1989)
#23 Michael Moore. Man I hate looking at this guy for the course of a movie.
	Flowers of Shanghai (1998)			Not Rated
#24 Hou Hsiao-Hsien - One of my favorite opening scenes. Amazingly well made, if often lacking much substance.
	Breathless (1960)			Not Rated
#25 Jean-Luc Godard - His first few films establish him as perhaps the best director ever, although his experimental films can't really be called movies.