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Originally posted by EccentricSam:

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Originally posted by Nickel-Z:
P.T., Q.T., and Lloyd Kaufman take my award for the most enthusiastic and are at this point in time, my favorite. I don't think I can take someone who puts Steven Spielberg at the top of their list seriously...

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Wow that's about 70 percent of the people here at the forums (I, like you, am one of the 30). Prepare to get verbally slapped in the face by Mark...

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Nah, I'm not gonna do that because anyone who has the guts to put Lloyd "TromaKing" Kaufman in their favorite director list is weird enough for me to like. Besides, I know what it's like to be in the minority. I'm one of the 5% who think that "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is semi well-done, overrated piffle, and I've seen it three times!

If Mark won't defend Spielberg, I must. Not to say that I have anything against Nickel but Spielberg is one of my favorites. Here is a list for you:

Saving Private Ryan
Amistad
Schindler's List
Arachnophobia
The Goonis
Gremlins
E.T.
Catch Me If You Can
Minority Report
The Indiana Jones series
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Close Encounters
Jaws

He has been involved in all of these good or great movies. Not including him seems an injustice to his contributions to the film industry.

BTW, don't forget Kevin Smith! I wouldn't put him at the top of my list but he still is one of my favorite directors.

Spielberg is good... I liked his earlier work better, but he'd never ever be my favorite. His greats are exceeded by the bland films he's made.

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Originally posted by mark f:

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Originally posted by EccentricSam:

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Originally posted by Nickel-Z:
P.T., Q.T., and Lloyd Kaufman take my award for the most enthusiastic and are at this point in time, my favorite. I don't think I can take someone who puts Steven Spielberg at the top of their list seriously...

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Wow that's about 70 percent of the people here at the forums (I, like you, am one of the 30). Prepare to get verbally slapped in the face by Mark...

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Nah, I'm not gonna do that because anyone who has the guts to put Lloyd "TromaKing" Kaufman in their favorite director list is weird enough for me to like. Besides, I know what it's like to be in the minority. I'm one of the 5% who think that "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is semi well-done, overrated piffle, and I've seen it three times!

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Well, since I've never seen any of Lloyd Kaufman's movies, I'll do it for you. Hey Sam and Nickel-Z...*SLAP*!!

Don't take me seriously if you wish, but I stand by putting Spielberg as my favorite director.

I love his work because he is so diverse. He can make his audience laugh, and he can make them cry. He can be exciting, dramatic, scary, confusing, or silly. Remember, this isn't a discussion for GREATEST director, it's FAVORITE director. There's a difference.

I love his earlier work but I must say that it was all pretty simplistic, and not especially serious or meaningful, but more fun and silly. More recently however, with movies such as "Schindler's List", "Minority Report" and "Saving Private Ryan", He has shown that he can do a serious, dramatic movie, or a movie with a pretty intricate and complicated plot ("Minority Report").

But wait, there's more. There are other reasons why I like Steven Spielberg so much. For one, he's Jewish like me. He's also a very strong liberal Democrat and has donated millions of dollars to the Democratic party. Something I admire quite a bit. And finally, even though I've never met him, he just seems like he is a really nice person.

Yes, well, I dislike Spielberg for preparing big budget films that cloud the industry with so much fluff that movies from less important yet more creative and innovative directors, from being on the big screen. With his huge bill fold, how could he not make visual feasts? Give 5 mill to Lloyd and see what he comes up with, I assure you it would be better. However, I'm willing to admit him as a good director and guess I just spouted off more than I meant to .

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Originally posted by Nickel-Z:
Give 5 mill to Lloyd and see what he comes up with, I assure you it would be better.

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Spielberg didn't always get a ton of money for his movies. You have to start somewhere. He proved his reputation and so he was trusted with a big budget. I'm sure if Lloyd was able to prove that he could do even better, producers would give him a chance.

Lloyd directs good movies, but its not the type that appeals to all. I think that when Spielberg makes a movie, he has a range of goals to hit. Intrigue, Love story, action, etc. All the while he misses just making a good movie. Working under his little prototype everything but his stories really seem to resemble each other. You must not think, however, that I am speaking of INDIE, MINORITY REPORT, SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, and lastly, JAWS. Everthing recently can have a backseat to MY favorite directors. Oh, and a director that is tackling "War of the Worlds" and "Indiana Jones 4" in the same year can't have anything that interesting to say.

1.Mizoguchi
2.Tarkovsky
3.Renoir
4.Hitchcock
5.Kubrick

+
Rohmer
Ozu
Max Ophuls
Eisenstein
Dreyer

They Shoot Pictures. Don't They? website has a list of top directors, as well as films, according to top 10's in various international polls. A master like Mizoguchi has little chance in a poll like this, given the shameful scarcity of his films on dvd.

Well, I've made a list of my top 30 favorite directors and the movies that make them my favorite directors. Enjoy.

1. Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan)
2. Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction)
3. Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey)
4. Ridley Scott (Gladiator)
5. Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands)
6. Michael Mann (Heat)
7. Terry Gilliam (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
8. M. Night Shyamalan (Unbreakable)
9. Peter Weir (The Truman Show)
10. Robert Rodriguez (Sin City)
11. Roman Polanski (The Pianist)
12. Jonathon Demme (The Silence of the Lambs)
13. David Fincher (Fight Club)
14. Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump)
15. Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption)
16. Danny Boyle (Millions)
17. Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho)
18. Coen Brothers (Fargo)
19. Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle)
20. Christopher Nolan (Memento)
21. Spike Jonze (Adaptation)
22. Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects)
23. Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia)
24. Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver)
25. Francis Ford Copolla (The Godfather)
26. Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line)
27. Richard Linklater (School of Rock)
28. Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away)
29. Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums)
30. Steven Soderbergh (Traffic)

At the current point in time probably Ridley Scott. Wolfgang Peterson is also quite good, although I haven't seen terribly many of his films.

1-Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas)
2-Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs)
3-M. Night Shyamalan (Signs)
4-Francis Ford Copolla (Apocalypse Now)
5-Gus Van Sant (Elphant)

1. Godard
2. Welles
3. Antonioni
4. Greenaway
5. Wong Kar-Wai

Spielberg is a unrelenting, no talent hack, who, along with his pal Lucas, almost single-handedly ruined the Hollywood movie as an outlet for the sporadic, occasional quality piece of cinema. Cheap thrills, base sentimentality and parlor tricks. At least true greats like Chaplin knew their work was absurdist comedy.

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Originally posted by Mike:
If Mark won't defend Spielberg, I must. Not to say that I have anything against Nickel but Spielberg is one of my favorites. Here is a list for you:

Saving Private Ryan
Amistad
Schindler's List
Arachnophobia
The Goonis
Gremlins
E.T.
Catch Me If You Can
Minority Report
The Indiana Jones series
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Close Encounters
Jaws

He has been involved in all of these good or great movies. Not including him seems an injustice to his contributions to the film industry.

BTW, don't forget Kevin Smith! I wouldn't put him at the top of my list but he still is one of my favorite directors.

You have the right to your opinion, and I've heard it for years now, but how, EXACTLY, did the AntiChrist Spielberg do that? By the way, looking at your top five directors, I notice that they're ALL "good" at parlor tricks.

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Originally posted by mark f:
You have the right to your opinion, and I've heard it for years now, but how, EXACTLY, did the AntiChrist Spielberg do that? By the way, looking at your top five directors, I notice that they're ALL "good" at parlor tricks.

Possibly so, but when the parlor tricks are contextualized and organic, they become magic. at least the five figures I mentioned are creators of what some people call CINEMA. Your boy Spielberg makes movies. And if you don't know the difference you need to go back to school.

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Originally posted by mark f:
You have the right to your opinion, and I've heard it for years now, but how, EXACTLY, did the AntiChrist Spielberg do that? By the way, looking at your top five directors, I notice that they're ALL "good" at parlor tricks.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that Spielberg is a no-talent hack, but I wouldn't put him on a list of top directors either. Though he's made some films I really enjoy, I think he lacks a signature style that makes so many other filmmakers great. There's no way you could watch "E.T.", "Shindler's List", and "Minority Report" back-to-back and tell me that they're made by the same guy. Not in the same way you can tell a Hitchcock, Tarantino, or even a Ridley Scott film.

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Originally posted by Bruce Oothout:
Possibly so, but when the parlor tricks are contextualized and organic, they become magic. at least the five figures I mentioned are creators of what some people call CINEMA. Your boy Spielberg makes movies. And if you don't know the difference you need to go back to school.

On the other hand, films are supposed to be a vehicle for telling a story, and Spielberg does that pretty well. Peter Greenaway makes some visually interesting films, but most of them bore me to tears. There's no way I'd put him in the top 5 filmmakers of all time.

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Originally posted by Bruce Oothout:

Possibly so, but when the parlor tricks are contextualized and organic, they become magic. at least the five figures I mentioned are creators of what some people call CINEMA. Your boy Spielberg makes movies. And if you don't know the difference you need to go back to school.

What a pretentious statement. I love when people start batting around the idea that somehow all cinema are movies, but not all movies are cinema, and that there's an aesthetic set of criteria to distinguish the two. Whatever. Here are my top 5 today.

1. Fellini
2. Hitchcock
3. Kubrick
4. Kurosawa
5. Anderson(Wes)

I'm going to try to place up my list here because at this point it's too difficult as task for me. But I'm puzzled by those people who are listing directors and one and only one film they directed. Does this mean that because of this greatness of this one film that the director therefore ranks up among the best or is the film supposedly representative of the director's work. What is it that one is actually basing their decision on?

Oops! It's almost midnight. Time for bed. I meant to say I'm NOT going to try to put up a list. It's beyond my capabilities. I'm just struggling to get a handle on the movies a really like.

Jim Jarmusch and Wayne Wang are my two favorite directors. Did I mention I like boring movies?