Some of My Favorite Movie Directors

With this post I would like to pay tribute to some of my favorite artistic movie directors. They are all current filmmakers whose work ranges from the past 20 years or so. They all have tremendous vision and the ability to execute that vision from the biggest to smallest detail of all their movies. While not all of them are mainstream Hollywood, (thank goodness) they are definitely directors who have made a name for themselves in the field of cinema.

Some of my favorite movies are ones that are more like dreams; where a straightforward storyline or narrative is not necessarily necessary. Films like - Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Dr. (2001), from David Lynch. Some of Lynch's earlier works include Eraserhead (1977), which is an insanely crazy movie in black and white, (1986) Blue Velvet, and Dune (1984).

"Films are like magic. They take us into new worlds. And that should be protected at all costs." - David Lynch quoted in Entertainment Weekly, February 22, 2002

In this post I mentioned Julian Schnabel, check it out for more on this great painter turned movie director. In addition to Basquiat, which is in my top 5 movies of all time he has also directed the movies: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), and Before Night Falls (2000).

Next on the list is Tim Burton. He directed my second favorite movie of all time - Edward Scissorhands. Also Big Fish, The first two Batman movies (the best ones by far, the only mistake was casting Michael Keaton as Batman), Beetlejuice, and Nightmare before Christmas, just to name a few. I mean come on, who else would make a full-scale insane clay-mation movie with a gothic/fantasy theme... no one else I can think of besides Burton. (The 2005 movie Corpse Bride was also in this vein).

Burton is a director whose movies have no wasted space. There are no parts however small, that weren't carefully thought out. All the directors mentioned here share that attribute; a masterful eye for detail, and a masterful eye for the larger picture.

"So if too many people like my films, I might get scared and think I did something wrong. Honestly.” -Jim Jarmusch

Next up is Jim Jarmusch; who directed Dead Man (1995), my most favorite movie of all time. Truly a visionary masterpiece, It stars Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer. (Yes I am a big Johnny Depp fan, but less so now that he has gone all super-Hollywood on us with Pirate shenanigans 1, 2 and 3.) I did like Depp's controversial take on Willy Wonka that many disagreed with. For those of you that haven't actually read the books by Ronald Doahl, Depp's take on Wonka is much closer to the book version than Gene Wilder's was. I am not taking anything away from Wilder, just saying it wasn't as true to the book. But back to Jarmusch; besides Dead Man he has also directed Ghost Dog, Coffee and Cigarettes, and Broken Flowers to name a few.

M. Night Shyamalan is another one of the better current directors out there right now. He has had some big hits but he has also taken risks. A lot of people didn't like his fairy tale - Lady in the Water, I thought it was a fantastic movie though. Shattered was a great movie, and Signs was very creepy. Shyamalan definitely has a storyteller kind of take with his style. He directed a live action movie of the animation series "Avatar" due out later this year. (Which is totally bogus that James Cameron produced a movie called Avatar, knowingly capitalizing on the buzz around the Last Airbender movie).

"I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it`s an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that`s my trademark or one of them anyway!"
- M. Night Shyamalan

The ending of the Avatar: The Last Airbender series kind of disappointed me, but it was still one of the better modern fantasy stories out there currently, and I liked the diverse, inclusive feel of it. It will be interesting to see Shyamalan's take on it, considering that much of that diverse feel was supposedly taken out in his casting of the movie.

I didn't go too in depth with my analysis of these directors and their fantastic works, but for those that haven't seen some of these movies mentioned, I leave the magic there for you to discover for yourself, without my perception clouding your experience. Feel free to comment on all the movies that these guys directed that I failed to mention, or about anything you want, as always.