who are the ten greatest living American filmmakers?

An intriguing question from the Lynch thread, especially as 98% of the ones I like are now dead. (semi-kidding)

Roughly in order of coming to mind:

Steven Spielberg
Martin Scorsese
Frederick Wiseman
Elaine May
Charles Burnett
David Lynch
Ken Jacobs
Todd Haynes
Stanley Donen
Roger Corman
Steven Soderbergh
Jerry Lewis

--------------

Ok, that's 12 (sue me). and then I thought of

Terrence Malick
Melvin Van Peebles
Woody Allen
Spike Lee
Kenneth Anger
D.A. Pennebaker
Milos Forman (naturalized!)
Michel Gondry (ditto?)
Joel & Ethan Coen
Francis Coppola
Wes Anderson
Kelly Reichardt
Clint Eastwood
Peter Bogdanovich
Richard Linklater
Alan Rudolph
Walter Hill
David Fincher
Jim Jarmusch
Gus Van Sant
Errol Morris
William Friedkin
John Sayles
Tim Burton
Amy Heckerling
Mel Brooks
Kathryn Bigelow
Terry Gilliam
Nicole Holofcener
Hal Hartley
Nathaniel Dorsky
Brad Bird
Sam Raimi
Jonas Mekas
Penelope Spheeris
Ernie Gehr

others i would not consider who many would:

P.T. Anderson
Brian De Palma
Sofia Coppola
John Carpenter
James Cameron
Q______ T_________
Robert Zemeckis

Stanley Donen is alive?!

wow who knew...yep

Then best working American filmmakers in no order:

Frederick Wiseman
Charles Burnett
David Lynch
Steven Soderbergh
Sofia Coppola
Kelly Reichardt
Steven Spielberg
Errol Morris
Jim Jarmusch
Martin Scorsese

Corman is an interesting choice, Morbs!

I'll have to think about it but I'd wager that my list would include people who, if they're still working, are well past their golden period (thinking someone like Joe Dante, although I'm unsure he'd make my top ten).

i put in my upper tier those w/ at least one film i consider"great" and for RC it's Masque of the Red Death.

Stanley Donen is still alive?!

lol many xps

Donen is the last Golden Age great alive, I think. he's 93.

I love a bunch that are still alive but also well past their prime/actively terrible now (Woody Allen, De Palma etc.)

at least worthy of mention:

Monte Hellman
Laura Poitras

What this tells me is that Americans are in the minority on the list of greatest living filmmakers.

Also, living AND active would probably be a worthwhile consideration.

what about dead AND active?

or living AND inactive, or should be inactive!

xp There's hope for Romero.

surprised to see tim burton on yr list, morbs - it's been close to 20 years since he's made something decent

I'd def consider Anderson and carpenter before burton

I still see defenders of the big-eyes artist movie.

also i very much liked Sweeney Todd.

he gets a lot of grace for me from Ed Wood and Mars Attacks! not the earlier popular stuff.

i liked Sleepy Hollow

for the purposes of this list, i don't care about recent quality

Pee Wee, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood and Mars Attacks is a great run. after that it's p much garbage.

fyc: which of the farrelly bros is still alive

I've only seen 3 Charles Burnett movies, but two of them KoS and To Sleep With Anger are absolutely stunning.

Is rob zombie alive

for the purposes of this list, i don't care about recent quality

in that case i'd say leaving john carpenter off is even more baffling tbh

Don't engage, gazzara.

For real: John Waters deserves a mention

He'd be in my ten, though I have to give the question a lot more thought.

yeah I forgot Waters, bcz inactive (let's face it) and using TSPDT as a backup -- he's not in the top 250 directors.

Same: Bob Rafelson.

leaving john carpenter off is even more baffling tbh

horror stinks

for real, i didn't leave him off anything except MY longlist. A little good faith, ever?

dismissing carpenter as a horror director is pretty reductive

also they live seems like it'd be right in line with the morbs worldview

i was kinda jokin'

still plan to see They Live someday

i like Halloween; not 'great' tho

they live is kind of a masterpiece of bitterly angry lefty polemic, honestly

watched it again recently and it seems more relevant than ever

I should see it again. I remember liking it but also suspect it's clumsy as hell in retrospect.

it is clumsy i guess but i'd prefer to think of it as single-minded: carpenter has one idea to get across (CAPITALISM IS BAD) and rowdy roddy piper is the perfect blunt object to drive the message home

Five more:

Sean Baker
Josephine Decker
James Benning
JP Sniadecki
Alex Ross Perry

jj abrams
mcg
max landis

larry clark

clark is garbage and a garbage-person

best living + working American directors (ie have made a great movie in the last 10 years) imo:

Martin Scorsese
David Lynch
Wes Anderson
Todd Haynes
Jim Jarmusch
Quentin Tarantino (even tho his best/last good movie was in 2009)

... and then there's a bunch of horror + comedy directors who don't have more than a couple films under their belts so probably shouldn't include them just yet

I am willing to hold out hope that The Florida Project is as great as everyone says but ... um, too soon.

pvmic, but malick

Lynch by a country mile, everyone else is playing for second place

The American filmmakers where I still take an automatic interest in whatever they’re doing (past Wiseman, the order’s approximate):

1. Frederick Wiseman
2. The Coens
3. Kelly Reichardt
4. Noel Baumbach
5. Richard Linklater
6. Sofia Coppola
7. Paul Thomas Anderson
8. Nicole Holofcener
9. David Fincher (I liked Gone Girl enough that he’s still on the list)
10. Errol Morris

I’m probably missing a documentarian where I’ve liked two or three films a lot. I haven't seen the Twin Peaks relaunch; if that turns out to be as good as I want it to be, Lynch would be back on the list.

Scorsese, Tarantino, Lee, DePalma, Coppola, others, the films I care about recede further and further into the past.

I haven't seen the Twin Peaks relaunch; if that turns out to be as good as I want it to be, Lynch would be back on the list.

If Mulholland and Inland are what knocked him off the list for you, good luck with that.

Steve Bannon

(xpost) Sort of, yeah. But I'm hoping my interest in the characters will withstand anything...I'm comfortable with whatever level of weirdness the first two seasons and Blue Velvet operated at, but maybe this will be on the other side of that, I don't know.

Would press for alive, active and currently great tbh

(semi-kidding)

are they only kinda dead?

Would press for alive, active and currently great tbh

Directors who are living, active and currently (meaning last 15 years or so) turning out some of their very best work:

Steven Spielberg
David Lynch
Coen Bros.

... struggling after that tbh.

Maybe I'll give Malick a pass for turning out his best movie in that period too.

The same exercise with european and asian directors would be fun!

off the top of my head:

David Lynch
Coen Bros.
Paul Thomas Anderson
Sofia Coppola
Todd Solondz
John Waters
Jim Jarmusch
D.A. Pennebaker
Alexander Payne
Quentin Tarantino

I'm a bit sad no one is mentioning Apatow.

same for James Gray and Jeff Nichols.

He's not great as a director

Cant believe i forgot the coens lol

Xp

Directors who are living, active and who I would watch a new movie by on purpose:

Joel & Ethan Coen
Sofia Coppola
David Fincher
William Friedkin
Walter Hill
Nicole Holofcener
John Hyams
Jim Jarmusch
Adam Wingard
Rob Zombie

Oh yeah, James Gray would get a slot too on the alive/active/currently-great list.

fuck I forgot Friedkin & Fincher

shit I can't believe I forgot Kelly Reichardt, too... she's in the top 5 for me

Love seeing her pop up so much. She hasn't really made a bad movie yet, they've all be more or less interesting or at least certainly worthwhile.

yeah she is in my top 5 right now too

What this tells me is that Americans are in the minority on the list of greatest living filmmakers.

Eric otm, which is why the question i asked is dead and gone

I knew I forgot someone who made an excellent film this year. Yeah -- Gray is in the top three among working American filmmakers. Holofcener not far behind.

No one's mentioned Kenneth Lonergan--completely forgot about him too. He'd be on my list for sure, so knock off Errol Morris.

This is personal favorites for me, not any stab at "best" --

David Lynch
Coen Bros.
P.T. Anderson
Wes Anderson
David Soderbergh
Jeremy Saulnier (yes, based only on Blue Ruin and Green Room)
then a nebulous 2nd tier that probably includes Jarmusch, Lonergan, Scorsese, probably Bigelow

I had to check to see if David Soderbergh was the Tommie Aaron of American film, but I think you meant Hank.

right, right, Hammerin' Steve

Malick probably at the top of the living/working list if he took time off after Tree of Life.

Green Room might be a good rewatch for this week.

I'll second Lonergan.

Ranked according to my current level of enthusiasm (as in, "how excited am I for an upcoming project by this filmmaker), my list would go something like:

1. Joel and Ethan Coen
2. Brad Bird
3. Quentin Tarantino
4. Richard Linklater
5. Steven Spielberg
6. Kenneth Lonergan
7. Spike Lee
8. Spike Jonze
9. Paul Thomas Anderson
10. Ira Sachs

(that's only 10% African American and 10% queer. Would have been 10% female too, but I remembered Spike Jonze at the last minute and Nicole Holofcener fell off the list.)

I've given up on Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Gus Van Sant and Tim Burton, and I'm so over Wes Anderson, Kathryn Bigelow, Todd Solondz and Alexander Payne. I have some serious catching up to do with Lynch post Mulholland Drive (just started watching the *original* Twin Peaks series, to be followed by the prequel film and then the new series). Sachs gets the spot that might otherwise go to Scorsese or Sophia Coppola, because a) I haven't seen Silence yet, and so for now the only thing I've liked from him in the last decade was the Fran Leibowitz doc, and b) I was so bored by Somewhere that I never made seeing The Bling Ring a priority, and so I still gotta catch up with it and her new one. I can't think of any documentary filmmakers that I consistently like--though the guy who did the Divine and Tab Hunter ones is good. I rarely enjoy Fincher, and I feel like I should enjoy Haynes and Malick far more than I do.

Good call on Sachs.

I probably should have included Pete Docter as well, as his three features as director (Monsters Inc, Up, Inside Out) is a great run.

Just returning from The Florida Project. Sean Baker is the greatest living American Filmmaker, bar none. Such an amazing experience.

Well, perhaps 'greatest current American Filmmaker'. He's definitely the American Filmmaker of the decade.

Ugh, really? I intensely disliked it.

"Ugh" as in, "Not you too?" My band of Florida film critics is disappointed like hell with it.

Great to hear, Fred. I put Tangerine in my top 25 of the century so far. that was an amazing movie. Really looking forward to TFP in a few weeks when it comes here.

xp Interesting Alfred... i'll dip out of this convo til I see the movie, curious to hear both yr guys' thoughts.

I liked Tangerine but this film showed he hasn't a clue (yet) how to pace a feature length film.

according to A White it also has fatal "class condescension" issues.

Well what doesn't, outside of Mel Gibson movies?

A colleague called it "tourist porn," which it isn't -- it's child cuteness porn. It accepts that these horrifying children are charming little dears.

Life's too short to engage with what A White thinks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's just so great. The colors, the framing of the pictures, every single actor, the way it feels like life is just drifting by, while on retrospect it's really tightly constructed, the colors, the sunsets, the fantasmogoric view of America, the music, and oh, did I mention the colors?

that's the problem, which you hit -- I had an existential fear that anyone outside Florida would nod and think, "See? Here is this phantasmagorical view of America." What you see in this movie isn't Orlando, isn't Disney, isn't Kissimmee -- it could be shot in Sarasota, Jacksonville, outskirts of Tacoma. It doesn't even get the noise level right.

and all the reviews are falling into the trap of writing, "See? Here's America." It's so fucking condescending.

One thing, I'll grant, it does get right: the colors of a summer sky in Florida before a thunderstorm. But the children are so poorly directed -- and the ending so misconceived that everyone in the screening room laughed -- and Willem Dafoe so obvious that, of course, we can discuss Oscar nominations. There isn't a hotel manager in the world as generous as Dafoe; he's managing a flophouse as if it were a Disney gift shop, and Disney gift shops wouldn't let customers get away with what Dafoe does.

I kinda don't care if it's accurately Orlando, the feeling of phantasmagoria was equally powerful in the films Baker shot in California. It's something he does in all his films.

The sound design is absolutely incredible and expressive. It's not about getting anything 'right', it's not a documentary. It's a work of art.

Also, Baker isn't the only one doing phantasmagorical America. Soderbergh in films like Magic Mike and Logan Lucky (just the names...) and the Sadie Brothers' Good Time. As examples. Baker is just the best one.

It fails as fiction.

Soderbergh's Tampa lives. So does American Honey, which covers much of the same ground, is half an hour longer, and the more moving film.

I do want to see The Florida Project mainly on the basis of Baker's previous film (which I didn't flat-out love, but found intriguing enough to see what he does next), and the disparity between the reviews I've been seeing and Alfred's reaction makes me, if anything, more curious about it, but American Honey is a serious red flag for me. I know that it was acclaimed, but I found it so tedious and unlikeable that I bailed on it with about an hour still to go in its (endless) running time.

What was the last great Florida movie? Sayles' Sunshine State?

Frederik revives this thread for a guy who's made two fucking features. Clown.

I'd say Ulee's Gold was the last to really get its topography; I dunno if it's great.

I'm posting a review at the usual places tomorrow.

Turned American Honey off in record time.

Frederik revives this thread for a guy who's made two fucking features. Clown.

Hey, if there was a single director out there who I thought hadn't yet made a ghastly mistake, I'd be enthusiastic too.

If any force, natural or supernatural, can make Shia TheBeef tolerable for at least a third of a picture, then I can keep hoping this same force will kill Donald Trump.

Sean Baker has made six feature films. I've only seen the three he has made this decade.

I forgot I saw Starlet. Not good.

What was the last great Florida movie? Sayles' Sunshine State?

watched this last week, not good

oh cool – this thread will go on all day!

Happiness was partially set in Florida iirc. So I guess that.

What was the last great Florida movie? Sayles' Sunshine State?

SPRAAAAANG BREAK FOREVER

Also, Bully.

not everyone will agree with me but imo a great florida movie is sun don't shine

SPRAAAAANG BREAK FOREVER

I don't think of that so much as a Florida movie as I do life itself.

Last great Florida movie = Impulse w/ William Shatner.

SPRAAAAANG BREAK FOREVER

I don't think of that so much as a Florida movie as I do life itself.

― Anne of the Thousand Gays (Eric H.), 12. oktober 2017 14:55 (fifty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True. That film is everywhere and always.

What I wrote about The Florida Project anyway

Saw it today. In between Fred & Alfred but erring on Alfred's side - my main issue with the movie is it lacks any forward momentum, and the ending feels tacked on and forced. I was intrigued by the helicopter that kept taking off and landing by the motel, and when the cops & CPS came, I got the idea that the girl was going to run and jump into the helicopter and fly away. A beautiful, absurd fantasy of an ending that was making me cry even as it didn't play out. I thought the idea of them seeking asylum in the Magic Kingdom was nice, but again, the movie was so poorly paced & kind of boring as a mood/atmosphere piece. Some things I loved: the colors obviously, Willem Dafoe's performance (yes Alfred, perhaps not the most common landlord, but I've known a few landlords that he reminded me of. he was my favorite part of the movie by far), Baker escalating situations beyond where most directors would stop or cut (the one parent beating the shit out of the other, the pedophile, the johns coming into the room when the kid was there).

As far as it representing Florida or America or being a "See? This is real America" - well, I trust the guy that actually lives in Florida. Fred, I think the fantasy of this movie does its subject(s) a disservice. I still liked it, and it confirms Baker's status as one of America's most interesting directors, but I was let down- mostly because I loved, loved, loved Tangerine so much.

Reading this is such a relief.

huh had no idea Florida Project was directed by same person as Tangerine

Well, violently down the middle on Florida Project.

For awhile, yes, Alfred is right that the movie takes for granted that "these horrifying children are charming little dears" and, left-field quips aside, not remotely convincing. Eventually, it settles into truly expert "everyone has their reasons" territory -- many moments of unforced efficiency. (Am thinking of the interlude with Willem Dafoe's son, I think, saying he doesn't want to "do this anymore," and also clearly understanding why Dafoe's character feels compelled to continue. And how the sudden pattern of bathtime play interludes gently invites the audience into a new and unpleasant plot point.)

And it has a knack for portraying squalor in a way that makes it clear how adults can see their environment one way and kids another way entirely. But one of the movie's most obvious but well-realized examples -- the birthday fireworks a half-mile away from the real show -- just underscored how the abrupt ending didn't fucking work. After Tangerine, which had one of my favorite endings in recent years, this was a damp squib. Even taking into consideration how it brings "reality" crashing into a 6-year-old girl's life so violently she has nowhere to turn to but desperate fantasy. But the movie's a lot stronger when it sticks to things like the tourists' helicopter endlessly taking off: exciting to kids, a slap in the face to the destitute adults.

Still, I'll refrain from calling any filmmaker willing to devote serious career energies into depicting the American underclass condescending until we actually have anything remotely like an appropriate proportion of filmmakers devoting serious career energies into depicting the American underclass.

Oh, and didn't need lines like, "Do you know why this is my favorite tree? Because it’s tipped over and still growing." Not at all.

That was the best line! Perfect metaphor for America in 2017. And such a gorgeous image of them sitting on the tree, absolutely beautiful.

I don't want metaphors for America in 2017 or ever.

Well, if a lot of people in the US agree with you, that's probably a major reason why American art is so shitty.

plz get your motherfucking Sean Baker discussion outta my thread

(Frederik, you don't know shit about America)

That gorgeous shot was why we didn't need the line

I thought the Florida project was excellent and it/baker should probably have a thread

I agree the shot was better. But line -> shot was a gorgeous piece of editing.

And yeah, as the best American director of the decade, Sean Baker probably deserves his own thread.

That gorgeous shot was why we didn't need the line

This. Plus the entire movie leading up to that point.