The 171st Best Director of All-Time: Noah Baumbach
Baumbach. Four of Baumbach’s best five films were from the 2010’s so like James Gray and others on this list before he’ll shoot up this list in the future when I update it (I’m trying
Duck Soup – 1933 McCarey
Rat-a-tat zaniness – bat$hit crazy for its entire 69-minute running time. Unlike lesser Marx Brothers films there’s no pretense made here about a straight story or love story- every sketch is fire, going for broke
Magnolia – 1999 P.T. Anderson
Viewed January 2018 (probably 5th time) and April 2020 It’s an enormous masterwork—pure filmmaking ambitionCertainly, since it’s an ensemble piece set it in LA- you have to think of Altman’s 1993 Short CutsEbert calls is “operatic
Private Fears in Public Places – 2006 Resnais
A great film for any auteur at any stage in their career- but for Rensais to make Private Fears in Public Places at age 84—remarkablea sort of distant cousin of Resnais’ 1980 masterwork Mon oncle
The 170th Best Director of All-Time: Andrzej Wajda
Wajda. Andrzej Wajda is the great polish auteur who emerged in the wake of WWII. I’ve always paired him with another great who made one hell of a debut in 1955- Satyajit Ray. Both followed
Countdown – 1967 Altman
It doesn’t rewrite the book on Robert Altman, Robert Duvall or James Caan by any stretch but it is a solid little film- rests somewhere outside the top 20 of 1967It was Altman’s first feature
Night of the Living Dead – 1968 Romero
There are two movements going on here in George Romero’s debut film Night of the Living Dead- a changing of the guard for the horror genre, and an important film for the history independent cinemaFrom
The 169th Best Director of All-Time: James Gray
Gray. James Gray’s best work (though his top four films are all really strong and closely clustered) has come in the 2010’s so he’ll vault up this list in the upcoming years. His resume’s strengths
The 168th Best Director of All-Time: Edgar Ulmer
Ulmer. On a shoestring budget Ulmer produced one of the best 1930’s horror films (The Black Cat) and one of the absolute staples and best films in film noir (Detour). Both show off Ulmer’s talents
Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages – 1916 Griffith
A staggeringly ambitious (both in grandeur and structure) early masterpiece—experimental Griffith lays out the complex structure in the opening titles—he’s weaving together moments of, yes, intolerance, throughout the ages—these four narratives unfold, in harmony, throughout
Train to Busan – 2016 Sang-ho Yeon
A strong entry into the horror/zombie subgenreI’ll be comparing it to other films below but I think it all starts with Romero’s work—sociopolitical entertainment in this specific mode The neglectful father is a fund manager,
Mon oncle d’Amérique – 1980 Resnais
An absolutely masterful dissection of the human condition, an accomplishment in editing, and a piece of cinema that should be used to showcase the possibilities strong film form A highly ambitious film without one single