I love the medium of film and I can acknowledge the great effort that goes into making them. However, I, like most people, have found myself drawn to particular directors whose works left a profound impact on me. To give some criteria for this article, I have to have seen at least half or more of a directors filmography, I’m going to be generous and say that they only need to have directed two or more films and their body of work needs to have transcended entertainment and affected me on a personal level. This last criteria is the most important because there are many directors out there who are highly regarded and, while I appreciate the craftsmanship of their films, their movies don’t leave me thinking and contemplating them long afterwards. With all that said and done and in no particular order, let’s take a look at some of the movie directors that I consider to be my favourite.
1. Wes Craven
I recently had a bit of a Wes Craven marathon where I watched fifteen out of the twenty films that he directed over the course of his lifetime with his films that I haven’t seen being Swamp Thing, The Hills Have Eyes Part II, Deadly Friend, Vampire in Brooklyn and Music of the Heart. Like many people, I started with his Scream films and A Nightmare on Elm Street and loved them with A Nightmare on Elm Street briefly becoming my favourite horror film of all time. I experienced other films from him in piecemeal over the years such as The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes but I finally settled down to watch as many of his films as I could recently. As you may imagine, watching the majority of his work one after another gave me a deep appreciation for his talent and, while there were a few that I didn’t care for like My Soul to Take and Cursed, his films have proved to stick with me for both the right and wrong reasons with The People Under the Stairs being an underrated masterpiece and Shocker being a movie that’s so crazy and all over the place that I derive great pleasure from watching it.
2. Lars Von Trier
Lars Von Trier is a director that I’ve been hearing about for years due to Antichrist and Nymphomaniac but it wasn’t until recently that I decided to watch his films. I’ve yet to see The Boss of It All but I’ve seen his other films and I have to say that his films stick with you. Something that I’m always searching for in film is emotional impact and his films have this in spades. My personal favourites of his would be Dancer in the Dark, Europa and The House That Jack Built with the only film of his that I actively disliked being Epidemic. I also have to commend the variety of his films that stretch across numerous genres and feel distinct from one another while retaining that aggressive emotional impact that I now associate with his movies.
3. Mamoru Hosoda
Mamoru Hosoda is an anime director whose films formed a core part of my initial interest in the medium and which has continued to attract my attention to this day. Of his films, I’ve seen The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, Wolf Children, The Boy and the Beast and Mirai with his newest film, Belle, currently in my Blu-ray collection which I’ll watch soon. Summer Wars was among the first anime films that I ever saw in a cinema and it impressed me so much that I quickly got around to watching The Girl Who Leapt Through Time which I enjoyed even more. So far, my personal favourite of his is Wolf Children, a film that I consider to be a masterpiece and one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen. I only saw The Boy and the Beast and Mirai recently and while I would consider Mirai to be the weakest film I’ve seen of his so far, I still enjoyed them. There are a lot of great directors in the anime industry and Mamoru Hosoda fully deserves to be considered as one of the best.
4. The Soska Sisters
The Soska Sisters have been perhaps the most impressive horror directors that I’ve recently discovered. Tragically, I’ve not been able to see as many of their films that I would like but the ones that I have seen have greatly impressed me. The first film of theirs that I saw also happens to be my favourite of theirs as well, American Mary. I didn’t know anything about the film when I sat down to watch it and the experience proved incredible, something that I couldn’t get out of my head for days. I quickly began seeking the availability of their other films but I found a few of them impossible to get my hands on, those being Dead Hooker in a Trunk, Vendetta and ABCs of Death 2, but I did manage to get their remaining two films. Rabid is a remake of a David Cronenberg film of the same name and it proved to be quite an affecting movie and, while I didn’t think it was as good as American Mary, I still greatly enjoyed it. I also got my hands on See No Evil 2 and I was sceptical about the film after watching the first one and finding it a dull, uninspired film. Imagine my surprise then when See No Evil 2 actually proved to be a far superior film to the first entry, one that was actually entertaining to watch! I still think it’s the weakest of the three films I’ve seen so far but the fact that they could take what had been an awful film and developed an excellent follow-up shows me how talented they are.
There are a lot of great movie directors that I’ve seen but these are the ones that made me want to go out and start seeking the other films that they’ve done. Let me know your thoughts on these movie directors that I consider to be amongst my favourites, who some of your favourite directors are, which directors have you enjoyed so much that you actively sought out their other movies and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!