Our Favorite 15 Working Directors

In lieu of this week’s Battle of Directors column, the Movie Mezzanine staff decided to rally together to form an arbitrary (yet thoroughly enjoyable to produce) list of our favorite working filmmakers. Diverse and (hopefully) thoughtful selections lie below. Enjoy!

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15.) Darren Aronofsky

Not enough people give credit to how versatile of a director Darren Aronofsky is. Able to expertly craft experiences of high-melodrama, persistent bleakness, ethereal beauty, and even quiet subtlety depending on the film, each of his movies are deeply intimate, hugely emotional experiences that don’t shy away from fully boring themselves into bleakness, sentimentality, abstraction, or even just pure insanity. Yet Aronofsky transcends cliche through sheer filmmaking prowess, and there isn’t a single director who can replicate his method of madness. – Christopher Runyon

14.) David Cronenberg

Toronto’s weirdest son has been making movies for over 40 years, sublimating the western world’s repressed urges into nightmarish fantasies. Working primarily in the idiom of horror filmmaking, but branching out lately into period dramas and crime thrillers, Cronenberg envisions human beings as physically and psychically malleable. And from Shivers to The Flyto last year’s Cosmopolis, he’s translated this vision into profound tragedy, using it to lay bare the realities of family and sex in a world increasingly mediated by technology. No one understands change quite like him, and his movies bear this out: incomparably visceral, singularly horrific, pure Cronenberg. – Andreas Stoehr

13.) Rian Johnson

Of the 15 filmmakers on this list Rian Johnson is both the youngest and least experienced. After only three movies (Brick, Brother’s Bloom, and Looper) Johnson has solidified himself as an ingenious craftsman and a fresh new voice in contemporary cinema. Moreover, he possesses the unique ability to construct riveting movies with a multiplicity of themes and ideas (visually and narratively) without getting mired in artifice. It may sound a bit clichéd, but Rian Johnson’s career as a storyteller looks bright and promising. – Sam Fragoso

12.) David Fincher

Since his breakout feature Se7en hit theatres in 1995, few directors in Hollywood have explored the dark impulses of the human psyche with more style or control than David Fincher.  Like so many nineties auteurs, the aesthetic of his early films, including The Game and Fight Club, were heavily influenced by his work in commercials and music videos, while exploring notions of nihilism and widespread social decay.  His more recent oeuvre, including two veritable masterpieces in Zodiac and The Social Network, show a clear maturation in Fincher’s visual style, while nonetheless retaining that same pulsating energy and rhythm that make him such a fascinating filmmaker. – Tom Clift

11.) Steven Spielberg

What can be said about Spielberg that hasn’t already been said? He’s one of the most important American filmmakers of the last 40 years. His body of work is as impressive as it is expansive. So many of his films have been called classics that it’s practically unbelievable. His more recent work has been less uniformly celebrated, but his constant willingness to challenge himself and experiment with new styles has made him a consistently important modern filmmaker, even this far into his career. – Corey Atad

10.) Jean-Luc Godard

To watch Godard’s ever-evolving work is to read Joyce: It is a headlong plunge into genius that masters its chosen field’s grammar to the point it must invent its own, yet for all the intellectual hurdles such work presents, the lyricism of its craftsmanship presents one with the option of losing oneself in its rhythm. No one else, and certainly no other lapsed Maoist, could shoot a petrol station with such astonishing beauty. His quest to push himself, and cinema, ever further has made him perhaps the most famous fringe filmmaker of all time, but if he will not get his due until after his death, at least he will leave behind a mountain of material. – Jake Cole

9.) Andrea Arnold

With only three shorts and three features to her name, Andrea Arnold has cemented herself as much more than a “director to watch”. Her films reflect a point of view completely unique in the film world today, and that’s even with the obvious comparisons to Ken Loach. The intimacy with which she approaches her characters and the frankness with which she portrays their lives are incredible. The force and consistency of her vision proves she’s the real deal, and one of very the best directors working today. – Corey Atad

8.) Martin Scorsese

Comfortably settling in as American cinema’s old master, Martin Scorsese seems renewed and reinvigorated with each new film. In each is a deep, abiding love for the medium of film itself, the magic (Hugo), the mystery (Shutter Island), and suspense (The Departed) that filmmaking shares with the audience. Each new Scorsese movie is a genuine event, and has been for forty years. I can’t wait to see what’s next. – Kristen Sales

7.) Paul Thomas Anderson

PT Anderson has earned every right to be discussed as an equal to the directors most frequently cited as influences, dudes in the no-first-names-necessary-club like Altman, Kubrick, and Malick. PT’s last two pictures have shown a mind that can keep pace with his bravado; don’t get me wrong, it’s not like Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and so forth were dumb or anything, but these last two pictures are like “Time to define the first half of the twentieth century, without breaking a sweat.” – Danny Bowes

6.) Christoper Nolan

Ever since his breakout hit Memento, Christopher Nolan has consistently established himself as one of the most viscerally exciting and original filmmakers working today. From his landmark Batman trilogy, to original hits like The Prestige and Inception, Nolan’s distinct style and voice has become a mainstay both for mainstream and independent cinema, and one of the most important filmmakers of our generation. – Kevin Ketchum

5.) Apichatpong Weerasethakul

With a batch of commissioned shorts and features to his name, Thai director Apichatpong “Joe” Weerasethakul has emerged one of the preeminent poets of modern cinema, crafting enigmatic but evocative works that cross dimensional barriers of being just as suddenly and deftly as they fracture a narrative. From animal spirits to a burning projector screen, the strange, beautiful sights of his filmography play as respectful, albeit critical, tributes to family, homeland and art form. Reincarnation plays a key role in much of Joe’s oeuvre, and at times it seems cinema itself will be reborn through him. – Jake Cole

4.) Quentin Tarantino

Carefully cultivating his filmography, Quentin Tarantino has evolved from a pop culture savant to a genuine scholar of film genre. Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained reveal a director whose love of genre filmmaking blends with a keen interest in alternative history, creating a uniquely warped pastiche. It’s QT’s world, we’re just living in it – Kristen Sales

3.) Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami’s prolific career has too often been shoehorned by critics who simply appreciate his meta-cinematic elements. Certainly, Kiarostami is interested in how the cinema investigates reality, but his primary interest is the human condition itself. Kiarostami’s images peer into emotion with a formal rigor in which every frame is densely layered with information, but also exists as only a part of a larger landscape. His camera always senses an outside presence (most notably through his radical use of sound) in which he both investigates but also suggests the limitations of when trying to capture such truth. In the era of new nihilism, Kiarostami remains the master of cinematic humanism. – Peter Labuza

2.) Terrence Malick

It’s fascinating that one of American’s most well-regarded filmmakers has made only seven films in a five-decade career, especially considering that virtually every Malick film is heralded as a masterpiece. His films are never about characters but rather, emotionally compelling formal expressions of ideas, which is why slews of A-list celebrities regularly get cut completely from his pictures in post-production. Malick is undoubtedly one of cinema’s most important poets. He is willing to explore broad questions about life in equally broad strokes in his refined form, employing lyrical editing and visually impressive cinematography to arrive at simple, but great truths. – Tina Hassannia 

1.) The Coen Brothers

The Coen Brothers are The Men. They can look back on a life of achievement, on challenges met, competitors bested, obstacles overcome. They’ve accomplished more than most directors, more than most men. What makes them The Men? Is it being prepared to make the right film? Whatever the cost? Isn’t that what makes them The Men? Sure. That and two pairs of testicles. – Russell Hainline

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What are some of your favorite working filmmakers?