Directors The world's top 5 directors (all-time) (1 Viewer)

[george kaplan]

I agree about Woody Allen. One could certainly put together a 4 comedy stretch for him, but you'd have to go back more than 30 years to do so.

 

[Jan H]

From 1973-79, Woody Allen made Sleeper, Love and Death, Annie Hall and Manhattan. That is the best '4 comedy stretch' that anyone has ever made, present lists included.

 

[george kaplan]

That's one opinion. But not one I'd subscribe to.

 

[Scott Weinberg]

"Comedy streaks" I enjoyed...

John Landis

1977 - Kentucky Fried Movie
1978 - Animal House
1980 - The Blues Brothers
1981 - An American Werewolf in London
1983 - Trading Places

Cameron Crowe

1989 - Say Anything...
1992 - Singles
1996 - Jerry Maguire
2000 - Almost Famous

John Hughes

1984 - Sixteen Candles
1985 - The Breakfast Club
1985 - Weird Science
1986 - Ferris Bueller's Day Off
1987 - Planes, Trains & Automobiles
1988 - She's Having a Baby
1989 - Uncle Buck

Joe Dante

1976 - Hollywood Boulevard
1978 - Piranha
1981 - The Howling
1984 - Gremlins
1985 - Explorers
1987 - Innerspace
1989 - The 'burbs
1990 - Gremlins 2: The New Batch
1993 - Matinee

Woody Allen

1969 - Take the Money and Run
1971 - Bananas
1972 - Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex
1973 - Sleeper
1975 - Love and Death
1977 - Annie Hall

Ivan Reitman

1979 - Meatballs
1981 - Stripes
1984 - Ghostbusters

Jonathan Lynn (I've always liked this guy.)

1985 - Clue
1990 - Nuns on the Run
1992 - My Cousin Vinny
1992 - The Distinguished Gentleman
1994 - Greedy
1996 - Sgt. Bilko[/n]
1997 - Trial and Error
2000 - The Whole Nine Yards

Alexander Payne

1996 - Citizen Ruth
1999 - Election
2002 - About Schmidt
2004 - Sideways

Carl Reiner

1979 - The Jerk
1982 - Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
1983 - The Man with Two Brains
1984 - All of Me
1985 - Summer Rental
1987 - Summer School

Rob Reiner

1984 - This is Spinal Tap
1985 - The Sure Thing
1986 - Stand By Me
1987 - The Princess Bride
1989 - When Harry Met Sally...

Robert Zemeckis

1978 - I Wanna Hold Your Hand
1980 - Used Cars
1984 - Romancing the Stone
1985 - Back to the Future
1988 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1989 - Back to the Future Part 2
1990 - Back to the Future Part 3
1992 - Death Becomes Her
1994 - Forrest Gump

Frank Oz

1984 - The Muppets Take Manhattan
1986 - Little Shop of Horrors
1988 - Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
1991 - What About Bob?
1992 - Housesitter
1995 - The Indian in the Cupboard
1997 - In & Out
1999 - Bowfinger

Colin Higgins

1978 - Foul Play
1980 - Nine to Five
1982 - The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
(also wrote Harold and Maude and Silver Streak.)

Mel Brooks

1968 - The Producers
1970 - The Twelve Chairs
1974 - Blazing Saddles
1974 - Young Frankenstein
1976 - Silent Movie
1977 - High Anxiety
1981 - History of the World: Part 1
1987 - Spaceballs

Wes Anderson

1996 - Bottle Rocket
1998 - Rushmore
2001 - The Royal Tenenbaums
2004 - The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker

1980 - Airplane!
1984 - Top Secret!
1986 - Ruthless People
1988 - The Naked Gun

 

[Brook K]

Well, I took this to be identifying stretches of truly outstanding movies, not simply movies I enjoyed or thought were "good".

Other than Everything You Know, which I wouldn't term as outstanding, I'm not a fan of the "early, funny ones". So for me I couldn't begin a list until Annie Hall and in the 4 movie stretches there is either a drama like Interiors and Husbands & Wives that interrupts things, or a movie I simply liked, but didn't think was something special, like Broadway Danny Rose, Radio Days, or Everyone Says I Love You.

As for Scott's lists, I like a lot of the movies, but I can't put together a run of outstanding movies on any. I guess John Hughes would come the closest, but I can't even imagine a scenario that would involve me sitting down and watching Weird Science short of the Ludivico Treatment.

 

[Jan H]

If you're talking 'uninterrupted' it's hard to beat Sturges' run of comedies, though I've yet to see Christmas in July. I've seen the others and they're all great. From Scott's list, there is no unequivocal 4-peat of comedy masterpieces, but if I had to watch any of them consecutively I'd take Landis or Alexander Payne.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Preston Sturges is a classic example of burning brightly—but briefly. During a very short period of time, he was as brilliant as anyone ever.

Strangely I think that Sullivan’s Travels is weaker than most of his films (because he does more telling and less showing), but almost no matter how his movies are ranked, they are all in the first rank.

 

[Kirk Tsai]

Keaton:
The Three Ages
Our Hospitality
Sherlock Jr.
The Navigator
Seven Chances

and

The General
College
The Cameraman
Steamboat Bill Jr.

Chaplin:
The Gold Rush
The Circus
City Lights
Modern Times
The Great Dictator
Monsieur Verdoux
Limelight

 

[Kevin M]

I agree with how Jefferson put it,

My scholarly answer would be:
Akira Kurosawa
François Truffaut
Alfred Hitchcock
Stanley Kubrick
Orson Welles

My favorites would be:
Akira Kurosawa
Alfred Hitchcock
Stanley Kubrick
John Carpenter
William Friedkin
& as three extra added bonus's: John Frankenheimer, Hal Ashby & George Roy Hill.

 

[Adam_S]

Two years later, here's how I'd respond (having seen virtually all of Hitch's films now, excepting some silents, some thirties quickies and Marnie)

John Ford - (Judge Priest, The Informer, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green was My Valley, My Darling Clementine, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence)

David Lean - (Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Brief Encounter, Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago)

Billy Wilder - (Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, One Two Three)

Steven Spielberg - (Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Empire of the Sun, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Saving Private Ryan, A.I., Catch Me if you Can)

Alfred Hichcock - (The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Notorious, Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, The Trouble with Harry, Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, Torn Curtain, Family Plot)

Hawks, Kubrick, Kurasawa, Renoir, Scorsese/Sturges would probably be my runners up.

 

[Arman]

Truffaut
Antonioni
Bunuel
Hitchcock
Lean

Oh yeah, any of the the following in another day can replace anyone of the five above: Welles, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Bergman, Fellini, Lang, Dreyer, Fassbinder, Rohmer, Sturges, Ozu, Lubitsch, Chaplin, Tarkovsky, Eisenstein, Godard, Griffith, Murnau, Lynch, Leone, Wong Kar Wai, Scorsese, Tarantino, Yimou, Linklater, Renoir, Kieslowski, Allen, Keaton, Almodovar

 

[DavidAls]

Akira Kurosawa
Alfred Hitchcock
Yasujiro Ozu
Satyajit Ray
Stanley Kubrick
Orson Welles
-The six filmmakers who have blown me away, every time, with everything I've seen. I have yet to stop finding new things in their work. I am strongly of the opinion that a lot more folks would share my assessment of Ozu and Ray were they not so difficult to see (close to impossible in the case of Ray, whose 50s/early 60s films especially will reward a hard search), with a handful of exceptions.

Billy Wilder
Kenji Mizoguchi
Federico Fellini
-Might rank in the above company once I see more of their work. Wilder's sense of irony and rather incredible skill with dialogue is definitely a bit underappreciated. And Fellini and Mizoguchi's visual sensibilities are truly in a class of their own.

Martin Scorsese
Jean-Luc Godard
-Still working, bless them both. Scorsese's misfired a few times, but I find dazzling thinking in even his weakest films - and that (to me) makes him one of the greats, and I've never been bored or unengaged with one of his films. Godard - meanwhile - is the only filmmaker whose ideas, theories and techniques I love more than his films-as-pieces-of-entertainment. Yes they can be pretentious and difficult, and the returns have been diminishing with him for at least 25 years, BUT his films always make me think about life and film and art, and how inseperable those things can be, and I look at the simplest things around me very differently after watching one of his films, which may be the real entertainment value in Godard.