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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.