Quentin Tarantino, during his Cannes Film Festival press conference (watch it here), mentioned an email chain he was a part of where he and some friends discussed what they believed to be the ten most exciting directors working today. Among those listed he said only David Fincher and Richard Linklater where in everyone’s top ten, he wasn’t sure why Pedro Almodovar wasn’t on everyone’s list and he also qualified what he believed it meant for a director to be the “most exciting”. Here’s how he put it:
“I think what that means is, you feel that their best work is still in front of them. That’s what makes a filmmaker exciting, that’s what makes you anticipate a new movie coming out. Because the new movie could be their best one. From this day on that will be the new barometer from which they’re judged. We could be wrong, and their best movie could be behind them, but we don’t know that so there is an excitement towards their work, as opposed to an older filmmaker, who’s terrific and you’re excited to see their movies, but you’re not expecting it to be as great as their best movie.”
This definition makes for a challenging project. How do you distinguish between your excitement for a director’s new film and whether or not you think it has the chance to be their best? So instead of approaching the idea from that mindset specifically I approached it by asking myself which director still has work ahead of them that can and will be judged alongside their best?
In doing this I found there were a couple of different kinds of directors that most often came immediately to mind, those whose body of work is still too small to really say they’ve given us their best and those that work within so many varying genres that while they may have given us the best comedy they can, there is still room for their best drama, best thriller, best action film, etc.
A few directors that I love, right off the bat, that didn’t make the list though they’d probably make a list of my favorite directors working today include Nicolas Winding Refn (will he ever make anything better than Bronson and Drive?), Quentin Tarantino (with another Western on the way I can’t say I see it being among his best), David Fincher (I want to see Gone Girl, but will it be judged among his best?), Kathryn Bigelow (I want to see her do something other than a politically charged military movie), Paul Thomas Anderson (a narrow miss), Wes Anderson and Christopher Nolan (I’m not sure he’ll ever top Memento or Inception).
A few all-time classic directors whose work I will always turn out for include Mike Leigh, Michael Mann, Lars von Trier and Martin Scorsese, whose body of work is so massive can he really top it? In the case of Scorsese he was a hard one to leave off the list as much as I’ve already come to love The Wolf of Wall Street and Silence sounds like a new direction for him, but in the case of this list I think the mere mention of a director’s name proves the value they bring to the current cinematic landscape, but if you need an eleventh, Scorsese would probably be mine.
I will show up to see the work of any of those filmmakers in a second and the same goes for the ten I’m about to list, those I mention within my reasoning as well as those at the very end of this post that would have been listed had I gone beyond a top ten. In attempting to gauge my excitement level for a director based on their previous work compared to my feelings for their work overall was damned near impossible, but here’s the best I could do…
#10
Martin McDonagh
With only two films to his credit, Martin McDonagh blew me away with In Bruges and disappointed me greatly with Seven Psychopaths. The greatness of that first film and the disappointment of the latter lead me to believe he’s still working on a learning curve. He hit a triple his first time out, a single and was caught stealing on his second at bat and I still think that home run is on the way.
#9
Cary Fukunaga
I respect Cary Fukunaga‘s Sin Nombre and Jane Eyre, but to date I think his best work is “True Detective” and since I’m looking squarely at movies here I think it’s very easy to say we haven’t yet seen the best he has to offer. Coming up next he has Beasts of No Nation and an adaptation of Stephen King‘s “It“, neither of which do I really believe will be his masterpiece, but that’s just the thing about this list of directors, you’re excited at the possibility and wouldn’t it be great to see someone of Fukunaga’s talent to deliver his greatest work on a film with a killer clown and giant spider?
#8
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke is the elder statesman on this list and with two Palme d’Or winners and an oeuvre that includes Amour, The White Ribbon, Cache and Funny Games is there a chance he will be able to top any of it? Personally I think one could place Amour, The White Ribbon and Cache alongside each other and find reason to declare one or the other his best, which is why he makes this list. His next film, already announced to be Flashmob, could very easily sit alongside those, judged on the same level.
I know some would want to place Funny Games, Benny’s Video and The Piano Teacher in that conversation, perhaps over those I’ve already mentioned. To me, that’s an exciting director, one you want to argue and debate their best work, recognizing different reasons as to why they’re great and anticipating that next one for reasons you can’t quite explain.
#7
Joel and Ethan Coen
Given my definition of what it means to be an “exciting” director, some may see the inclusion of this duo as cheating, but the mere fact the range of the last five Coen brothers movies alone — Inside Llewyn Davis, True Grit, A Serious Man, Burn After Reading and No Country for Old Men — makes me think another Coen classic could be around the corner. Llewyn Davis, True Grit and No Country are among my favorite films they’ve directed while I find Miller’s Crossing, Fargo and The Big Lebowski to be all-timers as well, not to mention just this past weekend I was instantly sucked into watching O Brother, Where Art Thou? when it came on television.
Joel and Ethan Coen are exciting because you never know what that next film might be or how we’ll be asked to dissect it.
