The Pixar directing quagmire

There are some credits given out rather loosely on a film. For example, a film might have dozens of executive producers, as that tends to be the kind of credit you give to someone when the actual thing they've done for the film is not easy to quantify -- or even sometimes if they just ask for it. It increases their ownership of the film in ways that can be useful. (This was explained to me recently as a reason Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are listed as executive producers on Tron: Ares.)

Directing, you would think, should not be such a credit given out willy nilly. But sometimes it's hard to tell, especially with films where the director is not yelling "Action!" and "Cut!" because there is never any camera rolling. (I know it isn't actually the director who usually yells that. Just go with me here.)

Pixar makes movies like this. For every Toy Story, where John Lasseter is listed as the director and that's that, there is a Brave, where IMDB lists Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman and Steve Purcell all as directors. I believe in some cases, one of them is listed as a co-director, which is just all the more confusing for me. 

I'm not going back to the credits of Brave to see how it's listed, not when I have a recent example from finally watching Elio the other night.

I'll just get this out of the way now, especially after I posted earlier this year that Elio was the first Pixar movie in ages I had intentionally passed on seeing in the theater: I didn't love Elio, but I certainly did not hate it either. In the end, I think I liked it better than I thought I was going to like it. Three stars.

As with most films, especially animated films, there are two phases to the credits: 1) a first section of credits that gives place of pride to individual names or pairs of names, while being designed according to the design details of the film and possibly even featuring additional footage, and 2) the second, longer section where all the remaining names steadily scroll by.

In Elio's first section of credits, the directors are listed as Madeline Shafarian, a name I did not know, and Domee Shi, who directed the most recent Pixar film I've truly loved, Turning Red. However they determine this at Pixar, Shi was the only credited director on Turning Red, and the positive feelings I ended Elio with, I attributed to her.

When the second phase of the credits rolled, I noticed a very odd first one:

                                                            Directed by
                                                          Adrian Molina

Huh?

Not co-directed, not assistant-directed, just directed. As though serving in contrast to Shafarian and Shi, or undermining them.

Now, this was also a name I recognized. Molina got a co-director credit on Coco, the Pixar film I loved most prior to Turning Red. Where, at the time, I wondered what the nature of his contribution was relative to Lee Unkrich, the man with the full directing credit on that film.

I fished around a bit on the internet and got some generic AI slop about directing credits being based on union rules, but then I also found a story that specifically addressed the role of co-director Angus McLane on Finding Dory, which was directed by Pixar regular Andrew Stanton. It is clear from Stanton's quotes in that article that the co-director has a lesser role, sort of a "jack of all trades" role, but that the role is indispensable. Of course that's what a generous collaborator would say.

The thing is, in Elio, there's no co-director credit. There are three distinct directing credits presented in the credits in two different ways.

Because Shafarian and Shi get the splashy credit, it looks like they are the film's "real" directors. However, the placement of Molina's credit, at the very top of the scroll credits, seems to say "Whatever we told you earlier, forget that. This is the guy who really did the job."

Well it turns out I just googled the wrong thing. My second google reveals that Molina was the original director of Elio, but left due to a change in the creative direction of the film. It couldn't have been a very acrimonious departure because it says that Molina is currently working on Coco 2. 

And this is where the union likely comes into play. Because of the work Molina put in on the film, he had to be credited in some way, but co-director was not correct because his directing work was not contemporaneous to that of Shafarian and Shi, nor should it suggest that he worked in any capacity as a helper to them. 

As a film critic, I think I just prefer it when it's some auteur like Martin Scorsese, and I can just assign him credit or blame for everything that works or doesn't work in the film. 

The best (and worst) directors of the ranking era

Massive project alert!

This is my 30th year of ranking films. 

I started in 1996. It's 2025. That's 30 years. 

Of course, I have only 29 previous #1s because this year is not yet over. But soon it will be an even 30. 

So yes, I have some anniversary stuff on the brain this year. It isn't a sufficiently long amount of time since the last bit of ranking anniversary stuff I did, which was only at the end of 2022. That was a (sort of belated) year-long project to rewatch and then rank all my previous #1s, and it only happened three years ago because it celebrated the precise 25-year anniversary of when my first list was published in 1997 ... and not leading up to that anniversary, but after the fact. 

Anyway, this is not the same project.

At some point recently, and I really can't remember what triggered it, I got the idea to see which director has fared best in my rankings over those nearly three decades of ranking movies. We're only looking at 29 actually completed lists, but that's okay. Look, you get the idea at a certain time, and you maybe don't want to wait a whole year to put it into practice.

But the actual compiling of this information very much seemed like it might take the better part of a year. 

I'll try to explain what I did. (It's not that deep.)

So I took all my previous movie lists and loaded them into Excel, in order, though that didn't matter because I was going to re-sort them anyway. This was a total of 3,147 movies, if you want to know. Yes, that's a lot. 

Just loading them wouldn't have been that time consuming, but then what I also did was add the director for each movie in its own column, as well as a column that computed what percentage this movie's ranking was out of the movies ranked that year. That would allow me to do more of an apples to apples comparison, because a movie ranked 37th in a year where I ranked 37 movies is a movie I liked much less than a movie ranked 37th in a year where I ranked 177 movies. 

Anyway, this allowed each row of the spreadsheet to have a title, a director, a year, a flat ranking and then a percentage representing where that movie ranked out of all the movies ranked that year. And since each formula relied only on other information on the same row of the spreadsheet, it meant I could sort this information without messing up any of the formulas. 

The goal would be to sort the spreadsheet by director, and then take an average of the ranking percentiles for all their movies to find out who did the best for me during these 29 years of ranking movies. 

Of course there would have to be rules. The primary rule would be that a director had to have directed at least three movies during this 29-year period in order to qualify. 

Why three? Does a standard of only one movie every ten years really mean a person is working frequently enough to be considered in an exercise like this?

Ah but I wanted this exercise to be inclusive, not exclusive, and possibly reveal preferences I couldn't have guessed before I started. And I thought that with the generous allowances of a three-movie minimum, I could capture both seminal directors who happened to have stopped making movies early on in this period, or directors whose contributions are relatively recent. Plus identify random working professionals I didn't already know that I loved. 

Of course, allowing anyone in who had made three movies I saw fit to rank meant that the shortlist included ... carry the one ... 313 different directors or directing pairs. Which does not feel like exactly what I intended. 

But then I told myself that I didn't have to list all of them (it remains to be seen whether I will or not), and that I'll feel it's more complete if I don't penalize the old greats who had the rudeness to go and die on us, or the newcomers who had the rudeness to be millennials. 

After adding a director and copying the formula for all these 3,147 rows -- and I enjoyed a little game of seeing how many director names I could match to movies without having to look them up on IMDB -- I then sorted the whole list so all the directors' movies would appear together, and took an average that I then added in a separate worksheet in my spreadsheet, where I also included the titles. That took a while longer. 

I realized pretty quickly that directors with fewer titles had a significant advantage. The more movies you have, the more likely you are to make one or even several duds. Some directors with only three films really lucked out in that I happened to have only seen the good films they made during this period, possibly never seeing some of their other efforts, or seeing them only after the ranking period was over. Remember, this is not all the films the director directed during the past three decades, only those that I actually watched in time to rank in the year they came out.

But because of this advantage held by directors with fewer titles, I decided I would also shine a spotlight on each director who had the highest average among directors who directed the same number of films they directed. So the two guys who directed 18 films in those 29 years -- now is the time to guess who they might be, before I reveal in a few minutes -- should get some sort of special treatment, just for making so many movies I thought were worth seeing.

Before we get into the surprise results the statistics tell us, I wanted to highlight some significant directors from this period who I was surprised did not meet the three-film threshold. (And by the way, I sorted directors alphabetically by first name, which explains the sequencing you are about to see.)

I was surprised that the following directors could not make the cut: Aaron Sorkin, Andrew Haigh, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, Armando Iannucci, Bennett Miller, Benny & Josh Safdie, Bill Condon, Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert, David Lynch, Errol Morris, Frank Oz, Gaspar Noe, Greta Gerwig, Harmony Korine, Harold Ramis, Jacques Audiard, John Lasseter*, John Singleton, Jonathan Demme, Jonathan Glazer, Mike Figgis, Mike Leigh, Nancy Meyers, Paul Greengrass, Paul Verhoeven, Paul W.S. Anderson, Richard Kelly, Taylor Sheridan, Ted Demme, Todd Solondz, Tom Tywker and Tony Scott.

* - If you include movies where the director is listed as a co-director with somebody else, Lasseter makes the cut. But I decided, probably arbitrarily, not to count such collaborations toward the person's solo filmography. If they always directed as a pair, they'd get credit that way. 

Sure, the above group includes some directors who stopped early or started late within the period. The reason I find their exclusion significant is that many of these are directors I've done enough thinking about, in some cases even as the director of one of my #1 movies, that their relative absence in the movies I've ranked surprised me. (Plus, mentioning them here means you don't have to wonder about them.) In some cases, I saw their other movies, just not in time, perhaps due to them not releasing in Australia in time to meet my deadline. In others, perhaps I still haven't seen some of their films. But in each case, my eyebrows went up a little bit when I got to these names on the list and saw they did not have enough movies to qualify. 

Okay, without any more dithering, let's get to the top ten, the bottom ten, directors honored by quantity of films ... and whatever else we have time for. I'll list them in reverse order for dramatic effect, and the number in parentheses indicates their average ranking percentile across all their films I ranked.

The ten best directors of the ranking era, according to my statistics

10. Asghar Farhadi (83.7%)
Films: 3 - A Separation, The Salesman, Everybody Knows
Comment: The films that bookend the titles above were a #1 and a #3 film, so you can imagine I wasn't a huge fan of The Salesman or else he might be the runaway winner. As it is, he'll have to settle for top ten. Farhadi's niche in the film industry is one I could not do without: the domestic social whodunnit. 

9. Alfonso Cuaron (83.8%)
Films: 5 - Y Tu Mama Tambien, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men, Gravity, Roma
Comment: Three top ten films, my favorite Harry Potter movie and one film I find overrated. I'll let you figure out which is which is which. Anyway, a new Cuaron film is, for me, an event -- an event that happens all too rarely. 

8. Jon M. Chu (84.3%)
Films: 3 - Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights, Wicked
Comment: A real newcomer in this period, Chu has two top ten films and then one I respect but don't love. This is just the type of result I wouldn't have thought of that makes this exercise worth having done, and I'll be sure to anticipate each new Chu film with extra zeal. (And hey look, we have the Wicked sequel coming out later this year.) 

7. Ryan Coogler (84.9%)
Films: 4 - Fruitvale Station, Creed, Black Panther, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Comment: A #2 film and a #11 film, and then two Black Panther films, the second of which I actually like more than the first. Coogler would be even higher on this list if I did this exercise a year from now, as Sinners is currently my #2 of 2025. 

6. Jordan Peele (86.6%)
Films: 3 - Get Out, Us, Nope
Comment: Another relative newcomer. Strangely, I don't like Get Out as much as most people do, and I thought my Us ranking was not likely to be a boon to his fortunes. But Peele benefits from existing at a time when I was ranking over 150 movies per year, and I thought his films were among the cream of the crop of those years. 

5. Lynn Shelton (87.4%).
Films: 4 - Humpday, Your Sister's Sister, Outside In, Sword of Trust
Comment: Rest in peace. Shelton is the highest ranked director who is not still with us. I adore three of these films, and Shelton benefits from me not seeing in time two of her films from this period that I actively didn't like. 

4. Mark & Jay Duplass (88.3%)
Films: 3 - Cyrus, The Do-Deca Pentathlon, Jeff Who Lives at Home
Comment: Pity that these guys appear to be done directing movies, as they brought something special to the screen each time out. All three of these movies were in my top 20 of their respective years. They join Shelton to prove that when done well, I really, really like mumblecore.

3. Bong Joon-ho (89%)
Films: 5 - The Host, Mother, Snowpiercer, Okja, Parasite
Comment: Bong movies are an event akin to new Alfonso Cuaron movies. Four top 20s and one other movie I like a fair bit. And if I'd done this exercise one year later, Mickey 17 would have sunk him like a stone.

2. Ben Affleck (89.3%)
Films: 3 - The Town, Argo, Air
Comment: This was probably my biggest surprise, though maybe it shouldn't have been. Affleck is a really good director, and is helped by the fact that I missed (what I assume is) the mediocre Live by Night, though if I'd seen Gone Baby Gone that would have boosted him back up. He might be the walking epitome of the notion of what makes a good movie: Four great scenes and no bad ones. If there was a bad one, I missed it.

1. Spike Jonze (92.5%)
Films: 4 - Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are, Her
Comment: If I'd really thought about it, I probably could have guessed Jonze would take this top spot. He has a #1, a #2, a #6 and a #21. Jonze likely also benefits from quitting while he was ahead, as he's had more than a decade to follow up my least favorite of these films and yet he has not, so I guess maybe he's just done. Shame. 

I'm quite proud of the diversity of this list, if I do say so myself. On this list we have three foreign language directors (from three different parts of the world), two Black directors, one Asian-American director and, yes, one woman, leaving only three regular white guys. (Or four, since you have to count the Duplass brothers as two guys.) If I had been coming up with this list with an eye toward political correctness, I could not have done better. The fact that these preferences were revealed through a scientific process is gratifying as it means I didn't have to cheat to look good. (Whether you agree with my tastes is, of course, another matter.)

This exercise did not only reveal the good. It also revealed the bad.

The ten worst directors of the ranking era, according to my statistics

10. Mark Steven Johnson (21.3%)
Films: 3 - Daredevil, Ghost Rider, When in Rome
Comment: Speaking of Ben Affleck, I don't think I actually hate any of these movies and I have some low level affection for Daredevil. But without any truly good films, Johnson approached rock bottom. I couldn't have matched this director's name to any of these movies or tell you anything about him at all.

9. Jeff Wadlow (21.1%)
Films: 4 - Kick-Ass 2, Fantasy Island, The Curse of Bridge Hollow, Imaginary
Comment: The Curse of Bridge Hollow was actually at the 46th percentile of its year, and made for a fun viewing experience with my family. That tells you just how negatively I feel about these others, including one that made my bottom five of last year. 

8. Gareth Edwards (20.6%)
Films: 3 - Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Creator
Comment: This one might really surprise Rogue One fans, and I do like that film better after a second viewing -- but only a little bit. The other two were way overrated for me, even though this is supposed to be "the good Godzilla." (If Roland Emmerich's was "the bad Godzilla.") 

7. Garry Marshall (19.9%)
Films: 4 - Runaway Bride, The Princess Diaries, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement, Valentine's Day
Comment: Marshall made some really enjoyable films earlier in his career, but that's not the period covered by these three decades. I do like the original Princess Diaries pretty well. 

6. Chad Stahelski (17.9%) 
Films: 3 - John Wick Chapter 2, John Wick Chapter 3 - Parabellum, John Wick Chapter 4
Comment: So I am not a huge fan of the John Wick sequels, as you can probably tell, or the John Wick Universe in general. Stahelski would have been helped if I'd seen the original, which I do like, in time to rank it. 

5. D.J. Caruso (17.3%)
Films: 3 - Taking Lives, Disturbia, Mary
Comment: I think I liked Disturbia? A little? Not a lot. Mary was in my bottom five films last year. 

4. Terry Gilliam (15.8%)
Films: 3 - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Zero Theorem, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
Comment: How the mighty have fallen. Gilliam directed some of my most cherished films of all time, and in fact, 12 Monkeys was one year before I started ranking. But this period? Blecch. There seems to be a moral justness to this as well, as Gilliam has revealed himself as a politically backwards jerk in recent years. 

3. Adam Shankman (14.8%)
Films: 4 - A Walk to Remember, The Pacifier, Rock of Ages, What Men Want
Comment: When I think of an example of a hack director, I think of Adam Shankman, though perhaps that has to do with his name. As a director, he shanks a lot of movies indeed. Rock of Ages should have, could have, been good, but it did not work for me. 

2. David Cronenberg (13.1%)
Films: 4 - A History of Violence, Cosmopolis, Maps to the Stars, Crimes of the Future
Comment: A possibly shocking result for cinephiles reading this. But I dodged ranking the good Cronenberg films from this period (Existenz, Eastern Promises, A Dangerous Method) and hit only the bad ones. I'm famously way lower than most people on A History of Violence, and Crimes of the Future is the only other of these that works even a little bit. Cosmopolis was my worst film of its year. 

1. Stephen Sommers (10.5%) 
Films: 4 - The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Odd Thomas
Comment: If you had given me 50 guesses about who would take this spot, I wouldn't have come up with the name Stephen Sommers. Especially since I feel like I sort of like the first Mummy and Odd Thomas, and definitely do not reserve special hatred for the other two. But statistics are statistics and I'm not going to argue with them.

What do you know. Ten white guys. I think that says more about the proliferation of white guys in the film industry than their innate talents as directors. However, this is another passive result that makes me sort of proud. 

Best directors at each number of films

18 films

Steven Soderbergh (67.5%)
Overall ranking: 72nd 
Beats out: Steven Spielberg (50.5%)
Comment: To be able to make an average of more than a film every two years during this period, and still be in the top 100 overall, is pretty good. With Soderbergh, there are only a few big highs (Traffic and Erin Brockovich, both top ten of 2000), and a few big lows (High Flying Bird, Haywire) while most of the rest are solid B+s. I'll mention Spielberg too. His greatest period of creative success is prior to 1996, in my opinion, and some movies I really did not like, such as War Horse, dragged him down to completely middle of the road. 

Big dropoff after their 18 films!

13 films

M. Night Shyamalan (31.9%)
Overall ranking: 275th
Beats out: N/A
Comment: Poor Night. We know it's been 30 years as a punching bag. However, this inescapable fact exists: Despite my low opinion of most of his films, I have only missed ranking one film he's released during this period, though having ranked Glass would not have helped him here. That is really saying something and worth acknowledging. Obviously my optimism for his potential remains undaunted. 

12 films

Richard Linklater (70.1%)
Overall ranking: 51st
Beats out: Woody Allen (51.2%), Ridley Scott (49.3%)
Comment: I avoided many of the "inessential" Linklater films from this period (eg. Bad News Bears, which is still one of my few Linklater blind spots) so the overall average of this great director is quite good, even for this many films. He's also had three top ten films during this period (Waking Life, Before Midnight, Boyhood). Always a must-see director. 

11 films

Christopher Nolan (69.1%)
Overall ranking: 57th
Beats out: Zack Snyder (31.7%), Michael Bay (26.5%)
Comment: Eleven films seems to be the magic number for giant spectacle movies, right? Snyder's and Bay's have been mostly bad, but Nolan's are (almost) always a huge success. Take out my negative reaction to Dunkirk and my middling response to Tenet and you'd have a top ten overall director, who may be the event moviest director we have working today. (Outside of Quentin Tarantino maybe.)

10 films

Wes Anderson (66.9%)
Overall ranking: 77th 
Beats out: Robert Zemeckis (64.6%), Joel & Ethan Coen (55%), Ron Howard (51.4%)
Comment: If I had seen probably my favorite Anderson film from this period, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, in time to rank it, he'd be even higher. Obviously I largely like Anderson, though some movies I dislike (The Darjeeling Limited, The French Dispatch) drag down an otherwise stellar record. Huge names he's beating out here, all of whom have a dud or two that cut into their average percentage.

9 films

Noah Baumbach (66%)
Overall ranking: 81st
Beats out: Danny Boyle (60.6%), Clint Eastwood (59.5%), James Mangold (49.5%), David O. Russell (48.5%)
Comment: At the start of this period, Russell was shooting for top ten overall status but his last, er, nearly 15 years have not been great. I always think of Baumbach as one of "my guys," though he too has let me down a bit with movies like Mistress America and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected). That tells you how strongly I feel about his other films.  

8 films

David Fincher (70.2%)
Overall ranking: 50th
Beats out (top five listed): Peter Jackson (69.7%), Adam McKay (69.1%), Martin Scorsese (67.2%), Jason Reitman (63.7%), Doug Liman (48.6%)
Comment: Like Nolan, a Fincher film is an event. I think of them as the two most interesting and challenging prestige directors of this period. Though Fincher does sometimes miss with me, as with The Killer. Otherwise, rock solid. 

7 films

Denis Villeneuve (78.8%)
Overall ranking: 19th
Beats out (top five listed): Taika Waititi (60.3%), Matthew Vaughn (57.8%), Bryan Singer (50%), Kevin Smith (47.5%), Francis Lawrence (47.2%)
Comment: Highest ranked director overall with as many films as he has made, though there are two directors with six films who are higher (as we will see in a moment). When Villeneuve misses, it's not by much, and he doesn't have any film lower than 55th percentile among that year's films (which was the first I ranked, Prisoners). Possibly the most exciting large-scale director to come on our radar in the last 15 years.

6 films 

Quentin Tarantino (83.4%)
Overall ranking: 11th
Beats out (top five listed): Darren Aronofsky (80.3%), Paul Thomas Anderson (73.8%), Alexander Payne (73%), Judd Apatow (72.3%), Sam Raimi (72.2%)
Comment: Of course. Tarantino just misses the top ten overall, and only because Django Unchained and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood managed only in the high 70s percentile those years. The list of runners up is like a murderer's row here. Aronofsky, the only director who has been my #1 twice, hasn't been as prolific during this period as I thought, due to a long layoff after Requiem for a Dream. If I had ranked The Fountain he would be lower. 

5 films 

Bong Joon-ho (89%)
Overall ranking: 3rd
Beats out (top five listed): Alfonso Cuaron (83.8%), Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (79%), Hirokazu Kore-eda (78.4%), Baz Luhrmann (71.2%), Todd Haynes (71%)
Comment: Already talked about Bong and Cuaron above, so no need to repeat myself, but I did want to comment on some of these others. Inarritu has gone missing lately but has made some excellent films that maybe have not all aged as well as they could have. Kore-eda is another "my guy" who I think of as an heir to Ozu. And I have a soft spot for the "jazz hands filmmaking" of Luhrmann.

4 films

Spike Jonze (92.5%)
Overall ranking: 1st
Beats out (top five listed): Lynn Shelton (87.4%), Ryan Coogler (84.9%), Alex Ross Perry (82.3%), Cristian Mungiu (78.9%), Pete Docter (78.6%)
Comment: I'll just mention Perry and Mungiu. Perry's films continue to challenge me and he has made my top ten twice. Mungiu has a #1 and a #2, a feat equalled by Jonze and beaten only by Aronofsky, but Graduation and R.M.N. did not work for me as well as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days or Beyond the Hills. 

3 films 

Ben Affleck (89.3%)
Overall ranking: 2nd
Beats out (top five listed): Mark & Jay Duplass (88.3%), Jordan Peele (86.6%), Jon M. Chu (84.3%), Asgar Farhadi (83.7%), James Cameron (82.1%)
Comment: Cameron is the only one I didn't mention previously. I guess he is the ultimate event movie director as he averages about a movie every ten years these days, meaning that a new James Cameron movie is a rare event indeed. A personal note that my friend and director Matthew Saville misses the five runners up by only three spots with his 77.1%, as only Curtis Hanson and Kevin Macdonald snuck in between him and Cameron. 

Okay, am I really going to list you the whole 313?

No I am not. It's too much. Even I can't delude myself that this is worthwhile reading for you.

However, I will finish by going down the list and mentioning a number of additional notable directors who have not been mentioned so far, their overall ranking, and possibly any films worth mentioning as to why they ended up higher or lower than you might expect.

I ended up going a little crazy, so you can just scan through and read the names you're interested in. 

#22 Jean-Pierre Jeunet - 4 films (77.9%) - Too few movies from this talent. Micmacs is his only miss. 

#29 Alex Garland - 4 films (74.8%) - Take out Men and you have a huge contender here.

#42 Sean Baker - 4 films (72.2%) - Red Rocket keeps this guy out of the top ten overall. 

#48 Guillermo del Toro - 6 films (70.5%) - Solid stuff from one of the icons of the period. 

#60 J.J. Abrams - 6 films (67.9%) - Directed movies in three franchises that have at least eight movies, and made good versions of all of them.

#71 David Lowery - 6 films (67.7%) - Have to mention my Ghost Story director here. Love A Ghost Story.

#83 Michael Moore - 4 films (65.3%) - A discussion of this period wouldn't be complete without a mention of its most confrontational documentary director.

#85 Robert Altman - 3 films (65.1%) - This is the kind of guy I was thinking of when I thought about directors who died during this period, and the three-film threshold would allow me to include them. Directed my #1 of 2001, Gosford Park. 

#96 George Lucas - 3 films (62.1%) - You had to want to know where the prequels ended up, average percentage wise, on my overall rankings, didn't you?

#99 Guy Ritchie - 4 films (61.8%) - The most notable thing about Ritchie is the number of his films I skipped during this period, at least in the year they came out -- far more than half the ones he made. I liked the ones I did rank, though. 

#113 Michael Mann - 5 films (59.8%) - I think of Mann as a good director but a few of his films have disappointed me. Would be lower if I'd ranked Miami Vice. 

#116 Yorgos Lanthimos - 6 films (59.3%) - Another iconic director from the second half of this period, Lanthimos was hurt by my comparative disappointment in Alps and Kinds of Kindness. 

#119 Kelly Reichardt - 6 films (58.9%) - There are actually eight female directors ranked higher than Reichardt, but each of them has only three films -- more of a comment on the film industry in general than anything else. Reichardt has been among the most prolific women in this period (we'll get to another later) with only one film I don't really like (Showing Up).

#121 Nicole Holofcener - 6 films (58.8%) - Ha, this is not even the one I was referring to in the discussion of Reichardt. Only two spots behind Reichardt overall, and one spot behind her for the title of preeminent female filmmaker who directed a half-dozen films that I ranked. 

#125 Sofia Coppola - 6 films (58.3%) - This is the one! Funny how these three are clustered all together. I adore Coppola and think of her as my favorite female director, but I can't deny that three of her films from this period have underwhelmed: Somewhere, On the Rocks and Priscilla. 

#126 Michel Gondry - 6 films (58%) - Started so strong with Eternal Sunshine, then offered steadily diminishing returns.

#129 Ari Aster - 3 films (57.3%) - If not for Beau is Afraid ... 

#134 Spike Lee - 6 films (56.8%) - There is always going to be some variability with the quality of films from a director like Lee. Some you're going to like, some aren't going to work for you. He probably wouldn't have it any other way.

#148 Robert Eggers - 4 films (54.6%) - Unforgettable filmmaking style, imperfect results. 

#152 Rian Johnson - 5 films (54.3%) - I don't like Brick, The Last Jedi or Knives Out as much as most people do.

#155 Oliver Stone - 6 films (53.1%) - There was a time when he was considered one of our greatest working directors, but that was largely before the last three decades. Now he is almost perfectly middle of the pack out of my 313.

#159 Cameron Crowe - 6 films (52.5%) - Crowe had two films in my top ten of the 2000s (Almost Famous and Vanilla Sky) but it was all downhill from there. Really it was just an excellent 2000 and 2001, though of course Crowe was excellent before then as well. 

#163 Ang Lee - 6 films (52%) - One of the most versatile directors we've ever seen has a couple misses that knock him down overall. What even was Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk?

#165 James Gunn - 5 films (51.6) - For all the grousing I've done about James Gunn over the years, I think favorably of him now, so I was a little surprised by this lowish ranking.

#173 Joe Wright - 6 films (50.7%) - Barely cracking the middle of my rankings in average among qualifiers, Wright is a study in extremes: the great Atonement and Darkest Hour, the terrible Pan and The Woman in the Window. 

#177 Tarsem Singh - 3 films (50.2%) - I will always think of this as sort of a "my guy" due to my love for The Cell. But the rest of his films are ... not The Cell. 

#185 Edgar Wright - 6 films (48.8%) - Wright was once flying high, but I really don't like his last two films. Like, at all. 

#199 Peter & Bobby Farrelly - 7 films (47%) - Really hot at the start, then really cold the rest of the way, with the exception of Hall Pass, which I unaccountably love. 

#205 Lars von Trier - 6 films (45.8%) - For all the ability he has to make unforgettably good films, more of his films are unforgettably bad, not to mention problematic. 

#209 Luca Guadagnino - 4 films (45.6%) - None of Guadagnino's four films I've ranked has worked for me as well as the general consensus, though I suppose there are a lot of people who don't think much of his Suspiria remake. 

#210 Paul Feig - 6 films (45.3%) - One of the more prominent comedy directors of this period started out very strong with Bridesmaids and Spy, but slipped considerably on his next four.

#211 Michael Winterbottom - 8 films (44.5%) - Winterbottom made more than just The Trip films during this period, but that did account for half of the eight films I ranked. The others were mostly disappointments. 

#213 Rob Marshall - 5 films (44.1%) - Our most prominent director of big-scale movie musicals did not make any nearly as good as Chicago, my #2 of 2002. 

#222 James Gray - 6 films (42.3%) - When Gray is good, he's really good (Two Lovers, The Lost City of Z), but when he's bad, he's more bad than the amount he is good (The Immigrant, Ad Astra). 

#226 Park Chan-wook - 3 films (41.9%) - Remember when Park was the best South Korean director? 

#230 Osgood Perkins - 3 films (40.7%) - The Blackcoat's Daughter? So good! Longlegs? So bad! Gretel & Hansel? Closer to Longlegs than Blackcoat's. 

#233 Nicolas Winding Refn - 3 films (40.2%) - Remember when this enfant terrible was on all our lips for a while? Unfortunately, the middle of the three I ranked is just terrible, that being Only God Forgives, which I ranked last that year. 

#237 Paul Weitz - 7 films (39.7%) - Busy working director who made a number of interesting films and some not so interesting, but in any case, it was not where I expected the director of American Pie to end up. 

#237 Sean Penn - 3 films (39.7%) - If not for Into the Wild, this would have been a disastrous period for Penn. 

#244 Terrence Malick - 5 films (38.9%) - Totally his own kind of director, and suddenly prolific during this period after a couple decades of inactivity, but he quickly became a parody of himself. 

#250 Wachowski Sisters - 7 films (38%) - My favorite film of theirs, Bound, was something I discovered later, so only The Matrix is a great film among these seven. And me ranking The Matrix Resurrections last that year really hurt them. 

#259 Tyler Perry - 6 films (36.9%) - There was a period when I made a semi-regular habit of watching Perry's movies and I semi-liked them. I've kind of lost track in the past five years. 

#265 Mel Gibson - 3 films (35.4%) - Remember how good Apocalypto was? 

#266 Jon Favreau - 6 films (35.1%) - My complicated relationship with Jon Favreau ranges from considering Elf an all-time top 50 movie for me to thinking Chef is one big portrait of a defensive asshole. 

#269 Roland Emmerich - 8 films (33.7%) - Emmerich's output is generally terrible, but I loved Anonymous (top ten that year) and I don't mind 2012. 

#271 Eli Roth - 4 films (33%) - Hostel was awesome. But maybe he should stick to acting. (Wait, he's not very good in Inglourious Basterds.)

#273 Duncan Jones - 4 films (32.4%) - Moon was my #1 of 2009. The other movies? Yeesh. 

#277 Robert Rodriguez - 5 films (31.5%) - I feel in my mind that Robert Rodriguez is better than this. He probably isn't. 

#279 John Woo - 4 films (29.7%) - Remember when John Woo was even good? We'll always have Face/Off. 

#285 Christopher Guest - 6 films (27.8%) - I remember when I thought the thing Christopher Guest brought to the movies was irreplaceable and hilarious. By the time of For Your Consideration and Mascots, that was long gone. 

#289 Ivan Reitman - 4 films (25.7%) - Clearly this was after Reitman's prime. My Super Ex-Girlfriend, anyone?

#293 Todd Phillips - 5 films (23.9%) - After tickling us with the first Hangover, Phillips curdled quickly.

#295 Ruben Fleischer - 5 films (23.8%) - I thought this guy might be bottom ten material because of how I loathe 30 Minutes or Less and Venom, but Zombieland props him up. 

#296 McG - 7 films (23.7%) - One of the most hilarious monikers of this period works a lot but doesn't make many good movies. My favorites of his are two films I didn't see in time to rank them: the original Charlie's Angels and We Are Marshall.

#297 Joel Schumacher - 5 films (23.4%) - And I even think of myself as a bit of Schumacher apologist, but the numbers obviously don't bear that out. (Still really like A Time to Kill though.)

Okay, exhale!

This exercise was long and fun (for me anyway), and it has indeed made me aware of some true feelings about the working filmmakers of the last three decades. And that's reason enough to do anything. 

Learning the names of the directing pairs

I don't really know if it's possible to do a quiz on a blog, but I can at least try, right?

As I've been doing some list work recently -- getting my movie spreadsheet up to date, which has now been done for a couple months, and a new project that I'll reveal within a few weeks -- I've gotten reacquainted with who directed what. 

And I've come to notice how many directing pairs there are out there -- and how many are not just brothers or sisters or maybe husband and wife, which tend to be easier for us to remember.  

In the names I'm about to go through, there may be a husband and wife represented -- no clues -- but if there are, they don't have the same last name, so you'd only know it by checking their Wikipedia page. And therefore the task of learning both names takes on a bit of added complexity, so you only do it if they've really broken through for you.

And in many of these cases, these people do share a Wikipedia page, because their professional personas have become intertwined. 

Your task today: See one name in a directing pair, and supply the other.

For people to be included in this quiz, they have to have directed more than one feature together. Just a one-off collaboration is not enough for them to get mentioned here. But rarely in these situations is there only one collaboration, if they're successful, which is why we cinephiles have even come to learn their names in the first place. 

Also, I'm sticking only to directors today, though it doesn't mean some of them aren't also writers and/or producers. It's just that they have to also be directors or else they're not in this. 

Simple enough?

It'll be 22 questions, but don't worry, you can move through them quickly. I'll start easy and get progressively harder. Depending on your level of casual vs. serious movie fandom, though, they might all be fairly hard. (Why 22? That was the number of pairs I saw that I wanted to include.)

Before we start, I should tell you the reason I'm writing this post today. Thursday night I watched Novocaine, which was okay to pretty good, and I noticed it was directed by guys named Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. This is actually the sixth film (including one short) directed by the pair, but since I hadn't seen (or even heard of) the other five, they wouldn't have made it into this quiz. However, I'd say they have enough ability that I might have the occasion to memorize their names in the future. 

Okay here we go. At the end, after a giant blank space, I will reveal the answers, as well as the films you would know them from -- using only the ones I've seen from my big movie spreadsheet, which was my source for finding these names. Give yourself half credit on an answer if you get the first or last name of their partner but not both. 

1) Phil Lord and ... ?

2) Seth Rogen and ... ?

3) Jean-Pierre Jeunet and ... ? 

4) Ron Clements and ... ?

5) Michael Powell and ... ?

6) Daniel Kwan and ... ?

7) Anna Boden and ... ? 

8) Mark Neveldine and ... ?

9) Jason Friedberg and ... ?

10) Brett Morgen and ... ?

11) John Francis Daley and ... ?

12) Nat Faxon and ... ?

13) Justin Benson and ... ?

14) Jonathan Dayton and ... ?

15) Glenn Ficarra and ... ? 

16) Josh Gordon and ... ?

17) Shari Springer Berman and ... ?

18) David Siegel and ... ?

19) Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and ... ?

20) Danielle Krudy and ... ?

21) Jimmy Chin and ... ? 

22) Severin Fiala and ... ?

NO CHEATING!!

SERIOUSLY!!

Okay here are the answers:

1) Phil Lord and ... Christopher Miller. Of course. "Lord and Miller" has become a brand name that indicates the sort of pop culture aware approach we've gotten familiar with in such movies as The Lego Movie, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and both Jump Street movies. They also had an initial take on Solo: A Star Wars Story but were ultimately canned from that project. However, they remain a creative force in the industry with a whole lot of producing credits as well. 

2) Seth Rogen and ... Evan Goldberg. I don't know if this is really second easiest, but it's easy (for me anyway) to remember that Rogen has worked regularly with his best friend from childhood on both writing and directing projects. Their directing credits include The Interview and This is the End. (Note: I usually list first the person in the pair whose last name comes first alphabetically, but I thought this might make it easier, and besides, Rogen is waaaay more famous than Goldberg.)

3) Jean-Pierre Jeunet and ... Marc Caro. I should say "et" rather than "and." You have to be just a little bit older to get this one because they don't work together anymore, but if you are my age and you really liked movies around the turn of the century, you knew these guys well. The French directing pair were the minds behind Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children. It's funny though ... I'm not going to change the order of these questions or anything, but now that I look at it, "Jeunet et Caro" became a brand name to a certain type of cinephile, indicating their unique production design and slightly dystopian world view, even though they only actually directed these two movies together -- that I've seen, anyway. Jeunet has a much longer career working by himself. 

4) Ron Clements and ... John Musker. This one is very familiar to me because I've been seeing it for a long time. Although many Disney movies are directed by multiple people and they tend to work in different combinations depending on the project, Clements and Musker were the two listed directors on a surprising number of films: Hercules, The Princess and the Frog, Treasure Planet, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. They are also the listed directors for Moana but are credited alongside fellow Disney company man Chris Williams there. 

5) Michael Powell and ... Emeric Pressburger. This is the easiest one for classic cinephiles, as the British pair known as the Archers represented one of the earliest examples of a creative team working together regularly, that weren't part of some studio system contract. Their list of highly regarded films that always have good showings on the Sight and Sound list includes The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death and I Know Where I'm Going! (It's not that I'm a huge fan of that last one. The exclamation point is in the title.) When Powell did work by himself he made one of the crazier films of that vintage you are likely to see, Peeping Tom.

6) Daniel Kwan and ... Daniel Scheinert. This could be harder for some people except for the fact that the two directors have the same first name, causing them to be nicknamed "the Daniels," and their most recent collaboration won best picture. The directors of Everything Everywhere All at Once also directed Swiss Army Man, firmly establishing their absurdist world view. Because of their big success we tend to think of them as more established, but their third feature isn't set to debut until 2026 (though Wikipedia also says it was booted from its expected release date by Steven Spielberg to make way for his own movie on that date). Scheinert did also direct The Death of Dick Long, which I also really liked. 

7) Anna Boden and ... Ryan Fleck. This pairing might be more obscure for some people except they did recently direct a Marvel movie. Their career prior to Captain Marvel was a lot more independent in spirit. Sugar, It's Kind of a Funny Story and Mississippi Grind are the movies where they are both credited as director, as I'm surprised to learn that Boden was actually not credited as director on the movie I know them from most: Half Nelson, their debut, where she only got a writing credit while Fleck got both. Damn film industry letting men take all the credit. They did date once but they are not married. 

8) Mark Neveldine and ... Brian Taylor. These two have gone their separate ways, but "Neveldine andTaylor" became a brand for their particular frenetic brand of action movie, seen in such titles as Crank, Crank High Voltage and Gamer. Although I really like the Crank movies (not so much Gamer), my favorite of their collective creative output might by Brian's equally gonzo solo effort Mom and Dad. Taylor has not been able to follow that up as his most recent effort was the truly terrible Hellboy: The Crooked Man last year. 

9) Jason Friedberg and ... Aaron Seltzer. The names on this list who should be most ashamed of themselves. If you know these names, and many of you would have the misfortune of knowing them, you know them from their awful movie parodies. Although their writing of the original Scary Movie was a promising(ish) start -- I enjoyed that movie back when I first saw it -- it got a lot worse from there, quickly. In terms of actual directing credits, we can blame them for Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans and Vampires Suck. I never subjected myself to Disaster Movie. 

10) Brett Morgen and ... Nanette Burstein. Might be starting to get a bit more obscure now, but again, this is a pairing I've known about for a long time. They now work separately and have both made some really good films by themselves. But together, the first documentarians on this list were the names behind On the Ropes and The Kid Stays in the Picture. Wait, those are really the only joint efforts I know them from? Funny which things stay with you, as On the Ropes was not even very memorable. (I also noticed I listed their names in reverse alphabetical order, because that's the order I've always thought of. Damn patriarchy.)

11) John Francis Daley and ... Jonathan Goldstein. These are the new power players on the block. They've made a trio of recent comedies that I consider reasonably successful, those being Vacation (which I like more than most people), Game Night (which most people like more than I do) and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (see comment about Game Night). They also had writing credits on Spider-Man: Homecoming and The Flash, and hey, Daley was on Freaks and Geeks! 

12) Nat Faxon and ... Jim Rash. While we are on the topic of people who act. You'd know Rash from Community and Faxon from ... well, a lot of things, no signature roles really. Together, you'd know them from directing The Way, Way Back and Downhill, the American remake of Ruben Ostlund's Force Majeure. I guess they don't have a significant directing career as such, but since they are both actors, they seemed like the 12th "easiest" in this quiz. (I learn actor names even more quickly than I learn director names.) 

13) Justin Benson and ... Aaron Moorhead. In among more independent-minded movies underpinned by science fiction and/or mind-blowing ideas, Benson and Moorhead are considered to be low-level visionaries. They've directed The Endless and Something in the Dirt, in which they also both appeared as actors, and finally decided to side-step the starring role in favor of the more established Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie in the bigger budgeted (but less successful) Synchronic. 

14) Jonathan Dayton and ... Valerie Faris. This one is especially known to me because they are the only directing pair to direct one of my #1 movies of the year. Dayton and Faris got there with Ruby Sparks in 2012, but the other good films they've made are Little Miss Sunshine (perhaps more universally praised/known than Sparks) and Battle of the Sexes. And yes, this is the first of three pairings on this list who are actually married. They have three children together. 

15) Glenn Ficarra and ... John Requa. The standout for this duo is the surprisingly likable Crazy Stupid Love (I refuse to put in the commas, as discussed here), but they're also responsible for a trio of okay to good other movies I've seen: I Love You Phillip Morris, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot and Focus. I don't have a lot more to say about them so I will just continue to filibuster for a moment here to get in enough text to properly format the text and the photograph together. They're good! (There, have I filibustered long enough?) 

16) Josh Gordon and ... Will Speck. As another group of more recent comers, these might have been listed higher in the quiz for newer cinephiles. However, for me they are more obscure because although I remember their names, I can't off the top of my head remember what they directed. As it turns out, it was Blades of Glory, Office Christmas Party, The Switch and Lyle Lyle Crocodile. Okay then! Blades of Glory was from 2007 so maybe they aren't quite as "new" as I think. 

17) Shari Springer Berman and ... Robert Pulcini. These two have a similar middling output to Gordon and Speck, with higher highs and lower lows. In fact, if not for the film where I first heard of them -- American Splendor -- I might not have bothered to learn their names at all. Nanny Diaries and Girl Most Likely are definitely much worse, with the former managing to squander a young Scarlett Johansson. This pair are also married and have been so since 1994. 

18) David Siegel and ... Scott McGehee. This one is pretty obscure -- what do you expect for #18 on a list of 22? But my love of one of their films -- 2013's What Maisie Knew, which made my top 25 of last decade -- really incentivized me to put them on my radar. The Deep End (2001) is also really good, though I'm more uncertain on Uncertainty and Bee Season. Because I need to filibuster a moment longer, I noticed they have a new movie this year starring Bill Murry and Naomi Watts, The Friend, which I will probably see. 

19) Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and ... Tyler Gillett. This could be much higher as this pair has stormed on the scene in recent years, but I contend that Bettinelli-Olpin's extremely complicated last name (there's a lot going on there) makes it much more difficult to learn. I always have to check how many T's and L's there are. After getting our attention in 2019 with Ready or Not, the pair directed the first two Scream reboots as well as last year's horror movie Abigail, which I just saw a few weeks ago. I haven't liked any of those movies as much as I felt I should have, but they're definitely a pair to watch.

20) Danielle Krudy and ... Bridget Savage Cole. You really might not know them because they are just starting out, but I expect a fruitful future from sadly the only pair of women to make this list. I was quite taken with their 2019 film Blow the Man Down, and I thought they followed it up reasonably well last year with House of Spoils. I can't easily find out anything else about them because they are the first pair to have no presence on Wikipedia other than being listed as the director of their films. They'll get there I think. 

21) Jimmy Chin and ... Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. This is the first of the final two that I expect no one to get, and it has everything to do with the complexity of the names. Jimmy Chin? Easy to remember. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi? Not so easy to remember. You'll know them from their documentaries about extreme sports, most likely climbing (Meru, Free Solo), but also the documentary they did on the rescue of the trapped Thai soccer team called, appropriately, The Rescue. They most recently moved into narrative filmmaking with Nyad. And yes, this is the last married couple.

22) Severin Fiala and ... Veronika Franz. The least likely pair for you to know is a pairing of what I thought was two women until I just looked at a picture of Severin Fiala. I've only seen two of their films, but their Goodnight Mommy made enough of an impression to get an American remake starring Naomi Watts, and I really like both films. (They didn't get to direct the remake.) They also made The Lodge, which I saw at MIFF but did not like. The pair are Austrian and they bonded over their love of horror movies. 

How many did you get? 

Here's how to judge your score:

0-5 - You don't pay attention to credits at all and I'm wondering if you really like movies.

5-10 - Very respectable, clap yourself on the back. 

10-15 - Superlative knowledge, you are not only a cinephile but you have a good memory. 

15-20 - Expert level knowledge, and you have also seen a lot of the same films I have.

21-22 - Me.

Other directors whose names are (or should be) adjectives

When David Lynch passed earlier this year, I described him as the man whose name became an adjective. That was suggesting a sort of exclusivity that may not actually exist. Lynch may have been on the leading edge of that trend, but there are plenty of other directors whose names we use that way -- or might, based on a couple criteria:

1) They have something very distinctive about the sorts of movies they make in either approach or subject matter, which might lead us to name drop them when we see another movie with those characteristics by some other director;

2) They have to be well enough known that you recognize their name when you weren't necessarily expecting it to come up, and when that name is turned into an adjective;

3) Their name can actually be turned into an adjective with reasonable ease.

It's that last one that helps us narrow down our list a bit. You might think that a particular movie bears the traits of a film made by Francis Ford Coppola, for example -- though Coppola has made different enough movies that he might actually fail the first test -- but "Coppolaian" or "Coppolan" just do not work as adjectives. They don't pass the sniff test. Quentin Tarantino has the same problem, though I'd argue you might break the rules a little bit and come up with a word like "Tarantonian" just to get around it. (And I think maybe some actually have. In fact, I think I have used that word before.)

On Wednesday night I watched a movie by a director who definitely does qualify in at least two of the three respects -- to be honest, I didn't think of the one I've listed as #2 until after I started writing -- which was the inspiration for this post. And after talking about him, I'll get into some others that I think we either use or should use. 

The movie was Fireworks Wednesday, the oldest movie I've seen in the directing career of Iranian master Asghar Farhadi, and seventh overall that I've seen. I've seen the last seven now -- in reverse order, that's A Hero, Everybody Knows, The Salesman, The Past, A Separation, About Elly and Fireworks Wednesday, taking us back to 2006 -- leaving only two other features I haven't seen: Beautiful City (2004) and Dancing in the Dust (2003). 

I wasn't sure at what point he found his particular voice, which I will expound on in a moment, so I thought this film from 19 years ago might be in the vein of other Iranian masters whose names you would know, like Jafar Panahi and Abbas Kiarostami, though both of those directors have films that are replete with formal challenges, while Farhadi's are not. Or maybe I just thought it would be more like the most common form of Iranian film, by any director, that we saw in this period, in which children were often the stars as a way of avoiding the scorn and potential censorship and/or retribution of the government. 

Nope. Even in Fireworks Wednesday, Farhadi was making intricate social dramas that play more like mysteries, where semantic disagreements and misunderstandings among characters lead to escalating consequences that result in (usually minor) tragedies for everyone involved. Simply put, this was Farhadi's dominant mode in all the movies listed above that I've seen -- you might say it was his only mode if that didn't sound like a criticism. With a filmmaker like Farhadi, we cherish each new instance of this and would not ask him to vary up his style in the slightest. 

So I think "Farhadian" is an adjective that should definitely enter our vernacular among cinephiles ... and even more so if there were a significant number of other directors making films like the films he makes. (Though it's possible that only in cinephile circles would his name be recognized completely out of context ... which is why I said I'm not sure if he meets criterion #2.)

Who else we got?

1) Hitchcockian - Films like this feature clever narrative suspense, interesting camera tricks, ordinary people out of their depth and possibly a cameo by the director. 

2) Spielbergian - Films like this feature a sense of childhood wonder, often set in and around suburbia, which is endangered by the mysteries of our world (or others), often supernatural in nature. 

3) Andersonian - Films like this feature a quirky ensemble of characters, often against lovingly fussy sets and backdrops, usually involving some sort of Russian nesting doll narrative structure. (Note: There is a slight risk of confusing Wes and Paul Thomas, but context should usually help sort that out -- and it also means Paul Thomas has to give up his claim to having an adjectival name, because he is just not as distinctive in style as Wes.)

4) Scorsesian - Films like this are epic in length, showcase audacious camera technique, use classic rock in memorable ways, and contain organizational infrastructures that either are, or resemble, organized crime.

5) Kaufmanian - Films like this involve a no-confidence schlub as a protagonist and likely a deconstruction of the ordinary rules of filmmaking and/or narrative structure, with an emphasis on the self. 

6) Gondrian - Films like this feature a lot of DIY technique involving construction paper or the equivalent, and often a bit of dream logic.

7) Fincherian - Films like this involve sleek camerawork and editing, and look into the darker parts of our souls. 

8) Hughesian - Films like this involve teenagers coming of age in situations usually involving high comedy (context helps for this one). 

9) Von Trierian - Films like this involve masochism and possibly mild to heavy misogyny. 

10) Shyamalanian - Films like this feature a labored twist, a high concept, some amount of horror ... and possibly a cameo by the director. 

I could keep going, but the adjectives might get more obscure and ten is a good place to stop. 

I'd like to include someone like Robert Altman for his very distinctive style and subject matter, and "Altmanian" does sort of work as an adjective ... but I just don't think I could ever see myself using it. You just know if it works or if it does not work. I think "Burtonian" has the same problem. (Which is probably why I didn't think of this post idea a few nights earlier, when I rewatched Edward Scissorhands for the first time in a quarter century.)

I also thought of Orson Welles, and "Wellesian" certainly does work ... but I don't know that I could focus in on a signature Welles style that would warrant the use of the adjective.

In fact we may have more examples of directors (or directing duos) with distinctive styles who don't work than who do. "Bergmanian" and "Coenian" also don't work, though we would absolutely want to use those adjectives if we could. Single-syllable last names often don't work. Just try "Croweian" or "Leeian" and you will see what I'm talking about. Then again, David Lynch has a one-syllable last name. Or, had. 

Overall I guess it is a select group that meet all three criteria, possibly not including the actual inspiration for the post. So while in many cases, we might still be inclined to make the comparison when writing about film, but we are more likely to have to use the more ungainly phrasing "it resembles the films of Joel and Ethan Coen" than that it is "Coenian."

Directors so often resemble themselves

I was going to call this post Things We Lost in the Fire: The Logging Years, but I thought the headline I chose would get more eyeballs.

The reason I was going to call it that was because Susanne Bier, the Danish director who directed the Halle Berry movie Things We Lost in the Fire, also directed the movie I watched on Monday night, Serena.

The movies are superficially dissimilar, but both deal with a main female character who is in some ways recovering from the trauma of losing family members in a fire. They are, in fact, the only two movies I've seen that Bier has directed, although her 2010 film In a Better World won the best foreign language film Oscar.

Perhaps if I had seen any of Bier's other films, I would not have been inclined to write this post. But from such meager seeds grew a much larger idea in my brain: The realization (not for the first time) that directors are perhaps one of the most prominent artists to get rewarded for essentially repeating themselves throughout their career.

This is no slight at Ms. Bier, to be sure. Even if these two films have similar themes, their settings and time periods are entirely different. Other far more acclaimed directors can get accused of similar things, whether it's the approach to set design of someone like Wes Anderson or the reliance on involving characters in bizarre sexual play-acting of someone like Yorgos Lanthimos. (Who is on my mind as I just saw the third of his five features on Friday night, and it's remarkable how interested he continues to be in exploring the same themes.)

In fact, this should probably be no slight on directors, either. Creative individuals the world over seem inclined to repeat themselves, whether in the themes themselves or in the actual content of their art. I think of the joke about AC/DC, whom no one has ever accused of being more than the purveyors of fun rock music. Whether this really happened or not is unclear to me, but the joke has it that an interviewer once asked a member of AC/DC how he addressed the criticism that they have ten albums and they all sound exactly the same. "That's ridiculous," he responded. "We have 11 albums."

Yet because I am a film fan first and foremost, I tend to notice repetition more in filmmakers than I do in authors or painters or musicians. I notice when the same themes of sexual perversion, death and punishment of women tend to follow around Lars von Trier, or when Woody Allen continues trying to explore the dynamic of an older male character and a younger female one.

On the whole, however, we don't condemn directors for continuing to explore what becomes an obsessive life-long pursuit of one particular kind of emotional truth. Why is Martin Scorsese interested in gangsters? Why is Noah Baumbach interested in hipsters? They just are, and we love that they are trying to continue to discover the final word on what makes people like that tick. Because in some way, they are trying to discover what makes themselves tick.

However, I'm generally more impressed with filmmakers who have something to say through their approach to storytelling, not so much in needing to explore one particular thing that interests them. This is why I'm so floored when I discover that Tom Tykwer can make both Run Lola Run and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which don't have a single thing in common in their look or themes. This is why the career of Ang Lee fascinates me so much, because no two films in an impressive filmography have seemed to bear any relationship to one another. This is why I'm trying to get my hands on A Most Violent Year as soon as I can, because after Margin Call and All is Lost, I have the sense that J.C. Chandor can do literally anything he wants.

It makes me wonder if being surprised is as much a key to loving the movies I love as anything else. If, for example, that's the reason I held Birdman in as much esteem as I did, because it felt like Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu showing us a side of himself that all previous evidence had indicated was not there.

So at this point in these musings, I must admit to you that Susanne Bier made a particularly poor news peg for this post indeed. Looking into the plot of Things We Lost in the Fire on wikipedia, I am reminded that Berry's husband in that film was not actually killed in a fire. He was killed while trying heroically to defend a woman who was being beaten by her husband. The fire referenced in the title is either metaphorical, or an event that happened years before and may have only involved property damage.

So Bier may be more like Tykwer or Lee than she is like Scorsese or Anderson. And even Scorsese and Anderson may not be like Scorsese and Anderson -- Scorsese with tell you indignantly that he made Hugo, and Anderson is known to bristle at the suggestion that all his films are the same.

Anyway, as with any of the famously stream-of-consciousness discussions film fans have with each other -- and sometimes with themselves -- you don't always end up where you think you are going to end up when you started. And sometimes you realize your original thesis was totally wrong, or at least, incompletely considered.

The thing is, all the directors I've mentioned in this post make far more good films than bad ones, and I'm always interested in seeing what they're going to do next. Tell the same story, tell a different story ... just tell it well and you've got my attention.

The battle for the biggest output

When a director releases two movies in quick succession, you tend to take notice. It usually says something about how prolific he or she is.

Not every director, mind you. Steven Spielberg had two movies come out a week apart in December, but they were his first two movies as director since the disaster known as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, so in that case it really was just an accident of timing.

With Steven Soderbergh, it's pure volume of cinematic output.

Soderbergh had a movie in September (Contagion, which I just watched last night) and now one in January (Haywire). He's clearly making them as fast as his body will allow. (Without the content itself suffering, apparently.) It's not the first such period of intense activity of his career, either. Remember, this was the guy who got nominated for best director for two different films in the year 2000 (Erin Brockovich and Traffic, the latter of which netted him the Oscar).

Soderbergh's frenzied moviemaking rate made me think of other directors who are constantly going behind the camera, and three other names immediately jumped to mind: Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and Michael Winterbottom. Allen's and Eastwood's movies usually make headlines; Winterbottom's don't necessarily, because they're a bit more out of the mainstream. But these are three guys who are constantly delivering new features, presumably on or ahead of schedule, since that would be the only way for them to keep pace with themselves. True to form, each had a film in 2011 (Midnight in Paris, J. Edgar and The Trip).

So I thought it would be interesting to see who's truly the most prolific of the foursome, and I'd love to hear your suggestions for which others might belong in the conversation. (Current directors only, please -- that eliminates all the hacks who made four or five movies a year back in the studio system days.) I have my suspicions, but as I write this, I really don't know who will take the prize.

In order to do this, we'll need to examine each director's career, starting with the year that the least experienced director in the group released his first feature. We'll look at their filmographies from that moment onward, and may have to make some judgment calls if there are films whose status as a feature is borderline. For our purposes, documentaries are considered features because they run at feature length. Before we even start I know there's an asterisk with Winterbottom's The Trip, which was a TV series edited into a feature. However, you could argue that a TV series might take even longer to film than a feature, so Winterbottom should get credit for it and then some.

It turns out that the newest to the game is in fact Winterbottom, whose first theatrical feature was 1995's Butterfly Kiss. (Or 1995's Go Now -- I'm having a hard time telling which one was released first.) He'd made TV movies before then, but his first feature wasn't until 1995.

So starting with the release year 1995 and onward, here's how it looks for each of our contenders:

Michael Winterbottom

Butterfly Kiss (1995)
Go Now (1995)
Jude (1996)
Welcome to Sarajevo (1997)
I Want You (1998)
Wonderland (1999)
With or Without You (1999)
The Claim (2000)
24 Hour Party People (2002)
In This World (2003)
Code 46 (2003)
9 Songs (2004)
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2006)
The Road to Guantanamo (2006)
A Mighty Heart (2007)
Genova (2007)
The Shock Doctrine (2009)
The Killer Inside Me (2010)
The Trip (2011)

That's 19 titles in 17 years, nine of which I've seen. It appears he has two movies due out in 2012, one of which premiered at last year's Toronto International Film Festival (Trishna), one of which is about scheduled to shoot (Bailout), I guess with the intention of getting released this year. But he loses out due to the timing of this post. (Sorry, I'm not counting the film festival premiere.)

Steven Soderbergh

The Underneath (1995)
Gray's Anatomy (1996)
Schizopolis (1996)
Out of Sight (1998)
The Limey (1999)
Erin Brockovich (2000)
Traffic (2000)
Ocean's Eleven (2001)
Full Frontal (2002)
Solaris (2002)
Ocean's Twelve (2004)
Bubble (2005)
The Good German (2006)
Ocean's Thirteen (2007)
Che Part 1 (2008)
Che Part 2 (2008)
The Girlfriend Experience (2009)
The Informant! (2009)
And Everything is Going Fine (2010)
Contagian (2011)
Haywire (2012)

And Soderbergh takes the lead with 21 films since 1995, 15 of which I've seen. I'm glad he didn't pull ahead of Winterbottom by only one, because I had to make the judgment call to split Che into two films. They were released that way, with separate admissions in most cases, and they contain over four hours of content in radically different styles. If that's not two movies, I don't know what is. (Though since they were filmed at the same time with the same crew, you could just as compellingly make the argument that they should be one film, if in this context you are quantifying a "film" as a distinct project in a distinct location that requires a certain amount of the director's undivided attention. So many ways to interpret the same information.) Incidentally, Soderbergh's Magic Mike is also expected later in 2012, with something called The Side Effects due in 2013.

Clint Eastwood
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
Absolute Power (1997)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
True Crime (1999)
Space Cowboys (2000)
Blood Work (2002)
Mystic River (2003)
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)
Changeling (2008)
Gran Torino (2008)
Invictus (2009)
Hereafter (2010)
J. Edgar (2011)

Well, Eastwood has let me down. I guess he has only been hugely prolific since 2008, releasing five films since the fall of that year. His 15 movies in 17 years -- 11 of which I've seen -- leave him at a pace of less than one a year. Still, not bad for an 81-year-old, especially when many of his films are painted on a huge canvas and seem to require a great deal of logistics. IMDB doesn't list a 2012 movie for him, so either someone charged with updating his page is slacking, or the man is finally giving his weary bones a short rest.

Woody Allen

Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
Everyone Says I Love You (1996)
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Celebrity (1998)
Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
Small Time Crooks (2000)
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
Hollywood Ending (2002)
Anything Else (2003)
Melinda and Melinda (2004)
Match Point (2005)
Scoop (2006)
Cassandra's Dream (2007)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Whatever Works (2009)
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)
Midnight in Paris (2011)

My suspicion was that Woody would be the most prolific. That's why exercises like this are great. Turns out he's only third most prolific, with 17 movies in the 17 years, 13 of which I've seen. But Woody does get a special commendation for being the only one on this list to make at least one movie (exactly one) in every year since 1995. If I were going only by U.S. theatrical release dates, Cassandra's Dream was released in January of 2008, leaving him with two movies in 2008 and none in 2007. But it played a number of places around Europe in 2007 and is generally credited with that release year. And sure enough, Allen's 18th film in the last 18 years (Nero Fiddled) is due out later this year. If you want to know how far back this streak goes, you have to go all the way back to 1981 to find a year in which Allen did not direct a film.

So our champion is: Steven Soderbergh! The guy who inspired the topic in the first place.

Take a vacation, will you, Steven? You're making everyone else look bad.