My Favorite Movie Directors
I like movies, so I decided to look at which directors have created the movies I’ve most enjoyed. Rather than rank them, I’m more so listing them without thought on one being better than another.
Robert Zemeckis
This director has made many great movies, and personal favorites. Back to the Future is an obviously well-known trilogy, Forrest Gump is also a big one, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit is also critically-acclaimed. I’ve not seen every one of his movies, but each I have seen I’ve enjoyed if not really liked. A big part of why his movies are great, in my opinion, is because Alan Silvestri composed the music for many of them. I haven’t seen Castaway yet, but I do listen to its soundtrack. Three other movies that seem less popular but are my personal favorites are Romancing the Stone, The Polar Express, and The Walk. A Christmas Carol was a bit off-putting, but I still enjoyed it.
Edgar Wright
It’s hard to choose a favorite film from this director, which makes choosing him as one of my favorite directors easy. Out of all of his films, and his Cornetto trilogy, my personal favorite is The World’s End; Hot Fuzz comes in a close second, and then last Shaun of the Dead. I thoroughly enjoyed Scott Pilgrim vs. the World even though I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite. Baby Driver is a definite favorite and one of those movies I can watch repeatedly without complaints. I’d say the weakest movie (I’ve seen) from him is Last Night in Soho which, while entertaining, was what I’d consider a slight “miss”. His editing style is unique and makes many of his films engaging.
Hayao Miyazaki
This is an obvious choice. Kiki’s Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, and Castle in the Sky are all fantastic films. Howl’s Moving Castle is my personal favorite animated film of all time. Others that he isn’t a director for but had a hand in making that I think are also fantastic are Whisper of the Heart, The Cat Returns, and Only Yesterday. Others that I don’t consider favorites but I recognize as great are Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds. Ones I think aren’t really good are Ponyo and The Boy and the Heron, but nobody’s perfect. He’s just an incredibly imaginative director.
Gore Verbinski
This one surprised me, as I didn’t really know how much I liked his movies until I thought more deeply about it. The first three films of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise are, in my opinion, really, really good. I hesitate to say they’re all fantastic as At World’s End seemed pretty weird, but… what’s weird is I still think it’s really good. A hot take I have is that the only two solid trilogies all the way through (in the sense of an ongoing throughline (so discounting the Cornetto trilogy)) are The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. And, of course, you can’t talk about Pirates of the Caribbean without mentioning the music. It’s fantastic. Admittedly, I haven’t seen a lot of his other movies, but I did see Rango and it was also weird but surprisingly very good. Even Mouse Hunt I enjoyed.
Christopher McQuarrie
He’s directed the past four Mission: Impossible movies, all of which I liked. The two I think are the best of the franchise are Rogue Nation and Fallout. That he’s written for Ghost Protocol as well as Edge of Tomorrow, The Usual Suspects, and Top Gun: Maverick, all other great films, tells me that he’s a solid creator of movies, particularly thrilling, action-fueled ones.
Makoto Shinkai
There are several movies I still have yet to see by him, including 5 Centimeters Per Second and The Garden of Words, but his three most recent films are all great. While Howl’s Moving Castle holds a special place in my heart as my favorite animated film of all time, I recognize Your Name as being a contender. Weathering With You was another beautiful film, as was Suzume. Though I’ve only seen these three, each are such great films I couldn’t not consider him among my favorite directors. Plus, each features RADWIMPS in their soundtracks which is awesome.
Honorable Mentions
There are several other directors I’d be remiss not to mention having some of my favorite movies or a variety of really good movies, but having an insubstantial amount of them for me to regard them as among my favorite directors.
The Coen brothers have a pretty great track record, though personally I only really have one favorite film they’ve directed and another two I really liked. Hail, Caesar! is my personal favorite from them, and both Raising Arizona and Burn After Reading are the other two I thoroughly enjoyed. Others I simply enjoyed were The Big Lebowski and True Grit. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs had interesting parts but felt too incohesive. My unpopular opinion is that No Country for Old Men was not very good.
Damien Chazelle directed two movies I consider just about perfect. Whiplash is so good but makes me too unsettled or uncomfortable for me to consider it a favorite, but La La Land, being a musical, is a definite favorite of mine. Its music is great, its acting is great, its story is great, it’s just amazingly good. While I did like First Man, it was a bit too solemn and understated for my liking (I recognize this is due to mainly being a sort of character study of Neil Armstrong). Him not being among my favorites is just another case of there not being enough favorite films for me to include him.
It may be blasphemous for me to say Peter Jackson isn’t among my favorite directors, and maybe he should be. I just can’t bring myself to bump him up to one of my favorites when he made The Hobbit trilogy. It should not have been a trilogy. And yes, this likely wasn’t his (or only his) idea to make it a trilogy. But it happened, and it was not good. The Lord of the Rings movies are goated, of course.
Another unpopular opinion of mine is that I didn’t ever really like The Matrix. That said, the Wachowskis made some good-to-great films I do recognize including Speed Racer, V for Vendetta, and one of my own personal favorite movies of all time Cloud Atlas. And, yeah, I won’t mention their other films that are… yeah.
Steven Spielberg has a lot of great movies. Yet, I don’t consider any of them to be a favorite of mine. I know, this is ludicrous to say of the guy who directed Jaws, E.T., the Indiana Jones movies, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, and West Side Story (2021). The closest I consider to being a favorite would be The Adventures of Tintin.
Christopher Nolan is my final honorable mention. He also has a lot of great movies that didn’t quite vibe with me to be a favorite. Inception, The Dark Knight trilogy, The Prestige, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer are all great films, some I’d consider masterpieces (but not favorites). His others that are widely acclaimed like Memento and Interstellar I have yet to see.
