Chantal Akerman Top Three Films: 1) Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 2) News From Home 3) Les rendez-vous d'Anna [The Meetings of Anna] Also Worth Noting: Nuit et jour [Night and Day] "At the age of fifteen Chantal Akerman saw Godard's Pierrot le fou and realized that filmmaking could be experimental and personal. She dropped in and out of film school and has since created short and feature films for viewers who appreciate the opportunity her works provide to think about sounds and images. Her films are often shot in real time, and in space that is part of the characters' identity." - Lillian Schiff (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998) "Independent filmmaker noted for her minimalist narratives and static visual style...Her films, often dramatically vague and nearly plotless, typically seek to explore human emotion and character through unorthodox cinematic means. Although she is admired by serious critics, her films are barely accessible to general audiences." - (The MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994) Robert Aldrich Top Three Films: 1) Kiss Me Deadly 2) The Dirty Dozen 3) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Also Worth Noting: The Longest Yard An artistic maverick whose reputation in the United States did not match his prestige in Europe, Robert Aldrich directed some of Hollywood's more intense examinations of violence, morality, and survival during the 1950s and '60s. -allmovie.com "At his best, Aldrich employed vicious irony, muscular acting and vivid, sophisticated compositions to evoke a world divided by self-interest and forever on the verge of violent anarchy." - Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989) Woody Allen Top Three Films: 1) Manhattan 2) Annie Hall 3) Hannah and Her Sisters Also Worth Noting: Crimes and Misdemeanors Actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright Woody Allen redefined film comedy during the 1970s, bringing a new measure of sophistication and personal complexity to the form. His movies — intimate meditations on recurring subjects such as art, religion, and romance — put a knowing, confessional spin on the anxieties of contemporary audiences, telescoping their fears and concerns through his own mordantly neurotic onscreen persona. Drawing universal insight from the traditions of Yiddish humor, Allen established himself both as a comic Everyman and one of American filmmaking's true auteurs, writing and directing features which broke with established narrative conventions and infused the screen-comedy form with unprecedented substance and depth. - allmovie.com Pedro Almodóvar Top Three Films: 1) Todo sobre mi madre [All About My Mother] 2) Mujeres al borde de un ataque de "nervios" [Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown] 3) Volver [Return] Also Worth Noting: Carne trémula [Live Flesh] Splashing his colorful films across the dour post-Franco Spanish landscape with the irreverent glee of a prostitute arriving late to church after a long night, Pedro Almodóvar has been called the most influential Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel. Beginning in the 1980s, Almodóvar started serving up provocative, candy-colored visions fraught with postmodernist insight into everything from sex and violence to religion and the dangers of good gazpacho. Sometimes shocking, sometimes controversial, Almodóvar's films have always managed to present a new and intriguing view of his native country, shaping the attitudes of both his compatriots and a larger international audience. -allmovie.com Robert Altman Top Three Films: 1) Nashville 2) McCabe & Mrs. Miller 3) The Player Also Worth Noting: Short Cuts, MASH During the 1970s, an era widely recognized as a renaissance period of American moviemaking, few directors enjoyed greater prominence than Robert Altman. An iconoclast whose work acutely attacked the conventions of genre filmmaking, Altman both satirized and revitalized such warhorses as the Western, the musical, and the crime drama, waging war on the sterile artifice of mainstream storytelling by creating a singularly sprawling and deliberately messy cinematic world bursting at the seams with sounds, images, characters, and plot lines. Famed for his inventive brand of overlapping (and often improvisational) dialogue and an acknowledged master of modern camera technique, Altman's quixotic career has been uneven at best, yet he remains a pivotal figure of contemporary cinema, a true maverick responsible for many of the defining motion pictures of his times. -allmovie.com Paul Thomas Anderson Top Three Films: 1) Boogie Nights 2) There Will Be Blood 3) Magnolia Also Worth Noting: Punch-Drunk Love With his 1997 film Boogie Nights, then-27-year-old director Paul Thomas Anderson took his place on the list of Hollywood wunderkinds. A brash, ensemble-driven epic made as a tribute to the Los Angeles porn industry of the 1970s, the film was both an exploration of the industry and the '70s version of the American dream. Combining sharp humor, indelible poignancy, and painstaking detail, Boogie Nights was hailed by one critic as the first great film about the '70s to come out since the '70s. The wide acclaim surrounding it — as well as Anderson's Best Screenplay Oscar nomination — put Anderson at the forefront of young American filmmakers, establishing him as one of the most exciting talents to come along in years. -allmovie.com Wes Anderson Top Three Films: 1) The Royal Tenenbaums 2) Rushmore 3) Fantastic Mr. Fox Also Worth Noting: The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou Bolstered by the support of veteran director James L. Brooks and producer Polly Platt, Wes Anderson attained a status in the late 1990s that most young filmmakers only dream of achieving — he proved that he could work within the Hollywood studio system and still create distinctive, willfully quirky films infused with an independent sensibility. -allmovie.com Kenneth Anger Top Three Films: 1) Scorpio Rising 2) Fireworks 3) Rabbit's Moon Also Worth Noting: Kustom Kar Kommandos, Eaux d'artifice Anger forged a body of work as dazzlingly poetic in its unique visual intensity as it is narratively innovative. In many ways, these wordless films represent the resurgence and development of the uniquely cinematic qualities widely considered retarded or destroyed by the passing of the silent era, especially in the area of editing. According to Tony Rayns, “Anger has an amazing instinctive grasp of all the elements of filmmaking; his films actively work out much of Eisenstein's theoretical writing about the cinema…. [Anger] comes nearer [to Eisenstein's theories] than anything in commercial cinema and produces film-making as rich in resonance as anything of Eisenstein's own.” - Maximilian Le Cain; "Senses of Cinema" Steven Spielberg Top Three Films: 1) Schindler's List 2) Jaws 3) Close Encounters of the Third Kind Also Worth Noting: Raiders of the Lost Ark "In bringing a distinctly personal sensibility to the traditional genres of mass entertainment, Steven Spielberg rapidly became the most commercially successful director in cinema history. While it is impossible to deny either his Midas touch or his extraordinary technical proficiency, it has nonetheless become increasingly clear in recent years that he is perhaps more at home with sentimental 'family' fodder than with more sophisticated material." - Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989) "One of the most famous Hollywood directors, Steven Spielberg has an intuitive sense of the hopes and fears of his audience. This quality and his showmanship have made him one of the greats, in the league of Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Capra, and Alfred Hitchcock." - Ronald Bergan (Film - Eyewitness Companions, 2006) George Stevens Top Three Films: 1) Shane 2) Giant 3) A Place in the Sun Also Worth Noting: Woman of the Year "People always count in a George Stevens film, and it is notable that even in his early comedies (and very good they are too), and in his later melodramas, he never quite allows sentiment to take over from sense, and so retains his capacity to move, rather than merely tug, at the heartstrings." - Mario Reading (The Movie Companion, 2006) Chantal Akerman Top Three Films: 1) Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 2) News From Home 3) Les rendez-vous d'Anna [The Meetings of Anna] Also Worth Noting: Nuit et jour [Night and Day] "At the age of fifteen Chantal Akerman saw Godard's Pierrot le fou and realized that filmmaking could be experimental and personal. She dropped in and out of film school and has since created short and feature films for viewers who appreciate the opportunity her works provide to think about sounds and images. Her films are often shot in real time, and in space that is part of the characters' identity." - Lillian Schiff (The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, 1998) "Independent filmmaker noted for her minimalist narratives and static visual style...Her films, often dramatically vague and nearly plotless, typically seek to explore human emotion and character through unorthodox cinematic means. Although she is admired by serious critics, her films are barely accessible to general audiences." - (The MacMillan International Film Encyclopedia, 1994) Robert Aldrich Top Three Films: 1) Kiss Me Deadly 2) The Dirty Dozen 3) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Also Worth Noting: The Longest Yard An artistic maverick whose reputation in the United States did not match his prestige in Europe, Robert Aldrich directed some of Hollywood's more intense examinations of violence, morality, and survival during the 1950s and '60s. -allmovie.com "At his best, Aldrich employed vicious irony, muscular acting and vivid, sophisticated compositions to evoke a world divided by self-interest and forever on the verge of violent anarchy." - Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989) Woody Allen Top Three Films: 1) Manhattan 2) Annie Hall 3) Hannah and Her Sisters Also Worth Noting: Crimes and Misdemeanors Actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright Woody Allen redefined film comedy during the 1970s, bringing a new measure of sophistication and personal complexity to the form.