Favorite film directors!

[Brian]

71 dB, who are some great Finnish directors? Aside from this guy!

[North Star]

71 dB, who are some great Finnish directors? Aside from this guy!

A few names: Renny Harlin, Matti Kassila, Aki & Mika Kaurismäki, Edvin Laine, Aarne Tarkas.

[71 dB]

Kubrick's The Killing was ok, but nothing special.

71 dB, who are some great Finnish directors? Aside from this guy!

I don't think there are great Finnish directors.  Renny Harlin went the same school (not the same time, he is older I am). 

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

A few names: Renny Harlin, Matti Kassila, Aki & Mika Kaurismäki, Edvin Laine, Aarne Tarkas.

I've seen several of Aki Kaurismäki's movies (specifically Ariel, Leningrad Cowboys Go America, The Man without a Past, and Vie de Boheme). I liked or loved all of them.

I don't think he's a great director (and who cares, really?). But he's an enjoyable, quirky director who does things his own way, similar to his friend Jim Jarmusch.

[North Star]

I've seen several of Aki Kaurismäki's movies (specifically Ariel, Leningrad Cowboys Go America, The Man without a Past, and Vie de Boheme). I liked or loved all of them.

I don't think he's a great director (and who cares, really?). But he's an enjoyable, quirky director who does things his own way, similar to his friend Jim Jarmusch.

Yeah, I don't think there is a truly 'great' Finnish director. Or they're all busy directing orchestras..

[Karl Henning]

Kubrick's The Killing was ok, but nothing special.

That is probably fair, on the whole.

[Brian]

Anyone here like Harmony Korine's films? 

Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy and Spring Breakers are unsettling films you'll never forget, actually it's impossible to forget a korine film when you've seen it 

One of my favorite film critics, Mike D'Angelo, went to film school with Harmony Korine and once said (in the comments here):
"I don't really have any good Harmony stories, sorry. We didn't hang out or anything. He was just the kid in my screenwriting class who would show up with pages that began "IRIS IN: On the anus of a goat." Same attention-getting, pseudo-provocative nonsense he's still doing today."

[Ken B]

Well I have no goat-anus guys on my list. Mine is pretty conventional, and I would say someone cannot be a favorite on the basis of one or two movies, it takes more.

Lubitsch
Sturges
Hitchcock
Kurosawa
Hawks
Wilder
Huston
Coppola *

* with qualms

Like Brian's list: mostly guys with their hands on the script, what the Cahiers (mistakenly) called the auteurs.

(I think conventional wisdom a few decades ago was Hitch, Kurosawa, Bergman, Lubitsch, Ford.)

[André]

[Brian]

Hawks
Wilder

Oh, dang, these are great picks. About Hawks - I recently saw "Only Angels Have Wings" - largely very good (with some fun cameos, great to see Jim Rockford's dad as a kid) but a little soapy with the love story. The same critic I just quoted about goat anii also wrote this, which is too hyperbolish (to me the romance feels like it walked in from a different script) but a worthy read:
https://film.avclub.com/could-only-angels-have-wings-be-the-greatest-hollywood-1798187308

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Coppola *

* with qualms

I got some qualms too (assuming you mean FF and not his offspring), but The Conversation is one of the most perfect movies I've ever seen.

[Brian]

I got some qualms too (assuming you mean FF and not his offspring), but The Conversation is one of the most perfect movies I've ever seen.

I approve of this post!

[Ken B]

I got some qualms too (assuming you mean FF and not his offspring), but The Conversation is one of the most perfect movies I've ever seen.

Yes. It's his best. Best of the era probably, with Chinatown.

[Ken B]

http://www.theonion.com/video/denmark-introduces-harrowing-new-tourism-ads-direc-14403

[Ken B]

Seems the right thread for this. http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/245953/this-anti-semitic-bbc-interview-perfectly-illustrates-britains-left-wing-anti-semitism-problem

[Brian]

Oddly enough, it looks like nobody in this thread ever mentioned Ken Loach. I had to watch The Wind That Shakes the Barley for school, but that's all I know of him.

[Crudblud]

Loach isn't very well known outside the UK, except to film buffs I guess. His stuff regularly plays at Cannes, and he has won the Palme d'or twice, but he definitely isn't a household name. He tends to do "kitchen sink" realist stuff about working class British life, and in general has a very left wing perspective which he has no qualms about expressing strongly in his work, some of it can be quite divisive for that reason. He had a big boost in popularity with I, Daniel Blake last year, but I think his most famous film, at least here in Yorkshire, will always be Kes.

[milk]

Yes, as Andre: Renoir, Bresson, Ray, Ozu, Hawkes, Wilder...I've always loved Eric Rohmer...Linklater has made some good films, especially Boyhood and Dazed and Confused...the Coen Brothers...I used to like Mike Leigh but it's been a while...Woody Allen made four or five good films...Errol Morris...Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines...

[Cato]

Ken Russell used to be really big 40+ years ago: any interest in his efforts?

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Loach isn't very well known outside the UK, except to film buffs I guess. His stuff regularly plays at Cannes, and he has won the Palme d'or twice, but he definitely isn't a household name. He tends to do "kitchen sink" realist stuff about working class British life, and in general has a very left wing perspective which he has no qualms about expressing strongly in his work, some of it can be quite divisive for that reason. He had a big boost in popularity with I, Daniel Blake last year, but I think his most famous film, at least here in Yorkshire, will always be Kes.

I don't think I've ever seen a Loach film. I tend to confuse him with Mike Leigh, who has a similar approach.

I remember that one of Loach's films was released in the US with subtitles, because its working-class English characters spoke a dialect incomprehensible to Americans.

From Kieslowski on Kieslowski, a book of interviews published by Faber & Faber:

"I always said that I never wanted to be anyone's assistant but if, for example, Ken Loach were to ask me, then I'd willingly make him coffee. I saw Kes at film school and I knew then that I'd willingly make coffee for him...I'd just make coffee so I could see how he does it all. The same applies to Orson Welles, or Fellini, and sometimes Bergman."