who are the ten greatest living American filmmakers?

The American filmmakers where I still take an automatic interest in whatever they’re doing (past Wiseman, the order’s approximate):

1. Frederick Wiseman
2. The Coens
3. Kelly Reichardt
4. Noel Baumbach
5. Richard Linklater
6. Sofia Coppola
7. Paul Thomas Anderson
8. Nicole Holofcener
9. David Fincher (I liked Gone Girl enough that he’s still on the list)
10. Errol Morris

I’m probably missing a documentarian where I’ve liked two or three films a lot. I haven't seen the Twin Peaks relaunch; if that turns out to be as good as I want it to be, Lynch would be back on the list.

Scorsese, Tarantino, Lee, DePalma, Coppola, others, the films I care about recede further and further into the past.

I haven't seen the Twin Peaks relaunch; if that turns out to be as good as I want it to be, Lynch would be back on the list.

If Mulholland and Inland are what knocked him off the list for you, good luck with that.

Steve Bannon

(xpost) Sort of, yeah. But I'm hoping my interest in the characters will withstand anything...I'm comfortable with whatever level of weirdness the first two seasons and Blue Velvet operated at, but maybe this will be on the other side of that, I don't know.

Would press for alive, active and currently great tbh

(semi-kidding)

are they only kinda dead?

Would press for alive, active and currently great tbh

Directors who are living, active and currently (meaning last 15 years or so) turning out some of their very best work:

Steven Spielberg
David Lynch
Coen Bros.

... struggling after that tbh.

Maybe I'll give Malick a pass for turning out his best movie in that period too.

The same exercise with european and asian directors would be fun!

off the top of my head:

David Lynch
Coen Bros.
Paul Thomas Anderson
Sofia Coppola
Todd Solondz
John Waters
Jim Jarmusch
D.A. Pennebaker
Alexander Payne
Quentin Tarantino

I'm a bit sad no one is mentioning Apatow.

same for James Gray and Jeff Nichols.

He's not great as a director

Cant believe i forgot the coens lol

Xp

Directors who are living, active and who I would watch a new movie by on purpose:

Joel & Ethan Coen
Sofia Coppola
David Fincher
William Friedkin
Walter Hill
Nicole Holofcener
John Hyams
Jim Jarmusch
Adam Wingard
Rob Zombie

Oh yeah, James Gray would get a slot too on the alive/active/currently-great list.

fuck I forgot Friedkin & Fincher

shit I can't believe I forgot Kelly Reichardt, too... she's in the top 5 for me

Love seeing her pop up so much. She hasn't really made a bad movie yet, they've all be more or less interesting or at least certainly worthwhile.

yeah she is in my top 5 right now too

What this tells me is that Americans are in the minority on the list of greatest living filmmakers.

Eric otm, which is why the question i asked is dead and gone

I knew I forgot someone who made an excellent film this year. Yeah -- Gray is in the top three among working American filmmakers. Holofcener not far behind.

No one's mentioned Kenneth Lonergan--completely forgot about him too. He'd be on my list for sure, so knock off Errol Morris.

This is personal favorites for me, not any stab at "best" --

David Lynch
Coen Bros.
P.T. Anderson
Wes Anderson
David Soderbergh
Jeremy Saulnier (yes, based only on Blue Ruin and Green Room)
then a nebulous 2nd tier that probably includes Jarmusch, Lonergan, Scorsese, probably Bigelow

I had to check to see if David Soderbergh was the Tommie Aaron of American film, but I think you meant Hank.

right, right, Hammerin' Steve

Malick probably at the top of the living/working list if he took time off after Tree of Life.

Green Room might be a good rewatch for this week.

I'll second Lonergan.

Ranked according to my current level of enthusiasm (as in, "how excited am I for an upcoming project by this filmmaker), my list would go something like:

1. Joel and Ethan Coen
2. Brad Bird
3. Quentin Tarantino
4. Richard Linklater
5. Steven Spielberg
6. Kenneth Lonergan
7. Spike Lee
8. Spike Jonze
9. Paul Thomas Anderson
10. Ira Sachs

(that's only 10% African American and 10% queer. Would have been 10% female too, but I remembered Spike Jonze at the last minute and Nicole Holofcener fell off the list.)

I've given up on Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, Gus Van Sant and Tim Burton, and I'm so over Wes Anderson, Kathryn Bigelow, Todd Solondz and Alexander Payne. I have some serious catching up to do with Lynch post Mulholland Drive (just started watching the *original* Twin Peaks series, to be followed by the prequel film and then the new series). Sachs gets the spot that might otherwise go to Scorsese or Sophia Coppola, because a) I haven't seen Silence yet, and so for now the only thing I've liked from him in the last decade was the Fran Leibowitz doc, and b) I was so bored by Somewhere that I never made seeing The Bling Ring a priority, and so I still gotta catch up with it and her new one. I can't think of any documentary filmmakers that I consistently like--though the guy who did the Divine and Tab Hunter ones is good. I rarely enjoy Fincher, and I feel like I should enjoy Haynes and Malick far more than I do.

Good call on Sachs.

I probably should have included Pete Docter as well, as his three features as director (Monsters Inc, Up, Inside Out) is a great run.

Just returning from The Florida Project. Sean Baker is the greatest living American Filmmaker, bar none. Such an amazing experience.

Well, perhaps 'greatest current American Filmmaker'. He's definitely the American Filmmaker of the decade.

Ugh, really? I intensely disliked it.

"Ugh" as in, "Not you too?" My band of Florida film critics is disappointed like hell with it.

Great to hear, Fred. I put Tangerine in my top 25 of the century so far. that was an amazing movie. Really looking forward to TFP in a few weeks when it comes here.

xp Interesting Alfred... i'll dip out of this convo til I see the movie, curious to hear both yr guys' thoughts.

I liked Tangerine but this film showed he hasn't a clue (yet) how to pace a feature length film.

according to A White it also has fatal "class condescension" issues.

Well what doesn't, outside of Mel Gibson movies?

A colleague called it "tourist porn," which it isn't -- it's child cuteness porn. It accepts that these horrifying children are charming little dears.

Life's too short to engage with what A White thinks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's just so great. The colors, the framing of the pictures, every single actor, the way it feels like life is just drifting by, while on retrospect it's really tightly constructed, the colors, the sunsets, the fantasmogoric view of America, the music, and oh, did I mention the colors?

that's the problem, which you hit -- I had an existential fear that anyone outside Florida would nod and think, "See? Here is this phantasmagorical view of America." What you see in this movie isn't Orlando, isn't Disney, isn't Kissimmee -- it could be shot in Sarasota, Jacksonville, outskirts of Tacoma. It doesn't even get the noise level right.

and all the reviews are falling into the trap of writing, "See? Here's America." It's so fucking condescending.

One thing, I'll grant, it does get right: the colors of a summer sky in Florida before a thunderstorm. But the children are so poorly directed -- and the ending so misconceived that everyone in the screening room laughed -- and Willem Dafoe so obvious that, of course, we can discuss Oscar nominations. There isn't a hotel manager in the world as generous as Dafoe; he's managing a flophouse as if it were a Disney gift shop, and Disney gift shops wouldn't let customers get away with what Dafoe does.

I kinda don't care if it's accurately Orlando, the feeling of phantasmagoria was equally powerful in the films Baker shot in California. It's something he does in all his films.

The sound design is absolutely incredible and expressive. It's not about getting anything 'right', it's not a documentary. It's a work of art.

Also, Baker isn't the only one doing phantasmagorical America. Soderbergh in films like Magic Mike and Logan Lucky (just the names...) and the Sadie Brothers' Good Time. As examples. Baker is just the best one.

It fails as fiction.

Soderbergh's Tampa lives. So does American Honey, which covers much of the same ground, is half an hour longer, and the more moving film.

(Frederik, you don't know shit about America)

That gorgeous shot was why we didn't need the line

I thought the Florida project was excellent and it/baker should probably have a thread

I agree the shot was better. But line -> shot was a gorgeous piece of editing.

And yeah, as the best American director of the decade, Sean Baker probably deserves his own thread.

That gorgeous shot was why we didn't need the line

This. Plus the entire movie leading up to that point.