Filmographies
Filmographies, mostly feature films (considering those longer than sixty minutes), that I have watched so far (some of them are incomplete and out of date). Ranked. Films followed by an asterisk [*] are the ones I regard as masterpieces.
Some of them, actually, incomplete.
Some of them, actually, incomplete.
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Alejandro González Iñárritu (ih-nyar-ee-too), born August 15th, 1963, is a Mexican film director.
González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the Directors Guild of America for Best Director. He is also the first Mexican-born director to have won the Prix de la mise en scene or best director award at Cannes (2006), the second one being Carlos Reygadas in 2012. His six feature films, 'Amores Perros' (2000), '21 Grams' (2003), 'Babel' (2006), 'Biutiful' (2010), 'Birdman' (2014) and 'The Revenant' (2015), have gained critical acclaim world-wide including two Academy Award nominations.
Alejandro González Iñárritu was born in Mexico City.
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a cargo ship at the ages of seventeen and nineteen years, González Iñárritu worked his way across Europe and Africa. He himself has noted that these early travels as a young man have had a great influence on him as a film-maker. The setting of his films have often been in the places he visited during this period.
After his travels, González Iñárritu returned to Mexico City and majored in communications at Universidad Iberoamericana. In 1984, he started his career as a radio host at the Mexican radio station WFM, a rock and eclectic music station. In 1988, he became the director of the station. Over the next five years, González Iñárritu spent his time interviewing rock stars, transmitting live concerts, and making WFM the number one radio station in Mexico. From 1987 to 1989, he composed music for six Mexican feature films. He has stated that he believes music has had a bigger influence on him as an artist than film itself.
In the nineties, González Iñárritu created Z films with Raul Olvera in Mexico. Under Z Films, he started writing, producing and directing short films and advertisements. Making the final transition into T.V Film directing, he studied under well-known Polish theatre director Ludwik Margules, as well as Judith Weston in Los Angeles.
In 1995, González Iñárritu wrote and directed his first T.V pilot for Z Films, called Detras del dinero, -"Behind the Money", starring Miguel Bosé. Z Films went on to be one of the biggest and strongest film production companies in Mexico, launching seven young directors in the feature film arena. In 1999, González Iñárritu directed his first feature film Amores perros, written by Guillermo Arriaga. Amores perros explored Mexican society in Mexico City told via three intertwining stories. In 2000, Amores perros premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Critics Weeks Grand Prize. It also introduced audiences for the first time to Gael García Bernal. Amores perros went on to be nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards.
After the success of Amores Perros, González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga revisited the intersecting story structure of Amores perros in González Iñárritu's second film, 21 Grams. The film starred Benicio del Toro, Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, and was presented at the Venice Film Festival, winning the Volpi Cup for actor Sean Penn. At the 2004 Academy Awards, Del Toro and Watts received nominations for their performances.
In 2005 González Iñárritu embarked on his third film, Babel, set in 4 countries on 3 continents, and in 4 different languages. Babel consists of four stories set in Morocco, Mexico, the United States, and Japan. The film stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Adriana Barraza. The majority of the rest of the cast, however, was made up of non-professional actors and some new actors, such as Rinko Kikuchi. It was presented at Cannes 2006, where González Iñárritu earned the Best Director Prize (Prix de la mise en scène). Babel was released in November 2006 and received seven nominations at the 79th Annual Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director nominated for a DGA award and for an Academy Award. Babel went on to win Best Motion Picture in the drama category at the Golden Globe Awards on January 15, 2007. Gustavo Santaolalla won the Academy Award that year for Best Original Score. After Babel, Alejandro and his writing partner Guillermo Arriaga professionally parted ways, following González Iñárritu barring Arriaga from the set during filming (Arriaga told the LA Times in 2009 "It had to come to an end, but I still respect González Iñárritu").
In 2008 and 2009, González Iñárritu directed and produced Biutiful, starring Javier Bardem, written by González Iñárritu, Armando Bo, and Nicolas Giacobone. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festial on May 17, 2010. Bardem went on to win Best Actor (shared with Elio Germano for La nostra vita) at Cannes. Biutiful is González Iñárritu's first film in his native Spanish since his debut feature Amores perros. For the second time in his career his film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. It was also nominated for the 2011 Golden Globes in the category of Best Foreign Film, for the 2011 BAFTA awards in the category of Best Film Not in the English Language and Best Actor. Javier Bardem's performance was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 2014, González Iñárritu directed Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, and Andrea Riseborough. The film is Iñárritu's first comedy. Birdman is about an actor who played an iconic superhero, and who tries to revive his career by doing a play based on the Raymond Carver short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The film was released on October 17, 2014.
In April 2014, it was announced that González Iñárritu's next film as a director will be The Revenant, which he co-wrote with Mark L. Smith. It is based on the novel of same name by Michael Punke. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Will Poulter with shooting began in September 2014, for a December 25, 2015 release.The Revenant is being filmed in Alberta and B.C. with production scheduled to wrap in February 2015. The film will be a 19th Century period piece, and is described as a "gritty thriller" about a fur trapper who seeks revenge against a group of men who robbed and abandoned him after he was mauled by a grizzly bear.
From 2001 to 2011, González Iñárritu directed several short films.
In 2001, he directed an 11 minute film segment for 11.09.01- which is composed of several short films that explore the effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks from different points of view around the world.
In 2007, he made ANNA which screened at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival inside Chacun son cinéma. It was part of the 60th anniversary of the film festival and it was a series of shorts by 33 world-renown film directors.
In 2012, he made the experimental short film Naran Ja: One Act Orange Dance - inspired by L.A Dance Project's premiere performance. The short features excerpts of the new choreography Benjamin Millepied crafted for Moving Parts. The story takes place in a secluded, dusty space and centers around LADP dancer Julia Eichten.
In 2001/2002, González Iñárritu directed "Powder Keg", an episode for the BMW film series The Hire, starring Clive Owen as the driver.
In 2010, González Iñárritu directed Write the Future, a football-themed commercial for Nike ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which went on to win Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.
In 2012, he directed Procter and Gamble's "Best Job" commercial spot for the 2012 Olympic Ceremonies. It went on to win the Best Primetime Commercial Emmy at Creative Arts Emmy Awards.Ranking
1 - Birdman
2 - The Revenant
3 - Amores perros
4 - Biutiful
5 - Babel
6 - 21 Grams- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Avid reader Charlie Kaufman wrote plays and made short films as a young student. He moved from Massapequa, New York to West Hartford, Connecticut in 1972 where he attended high school. As a comedic actor, he performed in school plays and, after graduation, he enrolled at Boston University but soon transferred NYU to study film. Charlie worked in the circulation department of the Star Tribune, in Minneapolis, in the late 1980s and moved to Los Angeles in 1991, where he was hired to write for the TV sitcom Get a Life (1990). He went on to write comedy sketches and a variety of TV show episodes. Between writing assignments, he wrote the inventive screenplay Being John Malkovich (1999), which created Hollywood interest and the attention of producer Steve Golin. Charlie works at home in Pasadena, California, where he lives with his wife Denise and children.Ranking
1 - Synecdoque, New York
2 - Anomalisa
3 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear, storytelling, acclaimed Academy Award winner writer/director/producer Sir Christopher Nolan CBE was born in London, England. Over the course of more than 25 years of filmmaking, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters ever made and became one of the most celebrated filmmakers of modern cinema.
At 7 years old, Nolan began making short films with his father's Super-8 camera. While studying English Literature at University College London, he shot 16-millimeter films at U.C.L.'s film society, where he learned the guerrilla techniques he would later use to make his first feature, Following (1998), on a budget of around $6,000. The noir thriller was recognized at a number of international film festivals prior to its theatrical release and gained Nolan enough credibility that he was able to gather substantial financing for his next film.
Nolan's second film was Memento (2000), which he directed from his own screenplay based on a short story by his brother Jonathan Nolan. Starring Guy Pearce, the film brought Nolan numerous honors, including Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay. Nolan went on to direct the critically acclaimed psychological thriller, Insomnia (2002), starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank.
The turning point in Nolan's career occurred when he was awarded the chance to revive the Batman franchise in 2005. In Batman Begins (2005), Nolan brought a level of gravitas back to the iconic hero, and his gritty, modern interpretation was greeted with praise from fans and critics alike. Before moving on to a Batman sequel, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced the mystery thriller The Prestige (2006), starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as magicians whose obsessive rivalry leads to tragedy and murder.
In 2008, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced The Dark Knight (2008). Co-written with by his brother Jonathan, the film went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. Nolan was nominated for a Directors Guild of America (D.G.A.) Award, Writers Guild of America (W.G.A.) Award and Producers Guild of America (P.G.A.) Award, and the film also received eight Academy Award nominations. The film is widely considered one of the best comic book adaptations of all times, with Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker receiving an extremely high acclaim. Ledger posthumously became the first Academy Award winning performance in a Nolan film.
In 2010, Nolan captivated audiences with the Sci-Fi thriller Inception (2010), starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, which he directed and produced from his own original screenplay that he worked on for almost a decade. The thought-provoking drama was a worldwide blockbuster, earning more than $800,000,000 and becoming one of the most discussed and debated films of the year, and of all times. Among its many honors, Inception received four Academy Awards and eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. Nolan was recognized by his peers with a W.G.A. Award accolade, as well as D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards nominations for his work on the film.
As one of the best-reviewed and highest-grossing movies of 2012, The Dark Knight Rises (2012) concluded Nolan's Batman trilogy. Due to his success rebooting the Batman character, Warner Bros. enlisted Nolan to produce their revamped Superman movie Man of Steel (2013), which opened in the summer of 2013. In 2014, Nolan directed, wrote, and produced the Science-Fiction epic Interstellar (2014), starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. released the film on November 5, 2014, to positive reviews and strong box-office results, grossing over $670 million dollars worldwide.
In July 2017, Nolan released his acclaimed War epic Dunkirk (2017), that earned him his first Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards, as well as winning an additional 3 Oscars. In 2020 he released his mind-bending Sci-Fi espionage thriller Tenet (2020) starring John David Washington in the lead role. Released during the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie grossed relatively less than Nolan's previous blockbusters, though it did do good numbers compared to other movies in that period of time. Hailed as Nolan's most complex film yet, the film was one of Nolan's less-acclaimed films at the time, yet slowly built a fan-base following in later years.
In July 2023, Nolan released his highly acclaimed biographic drama Oppenheimer (2023) starring Nolan's frequent collaborator Cillian Murphy- in the lead role for the first time in a Nolan film. The movie was a cultural phenomenon that on top of grossing almost 1 billion dollars at the Worldwide Box office, also swept the 2023/2024 award-season and gave Nolan his first Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards, as well as a handful of regional critics-circles awards and a W.G.A. nomination. Cillian's performance as quantum physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was highly acclaimed as well, and became the first lead performance in a Nolan film to win the Academy Award.
During 2023, Nolan also received a fellowship from the British Film Institute (BFI). In March 2024, it was announced that Nolan is to be knighted by King Charles III and from now on will go by the title 'Sir Christopher Nolan'.
Nolan resides in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Academy Award winner producer Dame Emma Thomas, and their children. Sir Nolan and Dame Thomas also have their own production company, Syncopy.Ranking
1 - The Dark Knight
2 - Batman Begins
3 - Memento
4 - The Prestige
5 - Insomnia
6 - Dunkirk
7 - Following
8 - The Dark Knight Rises
9 - Interstellar
10 - Inception- Director
- Actor
- Producer
Cláudio Assis was born on 19 December 1959 in Caruaru, Pernambuco, Brazil. He is a director and actor, known for Baixio das Bestas (2006), Amarelo Manga (2002) and Rat Fever (2011).Ranking
1 - Amerelo Manga
2 - Febre do Rato
3 - Baixio das Bestas
4 - Big Jato
5 - Piedade- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel married actress Frances McDormand in 1984 and had an adopted son.Ranking
1 - No Country for Old Men [*]
2 - The Big Lebowski [*]
3 - Fargo
4 - Barton Fink
5 - Blood Simple
6 - O Brother, Where Art Thou?
7 - Inside Llewyn Davis
8 - Hail, Caesar!
9 - Miller's Crossing
10 - A Serious Man
11 - True Grit
12 - Raising Arizona
13 - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
14 - The Man Who Wasn't There
15 - Burn After Reading
16 - The Hudsucker Proxy
17 - The Ladykillers
18 - Intolerable Cruelty- Producer
- Writer
- Director
The younger brother of Joel, Ethan Coen is an Academy Award and Golden Globe winning writer, producer and director coming from small independent films to big profile Hollywood films. He was born on September 21, 1957 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In some films of the brothers- Ethan & Joel wrote, Joel directed and Ethan produced - with both editing under the name of Roderick Jaynes; but in 2004 they started to share the three main duties plus editing. Each film bring its own quality, creativity, art and with one project more daring the other.
His film debut was in 1984 dark humored thriller Blood Simple (1984) starring Frances McDormand (Joel's wife) and M. Emmet Walsh in a deep story revolving a couple of romantic lovers followed by an insisting private eye. The film received critical acclaim, some award nominations to Ethan (best writing at the Film Independent Spirit Awards) and became a cult following over the years. Their second work was the comedy Raising Arizona (1987) starring Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter as a unusual couple trying to create their family by kidnapping babies from a rich family.
Miller's Crossing (1990) was the third film of the brothers, a mob drama with heavy influences from several criminal dramas and with a stellar cast that included Gabriel Byrne, Marcia Gay Harden, Albert Finney, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro and Jon Polito (the latter three would become regular actors in the Coen's films).
Their views on the Hollywood era of the 1930's was the central theme is the great Barton Fink (1991), created from a writers block both brothers suffered during the making of their previous film. John Turturro stars as a writer who suffers from a breakdown when he's commissioned to a big budget Hollywood project. The film was a breakthrough for the Coens marking their first win at the Cannes Film Festival (Joel got the Palme d'Or) and the first time a film of their received Oscar nominations. The underrated comedy The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) was what followed; but no one could predict their next big and boldest move that would definitely put Ethan and Joel on the spotlight once and for all.
The comedy of errors Fargo (1996) was a huge critical and commercial success. With its crazed story of a man who hires two loonies to kidnap his own wife and a pregnant policewoman tracking the leads to the crime, Ethan and Joel came at their greatest moment that couldn't be missed. The film received several awards during award season and the Coen's got their first Oscar in the Best Original Screenplay category. What came next was the underrated yet hilariously good The Big Lebowski (1998) starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, John Turturro and Steve Buscemi. Those masterpieces made their career in the late 1990's cementing the duo as one of the greatest writers and directors of their generation, if not, from all time.
The Odyssey retold for the 1930's in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000); the intelligent noir The Man Who Wasn't There (2001); the comedy Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and a remake The Ladykillers (2004) marked their way into the early 2000's. Certaintly of period of minor hits and some downer moments.
The big return was with the highly acclaimed No Country for Old Men (2007), where the brothers swooped at the Oscars with three wins: Best Picture, Screenplay and Writing, an adaptation from the Cormac McCarthy's novel.
A Serious Man (2009), Burn After Reading (2008), True Grit (2010), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Hail, Caesar! (2016) and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) were the subsequent films, all well received by audiences or got awards recognition, mostly nominations.
A shift from tone and career move was writing with other writers and for another directors: for Angelina Jolie's Unbroken (2014), for Spielberg in Bridge of Spies (2015) and George Clooney in Suburbicon (2017).
As for personal life, Ethan has been married to Tricia Cooke since 1990. Tricia works as an assistant editor in several of the Coen brothers films.Ranking
1 - No Country for Old Men [*]
2 - The Big Lebowski [*]
3 - Fargo
4 - Barton Fink
5 - Blood Simple
6 - O Brother, Where Art Thou?
7 - Inside Llewyn Davis
8 - Hail, Caesar!
9 - Miller's Crossing
10 - A Serious Man
11 - True Grit
12 - Raising Arizona
13 - The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
14 - The Man Who Wasn't There
15 - Burn After Reading
16 - The Hudsucker Proxy
17 - The Ladykillers
18 - Intolerable Cruelty- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Darren Aronofsky was born February 12, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up, Darren was always artistic: he loved classic movies and, as a teenager, he even spent time doing graffiti art. After high school, Darren went to Harvard University to study film (both live-action and animation). He won several film awards after completing his senior thesis film, "Supermarket Sweep", starring Sean Gullette, which went on to becoming a National Student Academy Award finalist. Aronofsky didn't make a feature film until five years later, in February 1996, where he began creating the concept for Pi (1998). After Darren's script for Pi (1998) received great reactions from friends, he began production. The film re-teamed Aronofsky with Gullette, who played the lead. This went on to further successes, such as Requiem for a Dream (2000), The Wrestler (2008) and Black Swan (2010). Most recently, he completed the films Noah (2014) and Mother! (2017).Ranking
1 - Black Swan
2 - Requiem for a Dream
3 - Pi
4 - The Wrestler
5 - mother!
6 - The Fountain
7 - Noah- Producer
- Director
- Writer
David Fincher was born in 1962 in Denver, Colorado, and was raised in Marin County, California. When he was 18 years old he went to work for John Korty at Korty Films in Mill Valley. He subsequently worked at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) from 1981-1983. Fincher left ILM to direct TV commercials and music videos after signing with N. Lee Lacy in Hollywood. He went on to found Propaganda in 1987 with fellow directors Dominic Sena, Greg Gold and Nigel Dick. Fincher has directed TV commercials for clients that include Nike, Coca-Cola, Budweiser, Heineken, Pepsi, Levi's, Converse, AT&T and Chanel. He has directed music videos for Madonna, Sting, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Aerosmith, George Michael, Iggy Pop, The Wallflowers, Billy Idol, Steve Winwood, The Motels and, most recently, A Perfect Circle.
As a film director, he has achieved huge success with Se7en (1995), Fight Club (1999) and, Panic Room (2002).Ranking
1 - The Social Network
2 - Zodiac
3 - Fight Club
4 - Seven
5 - The Game
6 - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
7 - Gone Girl
8 - Alien 3
9 - Panic Room
10 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
11 - Mank- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future director Jennifer Lynch shortly after he turned 21. That experience, plus attending art school in a particularly violent and run-down area of Philadelphia, inspired Eraserhead (1977), a film that he began in the early 1970s (after a couple of shorts) and which he would work on obsessively for five years. The final film was initially judged to be almost unreleasable weird, but thanks to the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, it secured a cult following and enabled Lynch to make his first mainstream film (in an unlikely alliance with Mel Brooks), though The Elephant Man (1980) was shot through with his unique sensibility. Its enormous critical and commercial success led to Dune (1984), a hugely expensive commercial disaster, but Lynch redeemed himself with the now classic Blue Velvet (1986), his most personal and original work since his debut. He subsequently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival with the dark, violent road movie Wild at Heart (1990), and achieved a huge cult following with his surreal TV series Twin Peaks (1990), which he adapted for the big screen, though his comedy series On the Air (1992) was less successful. He also draws comic strips and has devised multimedia stage events with regular composer Angelo Badalamenti. He had a much-publicized affair with Isabella Rossellini in the late 1980s.Ranking
1 - Eraserhead [*]
2 - Inland Empire
3 - Blue Velvet
4 - Mulholland Drive
5 - The Straight Story
6 - Lost Highway
7 - The Elephant Man
8 - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
9 - Wild at Heart
10 - Dune- Director
- Writer
- Producer
He studied Law. He also directed theatre pieces, wrote movie criticisms and took part in the creation and development of the 'cinema novo' movement in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, becoming its theoretical leader and first embassador in Europe. After "Barravento (1962)", a trilogy of films and "Antonio das Mortes (1969)" he won various international prizes. As he symbolized the feelings of the ideology of the May of 1968, he became very popular in Europe and America. But when he started to film in Africa and Spain his followers were distracted and this marked the beginning of the decline of his fame. Thus, he only made a couple of films of minor interest later on.Ranking
1 - Terra em Transe [*]
2 - O Dragão da Maldade Contra o Santo Guerreiro
3 - Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol
4 - Barravento
5 - A Idade da Terra
6 - O Leão de Sete Cabeças
7 - Cabeças Cortadas
8 - Câncer
9 - Claro- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Gaspar Noé is an Argentinian filmmaker and screenwriter who lives in France. He is the son of Luis Felipe Noé, an Argentinian artist. He directed I Stand Alone, Irréversible, Enter the Void, Love, Climax, Carne, Lux Æterna, Sodomites and Vortex. His films are known for having a sensory overload style, most notably in Enter the Void. He is married to Lucile Hadzihalilovic.Ranking
1 - Irréversible
2 - Enter the Void
3 - Love
4 - I Stand Alone
5 - Climax- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Harmony Korine was born in 1973 in Bolinas, California. His family moved to the east coast of the United States when he was five, and he spent his early years in Nashville, Tennessee, and New York. At the age of nineteen, he wrote the critically acclaimed screenplay Kids (1995) for director Larry Clark. At the time of release of Gummo (1997), he was at work writing a new feature and a 10-part decalogue called "Jokes," which is to be financed through French investors.Ranking
1 - Gummo [*]
2 - Mister Lonely
3 - Spring Breakers
4 - The Beach Bum
5 - Trash Humpers
6 - Julien Donkey-Boy- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Writer/director James Gray made his first film Little Odessa (1994) at the age of twenty-five. The film, which starred Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell, received critical acclaim and was the winner of the Venice Film Festival's prestigious Silver Lion Award in 1994.
Miramax Films released James Gray's second feature, The Yards (2000) starring Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Faye Dunaway, Ellen Burstyn, Charlize Theron and James Caan in fall of 2000. The film was selected for official competition at the 2000 Cannes International Film Festival. Prior to "The Yards" and "Little Odessa", Gray attended film school at the University of Southern California. It was there that his student film Cowboys and Angels was first seen by producer Paul Webster, who encouraged Gray to write his first feature script.
As a child growing up in Queens, New York, Gray aspired to be a painter. However, when introduced in his early teenage years to the works of various filmmakers, including Francis Ford Coppola, Gray's interests expanded to the art of filmmaking. The Yards returned Gray to Queens where the story takes place.Ranking
1 - Little Odessa [*]
2 - The Yards
3 - Two Lovers
4 - We Own the Night
5 - The Immigrant
6 - Ad Astra
7 - The Lost City of Z
8 - Armageddon Time- Writer
- Director
- Actor
The name "Melville" is not immediately associated with film. It conjures up images of white whales and crackbrained captains, of naysaying notaries and soup-spilling sailors. It is the countersign to a realm of men and their deeds, both heroic and villainous. It is the American novel, with its Ishmaels and its Claggarts a challenge to the European canon. It is Herman Melville. And yet, for over three decades, it was also worn by one of the French cinema's brightest lights, Jean-Pierre Melville, whose art was as revolutionary as that of the eponymous author.
Jean-Pierre Grumbach was born on October 20, 1917, to a family of Alsatian Jews. In his youth he studied in Paris, where he was first exposed to great films, among them Robert J. Flaherty's and W.S. Van Dyke's silent documentary White Shadows in the South Seas (1928). It left so deep a mark upon the pubescent Grumbach that he became a regular at the cinema, an obsession that would benefit him in adulthood. His own earliest efforts, 16mm home movies, were made with a camera given to him by his father in this period. In 1937, however, his career was forestalled when he began obligatory service in the French army. He was still in uniform when the Nazis invaded in 1940; under the nom de guerre of Melville, he aided the Resistance and was eventually forced to flee to England. There he joined the Free French forces and took part in the Allies' liberation of continental Europe. After the war, despite a desire to revert to Grumbach, he found that pseudonym had stuck.
Eager to earn his place in the movie industry, Melville applied to the French Technicians' Union but was denied membership. Undaunted by what he regarded as party politics, he set up his own production company in 1946 and started releasing films outside the system. The first, a low-budget short titled 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (1946), was a success, inspired by his boyhood love for the circus. His feature-length debut, The Silence of the Sea (1949), was highly innovative. An intimate piece on the horrors of World War II, it starred unknown actors and was filmed by a skeleton crew. Its schedule was unusual: It was shot over 27 days in the course of a year. Its production was unusual: it incorporated "on-location" scenes--rarities in that era--done without vital permits. Its provenance was unusual: it was adapted from a book before the author's consent was obtained. Above all, its style was unusual. Its dark, claustrophobic sets and bottom-lit close-ups signaled a departure from the highly cultured cinema of René Clair, Marcel Pagnol, Abel Gance and Jacques Feyder. It was neither comedietta nor costume drama nor avant-garde "cinéma pur." Where its roots may have been in Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion (1937), it was clearly something new.
Over the following 12 years Melville continued to create films that would influence the auteurs of La Nouvelle Vague (i.e., the French New Wave.) In 1950 he collaborated with Jean Cocteau on an unsatisfying version of The Terrible Children (1950), the tale of a strange, incestuous relationship between siblings. When You Read This Letter (1953), with French and Italian backing, was his first commercial project. While it was unprofitable, the fee he received allowed him to establish a studio outside of Paris. His next work, Bob the Gambler (1956), featured Roger Duchesne, a popular leading man of the 1930s who had drifted into the underworld during the war. As such, he was a uniquely apt choice for the role of the fashionable, self-immolating Bob. His supporting cast included Daniel Cauchy as toadying sidekick Paolo and newcomer Isabelle Corey as the temptress Anne. Although the picture was not a hit, it was a favorite of the aficionados that frequented Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque Français. Among them were the young savants Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, the latter of whom used Guy Decomble of "Bob le flambeur" in his The 400 Blows (1959) that ushered in the "New Wave" era. They adored the hip, new rendering of a tired scenario, much of it shot in the streets with hidden cameras. They viewed it as fresh and daring, a "freeing up" through the rejection of high-minded literary adaptations and the embracing of pop culture. Simply put, Melville refused to play by the rules, and they followed suit.
In retrospect, "Bob le flambeur" seems straightforward: A reformed mobster turned high-stakes gambler comes out of retirement to pull one last job. Its genius lies in its simplicity. Melville admired American culture, as his alias indicated. He drove around Paris in an enormous Cadillac, sporting a Stetson hat and aviator sunglasses. He drank Coca-Cola and listened to American radio. The works of American directors John Ford and Howard Hawks were appealing to him, as they were ageless sagas of heroes and villains. Melville strove to build his own pantheon by blending the American ethos with his postwar sensibilities. As he perceived it, it was America that had valiantly rescued France from German occupation. Still, for a young man with Alsatian roots, the line separating good guys and bad guys had been breached, and one can see this disillusionment from The Silence of the Sea (1949) onward. Thus, while he borrowed from the American noir's revolt against the dichotomous Hollywood creations of the 1930s, the artist was forging his own apocryphal brand of dark tragedy. In his paradigm, a criminal could be a kind of hero within his milieu, so long as he stuck by his word and his allegiances. It was his personal style and his adherence to the code of honor that defined a "good guy"; obversely, it was his faith in others that was his downfall. It is a universe without the possibility for salvation, in which love and friendship are brief interludes in the cat-and-mouse games that lead to certain destruction. In that sense, Bob is a crucial link between Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937) and Godard's Breathless (1960), in which Melville gave a brilliant cameo performance.
Jean-Pierre Melville is often regarded as the godfather of the Nouvelle Vague. Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that had it not been for his aforementioned passion for American film, he might have shown us a very different "Bob le flambeur". Originally conceived as a hard-boiled gangster flick about the step-by-step plotting of a heist, Melville was forced to rethink its narrative after watching John Huston's remarkably similar The Asphalt Jungle (1950). It was only then that he had the idea to turn Bob into the comedy of manners that so delighted the cinephiles of the day. For this and other debts of gratitude, his next picture, Two Men in Manhattan (1959), was "a love letter to New York" and the America he revered. It was also his third straight box-office flop, however, and it caused Melville to break away from a New Wave movement that he felt catered to the cognoscenti. He later said, "If . . . I have consented to pass for their adopted father for a while, I do not wish it anymore, and I have put some distance in between us."
The first step in this split came with Léon Morin, Priest (1961), a wartime piece about a priest's endeavors to bring redemption to the inhabitants of a small town. Produced by Carlo Ponti, it was a big-budget affair with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva, both household names by then. On the strength of its favorable reception, Melville released four consecutive cops-and-robbers movies, the most notable of which were The Informer (1962) and Le Samouraï (1967). Belmondo again headlined in "Le Doulous", not as a clergyman but as the fingerman Silien, whose loyalty to his old mob cronies entangles him in a web of intrigue and disaster. During the making of "Le Samouraï", a hauntingly minimalist film about a doomed assassin, Melville's studio burned to the ground and the project was completed in rented facilities. Regardless, it was a critical and commercial success. Presenting Alain Delon as ultra-cool assassin Jef Costello, it was considered one of the most meticulously-crafted pictures in the history of the cinema. Delon would later star in a second masterpiece, The Red Circle (1970), featuring the ultimate onscreen jewel heist. His Charles Bronson-cum-Jack Lord sang-froid toughness served as a counterpoint in Melville's oeuvre to the lighter and less predictable Belmondo. Another memorable production was Army of Shadows (1969), an austere portrait of perfidy within the ranks of the French Resistance.
It is trite to say that a particular artist is "not for everyone." In Melville's case, this statement could not be more fitting. Despite a round belly and an unattractive face, he was a notorious womanizer, and his chauvinism is painfully obvious in his movies. They are cynical, male-driven works in which women are devoid of nobility, merely functioning as beautiful chess pieces. His men also lack spiritual depth, diligently playing out their roles toward the final showdown. A "profound moment" inevitably occurs before a mirror, a cliché for which many critics do not share the creator's enthusiasm. As a result of these peccadilloes, as well as its lack of back-stories and character motivations, Melville's later output has been accused of stiffness, with its wooden troupe of cops, crooks and general mauvais sujets. Further, well-structured plots notwithstanding, Melville films are methodically paced with tremendous attention paid to time and place. Hollywoodphiles often find them slow, with an overemphasis on tone and style.
Some have gone as far as to claim that the réalizateur's genius was outstripped by his importance to the development of the medium. They look to him as a sort of Moses figure, helping to guide the Nouvelle Vague to the promised land without partaking in its fruits. At his death by heart attack in 1973, the 55-year-old had directed just 14 projects, at least six of which are acknowledged classics. Aside from Godard and Truffaut, luminaries such as John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann, Volker Schlöndorff, Johnnie To and Martin Scorsese have pointed to him as an key influence. If a man's legacy is best measured not only by its quality but by the respect of his colleagues, Jean-Pierre Melville's contribution to cinema surely ranks with the greatest.Ranking
1 - Le Cercle rouge [*]
2 - Le Samouraï
3 - L'Armée des ombres
4 - Bob le flambeur
5 - Le Doulos
6 - Le Silence de la mer
7 - Le Deuxième Souffle
8 - Léon Morin, prêtre
9 - L'Aîné des Ferchaux
10 - Les Enfants terribles
11 - Un flic
12 - Quand tu liras cette lettre
13 - Deux hommes dans Manhattan- Music Department
- Writer
- Composer
John Howard Carpenter was born in Carthage, New York, to mother Milton Jean (Carter) and father Howard Ralph Carpenter. His family moved to Bowling Green, Kentucky, where his father, a professor, was head of the music department at Western Kentucky University. He attended Western Kentucky University and then USC film school in Los Angeles. He began making short films in 1962, and won an Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Subject in 1970, for The Resurrection of Broncho Billy (1970), which he made while at USC. Carpenter formed a band in the mid-1970s called The Coupe de Villes, which included future directors Tommy Lee Wallace and Nick Castle. Since the 1970s, he has had numerous roles in the film industry including writer, actor, composer, producer, and director. After directing Dark Star (1974), he has helmed both classic horror films like Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), and The Thing (1982), and noted sci-fi tales like Escape from New York (1981) and Starman (1984).Ranking
1 - The Thing [*]
2 - Halloween [*]
3 - Assault on Precinct 13
4 - Someone's Watching Me!
5 - Escape from New York
6 - They Live
7 - Christine
8 - Starman
9 - Dark Star
10 - In the Mouth of Madness
11 - The Fog
12 - Elvis
13 - Vampires
14 - The Ward
15 - Prince of Darkness
16 - Memoirs of an Invisible Man
17 - Big Trouble in Little China
18 - Village of the Damned
19 - Ghosts of Mars
20 - Escape from L.A.- Director
- Producer
- Cinematographer
Joshua Oppenheimer was born on 23 September 1974 in Texas, USA. He is a director and producer, known for The Act of Killing (2012), The Entire History of the Louisiana Purchase (1998) and The Look of Silence (2014).Ranking
1 - The Act of Killing
2 - The Look of Silence- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Kleber Mendonça Filho is a Brazilian film director, screenwriter, producer, and critic. With a degree in journalism from the Federal University of Pernambuco, Kleber Mendonça Filho began his career as a film critic and journalist. He wrote for newspapers such as Jornal do Commercio and Folha DE S. Paulo, for magazines such as Continente and Cinética, and for his own site, CinemaScópio.Ranking
1 - O Som ao Redor
2 - Bacurau
3 - Aquarius
4 - Retratos Fantasmas
5 - Crítico- Writer
- Director
- Editor
Lucile Emina Hadzihalilovic was born on May 7, 1961 in Lyon, Rhône, France, to Bosnian parents and grew up in Morocco. She studied Art History and Film Directing at the IDHEC. She has been working in film industry since 1980's, as director, editor, writer and actress in both short and feature films. Hadzihalilovic is best known for Innocence (2004), Evolution (2015), her third feature as a director, and La bouche de Jean-Pierre (1996). She also collaborated with her husband, Gaspar Noé, whom she assisted in writing Enter The Void (2009).Ranking
1 - Innocence
2 - Evolution
3 - Earwig- Producer
- Director
- Actor
Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later provided the inspiration for several of his films. Scorsese earned a B.S. degree in film communications in 1964, followed by an M.A. in the same field in 1966 at New York University's School of Film. During this time, he made numerous prize-winning short films including The Big Shave (1967), and directed his first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967).
He served as assistant director and an editor of the documentary Woodstock (1970) and won critical and popular acclaim for Mean Streets (1973), which first paired him with actor and frequent collaborator Robert De Niro. In 1976, Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), also starring De Niro, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and he followed that film with New York, New York (1977) and The Last Waltz (1978). Scorsese directed De Niro to an Oscar-winning performance as boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and is hailed as one of the masterpieces of modern cinema. Scorsese went on to direct The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995) and Kundun (1997), among other films. Commissioned by the British Film Institute to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema, Scorsese completed the four-hour documentary, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995), co-directed by Michael Henry Wilson.
His long-cherished project, Gangs of New York (2002), earned numerous critical honors, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Director; the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator (2004) won five Academy Awards, in addition to the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for Best Picture. Scorsese won his first Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), which was also honored with the Director's Guild of America, Golden Globe, New York Film Critics, National Board of Review and Critic's Choice awards for Best Director, in addition to four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Scorsese's documentary of the Rolling Stones in concert, Shine a Light (2008), followed, with the successful thriller Shutter Island (2010) two years later. Scorsese received his seventh Academy Award nomination for Best Director, as well as a Golden Globe Award, for Hugo (2011), which went on to win five Academy Awards.
Scorsese also serves as executive producer on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2010) for which he directed the pilot episode. Scorsese's additional awards and honors include the Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival (1995), the AFI Life Achievement Award (1997), the Honoree at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's 25th Gala Tribute (1998), the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award (2003), The Kennedy Center Honors (2007) and the HFPA Cecil B. DeMille Award (2010). Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio have worked together on five separate occasions: Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).Ranking [Fiction Films]
1 - Raging Bull [*]
2 - Taxi Driver [*]
3 - The King of Comedy
4 - Mean Streets
5 - The Age of Innocence
6 - Goodfellas
7 - Casino
8 - The Color of Money
9 - Cape Fear
10 - Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
11 - After Hours
12 - The Irishman
13 - The Departed
14 - The Wolf of Wall Street
15 - Gangs of New York
16 - The Aviator
17 - Silence
18 - Who's That Knocking at My Door
19 - New York, New York
20 - The Last Temptation of Christ
21 - Killers of the Flower Moon
22 - Bringing Out the Dead
23 - Kundun
24 - Hugo
25 - Shutter Island
26 - Boxcar Bertha
Ranking [Documentaries]
1 - A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
2 - My Voyage to Italy
3 - No Direction Home: Bob Dylan
4 - George Harrison: Living in the Material World
5 - American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince
6 - Italianamerican
7 - The Last Waltz
8 - Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
9 - A Letter to Elia
10 - Public Speaking
11 - Shine a Light
12 - The 50 Year Argument
Unseen: New York City... Melting Pot; Street Scenes; Martin Scorsese: Back on the Block; Lady by the Sea: The Statue of Liberty- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Writer, director, and producer Nicolas Winding Refn was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1970 to Anders Refn, a film director, and editor, and Vibeke Winding (née Tuxen), a cinematographer. At the age of 8, NWR moved to New York with his parents, where he would stay for the rest of his youth. The grandeur and grit of 1980s Manhattan left a deep impression on the young NWR, who then only spoke Danish. Calling the city home ever since, he would devote his career to exploring the filmic legacy of this iconic cityscape, developing a distinctive, neo-noir cinematic style.
In 1987, NWR returned to Copenhagen to complete his high school education, but upon graduation, he swiftly returned to New York, where he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. NWR's college years were cut short when NWR threw a desk at a classroom wall and was expelled from the Academy. Instead, he applied to the directing program at the distinguished Danish Film School and was immediately accepted. However, this education was also to be short-lived, as NWR dropped out a month before the start of the semester.
During these educational bouts, NWR experimented passionately with the short film format, writing, directing, and starring in his own productions. In 1993, an obscure Danish cable TV channel offered to air his short film Pusher, which led to the offer of a lifetime. NWR was given 3.2 million kroner (roughly USD 306,000) to transform the short into a feature. At 24 years old, NWR used the funding to write and direct the feature film Pusher (1996), a brutal portrayal of the criminal underworld of Copenhagen. Notorious, violent, and uncompromising in its social themes, Pusher won NWR instant national and international critical acclaim and remains a cult title amongst film aficionados. The success of his debut opened doors and spurred him to push the boundaries of filmmaking further, resulting in the similarly gritty Bleeder (1999), which portrayed a network of Copenhagen's working-class denizens living and working at the edge of the law. Highly stylized and focused on introverted emotional reactions to epic situations, this film was a turning point for shaping NWR's future career. Bleeder was selected for the 1999 Venice International Film Festival and won the prestigious FIPRESCI Prize in Sarajevo.
NWR's third feature, the much-anticipated Fear X (2003), was his first foray into English-language movies. Starring the award-winning actor John Turturro, Fear X premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was highly divisive to critics, and its release was a massive financial disaster that left NWR broke and in debt. In dire desperation and needing to pay off his debt, NWR returned to Denmark to revisit his first feature film, the successful Pusher. NWR was reluctant to return to his past success but decided he could make commercially viable and artistically pleasing films in the Pusher franchise. Over the short course of two years, NWR managed to write, direct, and produce the two sequels, Pusher II (2004) and Pusher III (2005). The films' box office performance validated the success of the internationally renowned Pusher trilogy. In 2005, the Toronto Film Festival held a Pusher retrospective showing all three features, cementing its worldwide phenomenon. Around this time, while still looking for financial stability following his Fear X experience, NWR took a quick gig directing an episode of the iconic UK television mystery series Agatha Christie's Marple (2004).
With such critical acclaim from the newly released Pusher II and Pusher III, NWR's reputation as a writer, director, and producer was solidly reaffirmed in the film industry. NWR and his wife, Liv Corfixen, were the subjects of an acclaimed documentary, Gambler (2006), which premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2005. In addition, NWR received two lifetime-achievement awards: one from the Taipei International Film Festival in 2006 and the second from the Valencia International Film Festival in 2007. Gambler won the Emerging Master Award from the Philadelphia International Film Festival 2005.
Longtime UK based distributor and friend of NWR, Rupert Preston, urged him to accept an offer to write and direct Bronson (2008), an ultra-violent and stylistically surreal film following the real-life landmarks and self-entrapment of Charles Bronson, Britain's most notorious criminal. Even before the film was released, Bronson made waves inside and outside the film industry. The 2009 Sundance Film Festival selected the film for its World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and Bronson soon became the talk of the festival. With such a prestigious premiere, Bronson was chosen for other major international film festivals and reaped substantial box-office results. But even with such a buzz surrounding the film, no one could predict how the British press would bite at Bronson's bit. The content was close to the knuckle, the subject matter controversial, but NWR's take on this was even more inspired, leading him to be labeled by the British media as the next great auteur of European cinema. The film won Best Film at the 2009 Sydney Film Festival. Tom Hardy also won a Best Actor award at the 2009 British Independent Film Awards for his portrayal of Charles Bronson.
Following the highly successful Bronson, NWR embarked on another English-language, and his first digitally shot, feature film, Valhalla Rising (2009), inspired by a story his mother would read to him at the age of five, about a father and son who embark on a trip to the moon. He creatively embraced not recalling the ending of this story, solidifying his longtime fascination with the unknown. The film, starring frequent collaborator Mads Mikkelsen, premiered at the 2009 Venice Film Festival and led the world media to coin his distinctive filmic style as "Refn-esque."
In 2011, NWR directed the American neo-noir crime drama Drive (2011), starring rising Hollywood star Ryan Gosling. It premiered in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a standing ovation, with NWR winning the award for Best Director. The film was praised for its direction, cinematography, actors' performances, visuals, action sequences, and musical score. However, some critics were appalled by its graphic violence, finding it potentially detrimental to the film's box office success. Nonetheless, the film was still a commercial success, grossing $81 million against a production budget of $15 million. Several critics listed Drive as one of the best films of 2011, including the National Board of Review. Its honors include a nomination for Best Sound Editing at the 84th Academy Awards. Shortly after the massive success of Drive, Nicolas signed a two-picture deal, which led to the feature films Only God Forgives (2013) and The Neon Demon (2016).
The incredibly anticipated follow-up to Drive, Only God Forgives (2013), was a crime thriller set in Bangkok starring Ryan Gosling (now a top name in Hollywood) and cinematic veteran Kristin Scott Thomas, premiering in competition at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. It was shot on location in Thailand and was dedicated to Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky, a longtime friend of Nicolas. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Grand Prize at the Sydney Film Festival. Nicolas's experience making the Only God Forgives was documented by his wife, Liv Corfixen, in the film My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn (2014). Corfixen's documentary, in turn, premiered at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX, and at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles, CA, to positive reviews.
In November of 2014, NWR, alongside co-producers Gaumont Film Company and Wild Bunch, announced that his next film would be titled The Neon Demon (2016). The Neon Demon would be filmed in Los Angeles, CA, in early 2015. The film featured a cast of some of Hollywood's greatest names, including Elle Fanning, Karl Glusman, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks, Abbey Lee, Jena Malone, and Bella Heathcote. On April 14, 2016, it was announced that the film would compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, marking it as the third consecutive film directed by NWR that had competed for the Palme d'Or. After The Neon Demon, Nicolas decided to take a turn and explored the path of the long-form narrative streaming series, starting with Too Old to Die Young (2019) and ending with Copenhagen Cowboy (2022).
In 2019, Nicolas created his first television series, Too Old to Die Young (2019), which premiered on Amazon Prime 2019. The thirteen-and-a-half-hour, ten-episode streaming neo-noir series was written by NWR and legendary comic book author Ed Brubaker, with NWR directing all ten episodes. The series starred Miles Teller alongside William Baldwin, Jena Malone, John Hawkes, Cristina Rodlo, Augusto Aguilera, Nell Tiger Free, Babs Olusanmokun, and Callie Hernandez, as well as Hart Bochner. The series features NWR's fourth collaboration with composer Cliff Martinez, whose original score for Drive had become an instant classic. Episodes four and five of the series premiered out of competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival on May 18. The full series was released on Amazon Prime Video on June 14 of the same year.
NWR followed up Too Old to Die Young with yet another limited streaming series, Copenhagen Cowboy (2022), produced by Netflix. The series follows enigmatic young heroine, Miu (Angela Bundalovic), who after a lifetime of servitude and on the verge of a new beginning, traverses the ominous landscape of Copenhagen's criminal netherworld. Searching for justice and enacting vengeance, she encounters her nemesis, Rakel, (Lola Corfixen) as they embark on an odyssey where the two young women discover they are not alone, they are many. It was shot in NWR's native Copenhagen, where he hadn't filmed since completing his Pusher trilogy. NWR created and directed all six episodes. The six-episode supernatural noir-thriller first premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2022. The series was released on the Netflix platform on January 5, 2023. A documentary entitled Copenhagen Cowboy: Nightcall with Nicolas Winding Refn (2023) and directed by Nicklas Kold Nagel, was released on Netflix detailing the limited series production.
After Copenhagen Cowboy, NWR was contacted by Prada to create an installation as a backdrop for their SS23 women's collection fashion show in addition to directing a 30-minute short film, Touch of Crude (2022). The short film follows three different women, played by NWR's wife, Liv Corfixen, and daughters, Lola Corfixen and Lizzielou Corfixen, who discover a mysterious entity and unearth its enigmatic secret. The film marked the first collaboration with Prada, which simultaneously premiered at the León Film Festival in 2023.Ranking
1 - Only God Forgives
2 - Drive
3 - Bronson
4 - Pusher
5 - The Neon Demon
6 - Valhalla Rising
7 - Bleeder
8 - Pusher II
9 - Pusher 3
10 - Fear X- Actor
- Writer
- Director
His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was orphaned at 15 after his father's death in 1930 and became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein of Chicago. In 1931, he graduated from the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois. He turned down college offers for a sketching tour of Ireland. He tried unsuccessfully to enter the London and Broadway stages, traveling some more in Morocco and Spain, where he fought in the bullring.
Recommendations by Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott got him into Katharine Cornell's road company, with which he made his New York debut as Tybalt in 1934. The same year, he married, directed his first short, and appeared on radio for the first time. He began working with John Houseman and formed the Mercury Theatre with him in 1937. In 1938, they produced "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", famous for its broadcast version of "The War of the Worlds" (intended as a Halloween prank). His first film to be seen by the public was Citizen Kane (1941), a commercial failure losing RKO $150,000, but regarded by many as the best film ever made. Many of his subsequent films were commercial failures and he exiled himself to Europe in 1948.
In 1956, he directed Touch of Evil (1958); it failed in the United States but won a prize at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. In 1975, in spite of all his box-office failures, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1984, the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award. His reputation as a filmmaker steadily climbed thereafter.Ranking
1 - Citizen Kane [*]
2 - The Trial [*]
3 - F for Fake [*]
4 - Touch of Evil
5 - Othello
6 - The Other Side of the Wind
7 - Macbeth
8 - Mr. Arkadin
9 - The Lady from Shanghai
10 - The Magnificent Ambersons
11 - Chimes at Midnight
12 - The Stranger
13 - The Immortal Story- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Anderson was born in 1970. He was one of the first of the "video store" generation of film-makers. His father was the first man on his block to own a V.C.R., and from a very early age Anderson had an infinite number of titles available to him. While film-makers like Spielberg cut their teeth making 8 mm films, Anderson cut his teeth shooting films on video and editing them from V.C.R. to V.C.R.
Part of Anderson's artistic D.N.A. comes from his father, who hosted a late night horror show in Cleveland. His father knew a number of oddball celebrities such as Robert Ridgely, an actor who often appeared in Mel Brooks' films and would later play "The Colonel" in Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997). Anderson was also very much shaped by growing up in "The Valley", specifically the suburban San Fernando Valley of greater Los Angeles. The Valley may have been immortalized in the 1980s for its mall-hopping "Valley Girls", but for Anderson it was a slightly seedy part of suburban America. You were close to Hollywood, yet you weren't there. Would-bes and burn-outs populated the area. Anderson's experiences growing up in "The Valley" have no doubt shaped his artistic self, especially since three of his four theatrical features are set in the Valley.
Anderson got into film-making at a young age. His most significant amateur film was The Dirk Diggler Story (1988), a sort of mock-documentary a la This Is Spinal Tap (1984), about a once-great pornography star named Dirk Diggler. After enrolling in N.Y.U.'s film program for two days, Anderson got his tuition back and made his own short film, Cigarettes & Coffee (1993). He also worked as a production assistant on numerous commercials and music videos before he got the chance to make his first feature, something he liked to call Sydney, but would later become known to the public as Hard Eight (1996). The film was developed and financed through The Sundance Lab, not unlike Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992). Anderson cast three actors whom he would continue working with in the future: Altman veteran Philip Baker Hall, the husky and lovable John C. Reilly and, in a small part, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who so far has been featured in all four of Anderson's films. The film deals with a guardian angel type (played by Hall) who takes down-on-his-luck Reilly under his wing. The deliberately paced film featured a number of Anderson trademarks: wonderful use of source light, long takes and top-notch acting. Yet the film was reedited (and retitled) by Rysher Entertainment against Anderson's wishes. It was admired by critics, but didn't catch on at the box office. Still, it was enough for Anderson to eventually get his next movie financed. "Boogie Nights" was, in a sense, a remake of "The Dirk Diggler Story", but Anderson threw away the satirical approach and instead painted a broad canvas about a makeshift family of pornographers. The film was often joyous in its look at the 1970s and the days when pornography was still shot on film, still shown in theatres, and its actors could at least delude themselves into believing that they were movie stars. Yet "Boogie Nights" did not flinch at the dark side, showing a murder and suicide, literally in one (almost) uninterrupted shot, and also showing the lives of these people deteriorate, while also showing how their lives recovered.
Anderson not only worked with Hall, Reilly and Hoffman again, he also worked with Julianne Moore, Melora Walters, William H. Macy and Luis Guzmán. Collectively, Anderson had something that was rare in U.S. cinema: a stock company of top-notch actors. Aside from the above mentioned, Anderson also drew terrific performances from Burt Reynolds and Mark Wahlberg, two actors whose careers were not exactly going full-blast at the time of "Boogie Nights", but who found themselves to be that much more employable afterwards.
The success of "Boogie Nights" gave Anderson the chance to really go for broke in Magnolia (1999), a massive mosaic that could dwarf Altman's Nashville (1975) in its number of characters.
Anderson was awarded a "Best Director" award at Cannes for Punch-Drunk Love (2002).Ranking
1 - The Master [*]
2 - There Will Be Blood [*]
3 - Phantom Thread
4 - Inherent Vice
5 - Punch-Drunk Love
6 - Licorice Pizza
7 - Boogie Nights
8 - Magnolia
9 - Hard Eight
* Junun- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.
In January of 1992, first-time writer-director Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) appeared at the Sundance Film Festival. The film garnered critical acclaim and the director became a legend immediately. Two years later, he followed up Dogs success with Pulp Fiction (1994) which premiered at the Cannes film festival, winning the coveted Palme D'Or Award. At the 1995 Academy Awards, it was nominated for the best picture, best director and best original screenplay. Tarantino and writing partner Roger Avary came away with the award only for best original screenplay. In 1995, Tarantino directed one fourth of the anthology Four Rooms (1995) with friends and fellow auteurs Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Allison Anders. The film opened December 25 in the United States to very weak reviews. Tarantino's next film was From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), a vampire/crime story which he wrote and co-starred with George Clooney. The film did fairly well theatrically.
Since then, Tarantino has helmed several critically and financially successful films, including Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015).Ranking
1 - Pulp Fiction [*]
2 - Jackie Brown
3 - Death Proof
4 - Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
5 - Kill Bill: Volume 1
6 - Kill Bill: Volume 2
7 - Reservoir Dogs
8 - Inglorious Basterds
9 - The Hateful Eight
10 - Django Unchained- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Ryan Kyle Coogler is an African-American filmmaker and producer who is from Oakland, California. He is known for directing the Black Panther film series, Creed, a Rocky spin-off and Fruitvale Station. He frequently casts Michael B. Jordan in his works. He produced the Creed sequels, Judas and the Black Messiah and Space Jam: A New Legacy. He is married to Zinzi since 2016.Ranking
1 - Creed
2 - Fruitvale Station
3 - Black Panther- Composer
- Actor
- Producer
Writer-director Shane Carruth, a former software engineer, burst onto the independent movie scene with his extremely low-budget science-fiction film Primer (2004) in 2004. Carruth also played one of the two leads in the film and composed its music. "Primer" won the Grand Jury Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Born in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 1972, Carruth studied mathematics in college and became a flight simulation software developer before making his first movie. Carruth then spent the next eight years developing "A Topiary", another science-fiction film. The movie was never made and Carruth said that "I basically wasted my whole life on" the project.
Carruth finally made a second film, Upstream Color (2013), which was released in 2013 after debuting at the Sundance Film Festival. He is working on his third film, "The Modern Ocean".Ranking
1 - Upstream Color
2 - Primer