80. Jeff Nichols
There are a few splashy enfant-terrible types on this list but Jeff Nichols’ quiet, sober, deeply reflective films are their own, very singular sort of thrilling. Glancing off genres rather than diving into them, Nichols has so far made a sort-of family drama (“Shotgun Stories“), a quasi-thriller (“Take Shelter“), a skewed-perspective coming-of-age story (“Mud“) and a not-really-sci-fi sci-fi (“Midnight Special“). They’re all very different, but they’re all distinctly Jeff Nichols films, caring more about character interactions and psychology than plot, each with a central theme of father- or parenthood as a spine. Not only has this impressive and thoughtful catalogue gifted us some of the finest performances from Nichols’ constant collaborator Michael Shannon, but it’s built to this year’s “Loving” in which Shannon features but which stars Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga, in what ought to be a star-making turn, and is, of itself, a beautiful, hushed love story that gently remakes the tired historical biopic genre.
79. Rian Johnson
Right now, Rian Johnson still feels like Hollywood’s best kept secret. He’s had commercial success — with 2012’s excellent “Looper” — but he’s far from a household name. But that’ll change in December 2017, because Johnson’s currently hard at work on the next movie in the main “Star Wars” saga, and if he holds up his usual form, it stands a good chance of being one of the best films in the franchise. So far, Johnson’s tackled three very different styles — the noir with debut “Brick,” the con-man movie with the underrated “The Brothers Bloom,” and sci-fi with “Looper” — but the all feel like they were born of a singular filmmaker, a playful genre-blender capable of melding textures and tones and reinventing familiar tropes into something fresh (witness the way the sci-fi thriller of his last film transformed into something else in its second half). We have no idea what his “Star Wars” film will look like, but we’d wager it’ll be amazing.
78. Barry Jenkins
If you’ve been ahead of the game, you’ll have known who Barry Jenkins was for a while — his wonderful debut “Medicine For Melancholy,” a sort of San Francisco-set, African-American spin on “Before Sunrise” that snuck discussion of gentrification into its charming romantic plot, was a gem back in 2008, one that had him tipped for the top by the likes of Steven Soderbergh. But sadly, virtually no one saw it, and it took Jenkins eight years to follow it up. But his second feature “Moonlight” has exploded on the festival circuit, and rightly so: a three-part drama following the coming-of-age of young Chiron, it’s an utterly gorgeous, deeply moving look at racial and sexual identity, and the way we construct veneers for ourselves. With several of the year’s best performances from Trevante Rhodes, Andre Holland, Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris, and a distinctive, almost European-vibe, it’s vaulting Jenkins to the status that he should have had long ago.
77. Alejandro González Iñárritu
As it always does with the front-runner for the arbitrary award that is the Best Picture Oscar, in the lead-up to the 2014 ceremony it became vogueish to dismiss “Birdman“. But we stand by our assessment of Iñárritu’s eventual winner as a tremendously fun romp, that radically reinvented our idea of what the Mexican director was about. His filmmaking chops had never been in doubt, but all his films bar his electrifying first, “Amores Perros” — “21 Grams,” “Babel” and “Biutiful” — suffered from a self-seriousness for which “Birdman” felt like the antidote. And then came “The Revenant,” which netted Iñárrituhis second consecutive Best Director statue (meaning, as one wag pointed out, that Alejandro González Iñárritu now has more Best Director Oscars than women do) and we slightly wonder if we helped create a monster. Still, there’s no denying the director’s impeccable craft, and we’re very, very curious to see what happens next.
76. Mike Mills
Who knows how much higher Mike Mills might place on this list in a couple of weeks time after his third feature, “20th Century Women,” which stars a powerhouse trio in Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning, premieres at the New York Film Festival. But anyway, he’s here with flying colors after just two films, his debut “Thumbsucker,” which transcends the “quirky coming-of-age indie” ghetto by virtue of its witty scripting and terrific cast, and his sophomore title “Beginners.” Ostensibly another Sundance/indie movie mainstay — the offbeat relationship drama — “Beginners” is actually a charming, wise film about grief, love, and acceptance, and while both Ewan MacGregor and Melanie Laurent do lovable work, it’s Best Supporting Actor-winner Christopher Plummer as the father coming out late in life, who steals the show. Well, either him or Arthur the dog, and either way the real star is Mills whose semi-autobiographical script and whipsmart direction deliver a deeply moving, heartfelt delight.
75. Nicole Holofcener
It is the peculiar burden of writer/directors who make women their subjects that their work can be easily dismissed with the pejorative term “chick flicks.” But Nicole Holofcener’s sensitive, witty and insightful studies of women of various lifestages facing personal, professional and philosophical issues, threaten to give the “chick flick” a good name. Holofcener has supplemented her 20-year big-screen career with TV, especially on shows that also centralize the female experience – everything from “Sex and the City” and “Gilmore Girls” to “Parks and Recreation” and “Orange is the New Black.” But it’s her feature work we love most, whether the fantastic ensembles featuring the great Catherne Keener of her first four films – “Walking and Talking,” “Lovely and Amazing,” “Friends with Money” and “Please Give” or the career pinnacle that was her last title, the intimate, melancholically funny “Enough Said,” with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and a wonderful swansong performance from the late James Gandolfini.
74. Ang Lee
With Inarritu, one of the few working filmmakers to have two Best Director Oscars, Lee’s a remarkable chameleon who’s tackled all kinds of bold, big films since he came to American attention two decades ago. Not all of his big gambles have worked — Civil War drama “Ride With The Devil” is underrated but flopped, “Hulk” is interesting (especially by modern superhero standards) but doesn’t 100% work, and the less said about “Taking Woodstock” the better. But on top form — with the finely-honed comedy of manners of his Taiwanese trilogy and “Sense & Sensibility,” the incredibly rich “The Ice Storm,” the wrenching “Brokeback Mountain,” the genuinely magical “Life Of Pi” — few A-list filmmakers can compete. It’s easy to take him for granted, so unassuming and fuss-free he seems to be. But the imminent “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” might be about to remind us what an absolute asset he is the medium.
73. Guillermo Del Toro
We’re pretty sure that Guillermo Del Toro doesn’t believe in the principle of one-for-me, one-for-them. Whether he’s making a tiny Spanish-language ghost story set during the Spanish Civil War, a superhero sequel, or a film about giant robots fighting giant monsters, Del Toro treats them with the love and care that he’d treat his own child, fills them with his fetishes and fascinations, and turns them into macabre works of art. Yet his obsession with creatures, beasts, and ghouls is always deployed to tell stories about humanity, and it’s that — and his encyclopedic love for cinema in all its forms, that’s made him not just one of our best genre filmmakers, but one of our best filmmakers period. After the lavish, Powell & Pressburger-ish Gothic tale “Crimson Peak,” he’s downscaling for next year’s intriguing “The Shape Of Water,” starring Sally Hawkins and Michael Shannon.
72. Laura Poitras
One area into which female directors seem to be making the biggest inroads is non-fiction filmmaking. And on the cutting edge of that phenomenon, alongside the great Amy Berg and following the trailblazing Barbara Kopple, is the Oscar-winning director of “Citizenfour,” Laura Poitras. Poitras, also nominated for her 2006 sophomore directorial feature about the Iraq War “My Country, My Country,” has since then not only directed a further two features prior to “Citizenfour,” but has produced and directed other non-fiction film and TV work. But it is her utterly gripping, thrilling Edward Snowden film that vaulted her to general attention (Snowden contacted her initially based on her track record prior) and it, coupled with the upcoming “Risk” about Julian Assange, which played in Cannes and awaits a release date, places Poitras’ levelheaded, insanely topical, unimpeachable journalistic investigations at the very forefront of our modern Golden Age of documentary.
71. Ben Wheatley
Aside from being cinema’s foremost expert in grisly head trauma (virtually every one of his films so far has featured a bludgeoning or brain-splattering of some kind), Ben Wheatley’s one of the most exciting new voices to have emerged in the last decade. Prolific and wide-ranging in his subjects, which have ranged from Civil War-era English psychedelia to brutalist 70s concrete dystopia, but united in tone — darkly, slyly funny, always with an undercurrent of horror at the things people can do to each other — there are few filmmakers whose new efforts we look forward to more, especially because his films are always so entirely his (not that he can’t play in other’s sandboxes too — he did a good job on a couple of “Doctor Who” episodes recently). His enormously enjoyable new one “Free Fire” looks likely to introduce him to a bigger U.S. crowd, and we’re fascinated to see where he goes from there.