The 100 Best And Most Exciting Directors Working Today - Page 6 of 10

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50. Xavier Dolan
It’s hard to believe that Xavier Dolan is still only 27. He’s been around for long enough that you can no longer call him a wunderkind or a rising star: He’s simply a major filmmaker who’s long since demonstrated that he’s more than a flash in the pan. His earliest films were often imperfect, but always showcased immense promise, and he took a big step forward with his gripping thriller “Tom At The Farm,” then another giant leap with his Cannes Jury Prize-winning “Mommy,” a film positively giddy with the possibilities of the medium, and with a heart so big and raw that it burst out of its proverbial chest and lay there throbbing on the floor. We didn’t love his most recent film, starry, shouty melodrama “It’s Only The End Of The World” (and he didn’t love that we didn’t love it…), but we’re still psyched to see his next, English-language debut “The Death And Life Of John F. Donovan” with Kit Harington and Jessica Chastain.

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49. Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick is one of the greatest filmmakers in the world. There’s no disputing that. But we’d be lying if we said that the arrival of a new Malick picture — once a cinephile’s Holy Grail, now virtually an annual event — doesn’t quite fill us with the joy and anticipation that it once did. He is still, obviously, the man behind indisputable masterpieces like “Badlands” and “Days Of Heaven” and “The Thin Red Line,” and as such will always have our ticket money. But there’s been a slight sense of diminishing returns of late, with “To The Wonder,” “Knight Of Cups” and “Voyage Of Time” feeling to greater or lesser extents like collections of B-sides left over from the masterpiece album rather than independent works that suggest a progression or even variation. Even those B-sides have images with more beauty and soul than 95% of what you’ll see, but we’d love to see him take his talent into different territory. If it doesn’t arrive with the long-in-the-can “Weightless,” we hope it comes with his WWII-setRadegund,” which is filming now.

Celine Sciamma48. Céline Sciamma
Had we cracked the code for precisely how some foreign-born filmmakers ‘break’ America, we would not be the penniless bloggers we are. But it does seem like a cosmic oversight that French director Céline Sciamma is not more widely known, although with her profile on the rise as both writer/director and screenwriter (she had writing credits on two well-received 2016 Cannes titles, “Being 17” and the animated “My Life As A Courgette“), we trust that will change. All three of her directorial films to date (which form a loose thematic trilogy) have been minutely observed coming-of-age tales — no, wait! Come back! They’re really good! — that demonstrate exquisite visual style and a non-condescending sensitivity toward emerging sexual identity. “Water Lilies,” “Tomboy” and “Girlhood,” however, also represent a progression in confidence, culminating in the extraordinary, life-filled, lyrical realism of the most recent picture. Now that her coming-of-age period has, erm, come of age, we can’t wait to see where she goes next.

Andrew Haigh47. Andrew Haigh
Topping several of our individual Best of 2015 lists with the sublime subtle ache of “45 Years,” UK director Andrew Haigh was already well known to us, not just for his lovely prior feature “Weekend” (which was his second after LA Outfest winner “Greek Pete“) but for his work as co-creator of cancelled-too-soon HBO series “Looking.” That show did at least get the grace note of a finale film that aired earlier this year, one that once again proved Haigh’s exceptional facility with life-stage-related wistfulness which he manages to communicate almost entirely through visuals and performance. The acclaim for “45 Years,” especially Charlotte Rampling‘s Oscar nomination, has meant Haigh is in demand now, with an Alexander McQueen biopic slated to roll after “Lean on Pete,” an adaptation described as his “passion project.” And, well, loving “45 Years” as much as we did, we breathlessly wait to see what Haigh does when his heart’s really in it…

James Gray46. James Gray
Two decades and five films into his career, and James Gray’s still awaiting the kind of mainstream acceptance and wide critical adulation he gets in Europe, where he’s long been a favorite. He’s a man out of step with his times, who makes steely Lumet-ish crime thrillers (“We Own The Night”), resolutely grown-up relationship dramas (“Two Lovers”) and sweeping Old Hollywood melodramas (“The Immigrant”), films that don’t even remotely pander or cater to modern audiences. And we love him for it. Gray’s such a controlled and subtle filmmaker that his films can sometimes seem chilly from a distance, but there’s such a rich vein of emotion under the surface for an adventurous viewer willing to meet him halfway, and cinephiles will be discovering him for generations to come. And hopefully sooner: Perhaps his latest, adventure “The Lost City Of Z,” soon to premiere at NYFF, will be the one that sees him finally connect with the wider audience he’s long deserved.

Damien Chazelle on the set of'La La Land'45. Damien Chazelle
Fairly soon, Chazelle will be inescapable as the awards buzz for his utterly delightful, dizzily inventive, joyful and bittersweet “La La Land” builds (our dazzled review from Venice is here), but even the prospect of all those For Your Consideration ads can’t dampen our enthusiasm for this relative neophyte. Only his third feature after his “mumblecore musical” debut “Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench” and the eyecatching”Whiplash,” from film to film Chazelle seems not so much to have been on a learning curve as basically mastering a vertical learning ascent as a director (when he’s not racking up writing credits on films such as “10 Cloverfield Lane” and “Grand Piano“). Because as much as we admired “Whiplash,” especially as a long-overdue vehicle for Oscar recognition for the great J.K. Simmons, “La La Land” is exponentially more ambitious in scope and more sweepingly emotive in effect. It’s gorgeous, and Chazelle deserves all the good stuff coming his way.

maren-ade-das-filmfestival-cannes-schick44. Maren Ade
Yes, summer 2016 found our multiplexes a grim place, but as anyone lucky enough to have the season bounded by Cannes on the one side and Venice on the other knows, that really was no reason to declare the death of cinema (again). And German director Maren Ade’s third film, after unsettling film-school graduation piece “The Forest For The Trees” and precision-tooled relationship-in-decay story “Everyone Else,” is basically a definitive one-film argument for the rude health of cinema. “Toni Erdmann” is a highly peculiar father/daughter story, both tightly wound and loose-limbed, rather like its two unforgettable central characters. But it’s also hilarious and heartfelt and completely singular, with moments of truth so piercing they feel surreal, and moments of surreality played so deadpan they feel like truth. The injustice of Ade winning nothing in Cannes cannot detract from the fact that she will long be remembered as the outstanding Cannes breakout, in an outstanding year.

Sarah Polley43. Sarah Polley
Given the sheer number of actors who eventually turn their hand to directing, it’s surprising, statistically speaking, that there aren’t more of them on this list. But then, few have taken to it with the commitment, skill and sheer talent of Sarah Polley. These days, Polley seems to have moved entirely into directing, and you can see why: As enormously talented an actor as she was, her three features to date have been something truly special. Aged just 37, she won Julie Christie an Oscar nomination for her performance in Polley’s directorial debut “Away From Her,” while follow-up “Take This Waltz” took the same kind of finely wrought relationship drama and transplanted it to thirtysomethings and the question of whether we can be truly monogamous. Her most recent film, deeply personal documentary “Stories We Tell,” was her best to date, taking her own experiences and using it to investigate the nature of truth and art. The sooner she makes another film, the better.

Ryan Coogler42. Ryan Coogler
With a definite bias on this list toward emerging filmmakers and those we’re confident will make a splash in the very near future, Coogler, whose trajectory over just two completed directorial features and one announced blockbuster has not seen him put a foot wrong, was always going to figure. His debut, true story “Fruitvale Station,” managed to find a balance between shocking topicality, righteous anger and human tragedy and also broke out star Michael B. Jordan. Coogler and Jordan then reunited for the lighter-hearted, more generic but no less skillfully made “Rocky” sequel “Creed” — probably the most purely enjoyable boxing movie in a period lousy with them. That Coogler’s skill, not least in staging thrilling set pieces (the subway station fracas in ‘Fruitvale’; the fight scenes in “Creed”) led to him snagging Marvel’s “Black Panther” gig, which he’s also co-writing, is one of the most satisfying good-news stories that blockbusterdom has given us recently.

Spike Jonze41. Spike Jonze
Maybe because he was visible prior as a director of some of the most memorable music videos of the 1990s (like Weezer‘s “Buddy Holly, Beastie Boys‘ “Sabotage, Bjork‘s “It’s Oh So Quiet and Fatboy Slim‘s “Praise You“), one can forget that Spike Jonze only has four features to his name. Or maybe it’s just that taken together, they have the impact of a much bigger filmography. Starting with the peerless one-two of his Charlie Kaufman-scripted diptych “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation,” Jonze became associated with a certain type of hip, self-aware, metatextual playfulness, and a charmingly lo-fi aesthetic. It was seven years, however — during which he produced the “Jackass” movies, “Synecdoche, New York” and “The Fall,” among others — before he turned in his lovely adaptation of Maurice Sendak‘s “Where the Wild Things Are,” and then another four before we got the brilliant, bittersweet “Her,” which netted him a screenplay Oscar. Don’t leave it so long next time, please.