Movies: Greatest director of all-time

[The Macho King]

Impossible to judge. This isn't sports - there isn't any sort of objective criteria we can point to as to what makes a great director.

I have some favorites. Kurosawa has insane range. Kubrick composes a shot better than basically anyone. For modern movie making, you can't find someone more important than Spielberg. Hitchcock is foundational. Wong Kar-Wai probably is the leader in "i sit and wait through the credits for 20 minutes after it's over to sort out my feelings." Lynch made surrealism mainstream. Etc. Ad nauseum.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

Miyazaki Hayao

 

[sansabri]

dunno about all around best, but for American movies it took an Italian to make the best ones

 

[VMBM]

Scorsese, but I don't feel very passionate about it. It's just that when I think of his top four or five movies (King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver for me), he seems to come out on top in comparison. Spielberg maybe at #2.

Then again, there are directors that are even more auteurs in the sense that they also write all or nearly all of their movies, like Bergman. I'm quite a shallow Bergman-fan though; I love some of his more accessible films like Wild Strawberries, Fanny and Alexander and Smiles of a Summer Night, but the more challenging stuff like The Silence and Persona often leaves me cold (or maybe they're just crap, hi hi).

 

[Hippasus]

Being a director is sort of like being a painter, or perhaps a composer, with a lot of people involved. It involves sight, sound, interpersonal relations though acting. I said one of the criteria of a great director is being able actualize an aesthetically-pleasing vision through film, but I should add a caveat on that. There is the beautiful as well as the sublime. The latter can evoke a sense of overwhelmedness or even a sense of dread in the viewer. Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey might be a good example of this, but there are many, many others. Even Goodfellas or something. I think of aesthetically-pleasing quality as having more to do with nice cinematography, good storytelling, etc.

Another good one that I haven't seen mentioned is Jim Jarmusch. He has a unique sort of black-and-white style, and good characters and stories.
Down by Law and Dead Man are examples.