(Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

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PeaceAnarchy
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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

Post by PeaceAnarchy »

FitFortDanga wrote:The one that stands out is Spielberg.

I thought he'd be the one. He's definitely the one whose ranking is most unfairly improved by this system. The other for me is Godard.
My list is below for those with over 10 ratings I put their whole average at the end. Some like Hitchcock, Woody Allen and Godard had huge jumps, others not so much.

Akira Kurosawa , 92.6 , 18 , 87.17
Expected, a fantastic filmmaker

Alfred Hitchcock , 91.8 , 30 , 81.4
Made some mediocre movies but a lot of great ones, definitely like the improvement.

Sam Peckinpah , 90.63 , 8 ,
Always surprised to realize how much I like his films, but I've loved them all

Ingmar Bergman , 90.4 , 17 , 85.76
Like Kurosawa, expected.

Billy Wilder , 90 , 13 , 88.31
Seems a tad high but I do love his films

Krzysztof Kieslowski , 89.83 , 6 ,
Need to see more, but I love his style

Oliver Stone , 89.8 , 5 ,
No way. This makes me want to see more just to make this go down. A few great films does not a great director make.

Stanley Kramer , 89 , 5 ,
Like Stone, 4 great films and a decent one. I doubt his others will live up to this score.

Terrence Malick , 88.8 , 5 ,
Great director, but this is higher than others I like more.

Fritz Lang , 88.7 , 23 , 83.91
Lang is a great example of someone with a ton of certified masterpieces but also a large amount of merely ok films. Those ok films stand out just as much as the good ones in my judgement of him.

Stanley Kubrick , 88.7 , 14 , 82.29
Not a favourite but a great director and I can't deny I love his films

Eric Rohmer , 88.6 , 24 , 83.88
Hurt by the fact that while I love nearly all his films I don't give him scores that quite reflect how much I like him.

Woody Allen , 88.5 , 3 , 80.23
Films all over the place, someone bound to be helped by cutting off the bad ones. Unlike Lang, though, I have a more positive view of his films as a whole.

Chan-wook Park , 88.2 , 5 ,
Need to see more to decide just how warranted this is

Martin Scorsese , 88.2 , 21 , 81.24
Not wild about the guy, but at his best he's excellent.

Christopher Nolan , 88 , 7 ,
Has yet to disappoint me.

Paul Thomas Anderson , 88 , 5 ,
A favourite.

Spike Jonze , 87.6 , 5 ,
I didn't even realize I'd seen 5 Jonze films. Unwarranted

David Fincher , 87.5 , 8 ,
Seems about right.

Luis Buñuel , 87.3 , 19 , 83
When he's on he's great, and from what I've seen even his lesser work is pretty good.

Satyajit Ray , 87.29 , 7 ,
Need to see more, but feels warranted.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder , 87.17 , 6 ,
Doesn't stand out as a favourite to me, but that could change if I see more.

Marcel Carné , 87 , 7 ,
I think I've seen his best, but until I see the bad ones I have no problem with this.

Jean-Pierre Melville , 87 , 7 ,
Yup, great director.

Masaki Kobayashi , 86.83 , 6 ,
Need to see more to decide how I feel.

Milos Forman , 86.6 , 5 ,
Stone v2. Average raised highly by One flew

Joseph L. Mankiewicz , 86.6 , 5 ,
Like Kramer, I think this is due to seeing his renowned films and nothing else.

Buster Keaton , 86.6 , 31 , 77.74
Keaton's fine. This seems a tad high, but the full average is way too low.

Robert Bresson , 86.5 , 13 , 82.77
Here's where this method works perfectly. I'm willing to forgive his couple of missteps for the great ones.

Jean Renoir , 86.4 , 16 , 81.88
Lacks that great score to pull the average up, but consistently wonderful.

Kar Wai Wong , 86.38 , 8 ,
Films I enjoy more in the moment than retrospectively, but I do love them when I watch them.

Werner Herzog , 86.22 , 9 ,
Need to see more, but seems about right.

William Wyler , 86.1 , 18 , 83.28
Grown fonder of him lately. He's earned his place.

Yasujiro Ozu , 86 , 10 ,
Yes

Steven Spielberg , 86 , 23 , 76.35
No.

Luchino Visconti , 86 , 8 ,
Seems about right from what I've seen.

John Cassavetes , 86 , 6 ,
Another one I need to see more from, but the distincitveness of his films makes this feel accurate.

Joel & Ethan Coen , 86 , 16 , 82.38
About right

Kenji Mizoguchi , 85.71 , 7 ,
Like Ray this feels provisionally right, but I need to see more.

Alain Resnais , 85.7 , 10 ,
Only four of these 10 really stand out, but feels right.

Charles Chaplin , 85.6 , 16 , 79.75
Same as Keaton

Preston Sturges , 85.57 , 7 ,
One of my favourites, seems relatively low.

Douglas Sirk , 85.33 , 6 ,
Need to see more but feels right

Jean-Luc Godard , 85.2 , 18 , 75.11
Ha Ha Ha. Half masterpieces, half crap. Not sure which average is more reflective of my feelings, but I'll lean towards the lower one.

Gus Van Sant , 85.13 , 8 ,
What the hell is this doing here? Even after glancing at his films and their ratings this seems way too high.

François Truffaut , 85 , 9 ,
Yup, I like Truffaut, though like Lang he's got some clunkers and I haven't seen enough here to flush them out.

Hayao Miyazaki , 85 , 9 ,
I like the guy but this feels rather high.

Elia Kazan , 84.9 , 12 , 83.75
Like Wyler, I've come around to him lately. Doesn't feel as much like fluke anymore.

Orson Welles , 84.8 , 11 , 83.45
About right. Not as crazy about Orson as others but he made some beautiful films.

King Vidor , 84.75 , 8 ,
Doesn't feel accurate, though I like some of his films.

Nicholas Ray , 84.71 , 7 ,
Need to see more to be sure. Could rise, could fall.

Otto Preminger , 84.33 , 6 ,
On his way down. He did make a few masterpieces though.

Howard Hawks , 84.2 , 16 , 79.75
MAde a ton of films, the good ones dominate the ratings, but not so much my impressions of him.

Louis Malle , 84.17 , 6 ,
Not sure. I like what I've seen, but lacks a distinctive enough style to be a fair predictor of what I haven't seen.

Michael Powell , 84 , 13 , 81.08
Feels quite low, and I'm not sure why. Especially after cutting off a couple of low ones.

I'm not sure how I feel about this as a reflection of my tastes. On the one hand it does dramatically improve the lot of my favourites who are held back by mediocre shorts or the occasional bomb. On the other hand it does nothing to fix the fact that Oliver Stone, while he's made 4 great films and another pretty good one, is in no way one of my favourite directors and were I to watch any of his remaining 16 films that average would plummet. I think selective viewing habits are a big reason why trying to make lists like this aren't fully reflective of tastes. Also, writing up those little comments I realize that five films does not feel like enough to judge a director for me.

It seems to me that, as unqualified lists, these are more useful in making me realize I should watch more films by some of these directors than a valid quantification of my tastes in directors. In some films I find the directorial influence, like say Rohmer or in a totally different way Hitchcock, so essential to my liking them that they do a lot more to raise my esteem of those directors than all the Wyler films I've watched combined, do.

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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

Post by MmzHrrdb »

I took the 24 directors I've seen 5 or more films from (there are 24). I also only took the average of the top 5 because I haven't seen the sheer volume of films other members have:
Christopher Nolan All 7 films- 87.00 Top 5- 91.8
Francis Ford Coppola- 6 films- 86.33 Top 5- 90.20
Peter Jackson- 6 films- 84.67 Top 5- 88.60
Martin Scorsese- 10 films- 80.60 Top 5- 88.40
Darren Aronofsky- 5 films- 88.00
Coen Brothers- 12 films- 71.33 Top 5- 87.40
David Cronenberg- 10 films- 78.45 Top 5- 86.80
Steven Spielberg- 10 films- 75.00 Top 5- 86.20
Sidney Lumet- 6 films- 82.67 Top 5- 85.80
PT Anderson- 5 films- 85.50
Gus Van Sant- 6 films- 79.17 Top 5- 84.6
Quentin Tarantino- 5 films- 81.40
Alfred Hitchcock- 5 films- 80.80
Robert Altman- 7 films- 78.29 Top 5- 80.60
Jonathan Demme- 5 films- 79.00
Ridley Scott- 5 films- 78.20
David Fincher- 5 films- 75.80
Michael Mann- 5 films- 75.40
Terry Gilliam- 5 films- 74.80
Ron Howard- 5 films- 70.40
Tim Burton- 5 films- 62.80
Dennis Dugan- 5 films- 53.00
Joel Schumacher- 5 films- 45.80

Coen Brothers are the biggest jumpers. I consider them both as favorites, but they have a few films that drags their average down a lot.
PT Anderson's spot kind of surprised me, as I consider him one of my favorite directors, but I think this can be attributed to him having only directed 5 films. His average should go up as he makes more movies (although it might not if The Master ends up being similar to Huston's Wise Blood, a film that I hated).
Also standing out is Fincher, who I consider to be a good director , but I couldn't stand the Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I'm sure any number of his films I haven't seen would easily replace that in the top 5.

djross
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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

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PeaceAnarchy
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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

Post by PeaceAnarchy »

djross wrote:It's not the system that is to blame: its that the Spielberg films you give high scores to don't deserve them.

I get what you're saying but, although I admittedly haven't seen any of them in a while, with the possible exception of Saving Private Ryan I wouldn't consider any of the scores I gave those top films to be out of line with my perception of the films. Schindler's List may have been manipulative but it's still amazing, Munich is both impressively nuanced and exciting to watch. Jurassic Park is dinos with a great story, E.T. is E.T., and both Jaws and Indiana Jones are very well crafted fun movies.
I think Spielberg is a very good director, but cutting off the mediocre two thirds of his filmography doesn't reflect the way I perceive him and his films.

ShogunRua
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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

Post by ShogunRua »

djross wrote:
PeaceAnarchy wrote:
FitFortDanga wrote:The one that stands out is Spielberg.

I thought he'd be the one. He's definitely the one whose ranking is most unfairly improved by this system.


It's not the system that is to blame:


Speaking of the system, what do you think about my proposed alteration on the last page?

By adding together both (average score) and (average score of best 10 films) aberrations like this would be eliminated.

djross
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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

Post by djross »

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adrian
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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

Post by adrian »

Back in my pre-Criticker days, I sorted my favorite directors based on what "grades" I gave their movies, not by averaging their scores but by adding up the scores according to a point system. For example, an A+ would get 1 point, an A would get .75 points, etc. There was a negative score for bad movies so enough of these could cancel out a great one.

ShogunRua
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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

Post by ShogunRua »

djross wrote:
ShogunRua wrote:Speaking of the system, what do you think about my proposed alteration on the last page?


Well, the problem from my side (and as I indicated in my earlier reply to CMonster) is that I wasn't convinced there was any "aberration" (which is not to say that the results of this system are "true" in any way whatsoever).


I made it quite clear on the first page;

"Exactly. I enjoy djross's numerical topics and feel this particular one is a decent approach.

However, its failing is that it doesn't punish directors enough for making bad films, and rewards them too much for making lots of pictures.

Who is a better director; Director A, who had 30+ movies in an incredibly long career, of which 10 were good, and the other 20+ sucked, or Director B, who only made 8 pictures, of which 7 were good and 1 was lousy?

Most would say Director B, but by your numerical method, Director A would have a distinct advantage.

How to solve this? I have an idea; calculate both the average rating for all movies by a director, AND calculate the average by djross's approach above.

Then, add these two averages together and order the results. That way, BOTH approaches are factored equally into the final equation; the best movies of the director, but also an indication of how good all their movies were, on average."

It's fine if you disagree, but let me know what you don't like about this method.

djross wrote:I'm more interested to see the results of other users actually using this system, but for one reason or another they seem reluctant to do so.


Nor was I expecting anyone to. This is your topic and your system, after all. I simply proposed a possible alteration about 8 replies down.

djross
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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

Post by djross »

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PeaceAnarchy
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Re: (Yet) another approach to the question of greatest directors

Post by PeaceAnarchy »

djross wrote:
ShogunRua wrote:I made it quite clear on the first page


I understood what you wrote. I just didn't agree that it identified a problem, as I explained in my response to CMonster.

It depends on whether the idea is to get a list of favourite directors or "the best." If it's the latter then perhaps it makes sense to only judge them on their best work and the fact that they made some, perhaps many, clunkers shouldn't matter. But if it's some attempt at objectivity we're after we should be using some form of objective or at least aggregate rankings. My rating of individual movies only partially reflects my feelings about their value as works of art, it mostly reflects my personal reactions to that work of art. Perhaps avgcrtckr's list would be most useful in that regard

If the goal is to make a list of favourites, or at least a list that attempts to reflect our personal tastes then certainly a strict cutoff is not reflective of my own perceptions of directors. To take an extreme, by this system if I've watched ten masterpieces by a director and then watch his or her lesser known 20 films all of which I find terrible, that director's ranking doesn't change one bit. Yet in my own perception, my esteem for such a director would most assuredly go down, and that would happen regardless of the order in which I watched those films.

While ShogunRua's suggestion does alleviate this problem, it also penalizes a director who makes 10 masterpieces and 20 very good, but not great, movies, someone who I would probably give extra credit to for their large and successful body of work beyond the masterpieces. Cutting off the bottom makes both this person and the one mentioned above seem identical.

Without full information, i.e. watching all of a director's films, simple averages just don't reflect a fair comparison. The idea of your method is to put those directors we've seen more of on an equal footing as those we've seen less of, but that extra information isn't worthless and should, in some way be incorporated into the equation.

The more I think about it the more it seems a more mathematically sound variation of what adrian mentioned might be the way to go. Perhaps some way of looking at deviations from the mean of scores and adding them up with some appropriate weighting system. Of course it's more work than I'd be willing to do by hand for an intellectual exercise, but if I had all the data in a spreadsheet I'd give some things a try to see what happens.

On a more qualitative note, I think what the films are and what they meant in a director's career also affects how I'd look their value in any system. I wouldn't consider it fair to hold Fear and Desire against Kubrick if I'd only seen ten of his films, but I'd consider it fair if he'd made an equally bad film at the height of his career. A similar thing applies to many shorts from feature film directors. Rohmer's shorts, for example, hold no sway in how I regard him as a director.

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