The Art House Powerhouse 100

[Above: David Cronenberg]

Art House Powerhouse Key:
RH: recent highlights
U: upcoming
S: screenplay

DIRECTORS

Joel & Ethan Coen { RH: No Country for Old Men U: Burn After Reading } The Coens put their experience and sensibility to work in No Country for Old Men, producing their finest work and one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2007. With their darkly humorous, distinct style, they deftly straddle the cinematic divide, creating art house films with widespread audience appeal.

Martin Scorsese { RH: The Departed, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan U: Shine A Light, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt } Call him Little Big Man. Scorsese continues to make indie-style films on a blockbuster scale. Last year’s Oscar winner (The Departed) is set to release his Rolling Stones’ concert epic Shine A Light while working on a Teddy Roosevelt bio starring his perennial leading man Leonardo DiCaprio. And he’s still found time to produce The Young Victoria, about the Queen of England and her romance with Prince Albert.

Jason Reitman { RH: Juno, Thank You For Smoking } While Thank You for Smoking and Reitman’s shorts—like Consent—were funnier than they were sweet, they were smart enough that we suspected he had a tender side. Now, with Juno, he’s proven that you can be laugh-out-loud funny and still respect your characters.

Paul Thomas Anderson { RH: There Will Be Blood } Anderson’s latest flees the modern southern California settings of his best works (Boogie Nights, Magnolia) for the early-20th-century oil rush and taps a real gusher. An enthralling exploration of American greed and madness, Blood is all the more surprising for how stately and conventional it turns out to be.

Wes Anderson { RH: The Darjeeling Limited U: The Fantastic Mr. Fox} Scenes in slow-motion set to Kinks songs, overwhelmingly quirky production design, dramatic family rivalries—Wes Anderson just can’t seem to escape himself. But this is OK. Because underneath the deadpan humor of each of his movies is a true sense of melancholy and loss unmatched by any other filmmaker of his generation.

Ken Loach { RH: The Wind That Shakes the Barley } Loach shot the scenes in his Irish historical epic The Wind that Shakes the Barley chronologically, allowing his actors to grow with the characters. The result won the Palm d’Or at Cannes, and it’s likely that Loach’s brand of innovative, socially conscious and fiercely independent filmmaking will continue to garner critical acclaim.

David Lynch { RH: Inland Empire } As visionary as ever, Lynch no longer settles for just making his movies—as rich, strange and beautiful as they are. Now he’s pioneering new ways to distribute and market films, rolling with the digital revolution, and using his hip website as a platform. Coming soon, Eraserhead ringtones!

David Cronenberg { RH: Eastern Promises, A History of Violence } How do you follow up a career-defining film? If you’re David Cronenberg, you top it. A History of Violence richly deserved its accolades, but this year’s Eastern Promises was even better, its nerve-rattling suspense a convenient hanger for the film’s meditation on fate, the hidden side of urban life, and the roles we all play.

Noah Baumbach { RH: Margot at the Wedding, The Squid and the Whale U: The Fantastic Mr. Fox (S), The Emperor’s Children (S) } The Squid and the Whale took us by surprise with its refreshingly honest observation of a family in disorder. And now he’s done it again with Margot at the Wedding. Next up is a co-writing reunion with director Wes Anderson for the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox and an adaptation of The Emperor’s Children for director Ron Howard.

Woody Allen { RH: Match Point, Cassandra’s Dream U: Vicky Cristina Barcelona } A true auteur unconcerned with critical or popular success, Allen still writes and directs a new feature every year in whatever genre or style happens to catch his fancy. While not everything he creates is a gem, Allen has shown time and time again that he’s one of the all-time-great directors.

Tim Burton { RH: Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street U: Alice in Wonderland, The Spook’s Apprentice } Tim Burton’s playfully grim, oddball aesthetic has proven dizzyingly consistent over the years. His screen adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd, about a revenge-obsessed barber who gives the closest shave in London (wink, wink), manages to humanize his characters in spite of the tale’s broad, black humor. Burton’s career longevity is an inspiration to idiosyncratic art-house directors the world over.

Todd Haynes { RH: I’m Not There } Though he can often seem dry and formal (the kind of director only the French can truly love), Haynes is a savvy deconstructionist of American pop language, exploding myth to see what lies beneath. Bob Dylan must have seen a kindred spirit when he signed off on I’m Not There. The film is a virtuoso gambit that promises Haynes is here to stay.

Michael Winterbottom { RH: A Mighty Heart, The Road to Guantanamo U: Genova } Some directors make the same movie over and over. Winterbottom barely makes the same film once. Eclectic sometimes means erratic, but the prolific Brit is as adept at socially aware biopics as he is at rock ’n’ roll sagas and gonzo literary comedies and lefty documentaries. His versatility is a virtue more filmmakers should embrace.

Guillermo del Toro { RH: Pan’s Labyrinth U: Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Orphanage (producer) } Long a cult favorite, Del Toro broke through to the mainstream with the dark, ornately imagined Pan’s Labyrinth, which was nominated for six Oscars and took three home. Next up for Del Toro? A sequel to 2004’s Hellboy.

Sidney Lumet { RH: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead } His classic films—from 12 Angry Men to Network—echo through the work of younger directors, but now Lumet has reciprocated by taking a powerhouse cast through some of the leanest, darkest material he’s ever put to film: a robbery gone even more wrong than Al Pacino’s in Dog Day Afternoon.

Stephen Frears { RH: The Queen, Mrs. Henderson Presents U: Skip Tracer } A director who hails from the workaday tradition of British filmmaking, Frears is the very definition of an “old pro.” Yet, his movies—including Dirty, Pretty Things and The Queen—are crisp and engaged, alert to the tremors on every stratum of an English society in the midst of pivotal changes. Bonus: He’s peerless with actors. Long may he reign.

Michel Gondry { RH: Be Kind, Rewind; The Science of Sleep } When film critics snicker at directors who cut their teeth on music videos, the most convincing counterexample is the ever-inventive Gondry, who uses visual flair not to tickle our lizard brains but to explore our dreams, whether romantic, melancholy or comic.

Werner Herzog { RH: Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man U: Encounters at the End of the World } Nothing human is strange to Herzog. A cultural anthropologist with a movie camera, he makes documentaries that are more gripping than most features, and features that have the raw vigor of mortal life at its most extreme. A man who will eat his shoe and survive a random gunshot wound is a man to watch, and the prolific German continues to offer plenty such occasions.

Marc Forster { RH: The Kite Runner, Stranger Than Fiction U: Bond 22, Land of Roses } A few years after Finding Neverland, Forster has discovered Hollywoodland, where all dreams come true. Though he reportedly turned down 2004’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the indie award winner has agreed to direct the new 007 action film Bond 22. But not before giving us one of the year’s best in The Kite Runner.