The Ten Best Directors of the Aughts

We’ve already extensively covered many of our top films in various categories and will revisit this category shortly for our

“Top 25″; that is…our best of the best films of the entire decade. But our year-end review would be incomplete without first looking at some of the “movers and shakers” of the industry. These include famous producers, writers, actors, and of course, the rea“authors of the film: directors.

That is what we have for you today. 10 directors (and as always, a few honorable mentions) whose contributions to modern cinema are undeniable. Read on to see who we’ve selected.

Wes Anderson

What do you do when you’re a rising filmmaker with hipster cred on top of the indie scene? This was Wes Anderson in 2001, when “The Royal Tenenbaums” was released to widespread acclaim. Characters in the Andersonverse are invariably all ex-prodigies who dress in psychedelic 60′s garb and have family problems. This explains not only “the Royal Tanenbaums”, but also “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” and “The Darjeeling Limited” as well. Alright, quirky, dry humor may not be to everyone’s liking. That’s Anderson’s style through and through. That and his love of vintage Kinks tracks. Yet it is hard to deny his monopoly on independent auteur films. He’s got a legion of followers. Plus, his latest film, the children’s book adaptation, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” has gotten rave reviews despite allegations that he directed the film through e-mail. I say that takes talent.

Danny Boyle

In 2003 Danny Boyle reignited the zombie genre, making a film that took itself seriously and represented the zombie apocalypse in an edgy and intense way. The fact that he did the film for $8 million and still managed to create the incredible sense of isolation that he did is pretty amazing. He then went on to make the indie hit, “Millions” a family film about a 7 year old who finds a big bag of dirty money; then the great sci-fi flick, “Sunshine”, about a group of people sent to reignite the sun with an enormous bomb before it dies. Unfortunately, the film was hardly promoted by Fox Searchlight and very few people saw it in theaters. Finally, after 14 years of directing feature films, he hit it big with “Slumdog Millionaire”, an extremely popular film with an insanely odd premise: a poor Indian kid who is chosen to play “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” and ends up knowing the answers to all of the questions by coincidence because of very specific memories throughout his life. Here, Boyle’s knack for bringing tension and livid emotions out very colorfully won him the Oscar for ‘Best Director’. But this award only cemented what we knew from day one.

Guillermo Del Toro

Del Toro, too, had such a good decade. He was chosen to direct the “Lord of the Rings” prequels, “The Hobbit” Parts 1 and 2.

How did he land the gig? By doing a lot of films and making them all good. My personal Del Toro favorite was his Mexican film “The Devil’s Backbone” from 2001. It was creepy and emotionally effective, one of the best horror films ever made. He then went on to make “Blade II” in 2002 which was okay, but many hold it high above the original “Blade” which he did not direct. “Hellboy” in 2004 was a moderate success and started a franchise he could call his own. People enjoyed the sarcastic and odd film, and the film has now become sort of a cult super-hero hit. His big break of the decade oddly came in the form of another Mexican film, “Pan’s Labyrinth”. It didn’t win best foreign film for the year it was released, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it is absolutely one of the most popular foreign films of the decade. “Hellboy II” came in 2008 to great reviews and solid word of mouth, but the large 85 million dollar budget was a bit much for the odd film and it had a hard time making to much here in the states. Del Toro is an important filmmaker who only looks to becoming more important in the near future.

Clint Eastwood

At almost 80 years old, “Dirty Harry” is one of the most prolific AND consistent Hollywood directors there is. The actor’s career spans 50 years in television and movies, and he embodies an endangered breed in all his roles as the American tough guy. His films, like John Ford of cinema yesteryear, convey a nostalgia for American values and readjustment in hard times. This decade alone, Clint Eastwood was nominated for ‘Best Director’ three times, winning in 2005 for “Million Dollar Baby”, about a resilient young waitress who wants to become a boxer. His latest film, “Invictus”, about apartheid in South Africa and a beleaguered rugby team, is up for a handful of Golden Globes and is receiving Oscar buzz. There is a story that on the night that Eastwood won his first Oscar for directing “Unforgiven”, a young director approached him and said Eastwood had inspired many like him. The young director? Steven Spielberg. The rest speaks for itself.

Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson had a sort of Sam Raimi-to-David Lean metamorphoses after the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy was released. Here was a short and burly director from New Zealand whose reputation came from cult classics like “Heavenly Creatures” and “The Frighteners”. He shocked the world with his commitment to bringing Middle-Earth to life in “The Fellowship of the Ring”, adapted from the epic novel by J.R.R. Tolkien. Jackson spent the better part of a decade bringing these films to life. It took a whole year JUST to grow the set that would be used for the Shire. His dedication was finally rewarded with the ‘Best Director’ statue at the 2004 Academy Awards. Jackson went onto make a 3-hour remake of King Kong and most recently, the adaptation of Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones”. He has also proved very successful in the producer’s chair (District 9, anyone?) but we can save that for another time.

Sam Mendes

Sam Mendes arguably had his best film in 1999 with “American Beauty” which went on to be a huge success and win ‘Best Picture’ at the Oscars. This decade saw him add four more films to his mantle of excellent. First, he did “Road to Perdition”, a fantastic, but awards-starved gangster film starring Tom Hanks. Then came , “Jarhead”, an overlooked, but slightly sloppy Iraq War movie. It talked about a new aspect of modern warfare, the possibility of being completely bored as a soldier and the odd effects that this has on our troops. Unfortunately, audiences largely felt the same boredom and the film wasn’t all that successful financially or in accolades. But Mendes’ true prowess is in endeavoring to bring personal relationships to life, as he did with “American Beauty”. In this vein, he directed “Revolutionary Road”, a film that repudiates 1950′s suburbia, which earned him another Oscar nom. He sealed his spot on this list with his very solid romantic dramedy, “Away We Go” which was released earlier this year about a couple questioning where to raise their expecting daughter.

Michael Moore

Love him or hate him, Michael Moore is probably the most famous documentarian in the world… if you call his works documentaries. Hollywood as whole does tend to swing left, but Michael Moore would probably be anti-Hollywood, so where do you think that points him? He first surfaced on everyone’s radar way back in 1989 with a picture about corporatism and its impact on local economies, in “Roger & Me”. This decade, Moore directed four ‘documentaries’: “Bowling for Columbine”, which discuss gun control; “Fahrenheit 9/11″, the patriot act and a Bush conspiracy; “Sicko”, the healthcare system, which just recently was the subject of an unwieldingly complex reform bill; and most recently “Capitalism: A Love Story”. The last should come as a no brainer. Even his critics concede that he has a knack for finding flaws in different systems. But it’s not just because he’s influential: having made blockbusters from works of nonfiction, Moore secured a chance for other doc-filmmakers to get the same opportunity. And the topical doc has become a very vogue concept during the aughts. Moore should know because he was responsible for it.

Christopher Nolan

Chris Nolan burst on the scene in 2000 with the release of his neo-noir thriller “Memento” to rave reviews. Following a man who has had some part in a murder both after AND before the incident takes place via nonlinear storytelling, Nolan became a champion of this technique, and it would come to be used in future films. He’s perhaps most known to mainstream audiences for popularizing the reboot with “Batman Begins” and the record-breaking “The Dark Knight”, but Nolan’s other titles include psychodramas like “Insomnia”, “The Prestige” and hitting this summer, “Inception”. Strictly speaking, Christopher Nolan is probably the most powerful director in the world at the moment, excluding Steven Spielberg and James Cameron. Yet you can be sure that Nolan knows what he’s doing: none of his films have a lower score than 75% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Jason Reitman

If we had a space just for the most promising new director of the decade, we’d have to award that mantle to Jason Reitman. The youngest and most web-savvy of the bunch, Reitman is extremely humbled despite the impressive portfolio he’s racked up in less than 4 years. His work has slight libertarian-leaning views: for instance, his first claim to fame came in 2005 with “Thank You For Smoking”, a satire about the tobacco companies. He has since gone onto make several critically acclaimed dramedies. These include the Gen-Y favorite “Juno” and now “Up in the Air”, which is steadily expanding across the country. If you recognize his name, it’s because he’s the son of Ivan Reitman, who wrote, directed, and starred in “Ghostbusters” among other things. At only 32 years old, we still expect great things from Reitman, if he keeps a firm level of quality control on all his future projects.

Martin Scorsese

How could you have a best director list without the quintessential American director? A student of the French New Wave and member of ‘New Hollywood’, Scorsese has made several strong films throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90′s. Along the way, he won several awards, but never ever an Oscar, after having been snubbed time and time again by the Academy, going all the way back to “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” in 1975. This decade, Scorsese submitted 3 more modern masterpieces to modern cinema: “Gangs of New York”, “The Aviator”, and “The Departed”. While “The Aviator” received the most nominations of any of his films since “Raging Bull”, it was “The Departed”, with those familiar themes of betrayal versus loyalty, that finally won him the one prize that had alluded him: an academy award. This year, he will be receiving an honorary Golden Globe for lifetime achievement and there is no one else on this list (except maybe Clint Eastwood) who deserves it more. We hope his contributions continue well into his late ’90s.

Honorable Mentions:

As always, we keep a space open for other strong directors, but there was just no spot on the main list for them despite whatever similar achievements or influence they might have had during the decade. We invite you to look into their works as well:

Gus Van Sant

Michel Gondry

Steven Soderbergh

Ang Lee

Quentin Tarantino

Written By Riley B. and Adam G.

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