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Which directors have a flawless filmography?
I'm finishing a full rewatch of the films from the Coen Brothers tonight and have decided to go with PTA next. PTA really has no stinkers in his filmography. Fincher is pretty close, but I haven't seen Alien 3 and I'm willing to forgive the first film or two.
Who else can share this level of consistency?
Denis Villeneuve.
Practically nobody has watched his 90's movies, including me, but even if you do count them, he still has not had a single bad or even mediocre movie for at least one and a half decades - my personal highlights being Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.
He is more consistently excellent than any other working director. Could even easily put him in the top 10 of all time too imo.
I’ll be the contrarian and say that arrival is heavily overrated and merely ok. It’s got some great ideas wrapped around a painful “everyone but the protagonist is dumb and bad” trope.
I think it’s one of his worst (but still better than many films)
I don't see it that way. Everyone involved with the project had a different job to do. Renner's character was a mathematician, Whittaker's character was a colonel in the military; they have different goals, interests, and focuses. Louise Banks was the linguist, and a culture's language has been shown to alter how the people who 'speak' it think, and how their brain functions. She was the right person at the right time to understand their gift as an unraveling of the experience of time as linear (which she experienced as flash-forwards to her future family). It makes sense to me that only one person would discover this first (ergo experience the shift first), and that it would be a linguist.
If you haven't read it yet, I would recommend the short story it's based on, Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang. It's a good read, maybe better than the movie. It covers much more of Louise's perceptions of the future as she figured out the language.
I'm not going to bother to watch the movie again, but I can recall being annoyed at multiple scenes where it felt like she was telling the experts what to do, and was, of course, the one who was right.
The main one that jumps out in my mind is her taking off her helmet, as is standard trope in just about every alien movie, but there were so many others.
So in short I don't care about the language thing, but Whittaker is played off as borderline psychopathic and incompetent, and he's hardly the only one.
Really? I thought his character was portrayed rather refreshingly, clearly there for national security reasons but willing to hear out the experts and follow their lead (which is why that one conspiracy-addled soldier cracked). The CIA/NSA-type guy and the Chinese general were shown as much more aggressive and hostile (though even the general came around in the end).
It's very possible i'm mixing my characters (although so very very few are memorable). Obviously I didn't have a great impression of the film and I saw it so long ago. If i have a reason to watch it again I could do a breakdown, but yeah clearly not something I'd want to do at this point
like most, I think I started with Prisoners for him. That'd be a good set to go through. My little movie calendar has been working well, but I've hit a series of films that I really just dont want to watch... so I'm going through filmographies.
DV is a great pick!
If you haven't, give Incendies a go, too. That's the earliest I've seen and remember it being overall solid :)
This was one of the first names that came to mind. I recently went on a Denis bender and he really hasn't missed.
Also, if you're reading this and haven't seen Incendies, give it a watch. It'll ruin your week, but it's worth it.
Polytechnique ruined my week a bit more, but Incendies is definitely something as well. I just couldn’t help finding the story too constructed, which took a notch of the emotional impact off the ending.
Kubrick is amazing. Whenever I would watch his movies you can just pause at any second and the frame will always be amazing. So much thought and work put into his movies. Even if they are a bit "old". I still like his movies very much. The last movie I have watched of him is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. But there are many more that are really good of him.
I am so so so so so jealous of the people who were able to see this when it first came out.
It was still mind blowing for me when I first saw it in the 80's or 90's, on a tiny tv screen. It was already a different time where special effects were commonly used in cinema, but most weren't even close to what 2001 was able to do so much earlier. Imagine living your whole life in a world where none of that is a thing, then going to the movies one night and seeing this! I probably would have fainted out of surprise and pleasure.
Hah, your comment reminded me of my dad geeking out over the rotating hallways scene when he showed me the movie :)
Though we probably were in ~2000 and I was a pretty unimpressed teen, but his enthusiasm was contagious.
older films are better than most of the crap churned out these days. :) But yeah, Kubrick is absolutely on this list. Eyes Wide Shut is in my top ten, if not top five.
You've never watched The Shining?! You definitely should take care of that ASAP. I saw it when I was a kid and avoided it into my twenties, thinking it was as scary as I remembered. It isn't so bad. Still scary to a point, but not enough to skip I hate horror movies.
Most older films were also crap, they've just been forgotten. Classic survivorship bias.
I think the 4 hour version is a myth. There was a first screening that was longer than the theatrical release, but only by 19 minutes
Wes Anderson is very consistent at making Wes Anderson films. Whether that's a good thing or not will depend on the person.
That being said, I personally enjoy Wes Anderson films, and have enjoyed all of his films, so would count him in this category.
No bad films at all is such a high bar, since everyone has to start as a beginner at some point (and obviously the director isn't the only person who determines the ultimate quality of the film).
Some directors who come pretty close to my mind (without including people who only have 1-2 movies to their name):
You could also argue for Quentin Tarantino but opinions are going to be divided on that one. I personally could not stand Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
sad that Hayao Miyazaki's lately didn't land so well, but I'd still include him.
I'd absolutely include Tarantino in this. I've gone through all of his stuff a dozen times or more by now. I do Kill Bill as The Whole Bloody Affair cut, though. Even though you didn't like OUATIH, you might enjoy the novelization he wrote of it.
For Cameron, I haaaaaaaaate Avatar so much. I should watch Titanic, though. I've only seen that one shot of the guy hitting the railing. His other more action-oriented ones are perfect, though, almost to the point where I can overlook that blue shit.
Did The Boy and the Heron not do really well? That’s really sad to hear—I haven’t looked at its reception online but to me it was one of his greatest achievements and my friends who saw it in the cinema with me had similar views, so I’m surprised to hear that! How come?
I interpreted OP's comment as just meaning that it didn't land for me. Commercially it did quite well at $282m worldwide - compare to $274m for Spirited Away, for example.
Glad to hear you enjoyed it and definitely not discounting that view! The things I didn't like about it:
So, I liked The Boy and the Heron, but I have to say that the reason the animation isn't groundbreaking is, well, because the kind of animation Ghibli does is dated and not the cutting edge anymore. For that, you want Ufotable (the high budget Fate projects, Demon Slayer) or something like Spy Family, Apothecary Diaries or Frieren.
The state of the art is sharp, non-watercolor backgrounds with advanced compositing and lighting effects, and CGI-augmented motion shots. Of those shows above, Frieren is kind of leaning into more of a Ghibli style, but it's still technologically more advanced.
Ghibli is good at being Ghibli, but much like Disney, they're not really a leader in animation anymore.
Completely agree. I would say that it's unfair of me to expect Miyazaki, an 84-year old man, to still have that fire in him to innovate, but Takahata was 77 when he directed Kaguya!
Ufotable is great of course (also the stuff that Mappa has been doing using composition / 3D software like Blender on shows like Chainsaw Man is amazing), but that style is very much a refinement of where mainstream Japanese animation has been headed over the last 20 years and these days I find myself more excited about people trying to go in different directions altogether. The combination of western-style 3D CG and 2D anime in the Chinese show To Be Hero X is a recent example that immediately jumps to mind - it doesn't always hit, but it's an interesting idea!
Agreed on all points - I have felt like I am totally out of step with pop culture because I hated this film. It felt like it had all the elements on paper of a Miyazaki film...but they didn't fit together particularly well, there were parts that were bizarre and off-putting (what was up with the spirits???), and I found the protagonist really unlikable. I felt like if this didn't have Miyazaki's name on it, no one would care, and considering it might be his last film, a lot of people treated it with extra respect based on context on not on content.
hm. interesting. I was duped by some lackluster reviews and skipped it. I don't watch a lot of animation as it is, but his work is always really neat. I'll pop it in the list
The boy and the heron is not "easy" to watch, in the sense that if you go in blind or expecting to turn your brain off, a lot of things can go over your head.
Go in expecting something like The Wind Rises instead of his more famous work like The Moving Castle or Spirited Away.
Personally I loved that movie
I loved The Wind Rises -- I'm all into quiet cinema as a genre as it is, so patient films like that are right up my alley.
Good sell!
I still love Titantic after all these years. Was it 11 Oscars? Well earned. But I also hated Avatar (first one. Also not air bender) and I felt so insulted coming out of the theatre. Not sure I've seen any of his since.
I don’t know if i know anybody who is a sincere fan of the films.
Billy Zane has had a better career than i would have assumed. also, he was one of Biff’s posse in BTTF! Kind of neat.
+1 for all those.
I have a personal favourite in Tarantino. I watched all his movies (beside Death Proof) and I really love them all.
There is a certain cadence/editing to his style that is just unmatched imo, plus his writing is so unique that all of his films are really just believable, while still being quite violent.
Why didn't you like Once upon a time?
I actually like all of his movies except Hollywood. He's clearly studied the classics very closely and also puts a lot of thought into his own movies, and it shows through in everything he makes. The reason I suggested that he was debatable is that he's also an auteur with such a strong personal style that there's a reasonable chance that someone just doesn't like his movies at all. It would be like listing Wes Anderson.
In the case of Hollywood, it's a love letter to a certain era of filmmaking and some of the material that influenced him in particular - I absolutely don't begrudge that. However, on a practical level, the meat and potatoes of the film is just the protagonists hanging around the studio or driving around Hollywood, and I just could not get interested in that. Other than the scene with the hippies and the ending, there's very little of the unhinged dialogue and plot, menacing tension from just the suggestion of violence or actual schlocky violence which is what I loved from his other films.
I'm not a Tarantino buff, nor even much of a fan, but I will attempt to defend Once. I think it was a very clever tribute film precisely because (1) we've come to expect this style of violence and (2) I know how the story of the poor Sharon Tate ends. So there was a lot of tension of things going horribly wrong at every point of the mundane "maybe maybe maybe......!!!......nah just kidding" cycles. The scene where Margot Robbie' Tate simply goes into the theatre to enjoy a Sharon Tate film was quite tender and moving, because I wasn't expecting that treatment of appreciation and love for a lady in a Tarantino film.
Yeah, I get the impression that audiences who went in knowing the context of the murder tend to appreciate the movie more. I'm not an American and wasn't familiar with it at all at the time of watching, so that ending kinda came out of left field for me!
Which was my pick. Like Tarantino, everyone might not like him (which isn't a requirement for greatness), but every single film either have made have been excellent.
Make sure you watch Death Proof. It’s almost like a parody of Tarantino.
Interesting, I'll give it a watch. Where would you rank it in all his movies?
Hmmm I’d rate it maybe in the bottom half of his films. It’s kind of fun but odd. Aren’t they all though? The stunts are pretty universally acclaimed.
I noticed on rewatch recently that it has Rosario Dawson and Mary Elizabeth Winston together. They both appear later in Ahsoka.
Death Proof, but just like the other film in the Grindhouse double feature (Planet Terror), really did feel like a self aware parody. That was probably what made me enjoy both of them as well as the fake movie promos, at least one of which ended up getting made later because it was so popular (Machete).
...did you watch Tenet?
I did. I get it, there are valid criticisms in relation to the story, the characters and the sound mixing. There's enough good in there (memorable action scenes like the kitchen fight; interesting SF idea even if they don't stick the execution) that it's not a bad movie in my book.
Am I a total killjoy if I ask you to define "a stinker"? Just a film you personally dislike? So you're looking for a director whose every single film I like?
It's sort of an unfair question. All my favourite directors have at least one film I didn't like, with only one exception that comes to mind: Yorgos Lanthimos. But I haven't seen all of his work, so.
As for the Coen Brothers, Raising Arizona flew over my head to such extent that I only saw a part of the beginning. They are among my favourite directors though. Kubrick is another favourite but I didn't get Barry Lyndon. Lynch is my forever love but Inland Empire left me cold. And so on.
Yorgos Lanthimos is absolutely included in this list! great call.
Its funny -- Barry Lyndon is one of my favorite films, but I absolutely get why people don't like it. Everybody has films like that. I hate Fury Road so much and I've probably watched it three or four times (one black and silver, which was more interesting) -- it just isn't for me. I wasn't sure about Raising Arizona before (relatively neutral), but this time I really enjoyed it. Something clicked when I watched Moonstruck again -- I 'get' Cage's performances, no matter how unhinged they get. Its the strangest thing, but I think that gets the credit for my new appreciation of Raising Arizona.
For a stinker, you could absolutely put Inland Empire in there if it didn't land for you. But yeah, ultimately I'm going through an entire filmography for a director and I don't want to have to suffer through anything truly terrible. I don't mind skipping one or two, but I'm a bit of a completionist.
For a completionist, a bad film from a great director is a wonderful thing as it will significantly prolong the process!
After all, no matter how eagerly one wishes to complete, we all know there's no fun to be had after reaching the goal. Unless of course there's another equally great director to immerse yourself into, but at least in my opinion they aren't all too abundant.
I should probably force myself to see Barry Lyndon again.
Barry Lyndon is really neat from a lighting perspective, too. A lot of the scenes were shot with only candlelight, having reflectors hanging above the chandeliers to fill the space. I can't imagine how much they spent on candles for the production.
My watchlist has just over 2300 films in it... and I haven't added to it for quite a while. I'm not too concerned about finishing a filmography. Too many great films to watch.
My ability to fully enjoy a film is probably a lot lower than yours, but on the other hand I can watch the enjoyable ones countless times (at least I haven't yet hit a limit with any of them).
The lighting tech is actually one reason why I've been wanting to try Barry Lyndon again. At least if I end up disliking it, I can focus on that aspect. :)
is a fun swashbuckling satire :) i might read the novel, actually. let me know what you think when you’re on the other side
I have very mixed experiences with all his films, but they have all been worth watching for being so unique and different. Even though I didn't like Kinds of Kindness, I think it is brilliant he went out and made that crazy thing after the relative mainstream success of Poor Things - which also is his most "normal" film to date. Dogtooth is still my favorite though.
Dogtooth was my favourite for a long time as well, but the other two you mentioned have surpassed it for me, especially Kinds of Kindness. I consider it to be very close to perfection in every way.
Poor Things had a somewhat disappointing ending, and I'm not someone to focus on "plot" at all. It's just that the whole thing was teetering on the border between fresh expression and poor taste and then flopped to one side in the end, and I would have preferred the other side. In the grand scheme of things, it's excusable. Sort of like the one unnecessarily gross scene in Von Trier's Antichrist without which it would have been an even better film. It's still a very good film.
The first (and only?) director that I can think of, if I approach the question objectively, would be Andrei Tarkovsky. He didn't make many films but I think any of them could reasonably be called his best. They are just all very very good cinema.
From a more subjective point of view, I would argue that the filmographies of quite many directors fit the bill. Off the top of my head, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Claire Denis, Martin McDonagh, Werner Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola, Atom Egoyan and Hal Hartley are all extremely consistent. Not all of their films may be masterpieces, some may even stumble, but they all are worth a watch as they keep reaching towards something interesting. And often it's the films that try to push just a little too far, just a step beyond what is reasonable, which I end up loving the most.
I would have mentioned Tarkovsky, but I haven't seen enough of his work to evaluate fairly. More importantly, I don't speak Russian. I love The Mirror, it's one of my favourite films ever, but I'm also aware that I probably have little idea what it's actually about. I simply project my own interpretations and meaning onto it, which it allows me to do without fighting back too hard.
(I heard of a man who married a foreign lady despite the fact that neither of them knew each other's language. He told everyone they were deeply in love. The wife moved to the husband's country to live with him. After a few years they got divorced because she learned to speak his language. Turns out they weren't soulmates to the extent the man thought.)
To me it sounds like you have plenty of idea what it's about. For you. Some might argue that that's the whole point of engaging with art. :)
For me it is Stanley Kubrick and Michael Haneke.
Both filmmakers are for levels above most other directors for me, and every film is either a big or small masterpiece. Some are better than others, but their low bar is higher than most. It sounds like a pretentious cliche, but watching their films usually goes deeper on a philosophical emotional level. Especially Haneke is often deeply uncomfortable to watch, but I also think that makes it more interesting to reflect on as their films stay with me long afterwards. More questions than answers, more frustrations than nice conclusions.
Michael Haneke is one I need to tuck into. I've only seen Amour and maybe Funny Games --- I love Watts in everything she does.
Kubrick was a true master. Not much else to add to that. He's absolutely in my 'no stinker' list.
I love a film that really sticks with me. Have you seen Gaspar Noe's Vortex? It would make for an absolutely brutal double feature with Amour
Haven't seen Vortex yet but if it is anything like his other films, I can imagine it will be "fun".
Scorsese pretty much has the best hit ratio of any living director. I would include Nolan if it wasn’t for Tenet but I know a lot of people appreciate that film.
Hitchcock’s weakest film, To Catch a Thief, is still pretty good.
My biggest issues with both Scorsese and Nolan is that they primarily write "man movies" - women are either entirely non-existent, or are so paper-thin as to be primarily just window-dressing (and good luck ever passing the Bechdel test). It's really annoying after awhile. I am intrigued by Killers of the Flower Moon, and I was surprised to remember that Interstellar is a Nolan creation (and Murph is easily the most nuanced of the female characters I've seen in his films), but generally, I just don't want to watch their films anymore. Tenet is terrible for this and it's generally a hot mess.
Scorsese made one of the most influential films on motherhood. I also think his female characters in Goodfellas, The Age of Innocence, and Taxi Driver are layered. Even the female characters in something like The Wolf of Wallstreet are complex, especially Jordan’s wives. And he had a tremendous depiction of Kathryn Hepburn in The Aviator.
We'll just have to agree to disagree, I guess!
Tell us you're a guy without telling us you're a guy.
This is my reason why I cannot put Nolan in any top list. I actually do like all his movies, but since he is unable to properly represent 50% of the population, then he are no longer an actually truly great filmmaker. He has a ton of strengths though which puts him above a lot of others - but he will never be towards the top because of this.
Tenet felt so promising while I was watching it... and then it just finished and that was that. Cool concept, though.
I used to be a big Nolan fan, but I think something happened with The Dark Knight trilogy into Inception that caused Interstellar to have a lot of holes and to be visually strong but weak in all other areas (everybody disagrees with this and I won't bother defending it... I just think the back half lacks)
Even including television, Hitchcock still comes out really strong.
.... Tenet though... that crossover point was such a cool concept. I wish it delivered. If i find a good fanedit that actually fixes it, I'll let you know. :)
edit: gonna get this https://fanedit.org/tenet-live-was-i-ere-i-saw-evil/
I'll do a super hot take: I think Scorsese definitely has some misses.
For The Irishman he shoved a 2.5 hour movie into 3.5 hours. Shutter Island isn't good as either mystery or horror, because everything is so telegraphed that there isn't really a way to go than the way that it plods. Cape Fear and The Departed are both remakes that are worse than their originals.
I think that Scorsese knows so much about movies that his movies can almost become a caricature of whatever aspect of film making he is focusing on. Shutter Island is almost a caricature of foreshadowing; The Irishman is almost a caricature of plodding and methodical pacing.
I'm surprised no one has brought up Alejandro Iñárritu. 21 Grams, Birdman, and Bardo are all-time great films, just absolute masterpieces (some people might disagree with me about Bardo, but you gotta admit it's at least wildly ambitious, with significant follow-through). Babel and Biutiful are also excellent, though a little more straightforward in terms of theme/tone and plot, respectively. I think The Revenant gets a lot of undeserved hate because it has such a single-minded aesthetic, and you could also probably argue that Leo didn't deserve Best Actor for his performance in it, per se. But it's still a very enjoyable movie, honestly - albeit something you have to kind of let soak in, rather than obsess over intellectually. And Amores Perros is also really good, but maybe a little rough around the edges due to it being Iñárritu's first film. All in all, maybe not 'flawless' exactly, but it's hard for me to imagine many similarly-sized filmographies are much better than this.
I guess another good candidate would be Satoshi Kon. It's kind of a cop out, because of his untimely death at only 46, meaning he only ever directed 4 movies. But they're all phenomenal - Perfect Blue (the cult classic psychological thriller), Millennium Actress (the poignant, meditative piece about aging and the meaning of life), Tokyo Godfathers (the heartwarming dark comedy slash social commentary), and Paprika (the psychological sci-fi romp that is by turns disturbing and hilarious). Also, the one series that he was a showrunner for, Paranoia Agent, is also excellent, kind of like Twin Peaks in Tokyo. Really sad that he never got to complete his magnum opus (Dreaming Machine - which remains unfinished to this day).
I was about to suggest Satoshi Kon until I saw @eyechoirs already had... such a shame that he's gone!
Another likely candidate would be Isao Takahata, the other half of Studio Ghibli. I haven't quite seen everything from his filmography yet but they all seem to be critically acclaimed. I love how well he explores tender emotion without ever coming off as saccharine or cliché. Miyazaki himself has said he always was fighting to catch him.
:) my absolute favourite film of all time is Hot Fuzz, so possibly Edgar Wright. (Caveat: I have not yet seen 3: 1995 Fistful of Fingers, 2021 Sparks Brothers, and 2025 Running Man. And I've only watched Soho one time because I dislike horror/thrillers)
I don't think any of them were poorly received, right? Wiki Filmography
I haven't seen every film Guillermo del Toro has directed but I've seen no stinkers from him so far.
Flawless filmography is a tall task that I don't think any director would ever meet, but if I were to lax your criteria a bit, aside from some of the names mentioned, I'd add Julia Loktev, Maren Ade, and Kenneth Lonergan to the list, in that order. I would’ve mentioned Jonathan Glazer as well, but I’m morally opposed to his most recent work, despite it being an immaculate piece of filmmaking. (I'm mentioning it only because I couldn't think of another filmmaker who's one film away from meeting your criteria. I'm not interested in discussing the film.)
Firstly, I haven't seen everything by anyone.
Spielberg is prolific and considered one of the greatest living filmmakers. He came to my mind because of The Post, of all things, but he certainly has many other high quality works.
Rian Johnson's filmography is comparatively limited, but I love his mysteries and I enjoyed his approach to Last Jedi — I probably give him extra credit because of the reaction from the fandom.
Conversely, Nolan tops my list of least favorite directors by a long shot.
Wes Anderson films are usually not my cup of tea though I admire his distinct style and how carefully each shot is crafted. I thoroughly enjoyed Phoenician Scheme.
I'm going to take a risk and mention that I think everything wrong with Rian Johnson's contribution to that trilogy is not his fault, but mismanagement and a lack of project-wide coordination. Abrams was allegedly pissed off by it, but didn't seem to do anything to safeguard the continuity with his vision, either.
Yeah I share a similar view — Johnson did a stellar job and I think he produced a great Star Wars flick. Disney mismanaging their properties is a separate issue. But I'm the kind of guy that says, "I love Star Wars! I hate how the red shirts always die", just to mess with hardcore fans.
While Kubrick is the first answer that went to my mind and for which I believe most people would agree.
I have a few of them for which I love every of their films differently:
Cronenberg made one of my all time favourites with Eastern Promises. Such a great film.
I would say Lynch as well, may he rest in peace. I don't think Dune should be counted against him since it is so amazingly weird and wasn't exactly his vision that made it to theaters. His filmography will likely continue to age like fine wine!
I think Hong Sang-soo is pretty consistent. I don't necessarily agree with what each film is trying to say but I've never seen a Sang-soo film where it is bad because of poor directorial control.
Milos Forman is pretty close for me though I haven't seen every movie he's done but I've seen Black Peter, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Hair, Ragtime, Amadeus, The People vs Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon; they are all good or very good movies.
Tim Burton sometimes feels like he makes movies specifically that are crafted for my enjoyment, though I also haven't seen his full catalogue. Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Batman, Batma Returns, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks! The Nightmare Before Christmas (produced not directed I think, but still his fingerprints are all over it), Corpse Bride, Big Fish, Sweeney Todd, Beetlejuice. However, there's also Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to consider and they're ok at best.
Billy Wilder is maybe a good addition, though I can only think of a few of his that I have seen, so I'm not 100% sure. Some LIke It HOt, The Apartment, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity; all masterful.
I had a similar feeling with Wilder until I saw Seven Year Itch
The only thing I remember about that movie is the billowing dress on the subway grate and the fact that it is the iconic Marilyn picture and it is "from" that movie, but didn't actually appear in the movie.
Watching the movie is like watching a stand up comedian routine where you know all the punchlines and still don’t laugh.
Maybe I am too much of a contrarian, but I don't think I can say any director can meet that bar. All my favorites (Lynch, Kubrick, del Toro, Coen brothers, Tarantino, etc) have some that just aren't great IMO. That doesn't mean they aren't great directors, but "flawless filmography" feels like an impossible to meet bar even for the greats.