The most gravely serious of celluloid clowns. Always ‘New York’s neurotic nebbish’. In a wry article for the Guardian Guide, pick September...
The king of ensemble satire. Never happier than when filming twenty simultaneously yammering actors from atop a giant crane. His films reflect...
The socialist Eisenstein. Had a rough time of it at school, by all accounts. ‘The introverts always scream the loudest.’ ‘Not true!...
The baron of bloodshed. His colleagues advised him that using contemporary synthesised prog rock to soundtrack his films would cause them to...
An institution. Always ‘the indefatigable Sir Dickie’. The professional’s professional. Never approaches the cinematic wicket at half-cock, however small the job. Only...
In a wry article for the Guardian Guide, always ‘the sombre Swede’. More people have filmed humorous sketches parodying The Seventh Seal...
The stylist’s stylist. So confident of his own talent he thinks nothing of spending $50 million filming an idle daydream he had...
He only makes a film every six years, but every one is a masterpiece. If someone mentions Exorcist II: the Heretic, say:...
A decidedly wayward comic talent. Consistency may elude him, but on his day he can turn a plate of beans, a comfort...
Scourge of the establishment. He knew better than anyone the dark, perverted heart beating at the centre of the Catholic church. ‘Of...
The spindly small-town elf who made Goth respectable. The Obergruppenfuhrer of odd. ‘When he was a little boy, the circus left to...
Mention his ‘unmatched on-set generalship’. The De Mille de nos jours. He may not know one end of a camera from the...
The no-budget polymath. Never happier than when directing a high- octane action sequence with one hand and simultaneously playing the score on...
The folie de grandeur that was Heaven’s Gate may have put paid to the idea of the true Hollywood auteur once and...
Always ‘those enigmatic sibling auteurs, the mysterious Coen brothers’. Only they truly understand their own films. In a wry article for the...
Always ‘the bearded colossus of the sprawling American saga’. The director’s director. In a wry article for the Guardian Guide, speculate on...
The budget behemoth. Personally oversaw more than two thousand motion pictures from 1960-65 alone, on an average budget of fifty dollars apiece....
Always ‘British cinema’s prodigal son, the much-maligned maverick Alex Cox’. His films may not be to anyone’s taste, but you have to...
The Dauphin of decomposition. Make reference to his ‘Freudian use of prosthetics’. Can’t adapt books for toffee. His catalogue of aesthetic obsessions...
The Primark Hitchcock. ‘Unfair! While it’s true that anyone with money and a megaphone could have made the shot-for-shot remake of Vertigo...
A decidedly wayward comic talent. Consistency may elude him, but on his day he can turn a pool cue, a toilet roll...
Always ‘the Master’. Philip French writes: ‘Fellini’s La Dolce Vita marks the consummation of his ‘mature’ style. Gone are the self-conscious neo-realist...
In a wry article for the Guardian Guide, make mocking references to Nescafe adverts.
Always ‘the Master’. He painted the broad canvas of the American west with the meticulous brush of personal dignity. ‘Of course, the...
Turned a dime-store horror novel into a milestone of modern cinema. Mark Kermode writes: ‘Not only is The Exorcist the scariest film...
Paradoxically, the eternal child of Hollywood is now making more mature films than any of your so-called Dogme school of directors. Has...
The cold-hearted romantic. Who else but Godard could take a minor Gregory Peck western, strip it apart shot by shot, then reassemble...
The middle-brow’s middle-brow. Creates visual enigmas rather than films in the conventional, Hollywood sense. Has a knowledge of the classical painters so...
Always ‘the steely-eyed Teutonic polymath’. Never felt a film was worthwhile if it didn’t involve hypnotising his all-dwarf cast to drag a...
Always ‘the Master’. His influence remains so all-pervasive in modern cinema it is perfectly possible to write a wry article about his...
The erstwhile brigadier of bachelor rudery has grown up to become the chief petty officer of children’s slapstick. In a wry profile...
The harbourmaster of heritage. His chocolate box recreations of our colonial past are now so internationally renowned they are in danger of...
The Grand Moff of gore. In a review of his latest blockbuster, be sure to mention how far he’s come since the...
The gay Spike Lee. Scourge of the establishment. Would think nothing of making a Pig Latin musical in which Michelangelo is transported...
The controversial Irish firebrand. Roguish male punters should allude to the lasting impression made by an adolescent encounter with Danielle Dax in...
The middle-brow’s middle-brow. Always ‘that bearded recluse, the shy, indefatigable Stanley Kubrick’. Perennially mistreated by his countrymen, he sought refuge from the...
The doyen of disembowelment. A greater influence on Hollywood than Hitchcock and Truffaut combined. ‘He borrowed our mise-en-scene, now we’re borrowing it...
With The Blues Brothers, he took the one Saturday Night Live sketch with no discernible jokes, and turned it into a multi-million...
Always ‘the Master’. Would think nothing of spending a fortnight on getting a three-second seascape shot just so. More fond of trains...
A director from over there who did rather well over here. He brought speeded-up film back out of the silent age to...
A terrible waste of talent. ‘Ah, but though eighty percent of his oeuvre is undeniably formulaic pap, is he not Hollywood’s only...
The Dead End Kid who married Gloria Vanderbilt and never looked back. The actor’s director. A master technician, who thinks nothing of...
The wing-commander of weird. Never happier than when filming scenes of oxygen-fuelled rape, thuggish violence and steamy lesbo-dwarf sex, yet is physically...
Cinema’s mysterious recluse. Makes just one film every 16 1/2 years, but every one is a masterpiece. For aesthetic reasons, only shoots...
The stylist’s stylist. Yet there’s so much more to his oeuvre than the rolled-up jacket sleeve and mirrored sunglass of popular cliché.
While the Carry Ons, Confessions films et al are worthy only of pitying derision, the true film buff can find much to...
He may have learnt his trade pointing a camera at Simon le Bon on an elephant, but that’s no reason to deny...
The unsung artisan of American angst. In an article on visual style, mention ‘frames within frames’. His deft, peek-a-boo camerawork lent a...
Scourge of the establishment. In a wry article for the Guardian Guide, always say ‘like his fictional comedic namesake, he’s still angry!’...
He knew better than anyone the dark, perverted heart beating at the centre of the Catholic church. Mention that, despite the contents...