Directors you love/hate?

[Neville]

Love: Clint Eastwood, John Carpenter, Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Peter Weller (yep, he has directed movies), John Dahl (Despite "Unforgetable" and "Rounders"), Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, John Woo (Only for "A bullet in the head" and "A better tomorrow II"), Brian DePalma, Paul Anderson (though only for "Event Horizon"), Paul Verhoeven.

Hate: Wes Craven, Randall Wallace, Albert Pyun, Joe Chapelle ("Phantoms", ugh!), Michael Bay ("Armaggeddon", "Bad Boys", "Pearl Harbor", triple ugh!)

[John]

Don't really have a particular 'love' list, but I do have one director that I absolutely hate; Anthony Hickox. Before I saw Waxwork, I saw a few scenes from it and it looked like a great horror movie. Then I actually saw it and found out that it was a really lame, unfunny comedy with little bits of drama thrown in. Hellraiser III was stupid and Sundown, The Vampire in Retreat was really bad. It had one scene I liked and the rest was garbage.

 I guess I should also add Joel Spewmacher to this list after what he did to the Batman movies...

[jmc]

I've seen previews for PEARL HARBOR.  That's more than enough evidence for me to know that I hate Michael Bay as a director.  

Paul Verhoven is kind of a guilty pleasure for me, but then again, I've never seen SHOWGIRLS.  

Spielberg...I kind of agree about not liking his moral posturing.  I enjoyed his earlier films, and MINORITY REPORT looks interesting, but I think he's always going to be second-rate when making serious films because he can't seem to be able to look at things in a complex manner, especially when it comes to "evil" characters.  SCHINDLER'S LIST would have been a lot better had he depicted the Nazi characters as ordinary people doing horrible things.  Instead, he makes them into homicidal maniacs who seem to be using Nazism as an excuse for things they probably would have done regardless.   I think an opportunity was missed  in not making the Nazi characters more sympathetic--to have the audience identify and relate to them would have said a lot about the potential for evil in mankind.  That's sort of what Coppola does in THE GODFATHER.  I think it takes a lot more skill to make a repulsive character sympathetic.

He also seems to pick easy topics where it's easy to get an emotional reaction out of people, like the holocaust.

[Lee]

Likes:

John Woo
Wes Craven
Sammo Hung
Jackie Chan
Sam Raimi
Yuen Woo-Ping(even though he's done some crap)
Brian DePalma
Sam Peckinpah
Alfred Hitchcock
Dan Coscarelli
Cory Yuen of old and sometimes of today.
many others.

Hates:

Woody Allen
Baz Lurhman(or however you spell it)
Kevin Smith
Lo Wei
That idiot that directed Charlie's Angels
Albert Pyun(most of the time)
Cory Yuen of today most of the time
Many others.

[raj]

The only director I hate is Roman Polanski, though I give him credit for Bitter Moon (a very disturbing flim, IMO).

Most others I can take or leave.  I figure everyone's got a few horrid movies in them.

[mr. henry]

i really hate the current batch of "a" list directors that are either overrated or directing unremarkable overrated sludge.

the two i really can't stand right now: (get ready...i'm in a bad mood today)
(many of my gripes are story-related gripes but that's no excuse for directors going with crappy writing.)

RONNIE HOWARD:
for some reason (temprorary insanity)i thought 'a beautiful mind' could survive even his sugary style...even maybe pompous overrated russel crowe...how wrong i was. what a dumb movie geared to tricking idiots into thinking they were getting insight into the mind of a genius...and his theory was what again??? nope...nash's theories are never explained. in life nash never talked to hallucinations...he only heard voices...he was in many! institutions (not just one)...and he cheated on his wife and they were divorced..and due to his disease, he often held delusional racist views...all topics that ronnie howard isn't mature enough to tackle.

SODERBERGH:  (directs like a kid with his first jumbo box of crayons)
ok, i've only seen "limey" and "traffic." limey survived the directing style only because the main character was pretty strong. but "traffic"?...completely horrible...like a tv-movie financed by the reagan administration and written by a clueless sunday school teacher...

for instance: a drug czar that is schooled by upper-middle class teens...sigh.

for instance 2: the way that kid talked to michael douglass after the daughter disappears...the kid that got her involved with heroin...would anyone not reach over and yank this brat's heart out. he's yelling at her father while they are looking for her!---it's all very like that anti-drug ad "you!! you dad!!! i learned it from watching YOU!!!"

for instance 3: the drug trafficer's wife discovers a way to high-pressure cocaine into little porcelain dolls?...what the fu...? what planet is she supposed to be from...she was supposed to be ignorant of her husband's business practices and now she's some sort of untouchable brillian wizard..oh, i see it's a "money and drugs can REALLY change people" kinda message. people in the hood use drugs to escape and rich people traffic them to feed their children and pay for tai bo classes...yeah yeah, we get it.

and people who talk about soderbergh lighting the different stories differently...WTF?!!!...oh, that's new..AND brilliant. oscar oscar oscar.

-mr. h
while i realized i have never made a movie, it's still  fun to beeyatch

[Sploid The Noid]

I like how you hate Micheal Bay but have NEVER SEEN ONE OF HIS MOVIES!    
I don't like or dislike him  but I don't understand how you hate him without ever seeing a movie of his...

[Steven Millan]

         Two more hateful,extremely sucking  filmmakers who I forgot to add here:
             Director Roland Emmerich("Godzilla","Independence Day")and his producer buddy Dean Devlin.
           These two lowly excuses of human beings have made so much cinematic equalient of muck,that they nearly make Michael Bay look like Orson Welles(sorry,Orson,but I'm trying to make a point here).
             Roland and Dean richly deserve to be hanged from a tree,and have hungry rats ravage all over their entire bodies,and chew them down toi the bone!!!
            Especially for what they did to my old childhood friend Godzilla!!
         A most fitting punishment for them,wouldn't you all say?!