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I adore directors. The reason(s) why I watch a movie is usually whether I'm interested in the story and/or I like the director. When I found a good movie, I mark the director for my future reference.

However, I can’t really tell who my favorite director is. The reason is, I don’t watch enough of their movies. Not representative enough to claim I prefer his/her work over the others. So I try to count my movie-per-director number as shown on graphic below.


The names are in alphabetical order (with N for Garin Nugroho). They're not exactly my favorites, just the names pop off in my head when I surfed through IMDb. In fact I forgot a few names that I also consider in my watch-or-not decision. But there they are. I also only consider feature film and exclude short movie, video and TV movie (as far as I know, I don’t check each one of them). That’s how I got 100% for Garin.

Well, because I’ve mentioned Garin twice, let’s discuss about him first. I only put one Indonesian director because on my recently-watch list, he’s the only one who has long enough career and still make movie until now. If I put Chaerul Umam, I probably get 30-40% (I’m really too lazy to check on Katalog Film Indonesia), but he doesn’t make movie anymore. I can also put Joko Anwar and get 100%, but of course he’s only made one movie so far.

I got 50-60% for David Fincher, Peter Jackson, Danny Boyle, Tim Burton and Robert Rodriguez. I like them all, they have style. I always thought that Tim Burton is the closest to what-so-called-my-favorite director, but apparently I missed more than 40% of his movies. I think I got above 50% for the rest because they’re young and haven’t made as much movie as—let say—Woody Allen (whom I like very much but only got 13%). But yeah, I like them and I wait for more work from them. (From this young-and-have-style lot I also count Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and I think there is more but I can’t remember, hehe).

What the hell Tony Scott’s doing there? Well, I like him, hehe. Enemy of the State is one of my favorite movies even though it’s been played in TV for maybe the tenth time. And I put Lasse Hallström because I just enjoyed What’s Eating Gilbert Grape so much, again. Of course I got such low number because he made his early works (including adaptation of Astrid Lindgren’s Barnen i Bullerbyn) in Sweden.

And Bryan Singer? Well yeah, I watch Superman Returns because of him. Hate to say that even though the cast were great (and I like how Brandon Routh resembles Christopher Reeve) and the humor was also good, the movie was not dramatic enough nor heroic enough nor comical enough. Overall, it was dull.