A film director can work for decades and never make anything approaching a good film. Often within the movie industry, wannabe directors can strive for years and years and never get close to making a feature film - that's what makes the directors on this list so extraordinary. They have been extraordinarily consistent over a substantial amount of time, never allowing the quality of their art to shrink. Some of the very greats have made poor films. Hitchcock made numerous clangers such as Family Plot, Topaz and Lifeboat amongst his formidable filmography. Francis Ford Coppola, director of the greatest film of all time (The Godfather Part II) has not made a good film for a while now and Billy Wilder did his best to taint his legacy with his late career output of Fedora and Buddy Buddy. I decided a certain criteria was needed for a list like this, so put simply, to be eligible the director needs to have directed a minimum of three movies and documentaries and short films are not included.
10. Shane Meadows
Filmography:
Small Time, Twenty Four Seven, A Room for Romeo Brass, Once Upon A Time in the Midlands, Dead Man's Shoes, This is England, Somers Town, Le-Donk & Scor-zay-zee. Shane Meadows is the working-class hero of modern British cinema, his films feature socially realistic situations, often in the Midlands. He's the 21st century version of Mike Leigh, dosing his films in wry British humour without losing any of the harsh realism that is so important and prominent in his films. Ten years after making his debut as a director, he shot into the national consciousness with the release of his extraordinary masterpiece, This is England. This is England was one of the very best films of the last decade and by far the finest movie of 2006. Meadows has tried his hand at other genres too - he revolutionised the revenge thriller with Dead Man's Shoes and his mockumentary Le-Donk & Scor-zay-zee was one of the funniest films of the last decade, whilst still maintaining a sense of social realism. Meadows doesn't need to do anything fancy to manipulate his audience, he just creates interesting and likeable characters in realistic settings that people can relate to. Somers Town is a very quiet intimate drama that follows two teenage boys - one a Polish immigrant and the other a runaway from the Midlands. It's a wonderful character study and perfectly captures the trials and tribulations of being a lonely teenage boy - heartbreak, the yearning for love and acceptance and tricky parental relationships. What Meadows does so effectively is something incredibly simple and something all aspiring filmmakers should look at. He fills his films with believable, intrinsically flawed but relatable characters that it's impossible not to love. It's a simple trick and a large reason why all his films are so enjoyable, interesting and thrilling.