6. Sofia Coppola
Best Film: Lost in Translation (2003) Sofia Coppola is another director that has received an unfair amount of criticism mostly due to her gender. With her Godfather-helming father Francis, and relatives like Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman, Coppola has been derided as a byproduct of nepotism in Hollywood. She was admittedly terrible as an actress in the third film of the Godfather series, and the dreadful short that she co-wrote with her father in New York Stories has been graciously forgotten. But you can't make a great movie like Lost in Translation without talent (and Bill Murray). Her debut feature The Virgin Suicides in 1999 established that she could hold her own as a director, but Lost in Translation remains one of the masterworks of the 21st Century. She earned one of the four Academy Award nominations for Best Director as a woman, and she deserved it. Her status as a critical darling has taken some hits since: Marie Antoinette was an underrated examination of wealthy powerlessness, the unfortunate pondering of Somewhere was righteously maligned, but this year's The Bling Ring featured more than just Emma Watson pole dancing (much to the surprise of skeevy internet dwellers). Satirizing youth celebrity-obsessed culture may seem like an easy target, but it deals with the easily criticized subject matter with surprising gravitas, and The Bling Ring showed that she still has talent to spare.