10. Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino is one of the most influential directors of his generation; a film obsessive who learnt everything he knows from working in a video rental store, he burst onto the scene with Reservoir Dogs in the early '90s and pretty much blew everyone away with the sheer audacity and uniqueness of his debut. There's no denying that Dogs is a great film, of course, and the same goes for Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained - these are all the works of somebody who has a clear and unashamed love of cinema. Everyone knows, of course, that Tarantino's idea of a film derives from taking bits and pieces from hundreds of other films and pulling them together to create something fresh; he's the directorial equivalent of a hip hop artist, and he's always wore his influences on his sleeve. The problem, though, is that his pictures, though ripe with memorable dialogue cues and witty cultural references, lack substance; you rarely take anything away from a Tarantino movie other than a checklist of films you should go see. next. And his pictures - Jackie Brown aside, perhaps - lack any sort of emotional heart or proper plottings. He also seems to be regressing as a filmmaker; his pictures are becoming more noticeable in their homage-clad style, less interested in trying to seamlessly blend elements of originality with all those cinematic references. Still, because Tarantino serves as something of a poster boy for every movie buff who aims to take Hollywood by storm, his shortcomings are rarely touched upon; people idolise him because, after all, he's one of the geeks.