3. Wes Anderson
Owner of one of the most distinctive styles working today, Wes Anderson has made a name for himself with an ongoing collection of unconventional Indie films dealing with lives of dysfunctional groups of people. He primarily uses the same actors over and over again in his films: Bill Murray, Luke and Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman as well as many others appear in multiple Anderson films. This makes every Anderson movie feel as if they are connected in some way. Anderson is a somewhat divisive filmaker in that his films are sometimes criticized as style over substance due to his odd visual styling and his characters constant deadpan delivery of dialogue. Anderson's style is admittedly not for everyone but there is a poignancy to his films that lacking in most movies. All of his movies are about people who don't belong where they are or are misunderstood in some way, which is ironically indicative of how Anderson's movies are often misunderstood. In my opinion, Anderson has not made a bad movie in his career and, in particular, the Royal Tennenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom stand out as two of his best ever. On a side note, Moonrise Kingdom was was my favorite film of 2012 and it is was an awful snub by the Academy that it wasn't deemed one of the nine best movies to come out last year.
Filmography:Bottle Rocket (1996), Rushmore (1998), the Royal Tennenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), The Darjeeling Limited (2007), The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Moonrise Kingdom (2012)