3. Justin Lin
Also known as the man who made Vin Diesel a box office star again, Justin Lin has delivered in the past three years two of the best films I've seen in the cinema. It's a sad state of affairs when you it's a break to see a blockbuster whose third act doesn't feature two robots hitting each other, which is what seems to be dominating our multiplexes these days. Iron Man, Transformers or most of the recent Marvel output has all been following the same formula. Justin Lin seems to be from the Christopher Nolan school of directing where the idea is, if you can actually do it, why don't you? Dragging a bank vault down the streets of Rio, or bouncing Vin Diesel off the hoods of cars. He's a director that understands that it's not the same seeing actors pick up an easy paycheck for to sit in a black room, whilst the CGI programmers do all the work. He want's actors out there front and centre. So if it's bringing down a transport plane, on what is admittedly the worlds longest runway, or if it's stopping a tank with a squashed car, Lin knows how best to show that to an audience all the while making it clear that if his film cost $150 million, you're going to see where that money went.