Directors Martin Scorsese, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg each notch three films in the top 50, more than any other directors.
Scorsese and Spielberg owned the late ‘70s through ‘90s, the former tending toward gritty character studies (“Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull”), the latter toward big-budget epics (“Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Saving Private Ryan”). Remarkably, Jackson ties the two legends, earning a top slot for all three entries of the Lord of the Rings series.
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Icons like Francis Ford Coppola and Alfred Hitchcock earn only two slots each, which might speak to the recency bias inherent in modern film websites, and to some extent, our methodology. Along the same lines, directing luminaries Orson Welles (“The Third Man,” 1949) and Stanley Kubrick (“Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” 1964) earn only one top film apiece.
