I was just wondering this. How common is it to see all the movies from a specific director? Of course, if you a scholar, why not, but what if you are just a fan? Even if you love Passion of Jean D’Arc, Gertrud and Vampyr, would you go out of your way to see all of Dreyer’s earlier movies?

I bring Carl Theodor Dreyer up specifically because I though he might be someone from whom I’ve seen at least a majority of his films, because he made movies very slowly for someone who worked in the silent era (when you would sometimes push out a short every day), but turns out that while I have seen most of his post-Passion output (where he only made five movies in about 40 years), he had been very active in the years before Passion when he made a movie a year on average from 1919 to 1926, of which I knew nothing about.

So, that was a fail. Also, it gave me a feeling that there can’t have been that many directors from whom I’ve seen all of their filmography. There always seems to be those lesser known works no-one ever discusses for a reason. It seems there are quite a fee directors I’ve seen everything from except for one or two films (like Peter Jackson, Denis Villeneuve, George Lucas, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sergio Leone, Stanley Kubrick, Chantal Akerman, Lynne Ramsay – although that one I can probably fix in the near future)

However, I realized I need to make ground rules. So, no shorts, no documentaries, no unfinished films, no TV, no co-directed films, only directors with enough movies to be considered career directors (so, no Charles Laughton, no Barbara Loden, no Anna Eriksson – although she might make it some day, but I’m not quite sure where the limit should be, but I’m putting it at five movies minimum). I might have missed some. In fact, I foresee myself waking up in the middle of the night just to make sure I haven’t seen all the movies from some specific semi-obscure director.

Let’s get to it.

Pier Paolo Pasolini is an easy place to begin. Some years ago I made a deliberate attempt to watch all his movies. This wasn’t easy as not all of his movies are readily available but since there’s only 12 of them, I did manage to do it. “Only 12” seems pretty absurd since most directors would probably be happy to get to that number, but for someone who worked in the 60s and 70s, that is not a huge number and is largely limited by his untimely death (by murder) at 50 and his other works (of which there are a lot of).

David Lynch was pretty easy in this regard. I never even had to make any effort. This just kind of happened. I even have all of his movies on physical media, although Dune is a pretty recent purchase just out of interest in contrast to the new ones.

John Waters is another director I made a deliberate attempt to find all of his movies. One of them has never really been released outside of very limited VHS release, so this wasn’t easy either. Still, I managed to find that one on YouTube. Not that his other movies were necessarily easy to find either. He isn’t the most streaming friendly director and while he is widely known, his audience has never been very big. Also, I fully understand why some of his movies are not in print as they are pretty boring. He has returned to directing again after over 20 years, so I’ll have to remember to see Liarmouth as well at some point.

I don’t know what Quentin Tarantino is doing these days, but considering his recent comments and actions, I’m done with him. For me, he is now in the “dead to me until he is actually dead” camp. He doesn’t seem to be working on any movies anyhow.

Yorgos Lanthimos is one of those I had to work on, but not that much. Some of his early movies he made in Greece were pretty hard to find but I managed. Was it worth it? I don’t know. They are, at the very least, interesting even if they aren’t good.

CHristopher Nolan I forgot he made that one movie about a cop who can’t sleep in Alaska the name of which I can’t remember right now even though I just checked it. It starred Al Pacino and Robin Williams. Anyhow, this is on the easier side even though he has made quite a few movies at this point.

I was pretty surprised about having seen all Rian Johnson films. I didn’t even remember he had directed Brothers Bloom… a movie I didn’t remember having seen, but based on IMDb I have and I do have some vague memory of it. Not his proudest moment.

Jeremy Saulnier is another surprising one. I kind of forgot he had made five movies. The last two are just that forgettable, which is a pity, as both Blue Ruin and Green Room are so great.

Osgood Perkins has been very active lately. After six movies, I do still get a little excited about his movies. I know Keeper wasn’t a fan favorite, but I did like that one as well. However, I would argue he is one of those directors whose whole career has been a slow decline, but he also has had a lot of room to decline into.

Alex Garland is in the same camp but his decline has been faster. We go from my favorite sci-fi movie (Ex Machina) to something very uninspired (Warfare), although now that I think about it, if I take out Warfare (which was a co-directing gig), he shouldn’t be on this list… Hmm…

Peter Strickland on the other hand has been great all along. Well, I’m not the biggest fan of In Fabric but his four other movies are all these weird little gems.

I can’t believe I almost forgot David Fincher. While I’m pretty much over him now, there was a point in time where I was a huge fan of his. I still like certain of his movies very much, but as I’ve seen more and more movies from a wider variety of directors, he has kind of fallen on side. I guess he’s more like a great Hollywood director than a great director to me.

Okay, so that’s who I was able to come up with at this point. Quite a few contemporary directors, because they have fewer of those intermediary projects between the projects they really want to do. Just look at someone like Billy Wilder. He made so, so many mediocre movies on top of making about a dozen all-time great movies. Also, finding movies from contemporary directors is often easier even if they are now often hidden in the streaming jungle. It does mean I will have to work to keep these people on the list. Maybe. Garland? Do I bother at this point? Tarantino? Again, I’m done.