The Directors (2018– ) User Reviews

Going downhill

[dMraco765 · 3/10 · 23 March 2022]

This, and its sister show Discovering Film (which concentrates on acotors), are both going downhill now the show has moved on from classic Hollywood.

A lot of the modern directors, such as Jonathan Demme, don't have much weight, or they've literally made ONE highly acclaimed film and laughably get an episode (John Singleton & Antoine Fuqua). If one masterwork is really enough, there are hundreds of directors who've been overlooked by the series. Another problem is there are too many clips and not enough context.

I'm also puzzled as to why the show has become so narrowly focused on Hollywood. They used to explore world cinema, with diverse shows on the likes of people from Sergei Eisenstein to Claudia Cardinale. Now they seem to bypass legends like Wener Herzog to focus on middle-of-the-road, at best, modern Hollywood filmmakers. They have skipped too many legends, too much of the world, and we're left with a show that recounts the last few decades of an increasingly narrow film world. There's little left to discover in these shows, but the magic is still out there if they could find it again. . .

Shallow

[grantss · 5/10 · 11 April 2020]

A documentary series that examines the key directors in the history of film. Each episode looks at a specific director.

Dull and doesn't add much to one's knowledge of the directors or of film in general. Each episode is just a linear telling of their directorial career, revealed movie by movie. The narration and interviews with critics are all of the cheerleading type, i.e. all just saying how great the director is, what a great movie that particular movie was (even when it was known to be poor). No criticisms, no in-depth knowledge, nothing edifying or interesting.

It's so incredibly shallow. You could get the same amount of knowledge reading the director's list of credits on IMDB and more knowledge by reading their Wikipedia entry.