Although it is just plain fun to rank a director's movies, it may also help me think about the director's oeuvre of work as a whole. Comparisons can help me to discover elements of film that I am drawn to, what the director finds value in revealing through their movies and possibly how the director has grown artistically.
Alex Garland often uses high-concept sci-fi stories to explore possible, fearful near futures or current social problems with the use of elements of horror. He distills these big issues within stories that focus on a small group of characters and how they deal with what is going on within the unusual premises. Often, the characters are often overwhelmed and relatively powerless in…
Although it is just plain fun to rank a director's movies, it may also help me think about the director's oeuvre of work as a whole. Comparisons can help me to discover elements of film that I am drawn to, what the director finds value in revealing through their movies and possibly how the director has grown artistically.
Alex Garland often uses high-concept sci-fi stories to explore possible, fearful near futures or current social problems with the use of elements of horror. He distills these big issues within stories that focus on a small group of characters and how they deal with what is going on within the unusual premises. Often, the characters are often overwhelmed and relatively powerless in the face of what is happening, rather finding ways to cope.
Garland's main characters are very often dealing with past traumas that have long-lasting impacts and currently haunt them, sometimes obscurely revealed through short and frequent flashbacks or through dialogue. Usually his main characters are women who have trauma because of or perpetrated by men and part of the thematic character involvement revolves around women's strength in working through or moving forward despite the great power the trauma has over them.
Garland utilizes striking and fear-inducing imagery to visualize the strength and potency trauma has over his characters and by extension, society overall. In this way he causes an audience to investigate their own fears over the kinds of subjects he explores and the bigger, social problems that perpetuate these kinds of social fears.
Other directors I have ranked:
JJ Abrams | PT Anderson | Wes Anderson | Judd Apatow | Darren Aronofsky | Ari Aster | Sean Baker | Bong Joon-ho | Jane Campion | Charlie Chaplin | Damien Chazelle | Coen Brothers | Sofia Coppola | Cameron Crowe | Andrew Dominik | Robert Eggers | David Fincher | Greta Gerwig | Todd Haynes | Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu | Jim Jarmusch | Rian Johnson | Spike Jonze | Satoshi Kon | Stanley Kubrick | Sergio Leone | Richard Linklater | George Lucas | David Lynch | Martin McDonagh | Steve McQueen | Sam Mendes | Nancy Meyers | Hayao Miyazaki | Jeff Nichols | Christopher Nolan | Alexander Payne | Sarah Polley | Lynn Ramsay | Céline Sciamma | Ben Stiller | Quentin Tarantino | Andrei Tarkovsky | Taika Waititi | Edgar Wright | Chloé Zhao
