10. Ivan Reitman – Ghostbusters

In retrospect, it’s damn close to a miracle that a film as funny and inventive as Ghostbusters ever came out of the hands of a director like Ivan Reitman. Sure, just before Ghostbusters, he did one early semi-classic with Bill Murray called Stripes, but let’s not go out of our way overrating that movie. It was a silly film. No more, no less. But apart from that, the guy has made one misguided movie after another and worst of all, they are all genuinely unfunny comedies. This is the guy that single-handedly dug a grave for Robert Redford when they made Legal Eagles, something he has never quite recovered from.

9. Bryan Singer – The Usual Suspects

Here’s a guy who made one of the most awesome films ever with The Usual Suspects and then proceeded to spit me in the face time after time with mediocre to simply plain bad super hero movies, horribly incoherent special effects feasts like Jack the Giant Slayer and even a film with Tom Cruise as a Nazi. Who can forget the fantastic screenplay and the wonderful cast. This is the movie that put Kevin Spacey, in conjunction with his role in 'Seven', which was released the same year, and Benicio Del Toro on my and most people’s radar, not to mention great performances by Gabriel Byrne, Kevin Pollak, Chazz Palminteri , Pete Postlethwaite, Giancarlo Esposito and Dan Hedaya. It was shot well, edited well, written well, acted well and one hell of a fun ride with a twist for the history books.

8. Russell Mulcahy – Highlander

A surely less controversial pick is Russell Mulcahy. Do you even know that name? The first sequel to 'Highlander', which is a top contender for worst sequel ever made. It might not be a great work of cinema but boy, was it inspired and a lot of fun. The tale of a bunch of immortals chopping each other’s heads off throughout the centuries is B-movie heaven and became immensely popular once it was released on video. It is the only speaking part Christopher Lambert is somewhat tolerable in, has Sean Connery as a Spanish dude called Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez and a fantastic villain in The Kurgan, played with gusto by Clancy Brown.

7. Boaz Yakin – Fresh

Whatever happened to Boaz Yakin? You might not know that name and you might not even know the movie Fresh but that would be a real shame. It’s a wonderful directorial debut about a street-smart ghetto kid trying to stay alive and help out his family by being a delivery boy for local drug dealers. It has a great central performance by the then 14 year old Sean Nelson and also some stand-out supporting roles from Samuel L. Jackson and Giancarlo Esposito. The movie was produced by Lawrence Bender, who came hot of the success of 'Reservoir Dogs' and 'Killing Zoe' and would also produce a little movie called 'Pulp Fiction' the same year and it features another memorable soundtrack by the ex-drummer of The Police, Stewart Copeland.

6. Hideo Nakata – Ring

Hideo Nakata had made one horror film previous to Ringu called Joyurei, but it was hardly seen in the West and a modest success in his native Japan. I featured some bizarre footage which makes it way into the film the characters in the movie are shooting, reminiscent in tone of the footage that the rest of the world would get to know soon enough when 'Ring' was released. It was a worldwide horror success and spawned an enormous amount of sequels, spin-offs, imitations and remakes in its wake. It even added a new specific sub-genre to vernacular of popular culture: J-horror or Japanese Horror. After 'Ring', every Asian horror film, and some non Asian horror films, seemed to feature a girl with long black hair in front of her face. Sadako crawling out of the television set, in that creepy spider-like stop-motion manner, still keeps eveyone up at night. 

5. Joel Schumacher – Falling Down

Joel Schumacher is the man who has made so many forgettable features that there is no doubt that he himself would be forgotten if it wasn’t for the fact that he made the awful 'Batman & Robin'. 'Falling Down' is a great little flick. It has a stand-out central performance by Michael Douglas. A clear social commentary on the disappearing middle class and the pressures of modern capitalist society, 'Falling Down' manages to be a serious and dramatic yet also a highly entertaining film. Douglas is fantastic as the guy who has had enough and isn’t going to take it any more as he explodes in violence against the flawed society he sees all around him, whilst the always great Robert Duvall is fantastic as the cop on the brink of retirement who needs to bring him in.

4. John Singleton – Boyz N the Hood

John Singleton hit the ground running with his debut 'Boyz N the Hood' but stumbled immediately after and never managed to get up again. After Spike Lee opened the floodgates with 'Do The Right Thing' two years earlier, Boyz N the Hood was seen as part of a new black film movement and it was the first mainstream movie to deal with gang violence in LA. It received lots of praise and nominations whilst also winning quite a few awards throughout the United States. And just like in it was John Singleton’s debut and only great work, it also featured the debut of rapper Ice Cube, who gave a memorable performance but would never reach those heights as an actor again.

3. Tony Scott – True Romance

In all fairness you could do a lot worse than Tony Scott when it comes to brainless Hollywood action fare. That being said, you could do a whole lot better too. He has the classic 'Top Gun' to his name, not a high-mark in the history of cinema but it does have its merits for the type of film it is. The screenplay was written by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, the same guys who one year later would bring us 'Pulp Fiction'. It was sold to the studio before the now renowned director made 'Reservoir Dogs' but released afterward. The dialogues are 100% classic Tarantino and endlessly enjoyable and quotable. The cast is also memorable, with Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Gary Oldman, Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Brad Pitt, Tom Sizemore, Chris Penn, James Gandolfini, Val Kilmer and Samuel L Jackson.

2. Jan De Bont – Speed

Another fantastic directorial debut, which was followed by a bunch or mediocre to just plain awful films, Jan de Bont’s Speed remains a highlight of Hollywood action film. In 1994 he decided to make the jump to the director’s chair and delivered 'Speed', a film which was a box-office as well as a critical sensation and a really lean and tightly directed piece of action cinema. It might also have helped that even though he did not write the script, Joss Whedon was brought in as a script doctor and wrote about all of the dialogue for the movie. 

1. M. Night Shyamalan – The Sixth Sense

It’s an obvious number one but this guy so deserves to be here. M Night Shyamalan burst onto the scene in 1999 with 'The Sixth Sense'. It wasn’t his debut but it sure as hell felt like one as no one had ever heard of this guy before. The movie became a box-office sensation and even a critical darling, being nominated for a whole bunch of awards, although ultimately not winning that many of significance. Everybody seemed to love the movie and its notorious twist, a trick Shyamalan would later become infamous for.