10 Strange All-Time Favorite Movies Of Great Directors

There were a lot of interesting comments when I posted the all-time best lists of some of the greatest directors of all-time (click HERE). The most recurrent detail people kept noticing from was how Michael Mann listed "Avatar" as one of his 10 greatest films of all-time. Eclectic choice, right? Well, I researched and found these other 9 nuggets. Some of these are much worse than Mann's praise of the 2009 James Cameron mega-blockbuster. 

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Alfred Hitchcock - "Smokey and The Bandit"/"Benji"

Hitchcock’s daughter Patricia confirmed what some had heard offhand – that Hitch’s favorite movie was the massively popular but critically unbeloved 1977 Burt Reynolds backwoods chase flick. “He made his films for the audience and for entertainment – not for the critics or for self-pleasure.” To drive the point home, the other movie she namedropped as a favorite of the late director that night? “Benji.”

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Martin Scorsese - "The Exorcist II: The Heretic"

"I like the first Exorcist...but The Heretic surpasses it"

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Paul Thomas Anderson - "Men In Black III"

“Did you see ‘Men In Black III’?” he continues. “It was [expletive] great. . . .  The time-travel stuff [made me] cry my eyes out. I’m a sucker for that stuff.”

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Nicolas Windig Refn - "My Life as a Dog"

I saw this film with my mother when I was very young. It’s the only movie aside from It’s a Wonderful Life during which I’ve cried because I was happy.

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Michael Mann - "Avatar"

"is a brilliant synthesis of mythic tropes", with debts to Lévi-Strauss and Frazier’s The Golden Bough.

which "soars because, simply, it stones and transports you".

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Stanley Kubrick - "White Men Can't Jump"

This is a brilliant movie—the movie I’ve always wanted to make about jealousy. You will not understand what I’m saying, but you must believe me: The studio decides before the movie is ever released how it’s going to do. It has nothing to do with you.’“

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Quentin Tarantino - "Psycho II"

"Psycho II was the best performance of Perkins’ career. I like Psycho II better than Psycho” he continued, and went on to say that in fact he liked every remake of Psycho, including the Gus Van Sant version, better than the original Psycho, that he didn’t like the original Psycho that much at all, or any of Hitchcock’s work, for that matter. In fact, he said he liked all Hitchcock-esque films — except those by Truffaut — better than Hitchcock. Touché."

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Terrence Malick - "Zoolander"

Malick's apparently so enamoured with the film that he regularly watches it, quotes it to friends and organises film festivals with Zoolander included in the line-up. Rumour has it that Stiller even once recorded a special birthday message for Malick in character as Derek Zoolander.