Best Consecutive “Great Movies” Streak a Director Has Ever Had?

Last night’s comments section for Coppola had an interesting time-waster: The finest 4-5 consecutive "great" movie streaks from a filmmaker.

This idea originally came to me after Coppola had four of his films crack our 1970s critics poll. That’s something we have not seen in any of the other polls we conducted from the ‘60s, ’80s, ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s.

Kubrick had two films crack our ‘60s poll. PTA also two in our ’90s and 2010s polls. That’s about it. Sometime early next year, when the ’50s poll is conducted, Hitchcock has a decent shot at having three of his masterpieces hit the top 10 (“Vertigo,” “Rear Window,” and “North by Northwest.”)

It’s not easy finding a filmmaker who has had more than 5 genuinely great movies in a row. Kubrick has done it. Coppola came close. So did Hitchcock. Terrence Malick (if you count the 20 years of inactivity in between).

If “Spartacus” doesn’t count as a Kubrick-directed movie, then his streak extends back to “The Killing” and “Paths of Glory.” That’s a streak of 8 consecutive great films, unheard of in film history.

Stanley Kubrick : Lolita , Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining (6)

Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now (4)

Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds (4)

Terrence Malick: Badlands, Days of Heaven … The Thin Red Line, The New World, The Tree of Life (5)

Charlie Chaplin: The Gold Rush, The Circus, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator (5)

Michelangelo Antonioni: L’Avventura, La Notte, L’Eclisse, Red Dessert, Blow-Up (5)

Carl Theodore Dreyer: The Passion of Joan of Arc, Vampyr, Day of Wrath, Ordet, Gertrud (5)

Andrei Tarkovsky: Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror, Stalker (4)

Robert Bresson: The Diary of a Country Priest, A Man Escaped, Pickpocket, Trial of Joan of Arc, Au Hasard Balthazar, Mouchette (6)

Woody Allen: Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, Crimes and Misdemeanors

In the modern era …

Paul Thomas Anderson: Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, There Will be Blood, The Master (5)

Quentin Tarantino: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill (4)

Wes Anderson: The Fantastic Mr Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs (4)

Jean-Luc and Pierre Dardenne: Rosetta, The Son, L’Enfant, Lorna’s Silence, The Kid With a Bike, Two Days One Night (6)

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Tropical Malady, Syndromes and a Century, Uncle Boonmee, Cemetery of Splendor, Memoria (5)

Michael Haneke: The Piano Teacher, Cache, The White Ribbon, Amour

Martin Scorsese would probably have one of the most iconic streaks of consecutive great films if it weren’t for “New York, New York” (which I know fellow reader Teddy still stands by as being a great film).

If it weren’t for NY NY, Scorsese’s streak from 1973 to 1985 would look something like this: “Mean Street”, “Taxi Driver”, “The Last Waltz”, “Raging Bull”, “The King of Comedy”, and “After Hours.”