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15 Directors More Worthy Of Awards Than Ben Affleck

Look, I like Ben Affleck. I’m happy for his success. I loved Argo. He did a bang-up job on it and deserves immense credit for helming a terrific movie. I thought Gone Baby Gone was a real accomplishment and one of the best movies of its year, and he has continued to produce quality work since then, even though I still consider that one to be his greatest work so far. But honestly, best director of the year? And best film of the year? There has been too much talent this year that naturally had to be overlooked. Any list of five directors was going to leave out some enormously skilled filmmakers who did great work this year. To prove it, here’s a list of directors whose work I would argue is more deserving of a Golden Globe statue or Oscar write-in vote than that of our dear Mr. Ben Affleck.

[h2]14: Wachowski Starship[/h2]
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Ok, so I admit these folks are bonkers. But I also love them. The new team of the Wachowskis, Andy and Lana, and their new collaborator friend Tom Tykwer, is just a cauldron of crazy ideas and visual storytelling prowess. There are few other artists working today who can visualize rich concepts such as these in the way that these three can, for better or for worse. And when they work together they just go all out, as they have in Cloud Atlas.

I’m an ardent defender of this movie, as it’s another project that comes from seemingly impossible-to-adapt material. I’m not sure whether they pull it off to be honest, but to me, calling a film “ambitious” is not something that comes with qualifiers. Ambition is an end in itself, and to fulfill ambition is pure bliss for those of us who get to experience it. I feel like filmmakers who take real risks in their work are rarely appreciated for sticking their necks out the way the Starship crew does in Cloud Atlas. But like Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, I think this is a movie that will develop a real following ten years from now for its unique storytelling and visual realization of bold ideas, as well as its emotional power.

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