Generally speaking, it takes an up-and-coming director a few movies to get his/her feet wet before creating their best works. It took many of the greats – from David Fincher to Wes Anderson – years to make what many consider their greatest movies.
But every so often, someone comes along to buck that trend. Not only do they make perhaps their best movie of their respective careers, but also ones that become defining of an era or a movement. The director’s debut becomes the movie they spend year after year trying to live up to and recapture the same magic. Sometimes they succeed, like Edgar Wright continuing the same deadpan comedy style that made Shaun of the Dead an instant cult classic, and sometimes they don’t, like Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez never reaching the same terrifying heights they did with The Blair Witch Project.
There are hundreds of great directorial debuts, but today we’re going to focus on the 15 best ones. Some decade-defining hits just barely missed the cut, but still deserve some sort of recognition. Along with two listed above, I’ll put the rest here before jumping into the list: Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968), Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977), Kicking and Screaming (Noah Baumbach, 1995), Belly (Hype Williams, 1998), Monsters, Inc. (Pete Docter, 2001), In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008), Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015), and Shithouse (Cooper Raiff, 2020).
15. Whiplash (2014)
Damien Chazelle’s jazzy powder keg never loses sight of the finish line. Boiling with camera flourishes and hazy sets, Chazelle announced himself with Whiplash as either cinema’s savior or antichrist. Whiplash review
14. Lady Bird (2017)
13. Bound (1996)
It’s hard to argue the Wachowskis ever made a movie as defining and revelatory as The Matrix, but to offer a film as succinct as Bound right off the bat is a generational accomplishment, and easily one of the best movies of 1996. Bound review
12. Blue Collar (1978)
11. sex, lies, and videotape (1989)
10. The Virgin Suicides (1999)
9. Past Lives (2023)
8. Thief (1981)
7. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
6. Get Out (2017)
5. The 400 Blows (1959)
4. Blood Simple (1984)
3. 12 Angry Men (1957)
2. Hereditary (2018)
1. Citizen Kane (1941)
READ MORE: The Best Directorial Debuts of the 2020s
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