A friend of mine once said to me, "If you've seen one Fincher movie, you've seen them all". He said each movie is essentially the same, dark and gritty, lashed with rain and inhabited by morally dubious characters. To a large extent that's true but then again, you could say all of Tarantino's movies are essentially the same or that all Spielberg blockbusters follow the same formula. And in any case I like the rainy, gritty, morally dubious nature of Fincher flicks.

Some of his recent output hasn't been terrific, with The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo hardly electrifying but he has still managed to produce 2 of this centuries absolute gems, Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

"In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light."

McTiernan is easily one of the great action directors of the 1980s, catapulting Bruce Willis into the Hollywood stratosphere with Die Hard and helping solidify Arnie as an action legend with Predator. Mctiernan followed up his 80s success in the action genre with a string of movies over the following 20 years. Some were clumsy in execution (Medicine Man) and others were downright awful (Rollerball).

Through all the lows he still managed to thrill, returning to the Die Hard franchise with Vengeance, a better sequel than Die Hard 2 and putting a comedy twist on his own action formula with The Last Action Hero. Probably the most inconsistent director I'll be writing about, there is no denying McTiernan's place amongst the action greats.