4. David Fincher
If Hitchcock is the master of suspense, Tarantino is the master of dialogue and Kurosawa is the master of movement, then Fincher has to be to the master of atmosphere! There's no director in the world that creates tense and dark atmospheres like David Fincher, and that's the main reason he is on this list.
He's a technically gifted director with an incredible eye for details that relies on the camera work to tell a story and define his characters' personalities and states of mind.
He started his career with the unbeloved Alien 3. Though I agree that is way worse than the original Alien, it would be fair to say that it's way better than Alien 2, done at the time by a way more experienced director - James Cameron - with way less studio impositions.
Fincher would eventually impress the world with his second film: Se7en, probably his masterpiece and my favourite serial killer film of all time.
Among some of his other movies, there's obviously Fight Club, one of the most revered movies of all time especially among teenagers. It was once my favourite film, as any 16 year old kid, but some rewatches later it lost a bit of the magic, probably because I have outgrowned it. It's still a terrific film with two impressive perfomances by Norton and Pitt and again, an amazing atmosphere.
There's also Zodiac, his most ambitious work so far and a movie which I believe will be called a classic some years from now and his most recent brilliant work: Gone Girl.
How I rate his films:
Alien 3 (1992)
-
Se7en (1995)
+
The Game (1997)
-
Fight Club (1999)
-
Panic Room (2002)
+
Zodiac (2007)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
-
The Social Network (2010)
+
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
+
Gone Girl (2014)
+