Personally I don't think Miyazaki is as good as Maasaki Yuasa, Satoshi Kon, or Mamoru Oshii. Oshii's Angel's Egg trumps anything Miyazaki has done in terms of artistic mastery, and Ghost in the Shell trumps anything Miyazaki has done in terms of mainstream animation. Miyazaki has made the best family and children's animation, but I don't think he's the greatest in terms of his directing. He has probably made a larger impact on the media of animation that any other single individual has had, but I find that people who make the most impact overall are not the peak of human potential in terms of skill, creativity, and pure genius. The truly greatest artists are usually not appreciated by people who do not have a deep understanding of the art, and those people are not very common because it takes years of hard work to reach that level of understanding and appreciation. I feel like I'm starting to get there, but I am not yet at the point where I can really go into a lot of depth explaining why one artistic masterpiece is so much better than another great masterpiece.
I am talking about objective influence. Yuasa, Kon and Oshii would also agree with me that Miazaki is the greatest. In fact, in poll of a animation critics in Japan, Miazaki had 3 movies in the top 3 animated movies, while the top 15 had 1 Oshii and none by Yuasa or Kon.
Also, I find Miyazaki to be by far the most artistically impressive animator. It's true his films are populated by innocent and pure childlike characters and he is not as aggressively experimental as Oshii or Yuasa but his work is of a technical excellence out of their league (or any other animation director)
Finally, when talking about greatest there is only one objective criteria the degree of influence over other artists. The rest is talking about your favorites and everything about art is essentially subjective.
I also don't think Kurasawa is at the same level as Ozu. Kurasawa's movies are more accessible, but they are not as potent or artistic as Ozu.
Kurosawa movies might not be as different from mainstream modern movies as Ozu but the does not make Ozu better. Just less influential: Kurosawa's work is more influential hence his movies are accessible because everybody has already watched hundreds of copies of his style, in film, animation and manga. Therefore, the idea that Ozu or Mizoguchi are better is mostly because their work failed to be as influential. However, fact is that Kurosawa is widely regarded in Japan as the greatest, in a poll of film critics Ozu had 1 on the top 30, Mizoguchi, 1, Kobayashi 1, Naruse, 1, Kinoshita, 1, Miazaki, 1, Kurosawa? 7!!!
I do think Tarkovsky is one of the greatest directors of all time. Maybe Fritz Lang. Definitely Ingmar Bergman, and on that note I should also mention Carl Theodore Dreyer.
Tarkovsky is pretty much the gold standard of art films.
Ingmar Bergman on Andrei Tarkovsky
"My discovery of Tarkovsky's first film was like a miracle.
Suddenly, I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had, until then, never been given to me. It was a room I had always wanted to enter and where he was moving freely and fully at ease.
I felt encouraged and stimulated: someone was expressing what I had always wanted to say without knowing how.
Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream."
Ingmar Bergman on cinema...
"When film is not a document, it is dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn't explain. What should he explain anyhow? He is a spectator, capable of staging his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally. Only a few times have I managed to creep inside. Most of my conscious efforts have ended in embarrassing failure - THE SERPENT'S EGG, THE TOUCH, FACE TO FACE and so on.
Fellini, Kurosawa and Bunuel move in the same fields as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness. Melies was always there without having to think about it. He was a magician by profession.
Film as dream, film as music. (Laterna Magica, page 73)"
Tarkovsky is UBER well regarded. Even when I went to a modern art museum in Rio, there were Tarkovsky quotes. Nobody would ever think he is not one of the greatest and most influential. In fact, in modern blockbuster movies by Nolan and co. There are explicit attempts to mimic tarkovsky. The guy us incredible indeed because his movies are the closest film is to stuff like the 9th.
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