Edgar Wright, co-creator of TV’s “Spaced” and director of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”, compiled his top 10 films for Empire magazine’s poll of the greatest 500 movies.

Film Director and writer Edgar Wright’s Top 10 Films:
1. Raising Arizona
2. An American Werewolf In London
3. Carrie
4. Raidars Of The Lost Ark
5. Boogie Nights
6. Dirty Harry
7. Evil Dead 2
8. Taxi Driver
9. Don’t Look Now
10. Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls

Jonathan Lynn is a director who likes to fly under the radar. He’s made some of my favourite comedies, many of which you may not have realised Lynn directed. He’s a director who likes to allow the actors, and consequently, the characters to take centre stage. His camera is restrained, his visual style conservative. The story and the characters dictate the action, not the camera. He doesn’t politicise his films, nor does he focus on any one social condition. He chooses an array of different stories, generally focusing on family …

John Waters has never shied away from controversy and his favourite films list makes for interesting reading. The man who said ‘I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty,’ lists the art-house Andy Warhol film “Chelsea Girls”, which has no formal narrative in its depiction of the real life residents at the Chelsea Hotel in New York of 1966, and the Russ Meyer exploitation flick “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”, as two of his favourites.
Another one of his choices is “La Maman et la putain” …

“Are you telling me you built a time machine out of a DeLorean”: The Magic of Robert Zemeckis
Robert Zemeckis was once asked if television was a bad influence on children. He answered, emphatically, “television isn’t an education, but I see no reason to turn it off.” What would so many television-starved children give for Zemeckis as a babysitter, or indeed a father: ‘Can I pur-lease watch more TV?’/’Of course you can!’ He was a product of the television generation – this new visual medium that found its way into most …

KEN LOACH’S TOP 10 FILMS
1. A Bout de Souffle (Godard, 1959)
2. The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1965)
3. A Blonde in Love (Forman, 1965)
4. Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)
5. Closely Observed Trains (Menzel, 1966)
6. Fireman’s Ball (Forman, 1967)
7. Jules et Jim (Truffaut, 1962)
8. La Règle du Jeu (Renoir, 1939)
9. The Tree of the Wooden Clogs (Olmi, 1978)
10. Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)

MICHAEL MANN’S TOP 10 FILMS
1. Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)
2. Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
3. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
4. Dr Strangelove (Kubrick, 1963)
5. Faust (Murnau, 1926)
6. Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais, 1961)
7. My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946)
8. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928)
9. Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
10. The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)

SAM MENDES’ TOP 10 FILMS
1. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
2. Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
3. The Godfather Part II (Coppola, 1974)
4. The Piano (Campion, 1993)
5. The Red Shoes (Powell, Pressburger, 1948)
6. Sunset Blvd (Wilder, 1950)
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
8. Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
9. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
10. The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939)

JOE DANTE’S TOP 10 FILMS
1. Citizen Kane (Welles)
2. City Lights (Chaplin)
3. 8 1/2 (Fellini)
4. Les Enfants du paradis (Carné)
5. The Dead (Brakhage)
6. Rashomon (Kurosawa)
7. Psycho (Hitchcock)
8. Raging Bull (Scorsese)
9. The Searchers (Ford)
10. Once upon a Time in the West (Leone)