So, for the benefit of those who don’t know, the header image at the top of my Reviews by Director listings page features the top 20 directors featured on this blog — not my 20 favourites, but the 20 with the most films I’ve reviewed — pictured in alphabetical order. Obviously, sometimes the lineup changes; but rather than modify the image every time it does, I’ve always intended to update it about once a year. The last time I did was May 2020, so a new one has been overdue for about two-and-a-half years — or 936 days (as I expect you’d already realised).

For what it’s worth, this is now the 8th version of the image — which, when you add in the skipped years, makes it the 10th anniversary of the first. How exciting. This time, there are five changes — or ten, depending how you count it. What I mean is, five directors have been removed, replaced by five different ones.

There were 21 directors who qualified for the 20 slots, with a four-way tie for the last three places. For such occasions, I have an informal rule that I should make as many changes as possible, so out went the only one of the four who was already on there, Bryan Singer. Also dropping out of qualification were the Coen brothers, Ron Howard, George Miller, and Robert Zemeckis.

Joining in their place, we have three filmmakers who were on the list sometime before, but dropped off, and have now returned: Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, and Fritz Lang. They’re joined by two first-timers who seem likely to stick around, Kenneth Branagh and Denis Villeneuve.

And that’s that for… well, I would say “another year”, but we’ll see.