#5 - STEPHEN DALDRY

British film director Stephen Daldry has only given us two movies, and yet they are both true gems. His first feature was 2000's Billy Elliot, set in northern England, against the gritty backdrop of the 1984 coal miner strikes. Billy Elliot's story of a boy's desire to be a ballet dancer was praised and damned for its sentimentality, with critics declaring it either a moving story of triumphant nonconformity, or "emotional pornography." Regardless, Billy Elliot became a local and international smash, earning raves for young acting neophyte Jamie Bell's performance as the titular boy and Oscar nominations for screenwriter Lee Hall, supporting actress Julie Walters, and director Daldry.

Daldry followed his freshman triumph by directing Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Ed Harris, and Nicole Kidman in The Hours (2001). Adapted by playwright David Hare from Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Hours gracefully interweaves three stories about a critical day in the lives of Kidman's Virginia Woolf as she struggles to write her esteemed 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway, Moore's unhappy 1950s housewife who finds solace in Woolf's book, and Streep's 2001 incarnation of Clarissa "Dalloway." Finding visual analogues for the novel's challenging interiority and deftly juggling the scenarios' thematic echoes concerning the women's search for meaning in their lives, Daldry and Hare earned kudos for adapting an "unadaptable" book, while Streep, Moore and Kidman's superb performances garnered further raves for Daldry's direction. Bolstering the film's pre-Oscar buzz, The Hours won the Best Picture prize from the National Board of Review and appeared on the American Film Institute's 2002 Ten Best Films list. When the Academy Award nominations were announced in February of 2003, few were surprised that The Hours earned nine nominations in all, including one for Best Director.

Stephen Daldry fans can look forward to this year's release of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, starring Jude Law. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Michael Chabon, the film takes place in 1930s New York and is about two young cousins who create a comic book superhero named The Escapist, who (in Chabon's words) "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains!"