These second rung, but never second rate, directors hover fitfully behind the handful of geniuses - Bresson, Dreyer, Ozu, Renoir, Rossellini - where poetry and originality transcend matter and realism.
By all accounts Ogden has been a first-rate director.
"Daniel is a first-rate director with a real passion for theatre," said Church.
It attracted a first-rate director in Peter Wood, who had just done a dazzling revival of The Iceman Cometh.
Mr. Hoffman, a first-rate actor who is showing increasing evidence of becoming a first-rate director, and his team serve up Ms. Gilman's toxic yet tepid brew as expertly as one could wish.
These men, along with the stars and producers, are responsible for what we think of as the art of 007; there has never been a world-class, first-rate director hired for Bond, and when a serious contender, Michael Apted, did get the job, for "The World Is Not Enough," the outcome bore no imprint of his style.
The movie offers two auspicious debuts: Mr. Washington's as a first-rate director of actors, and Derek Luke's as Antwone, an angry young sailor who with the help of a Navy psychiatrist (Mr. Washington) begins to heal many of his childhood wounds.
The playwright David Eldridge, whose In Basildon has recently played to rave reviews at the Court, said: "Vicky Featherstone is a first-rate director and producer, genuinely believes in the centrality of the playwright to our theatre culture and is a terrific woman who inspires the trust of writers who know her and work with her".
Kaufman -- the first-rate director who helmed Doug Wright's pitch-perfect I Am My Own Wife and Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger At The Baghdad Zoo -- has assembled a masterful cast, with Strathairn and Ivey delivering particularly rich performances.
Ebert was more complimentary, saying "Justin Lin is emerging as a first-rate director in this second-rate genre" and Rolling Stone managed "Justin Lin, who misdirected the last two sequels, finds his pace this time, staging dynamite action".
