Kind of echoing here, but
Stanley Kubrick (absolute favorite, I'm obsessed with the man)
Akira Kurosawa (another film school icon)
Hayao Miyazaki (sad about his retirement, but what a career)
David Fincher (Seven is one of my top movies of all time)
Michel Gondry (what an imaginative and colorful filmmaker)
Christopher Nolan (from the first time I rented Memento on vhs)
Peter Jackson
And the rest are mostly based on early flicks, not so much later stuff.
Steven Spielberg, Terry Gilliam, Ridley Scott, John Carpenter