I'm assuming it's both. Kind of. I mean, the supposed purpose is a list of films, but as you read through that list and the way it's been laid out, you see that

I'm assuming it's both. Kind of. I mean, the supposed purpose is a list of films, but as you read through that list and the way it's been laid out, you see that Lee approached the task by first thinking about a list of filmmakers. And then you have some other films on the list which are there because they're noteworthy, regardless of the director. So it's sort of a hybrid. A lot of filmmakers, critics and film buffs, when asked to list the best films of all time, will start from the perspective of their favorite filmmakers and then work backwards from there. (The general public takes the opposite approach.) Similarly, if you ask a music critic or musician to list his favorite songs, he'll often start with favorite albums and then back into songs. Or maybe favorite artists -> albums -> songs. They're used to thinking about an individual work in the broader perspective of its creator's entire catalog. This can be a useful perspective to consider. Especially since there are some filmmakers (or authors, or artists, or bands) whose career output is highly influential, but whose individual works never really crack the Best of All Time list. Scorsese is a good example. Arguably none of his films, individually considered, ranks as a Best of All Time contender. But when you consider his entire output, you can't deny his influence on the technique of modern storytelling. I'd say the same thing about Milos Forman, for instance, though One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest does stand on its own merits on many people's lists. You could also make this argument for Steven Spielberg, controversial though he may be to film snobs. He hasn't made any given work as singularly brilliant as many of the movies listed here, but you can't deny that Spielberg has basically been synonymous with popular American cinema for the better part of an entire era. From the late 70s through the mid 2000s, he basically is the pop movie industry. And like Scorsese, he has had an outsized impact on the way people tell stories through the medium.