ILX Top Films of 2000-04 RESULTS (yes, really)

50) Sexy Beast (Glazer, 2000)

Remember when Sexy Beast came out and everyone was raving about Ben Kingsley? McShane owned his ass in that movie. -- Gear!

49) Morvern Callar (Ramsay, 2002)

Ugh. That was not a film. That was moving pictures and sound. -- Verbal

I saw this movie alone on my second to last night in London last year in NOvember when it was freezing cold after all my friends had flown back to the states and I was stuck there knowing no-body for the next day. I didn't know anything about it but I kept seeing the ads around and was obsessed with them. It was the most heartbreaking film I'd ever seen, I was almost numb when I walked out of there parts of it were so beautiful.
-- anthony kyle monday

52 points for Sexy Beast
54 points for Morvern Callar

Requiem For A Dream (Aronofsky, 2000) 56 Points

1. It's another movie about heroin, which is like another book about heroin.
2. The film's concept and presentation of drug and sex horror were very Stabbing Westward. It seemed to try to find the cool in the wrong spots (which tends to happen more often in creative drug movies). I loved Pi but he should have stuck to nerd shit. That's just me though. --LC

i thought it was quite a stinning bit of cinema. strange this thread should come up now, as i watched it and last exit to brooklyn in a hubert selby jr tribute night shortly after his death a couple of months ago and was really moved by it, again. the photography directly mirrors selby's writing style, the content of the fil itself was amazinglty true to th novel, which is quite a feat, given the sheer density and multi-layered nature of selby's prose. it's a bleak and often upsetting journey in print or on film, but by no means a bad one to go on. -- Dave Stelfox

T48)The Good Thief (Jordan, 2002), 56 points, 1 first-place vote

actually i think one of the best-acted films I've seen in recent years was perhaps The Good Thief, in which other than Nolte, the biggest "name" star had a brief cameo and the other roles were filled with a multicultural cast that seemed to embody nu-Europe, almost playing like a slap in the face to the hollywood-isms of Oceans' 12.
-- Gear! (Ill Cajun Gunsmith), July 12th, 2005 12:44 AM. (Gear!) (link)

"It is sad that Nick Nolte has been reduced to this. Good actor in a bad, wannabe artsy flick. Horrid music choices acompany pointless transitional shots and effects. Frequently the dialog was so muttered and slurred that we had to replay the scene several times to find out what was said." - Amazon reviewer

46) Bad Education (Almodovar, 2004) 57 points, 1 first-place vote

its a bit too much like an almodovar manifesto (without knowing very much about almodovar). or rather, it just has this feeling of him going "look! abusive priests! travsvestites! gay film directors! geddit!!!!!!!!!!!!!". a sort of amalgam of loads of his other films, but its layed on a bit strong. that said, it was in spanish and although i understood about 40/50%, i didnt get hardly any of the jokes for example, so that reduced my enjoyment a lot.
the plot is a bit too convoluted, again maybe thats my language problem contributing to that.
basically, its a lot like his other films, all mashed into one, but taken a bit far.
-- ambrose

It was great. I think more people responded to "Talk to Her" because of the "high art" thrust that the Pina Bausch component put in, and because that film was less ferociously gay than this one. But this is one is still excellent. It's weird to me how carefully balanced he is able to make his soap opera plots: he can take you somewhere that looks pretty much like a totally self-indulgent porn fantasy (the tranny gets the hottest guy in the room, etc.) and then can flip the valence of why that happened plot-wise in a way that is pretty darkly critical of certain strands of gay sexuality (the exploitive director who blatantly enforces casting couch fucking, the open question of whether abuse happened or not etc.).
-- Drew Daniel

Yes, and we can read ILXors' comments in our own ILX time, so why bother posting them either?

45T) Gosford Park (Altman, 2001) 58 points

yeah, it's great. what i love is the inversion of the manor-murder setup that forms the basis of all the commentary. rather than introducing the dramatis personae clearly and showing us the lines of relation to each other, into which the murder is inserted as an unknown; the murder is obvious and pretty boring (and it's late in the movie! like 2/3rds in!) even to the characters, but the status and even identities of the characters remain foggy even at the end (ok, who is who's kid? uh, ok that guy wanted this from, wait, i think...) and old bastard getting whacked is easy to understand but class/gender/nationality are a mess.
-- g--ff

rules
-- s1ocki

45t) Capturing the Friedmans (Jarecki, 2003), 58 points

I just watched it yesterday. I wonder how many "victims" turned down the interview requests. It's hard to feel like you are getting all sides of the story until you hear from more of them. The most damning thing towards the police seemed to be the coerced testimonials of the victims. The most damning thing towards the Friedmans, and what convinced me of their guilt, was what their lawyer had to say.
I also felt like the bond between the brothers and their father, their relationship, was obviously strong but seemed to require or only exist in a superficial form. See: their constant need to be performing while being recorded on tape and film. Were I to be all Freudian in examining their possible dysfunction, they seem to put up quite a front of happiness i.e. their need to perform really magnifies the tip of the ice-berg. Makes you think they could very easily absorb lies into their family and continue functioning/performing, and that perhaps they try so hard to have fun because were they to stop making silly jokes for 5 minutes, the ensuing silence would be horrible.
-- bnw

43) Kill Bill 2 (Tarantino, 2004), 61 points

Momus, your Lautreamont distinction ("ambivalent" feelings toward the object of his love) is full of hot air. Or do you call De Sade unconscionable, etc.? Certainly we can agree that De Sade has no "ambivalent" feelings toward the objects of his lust: he wants them all annihilated completely in a permanently recurrent frenzy of reductio-ad-ego (vide Blanchot's intro, et al). But unless I misread your likes & dislikes, you'd take De Sade's side in a discussion of whether people ought to read/celebrate his trangressive little missives or no. I think that when your engagement with postmodern tropes collides with your cultural biases, you flinch.
I think it is imperative that you go see this movie with as open a mind as you can, and soon, too.
-- J0hn D

Obviously the reason why the Bride knows the monk's moves is because Bill SAID 'No one gets taught this' and in these types of movies from the beginning of time til now, as soon as the antagonist says 'No one knows THAT' the protagonist suddenly picks it up, cf at the end when Bill says 'He taught you that?' and Bride replies 'Of course he did' which I thought was v. funny (as funny as a scene that had me really choked up could be). Of course this is because I spent way too long as a fucking film studies major and the world would be better off to take Dan's sensible explanation that doesn't actually involve the word "homage".
The buried alive scene is one of the most unsettling, horrifying things I have ever seen in filmed arts in my entire life and is one of the only accurate artistic depictions of feeling trapped that I have ever seen (if not the only one, since I can't think of a counter-example at the mo).

I really, really like this movie. I really like it as a whole too, but I think this one stood v. well on its own two feet and I am excited to get the inevitable director's DVD special edition that I'm sure will hit stores right around November for a priced-to-own reasonable fee of around $30. Fucking bastards.
-- Allyzay

42) What Time Is It There? (Ming-Liang, 2001), 62 points

What Time Is It There? didn't make much of an impression with me. -- jaymc

Or ILX it seems.

srch Paul Schrader on KB as the apex of meaningless collage

http://www.ragtagfilm.com/archives/images/george.jpg

41T) George Washington (Green, 2000), 63 points

I received no comments on this one and can't find much on ILE other than "AWESOME" and/or "MEH."

--Nordicskillz, May 1st, 2003

http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/movie/all_real_girls/01.jpeg

41T) All The Real Girls (Green, 2003), 63 points

ok, i saw this movie on a complete fluke occurance. i was supposed to see irreversible at the gene siskel, but it was sold out. so my friend and i walked down to the esquire and hit all the real girls. i had never heard of david gordon green but my friend said that his influences were quite impressive. after i got out, alls i could do is say wow. i didnt know what hit me and i couldnt really express it in words.
i never got another chance to see it in the theaters, but it haunted me no other movie has. i looked online every day waiting for some news on its dvd release. i counted the days for it to be released for gods sake.
and when i finally watched it again, it broke my heart even more. i think i was just emotionally shocked the first time through, but the second time just broke me down to nothing. this movie is life, it is real. some people want an escape when they hit the multiplex, but that really doesnt do it for me. i want to see life. its just like brian cox says in adaptation in reply to charlie's question about movies having nothing happening in them. surely there are many movies where stuff like this occurs, look at film noir. for example, nothing really occurs in the maltese falcon, no one gets what they want, people die, and you are left with nothing. now, i am not saying that this doesnt happen in real-life, which it obviously does, but it is not the realism that i look for in a movie. i look for the tragic reality of life and human error and regret. this was shown best in the bar scene when our anti-hero was drunk and talking to mary-margaret. "have you ever seen an animal make a mistake?" god, what an amazing line. and it completely shows what paul feels... then the whole mug throwing. powerful stuff there.
surely there were some silly scenes and stuff, but that is real too. who doesnt have silly things happen to them?
dont even get me started on the format or the cinematography, because i could write a book about it. and the constant comic relief of bust-ass... sigh.
i have so musch more to say but i will stop now.
hands down, number one movie of the year for me.
-- todd swiss

oh i don't know about this one at all - i think it's uneven and (dare i say it) BORING (and i generally like "boring" films). Paul Scneider is good and the last scene is nice -him trying to get the dog to go for a swim - but it seems to forced and strains tooo hard for meaning in those small scenes. Its seems to me to be the work of someone who has seen alot of Malick but only borrowed from the surface of his films (the dawn/dusk lighting, the loose structure) but Days of Heaven is so striking because it packs so much into such a tight running time and simultanously seems incredibly slow moving. Theres not enough in All the Real Girls plotwise and yet there are too many "meaningful" moments.
-- jed_

39) Traffic (Soderbergh, 2000), 64 points

I really liked "Traffic", and you must understand the magnitude of my Michael Douglas hatred to understand how amazing that admission is.
-- Dan Perry

I suspect Traffic will be unwatchable in a few decades. It's like Stanley Kramer + Alan Pakula.
-- Amateurist

38T) The Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr, 2000), 66 points, 1 first-place vote

http://www.niagara.edu/neworder/graphics/24hr.jpg

38T) 24-Hour Party People (Winterbottom, 2002), 66 points

35T - Chicken Run, 70 points, 2 first-place votes

35T - Cremaster 3, 70 points, 1 first-place vote

35T - Ocean's 11, 70 points, 1 first-place vote

32T - Songs From The Second Floor, 77 points, 2 first-place votes

32T - Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, 77 points

32T - Talk To Her, 77 points

32T - I Heart Huckabee's, 77 points

32 T - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 77 points, 1 first-place vote

26 - High Fidelity, 84 points, 1 first-place vote

25 - Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, 85 points

24 - Ratcatcher, 86 points

23 - O Brother Where Art Thou, 92 points, 1 first-place vote

22 - Belleville Rendezvous, 93 points

21 - The Pianist, 97 points, 2 first-place votes

20 - Punch-Drunk Love, 99 points, 1 first-place vote

I had a metacomment on the '80s poll results thread that could've been blurbed here bud.

19) The Incredibles (Bird, 2004), 100 points

The best thing, or perhaps the most refreshing thing, about this movie: Brad Bird (the writer / director) eschews How They Became Super-Heroes and just jumps right into the action. The first Spider-Man, the Hulk flick, the upcoming FF flick - they all hinge on establishing the PERSON (foibled, imperfect, angst-ridden) first, and then showing the circumstances that lead to their super-ness, which is all fine & good (it's a key component of what makes the characters iconic), but forces the filmmakers to get all that NECESSARY pre-amble out of the way, perhaps too quickly, to move onto the REAL movie, or (at the very least) creates a jarring disconnect between the origin and what follows. ("Necessary" because, of course, a lot of the appeal of these Marvel characters isn't so much what they can do, but HOW they came to be able to turn green or climb walls.)
The Spider-Man flick is what I'm thinking of here - the origin sequence was fantastic, but when the Green Goblin started attacking, the movie lost a little something, and the climax seemed oddly perfunctory as a result - kind of like watching an hour-long drama, and knowing the killer's going to be revealed in the next 5 minutes because it's almost time for E.R., chop chop. I blame Macy Gray, of course. Even movies like Van Helsing or Underworld are guilty of this - a belabored set-up, shabbily bolstered by crap ass characterization, followed by oodles of special FX and a bunch of supposedly significant plot shenanigans. (In these cases, I blame Kate Beckinsale.)

But, yeah - The Incredibles just hits the ground running. Here's the super strong guy, here's the stretchy girl, here are their kids, and here's what's going on. And it (the story / the characters) doesn't lack for nuance or depth in doing this, either, which is probably the most amazing thing.
-- David R.

18) Together (Moodysson, 2000), 102 points, 2 first-place votes

Together was one of my favorite movies ever, which is why I'm a little disappointed by the turn his work has taken.
-- Symplistic

I don't feel it's pointless.

17) Adaptation (Jonze, 2002), 107 points, 1 first-place vote

Starring Nic Cage and Nic Cage... how the hell can anyone sit through this movie? -- Me.

x-post

16) Kung Fu Hustle (Chow, 2004), 108 points, 1 first-place vote

Kung Fu Hustle (Shaolin Soccer) is also amaz-fuck-ing.
-- Alex in SF

Movie this year I'd most like to take a kid to see: Kung Fu Hustle. Man, if I were 12, that would be the greatest movie ever made.
-- slightly more subdued (Kenan)

15) Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (Tarantino, 2003), 111 points, 1 first-place vote

NOT EVEN TOP 10 ARE YOU HAPPY MORBIUS????

I lay in bed thinking about this, so be kind: Quarantino's action at least in the Crazy 88 fight I'd characterize as cubist action, where the camera pov moves so much that we're as close to seeing the fight in every angle at once. I don't particularly like it from a genre stand point, since it disorients the viewer and dissipates the energy of the scene (both of which contribute to experiences of the viewer trying to re-position himself with respect to the action, which "costs" energy at expense of the action itself). In the end, it was too self-consciously Artistic for me to enjoy on a primary level.
Single-shot sequences, OTOH, allow the viewer to more faithfully serve as a spectator, with fewer mediating removes between him and what's going on. And from a rockistish viewpoint, protracted shots reduce the ability to hide the stuntdoubles from viewers -- meaning that Uma has to have trained a buttload. This verisimilitude is an important point to me, that a star is actually performing these acrobatics, and again building up the image of being there (e.g. less mediation). (Of course, Hollywood is the reverse of the HK system, where martial arts champs become actors, so here's an inherent problem (see: Uma's (sometimes visible) difficulty with her swordwork b/c of her height.).)

But the problem likely isn't solely with Quarantino per se, but Hollywood grabbing onto the udders of the HK cash cow?
-- Leee

I am holding Tarantino personally responsible for the debacles in Iraq and the Occupied Territories and am having a ceremonial sword specially made to cleave him neatly into two pieces which I will then have fried by a short-order chef who looks a bit (wink! wink!) like Charlie Chan and served up to his gormless fans in between two pieces of tasteless American bread.
-- Momus

too many gems to sort through from Come anticipate Kill Bill with me

Eternal Sunshine better be comin' (the one that doesn't spend its last 20 mins going GET IT?)

KB should rank below old Mannix episodes.

14) Before Sunset (Linklater, 2005), 113 points

i was also hoping that Julie Delpy's character would reveal herself to be her character in Killing Zoe and would lead Ethan Hawke into a death spiral of heroin, bank robbery, and depravity.
-- Elvis Telecom

this was excellent. I watched it immediately after watching before sunrise for the first time; before sunrise annoyed me a lot, in a slightly embarrassed "god people in their early 20's in the mid-90's are so cliched" way, but I can imagine, had I seen it when it came out, it could have meant a lot to me. But Before Sunset is extraordinary. It's much more natural, for one thing. And even though you know exactly how it will end, maybe that's part of the charm of the thing. One of the best movies of last year, of course.
-- kyle

Can't find any of Morbius's snipes about Sunset

the characters are sort of supposed to be cliched. and potentially annoying.

how abt Armond W's "Linklater shoots Paris like it's Hoboken"

this would suggest that he doesn't understand the movie

http://www.mamacitaonline.com/swill/swill_hawke.html

FWIW he (and I) also liked Shaolin Soccer, almost as much, if not AS much.

xpost Julie Delpy is so freaking pretty, I'm going to hurl

13) Ghost World (Zwigoff, 2001), 115 points, 1 first-place vote

Myself and Thompson agree on Ghost World. Very well played, funny and interesting - but the subtext and ending are very poor. Fundamentally the films message appears to be if you are a misanthropist and mess with people you will end up with no friends (no disagreement there). So I worry about the film - and Enid in particular - being cluthced to the bosom of a certain kind of adolescent & post-adolescent girl because the ending is so vague. I certainly read it as a hopeful ending which is more than this character deserves. Where is the mystery bus going? Maybe it would be better to see her six moths later on the streets of some big faceless city...
Very interesting movie though. Oh and Nick - the final scene with Buscemi is back at his mothers with him undergoing therapy.
-- Pete

yowza. i mean, i heart thora and all...
-- jess (dubplatestyl...), November 18th, 2001 7:00 PM.
birch is weighty melons girl from Am Beauty right?
-- Alan Trewartha (alantrewarth...), November 18th, 2001 7:00 PM.
thora birch is what i imagine all my crushes to look like. (bad black dye job + glasses = swoon.)
-- jess

12) 25th Hour (Lee, 2002), 117 points, 1 first-place vote (MINE)

i had to stop myself crying three times (i had company), at 'fuck new york', at under the bridge, and at the dream sequence.. and i dont cry much in movies. wait, maybe i dunno. but you get my point.
-- mitch lastnamewithheld

Mark, remember that the 25th Hour monologue wasn't written by Lee, but by Benioff, the screenwriter--I would imagine that it owes as much to a vaguely similar monologue in Do the Right Thing as to the Scorses models you mention. Anyway it's wonderfully realized visually: the imagery that's referenced as grotesque the first time around reappears as elegaic the second time around. I'm not sure which shot you're referring to toward the end, but the one (throwaway?) shot that gets me is
*spoilers*

in the "25th hour" fantasy where Norton sits for a passport photo. There's a shot, held for just four or five seconds but an eternity in this context, of the man running the photo shop. There's something in the countenance and speech of this kindly eccentric (his ears and mouth riddled with studs, suggesting some of kind of Hell's Angel settled down) that's extremely generous, that cuts through the (hilarious) New Yorker's vision of the Rest of the America that is the bulk of that remarkable conclusion. I dunno, the whole sequence and that shot in particular must have been difficult to pull off--without enough little odd bits of business it would've seemed too ludicrous, too vain...with too much detail it would've seemed like a real forking-paths narrative which was NOT the point--but Lee and Benioff did it.

In this film the criticism of the harsh drugs laws is part and parcel with the shots of the WTC site and the backstories of the broker and the school teacher--something like a sum total of America's mistakes and abuses, responsibilities and blindnesses, fissures and reconciliations. I found the WTC stuff moving and totally germane, not least because it would have been this huge FACT that would continue to come 'round and smack the characters in the face. Philip Seymour Hoffman's stunned "whoah" when he sees the site from above felt like the kind of line that risked risked ridicule (for its seriousness/earnestness/"clumsiness") to achieve truth.

The Russian mobsters verged on cartoonish Scorsese territory, and that one scene threatened to make real some of the xenophobia expressed in the monologue. Oh well.

By "Godard's cartoon swiftness" what do you mean exactly?
-- amateurist

11) Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003), 126 points

tim ernst's gaijin cartoon books adapted to film, featuring two vapid, xenophobic, ugly americans. "japan is a wacky country! they reverse their Rs and Ls! haha engrish!" if this was set in let's say New York, the characters would stand out as even more unlikable, but as is, the setting steals the show, diverting the attention wisely away from the characters and plot. sofia provides visuals and her soft camera tone carries over seamlessly from the 70s suburban michigan of her last film which is impressive, but there is a real lack of depth here, these losers aren't very lovable or redeemable. kevin shields's new songs are pretty good, especially the one early in the film (the 2nd song on the score). i'm gonna get a pirated copy on dvd and see it again, but as is, i was pretty disappointed.
-- gygax!

I'm not really sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, yeah, it's a beautiful movie to look at (we saw it because Nancy is going to Tokyo this winter and didn't really need an excuse to drool over the landscape for two hours), but also yeah, it's a deeply shallow movie. It seemed to suck any of Scarlett J's actual life right out of her (check out her interview in Mass Appeal from a few months back if any of you are still harboring more of a crush on Thora Birch), and just replaced it with this blanked out gauziness, the uber-Trust Fund Hipster. You don't feel sorry for her treatment at the hands of her husband because he's just so fucking awful to begin with; you want to shake and say "what the fuck are you doing here in the first place??" (Yes, I guess the subtext is that their marriage is slowly falling apart - "I don't know who he is anymore" - but why the fuck would she end up with such a awful "arty" hipster schlub in the first place. And why should we care when she's such a tabula rasa! If I wanted to watch something that focused at least 50% of the time on viewing the vacuous, shallow lives of twentysomething BFA's desperately trying to enter into show biz at a distance well...I could have never left NYC.) The laughs are few and far between and usually, like gygax sez, at the expense of those wacky foreigners and their keeerazy habits. Bill Murray's character is the character he played in Rushmore stripped of any remaining will to live (and personality.) He is rapidly approaching a kind of apothesis of "the sad clown"; soon his face is going to be frozen in that kind of winsome grin with the saggy eyes. Still, with my fragile emotional state these days (and the fact that I AM Bill Murray), it was hard not to feel a little twinge at the end. More tellingly, however, I didn't even remember I saw it when I first opened this thread.
-- gabbo giftington

Heh, like I said.

http://www.virgin.net/movies/wallpapers/images/donniedarko_800.jpg

10) Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001), 127 points, 1 first-place vote

We watched the director's cut of Donnie Darko last night. In some ways it is a total dud. Pointless tacky CGI segments; INXS replacing Echo & the Bunnymen during the gorgeous intro sequence; pointless explanations of the plot practically flicked up onto the screen as pages of a book except so fast you have to pause them to read them. But then again it does make the film a whole lot easier to understand - some might say in a bad way whereas the original leaves a lot open to suggestion. It also makes the whole thing a lot more far fetched than the original.
I never really and completely understood the significance of "dying alone" nor the bit about the spears growing out of people's chests.
-- wogan lenin

What I hate is that thanks to the website and stuff everybody thinks they "know what happened." However, the movie itself didn't tell them...they basically had to do the director's work (you know, telling a story) themselves. Not to mention the just-above-Alicia-Silverstone skills of Ms. Barrymore, the Hal Hartley absurdity of their being either 7 or 400 kids in the town, but never anything in between. The idiotic adolescent fantasy that ones enemies in life are desparate psychotics (but not nice ones, like you). SPOILER: Jena Malone's death was gratuitous enough, but making it so that he knew how to fly back and save her (something you could only understand if you read the website and whatnot) makes it even hokier.
Wonderful acting from the family (especially Mary McDonell) and an impressively audacious debut for the director. But I gag when people tell me this is one of the greatest movies of the year. Far too unpleasant and mismanaged for such a ranking. Not to mention the director's filmschoolish obsession with interminable speed-up-slow-down musical sequences.
-- Anthony Miccio

Another possibility as to why it seems to resonate with so many people despite a lot of different ideas on "what its about" is the soundtrack. It isn't the usual "hip soundtrack" at all - that would imply hauling out a bunch of surefire chart hits, half of which arent even in the film, and releasing the soundtrack before the movie, etc etc etc (I hate this). Yes, there are a few 80s gems, but only a few (oh, and Duran Duran... tch).
But the score. I never hear anyone talk about it the way I always feel like talking about it.

The first thing me and a friend did after we saw the movie was mull over Mike Andrew's reworking of "Mad World", the next was to look for his score (still cant locate it easily though). It is a truly moving, wonderful use of music as mood, and coupled with the visuals, the setting (1988 was my last year of high school) and the overall concepts, I was left deeply moved. Picking the plot apart, while enjoyable, is just another layer to my enjoyment of this movie, and not at all why it is the most affected I think I have ever been by a film (apart from Pi, and it was enhanced greatly by its score also).

I would recommend anyone who liked the film hunt down the soundtrack. Not a scrap of Tears for Fears or Joy Div resides within, and Mike Andrews is a fucking genius.
-- Trayce

There's more talk about this one than all the other movies combined, I think.

everyone in the world hated it except for j hoberman, who thought it was the best movie since citizen kane. i wanna see it.

She still is for anyone with taste!

9) Memento (Nolan, 2000) 134 points, 1 first-place vote

Even the director doesen't know quite how the real story goes. His brother (who wrote the short story) refuses to tell him.
-- Will

anything involving lettering of any sort is such a mistake, I don't know anyone who doesn't eventually get it covered. I'm so glad I didn't do that, not that I don't want to get the one on my stomach covered up anyway.
-- Allyzay (tattoo...), November 12th, 2003 2:46 PM.
but Memento!!! Best tattoos ever!!
-- TOMBOT (find.hi...), November 12th, 2003 2:48 PM.
There are things I agree with you on in theory and things I agree with you on in actuality. If you showed up covered in Memento tattoos, you will find that that is very much a theoretical agreement.
-- Allyzay (eeee...), November 12th, 2003 2:51 PM.

8) Amelie (Jeunet, 2001) 179 points, 3 first-place votes WTF

Justify your dislike of Amelie... 'cause my love for it increases the more I think about it, and I can't help but think that anyone that doesn't feel the same way must secretly be a heartless, soulless automaton (no I don't actually think that).
I laughed throughout, not smirky knowing chuckles but helpless giggles and huge exhalations I might even tentatively call guffaws. And (and don't think that this is a common occurance because, um, it's not) I cried. Yes, actually did, when she guides the blind man down the street, giving him eyes, leaving him bathed in joy (see? you see the stupid phrases the movie makes me use?).
And I also want to bring up that debate between people that watch movies as if they're just plays put to film (fuck David Mamet by the way), and people for whom the visuals of movies are most important while plot can be fucked for all they care (and although it's prob. obvious which camp I feel like I belong to, I don't really think that's the right way to think about things, just my favorite way); and how maybe Jeunet's movies might appeal more to the latter, focusing as they do on the mechanics of immediate situation.
-- Dan I.

But is it not a valid criticism when Amelie in fact does copy many of the devices (people turning into a puddle of water, etc.)used on Ally McBeal? If I wanted to associate Amelie with an unhip television show just for the hell of it, I'd talk about how it was like the West Wing.
-- Nicole

7) Yi Yi (Yang, 2000), 187 points, 2 first-place votes.

6) The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001), 240 points

it is much better than rushmore, which i still love but seems far too strained and cynical compared to the sloppy beauty of tenenbaums. bottle rocket is quite good but something stops it from being really perfect, although at this point i prefer it to rushmore also in that sloppy beautiful way, also the jokes are better but honestly tenenbaums is so far above them both it's not even a comparison, one of the most wonderful films i have ever seen.
-- ethan

upon first viewing i privately decided it was possibly my favorite film i'd ever seen, i've viewed it four times since. um did this happen with anyone else? also more generally do you require time or general social/critical acceptance to truly love a film (tenenbaums reviews mostly lukewarm, 'it's good but no beautiful mind/monsters ball/lotr/amelie!', meanwhile everyone i know who's seen has basically said it was enjoyable but disposable)? in high school whenever 'best movies ever' were discussed in class most kids always just seemed to name the most recent passable film they'd seen, am i just afraid of being short-sighted like that? i feel like i'm going to be proved wrong in a few months and look back and say 'oh how sillyi was' or something, it's terrible. also is royal tenenbaums a great film?
-- ethan

Margot Tenembaum reminded my mom of me, especially the scene where she was with her frontier family in fishnets and black eyemakeup and chopped her own finger off.
-- Ally

Don't get me wrong, I really, really wanted to love The Royal Tenenbaums. I loved Rushmore, and Wes Anderson, so I guess I had very high expectations. But something about Tenenbaums just struck me as sloppy - the story seemed to start out well, but then the story started to degrade. It struck me more as a sketch or a portrait rather than a finished film...I don't know if that's what Wes Anderson was aiming for, but it really started pissing me off after a while. I thought Gene Hackman's brilliant performance was the only thing that really held the story in place; he was like a much-needed backbone for an otherwise (I hate to say it) spineless film. One of the things I like best about Wes Anderson's style is his talent for character development, but for so many of the characters, the development, the empathy just wasn't there. Perhaps it was just because he had so many characters to work with this time around. Anyway, I thought The Royal Tenenbaums was good, but not great.
-- geeta

It won't be and there's enough wrong here nevertheless

Spirited Away will clearly (and deservedly) win.

I could go for that. Too lazy to look, what were the #1s in the previous polls again? Blue Velvet for '80s, I sort of remember.

5) City of God (Meirelles/Lund, 2002)

seriously, this is the best comment on City of God that Google turns up:

My joint fave magic movie moment of 2003 was the torture / shooting of the small Brazilian street kids in City Of God, although I realise that saying it like that makes me look like some kind of sadist paedophile.
-- udu wudu

the followup to that movie moments thread:
camera follows a suitcase being wheeled through hollywood, onto an elevator, down a hallway and into an apartment where it is laid on the floor and unzipped, revealing four feet and eleven inches of gauge to the delight of three eager, big-dicked gentlemen.
^^--intro to weapons of ass destruction 2. highly recommended.
-- brian badword

http://www.ocean-films.com/themoodforlove/secret/images/img_menu.jpg

4) In The Mood For Love (Wong, 2000), 260 points

Finally, "In the Mood for Love" by Wong Kar Wei was a wonderfully melancholy moodfilm of quiet lives and missed opportunities, as visually *rich* a movie as any I've seen since the Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Even a twilight gale-blasted Tottenham Court Road seemed romantic after seeing it.
-- Stevie T

3) Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001) 279 points, 1 first-place vote

SPIRITED AWAY -- or This Week In Acid Casualty Anime Fairy Tales That Will Haunt Your Dreams For A Long Time But Make You Want To Watch Them Over And Over Again

So, I got back from my week long stay in British Columbia (Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo) last night, only to be whisked away to a friend's birthday party and then to a showing of the just-off-the-racks DVD for this little gem of an anime movie called Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki.

Oh.. my.. god. Not to underrate the surreal values of most anime flicks, but this one takes the cake, only because it's disguised as a fairy tale free of violence. And, while, compared to most anime flicks, this is indeed relatively violence-free, the images from this movie will never ever leave my brain -- partially to will, and partially not.

Keep in mind that I'm hardly a movie kinda guy, much less an ANIME kinda guy, and I think this is just one of the movies of the year. Maybe anime connoisseurs will balk at my recommendation... but whatever. And with almost all movies, I recommend the Japanese dialog with English subtitles.

Mind you, I still don't understand most of "Spirited Away", and probably never will. (And that pic at the top really doesn't even touch the surface of what horrific wonders and wonderous horrors are contained within)
-- Donut Bitch

Miyazaki believes in the audience feeling genuine, powerful emotions, terror, confusion, unease, gladness, love. Like in early Disney, eg Pinnochio, not today where it's all filtered for you into a low-key blandness.
I saw Spirited Away several times and it stayed fresh while each time suggesting more to me. Finally i think it's an allegory of the horror of having to grow up and go to work. Chihiro being in fear of her life conveys the death of innocence that we fight against.
-- pete s

90s: Pulp Fiction
80s: Blue Velvet
70s: Taxi Driver

I guess I'd be surprised if something like Spirited Away joined this company.

(XPOST!)

what are 2 and 1 then?

2) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004), 406 points, 3 first-place votes

the opening credits, so perfectly timed, of joel crying his eyes out in the car, that's everything. the entire centre of the movie is rooted in joel's anguish. there's a quote near the beginning where he's remembering their last major fight and is chasing her down the street and she disappears and he says something like (major paraphrase): "great - the perfect end to the perfect piece of shit story!" things have gotten so bad between them that on some level its clear that he BELIEVES what he's saying. he's that frustrated, that lost. and of course it rings true because most of us have been in that situation, where we've ended relationships and felt so separated from the love that was there in the beginning that our only logical recourse is to assume that we dreamt it.

what's so perfect about the second last scene is that the film's conceit allows kaufman to construct a direct bridge between that terrible frustration (in the form of their lacuna tapes) and the couple's excitement in meeting each other for the 'first' time. that's where you get your answers i think, in the way they happily relent to each other even in spite of knowing what's probably in store. it's hamfisted but its also stupidly powerful, the way their hopefulness and curiosity is enough to wash away their better judgement.

my interpretation of this scene was similar to jody's. i heard the voices in the background as analogous to the baggage that we carry with us into new relationships. they represent all the hurts and fears that you're left with whenever you part ways with someone, things you can ultimately get over but never totally leave behind. and even though they're with you when you meet the next person (and the next, and the next), they're never enough to keep you from trying again.

if joel and clementine end up in a loop, it's probably because they have that luxury! i don't infer anything overtly misanthropic from that, just the obvious: love is a difficult thing to say no to.
-- mark p

I fail to see how Kirsten Dunst dancing in her underwear in this movie expanded upon KD dancing in her underwear in 'Bring it On.' Then again, BiO was a fairly flawless performance, which she would be hard-pressed to improve upon.
I thought Kate Winslet in this movie had as much charisma as a sack of stale pototoes. God, and her hair could only be surpassed in its unfecthingness by Katie Holmes' locks in 'Pieces of April.' Did the two movies retain the same hair stylist perhaps?

I will say that Mark Rufallo's return to the stoner role suits him well—so well that I suggest that he never undertake to play a non-stoner.

Elihjah Wood? Please.

Can someone please acknowledge how utterly stupid this film was? Oh, OK, let's have an office where we erase peoples memories, but let's do the actual work of the memory erasing in peoples homes, and cart around our supplies in what looks like a stolen van.
-- Mary

I do rate Inland Empire, and it tops 2006 as an A minus.

http://www.celluloid-dreams.de/content/images/kritiken-filmbilder/mulholland-drive/mulholland-drive-1.jpg

1) Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001), 454 points, 4 first-place votes

Finally saw MD last night, I took the advice of many and decided not to try and too much make sense of it all, just strapped myself in and went along with the ride. My "date" took me by surprise afterwards by declaring that it had all made sense to her, tears still streaming down her face.
The whole thing still lodged deep in my psyche where I suspect it will remain for a while. The Spanish "Crying" (by no means a mere rehash of Blue Velvet's Orbison moment) had me gripping the sides of the seat with a lump in my throat and eyes damp, yet I couldn't really understand why. As someone who doesn't necessarily demand a plot, let alone a logical one, but would rather immerse himself in atmosphere and beautiful imagery, it was some kind of perfection. I haven't seen all the reference points that Edna talks about, but I was put in mind of Bunuel and Polanski's "The tenant". But no-one can create menace quite like David Lynch.
-- Tag

do people in relationships go to the movies on v-day?

Oh, I meant single people's VIEW of romance. I don't give a damn what ppl in relationships do.

http://uashome.alaska.edu/~jndfg20/website/pupkin.jpg

I think the best film of all 4 decades was likely made outside America.

I did find, however, that I gave a point to Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise in the 80s poll.

http://www.everyticket.com/images/nascar/bristol.gif

I would have voted Yi Yi #1

The list-maker, I would imagine.

I've just trawled through my computer and found my votes. Apparently I had The Pianist as my no.1, and Memento no.3 with Eternal & Mulholland at 2 and 4. Just in case anyone was troulbed by my earlier lack of certainty - you will sleep easy now.

What the hell is Swordfish?

I just am bad about cleaning out my old sent mail. Especially since I like reading what I wrote years ago far more than I like reading what others wrote to me.

You must know by now how bad I am about e-mail. Like that crazy woman with her telephone in Sisters, I never call and I never answer.

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. All the Real Girls
3. You Can Count on Me
4. 25th Hour
5. Mulholland Dr.
6. Talk to Her
7. Together
8. Spirited Away
9. Lost in Translation
10. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
11. Collateral
12. Before Sunset
13. Far From Heaven
14. Y Tu Mama Tambien
15. Spellbound

WORST
About Schmidt
Igby Goes Down
Waking Life

Besides, we already have Morbius to tell us the worst of The Best.

HARDLY ever.

What about the orphan votes? Where did A.I. finish with all these Uma Thurman foot fetishists?

Also, MD at least didn't exploit Richard Pryor.

Is the "Ratcatcher" here the same as the one in the 90's poll??

Yeah, it was the same film.

This was easily the most bizarre of ILX's old school film polls.

It might have been the most bizarre, but out of them all, it easily contains the highest number of films that I've actually seen.

Just noticed this. Wow, I've missed a lot of these.

whenever I see that photo upthread of All The Real Girls I think it's an ad for polio research.

I threw this one a ballot: https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/the-best-films-of-the-decade-so-far-2010-2014

I'll have to 'finish' this year before i can even think about that time frame.

*last year

Yeah, can we wait a few months? (just found out I'm going to Göteborg Film Fest so I'll get to see so many great 2014 films in a few weeks, yayyayyay!!!)