The (Now-Overrated) ILX Top 100 Films of the 2000s Poll Results

I'm a little surprised there isn't more commentary about what people like about these movies instead of what they hate

Man Who Enjoys Thing Informed He Is Wrong

i mean i like the good girl, and i'm glad that it got made, and it seemed like there was a dearth of solid, offbeat, grown-up american films at that time iirc, but some small nmber of frames from school of rock is more interesting than it imo

i liked the omniscient narration on et tu mama, and the window on rural mexico, and the energy of the young guys

narration reminded me of french new wave

nah totally prefer the Good Girl myself. brutal movie. still lol at the "invisible paint" joke.

School of Rock is okay and all but its basically a sports movie (underdogs gotta win the big game... *yawn* no wonder his next movie was Bad News Bears)

I liked the audience-pleasing non-canonical dwarf-tossing scene in whatever LOTR movie it was.
Joan Cusack is excellent in School of Rock. Clearly the superior Cusack.

this is dumbassery tho: "Of course the mom's character is privileged - she's a mother."

Wtf are you talking about? So all mothers in all films have their perspectives privileged????

One of the classic stereotypical dichotomies with female characters is that of madonna/whore. We have the groupie who has an unhappy ending, and we have the wonderful mother - the madonna figure - who through her great wisdom and love, lets her only son go on tour with a rock band and become "born" as a rock critic.

Also, In the Loop making this list is just really really weird. Kudos for a somewhat unpredictable poll, even if they're (early on, anyway) taking place in some alternate universe from what I experienced this decade.

i voted for 4 of the films that have shown up so far: happy-go-lucky, memories of murder, master and commander, and in the loop. i didn't vote for fellowship of the ring, mainly because i voted for the two towers.

sarahel, serious question: have you actually seen the film?

Yes I have seen it - and the stereotypical female characters just were too annoying, though I do really like Frances McDormand as an actress, so it wasn't excruciating.

I don't believe there was any evidence that he actually molested any children, but I don't recall.

He confessed to something vague in a letter, which suggested he at least did something he was ashamed of.

sarahel's memory jibes with mine fwiw

doesn't jibe with mine, or with the Madonna/Whore complex, but whatever. i don't really feel like arguing about it.

re: friedmans, wasn't it the creepy photos he took?

Movies deal in stereotypes, male and female. That's why we watch them. All of them.

sure but its nice to add some shading/subtleties in there

It's just the way I read it - someone like you, Mordy, who are probably identifying more with the main character because of the fact you are a) a guy and b) a music writer is probably going to pay attention to other things.

like how realistic it is for a bus full of rockers in '74 to be singing Tiny Dancer

Haven't seen almost famous, but how problematic is it compared to jerry maguire?

sarahel, I'm also an attentive film watcher and a graduate student in a very critical theory heavy department, so this isn't just a moment where I'm clouded by my fond memories

don't young, teenage boys view their mothers as their mother?

The scene where Zooey gives the kid her vinyl records, and he flips through all the mysterious covers, made me wish really bad that I'd had an older sibling.

It's not. But that's what Almost Famous is... Cameron Crowe writing and directing his own autobiography, and making something of a fantasy out of it to cover up the boring parts.

oh, and sarahel, Manderlay is vastly superior to Dogville. Still kind of shit, but not terrible.

Has this been posted? Best part of Team America:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yC7HwPh6Es

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/amelie.jpg

Soppy, sappy and lovely in equal effect. Point is that I do not believe in love at first sight, or the idea of soulmates - which the film to a lesser or greater extent panders to. Nevertheless I do find the narrative style and the visual beauty sucks you in far more that the films many shortcomings (overly cute and gamine lead, tweeness) washed over me. Luckily the lead and the film (the two are pretty much intertwined) have a dark side which makes the loveliness of the rest of it bearable.

― Pete

saw the first 20 minutes on tv at christmas and spent the first weekend after christmas looking for the dvd only to fail to find it anywhere (which is odd because it used to be everywhere).

― koogs

I think it's excellent. The only bit I didn't like was the sex shop which I thought was needlessly contrived (even in a very contrived film). But everything is so sparkly and pretty in it. I appreciated it even more after going to Paris and then watching it and realizing what a fantasy view of the city it is.

― anthony kyle monday

It seems like a lot of the criticism of Amelie is directed at the setting and characters and plot and so on. But it makes no claim to be otherwise, and can and should be enjoyed as light, clever fantasy, as a fairy tale romance. The whole arc of the film is watching Amelie's eventual detachment from her twee little fantasy world, and while it may have been more interesting to have city itself grow a bit in turn, it doesn't ruin the film to have the simpler story. The film is only in part about Paris, and not the real Paris, the one that's on your parent's decades-old postcards. If this is not your thing -- it isn't mine, really -- so be it, but I don't understand the level of animosity directed towards it.

― Jacob

Amelie

#72

Amelie
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
2001
France
(259.5 points, 14 votes)

iirc kate hudson's characters problems don't stem from her ho-dom, they stem from the rock dude being a dick and not-that-into-her. reallly don't see how this can be seen as a sexist narrative unless I'm remembering the movie wrong.

omigod

Amelie! Let the games begin!

Like Jules et Jim, this fucking thing defined Foreign Films for a generation.

Yeah, if you take the fame and rock n' roll out of Almost Famous, it's still just a story about a one-sided relationship. I don't see that as inherently sexist at all.

Amelie doesn't deserve a place on any best-of poll, but it's certainly not a bad film. Jacob pretty OTM

Very curious about what animations turn up. I didn't vote for Triplets in the end but it has some great touches and fantastic cartoon Glenn Gould

re: AF rock dude in not-falling-in-love-with-cheap-ho shockah

x-post

finally we can start arguing about racism instead of sexism

xp Mordy: Then, I'm at a loss why the stereotypical female characters aren't obvious to you - I don't know. I don't feel like watching that movie again to better build my argument, and I'm ready to just agree to disagree on this point.

iatee: and why would that be? Why would rock dude be a dick and not-that-into her? Because she's a groupie, she's too easy, impure, etc. This is a really tired narrative trope.

director's cut of AF fleshed out the women more iirc

Any movie with hot chicks that indie boys are going to get a tent in their pants for is going to make it on the list. Also see ATRG.

Sometimes I worry that when I like movies that other people dislike, it's because I wasn't smart enough to dislike them, too.

When that happens I just worry I'm not pretentious enough to dislike them too.

ATRG?

more like cause he can and will sleep with lots of girls / whoever he wants cause he's a rock dude.

xp

(Btw, this never happens to me when it comes to music, because I recognize that my enjoyment of music exists almost entirely on an aesthetic level, and aesthetic disagreements are understandable. But movies are more complicated: all sorts of politics and meta-narratives get mixed up with aesthetic appreciation. With movies I can no longer say "oh, I don't pay attention to the lyrics.")

All the Real Girls xxp

end times signifier- there is a director's cut of Almost Famous

this poll would be great if i don't know... ONE of the films I voted for shows up eventually? Damn I feel like Morbs on Oscar night.

I have to apologise here: I voted Amelie pretty high. I really wasn't expecting to like it (too sappy! too twee!), and put off watching it for quite a while, but it hooked me, and it would have been dishonest of me not to vote for it.

i didn't vote for amelie (my fiancee did, she submitted a ballot despite not being an ilxor), but i have always liked it. i recognize that maybe how much you like it comes down to how twee you are or how tolerant you are of tweeness, and it's basically a ridiculous modern fantasy, but it's really well-made. pales greatly in comparison to its more realistic semi-counterpart 'happy-go-lucky' imo.

With movies I can no longer say "oh, I don't pay attention to the lyrics.")

"I just sit back with a j and soak in the images."