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

8/45 for me, including WHAS and Audition from my top ten.

2/40 for me:

#2 Yi-Yi
#32 Ratatouille

sexy beast is an amazing movie and im proud to say it was in my top 10 - one of the best and most stylistically controlled debut films of the decade - glazer is an incredible craftsman - birth is amazing too - yall are fools and dismissing it as a "gangster film" is a substitute for actual thinking

― brews before HOOS (s1ocki), Friday, February 5, 2010 5:14 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

l8 to the sexy party here but slocki otfm - sexy beast is a masterpiece #6 on my ballot - birth is great too

one of the things i like about it is how it totally de-glamo(u)rizes all of the gangster shit, it makes it seem like a pretty horrible and kinda dull lifestyle and even the crime boss is just this guy who seems a little bored by the entire process and can't even rouse himself other than to basically be like, "look, i know what you did, i can kill you just like that and no one would care but i won't because you're not worth it, here's a tenner, head back to spain."

only minority report, nemo & borat 4 me

dont know quite how to say this and its not particularly revealing as far as what makes sexy beast good but its just a v forceful movie - totally ill, straight gangsta

everything is so close! #56 has fewer votes than #100

7 for me so fars: hpy-go-lky, harld +kumr, in bruges, kungfu hustl, borat, the host, sexy beast

haaay whoa only one of those movies is american

Just now catching up. I love Kings and Queen, voted for it highly, and I'm glad it placed (though I admit I thought it might be a little higher).

Would love to see A.I. again, as I've not seen it since the cinema. Didn't care for the ending at the time, but I was only 18 and I'd like to see if I can find the rhythm all the fans were clearly in.

Anyway, a link to the Jonathan Rosenbaum review: The Best of Both Worlds

It's mentioned in other articles around the site in passing, but I've not gone too in depth to see what they say.

64. Kings and Queen (282 points, 10 votes)

^proves that a passionate minority can lob a film pretty high into the list

have to say it's getting more interesting as it goes along

absolutely zero from my ballot so far -- i'm populist scum, though, there's at least a dozen that are a lock for the top half, probably more

wait in what world is only one of these films american?

oh you're taking about your choices

ppl who go to movies blazed, I don't particularly need to hear what you thought of anything...

Tho the broad comedy in The Host was a bit o_O

best thing about it! Lost interest after the first big attack scene.

Brick was fucking shit.

I rewatched Yi Yi last month and liked it well enough to put it 90th on my other ballot. Frankly, I'm kind of put off by how much more accessible it is that the guy's other films, even tho I was often bored by them; it's missing what made Yang Yang.

You Can Count on Me was like a first-rate TV movie or off-Broadway play. Thus, nowhere near my ballot.

i dont really remember much abt sexy beast but what i do remember was intense and spare the story was really well served, i think?

its cool 2 c u can count on me here. i def think of it as a 90s movie it seems more unselfconscious and thoughtful than the typical 00s american indie slice-of-lyfe dramas. its the closest film equiv i can think of to contemp realist short fiction - concerned with portraying the small moments of real clarity and empathy in ppl's 'everyday' lives.

kings and queen was #5 on my ballot tbh i didnt expect it to place at all. its uncertainty and instability felt p impt 2 me but i think im too stupid to explain why its good

You Can Count on Me was like a first-rate TV movie or off-Broadway play. Thus, nowhere near my ballot.

well its sensibility is p much entirely non-visual but iirc it makes good use of silence and atmosphere. not even really sure if this is diss coming from u

Ah, meant to quote this bit of Rosenbaum's review for those who couldn't be bothered to read the whole thing (A.I. SPOILERS SPOILERS):

It sounds like typical Spielberg goo — for better and for worse — and when you’re watching the film it feels that way. But the minute you start thinking about it, it’s at least as grim as any other future in Kubrick’s work. Humankind’s final gasp belongs to a fucked-up boy robot with an Oedipus complex who’s in bed with his adopted mother and who finally becomes a real boy at the very moment that he seemingly autodestructs — assuming he vanishes along with her, though if he survives her, it could only be to look back in perpetual longing at their one day together. Real boy or dead robot? Whatever he is, his apotheosis with mommy seems to exhaust his reason for existing. As Richard Pryor once described the death of his father while having sex, “He came and went at the same time.” Like the death of 2001’s HAL, which might be regarded as David’s grandfather, it’s the film’s most sentimental moment, yet it’s questionable whether it involves any real people at all.

i didn't vote for "you can count one me" simply because i forgot. it's definitely top 10 of the decade for me. give it n extra 30 points please.

yiyi, i dunno. i left after an hour or so because i was BORED OUT OF MY SKULL.

oh fwiw im 4/45 but theres lots of stuff i didnt vote for that i like okay

also a remy rave pretty much puts me right off. he only really likes things about "childhood" though iirc.

i dare say he likes other stuff but i associate him with meaningful childhood event.

capturing the friedmans (#6), master and commander (#9) h&k (#10), WHAS (#8), borat (#1), 25th hour (#35), AI (#34), ratatouille (#24), diving bell (#32)

ps I am a shameless strategic voter and only voted for stuff that I thought was likely to place

Up to 5/45 today (WHAS and You Can Count On Me). Feelin' like a lot of my picks are gonna start showing up with the quickness on Monday. Although the results so far have been all over the place in the best possible way, so who can say?

To anyone who might balk at the idea of watching You Can Count On Me...just quit balking. Seriously. I understand your reservations, but they're misplaced in this case. There's nothing quirky or sappy about it. There isn't any hyper-stylized dialogue or ludicrous plot twists. It isn't mopey or overly-giddy. And its indie-ness is pretty beside the point. It's more akin to a '70s drama, really. A solid, small, and very real-feeling movie about familial relationships and without (as I think someone said above) lessons to be learned or a moral to drive home. I rewatched it recently and was even more moved by it than I was ten years ago. So, yes, moving, but also very relaxed and at times pretty damn funny. It's just good, and one of my favorites of the last ten years (probably definitely my fave of 2000). So no more balking.

Gukbe, thx for the JRo link. btw his very mixed, careful reading of Taxi Driver on there is well worth absorbing too.

Lamp, all I mean is the limits of YCCOM's ambitions -- and it's very good at what it chooses to do -- just don't spell a Film of the Decade for me.

u can count on me was dece, jus a heartfelt lil guy

it's really good. the acting is fantastic.

no one cares about acting though

I feel the sudden need to note (as if anyone really cares) that I generally tend to judge movies (and definitely picked the movies for my ballot) based on two criteria: did it resonate with me personally, and do I feel that it achieved what it seems to have been meant to achieve? The negation of the former was definitely the dealbreaker for a lot of possible picks that I felt were otherwise perfectly respectable and solid movies. But I feel like that combination helps to explain why I voted for something like Napoleon Dynamite. Do I think that it's objectively one of the best movies of the last ten years? Hell no. But there was something about it that I found very subjectively appealing in a way that I might not be able to adequately explain, and I also think it was very successful in its aesthetic and (non-)narrative aims.

I care about acting, jed_, and I agree completely. I really felt for Linney, and I just wanted to give Ruffalo a big ol' hug.

sorry i'm drunk. acting, imo, is the thing that makes a film watch-able or not. i can watch any old crap if the acting is good and if the acting is bad then there's no way at all that the film can be good. good films with bad performances just don't exist.

xpost to myself but sort-of a response to the last post

xxpost!

Ha ha. My brother unknowingly just posted an ancient (2001, natch) and very apropos picture of me on his Facebook. So in celebration of today's placement of WHAS on the poll:

http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs198.snc3/20555_105173716175460_100000484962974_137013_6117675_n.jpg

Voted for 8 of the 45, all pretty much in the lower half of my ballot. Almost voted for many of the others that did make it. Of the 12(!) I haven't seen, I'm most looking forward to Together, Memories of Murder, WHAS, and Kung Fu Hustle.

I'm expecting a lot of my higher ranked movies to show up later on. I have a feeling they're probably favorites of many others on here as well.

I thought I voted for Tropical Malady, but I see that I inadvertently left it off my ballot. It's the only Weerasethakul movie I've seen as yet. Looking forward to Syndromes and a Century.

Acting is definitely a component of watchablility, but I agree with Deric that personal resonance is what makes a movie successful for me. Sometimes they coexist ( e.g. Mulholland Drive), but sometimes a great movie is great with even if the acting is just serviceable (Tropical Malady, Elephant)

ppl who go to movies blazed, I don't particularly need to hear what you thought of anything...

got it grandpa

These kids today, and their drug use.

"all those head films, midnight movies and raging bulls, easy tigers, that enriched your life over the years? put them in the garbage right now, because those people? reeeeeaaaally fucking high." </billhicksparaphrase>

lol @ easy tigers

5/40: together, y tu mama, 25th hour, WHAS, in the loop

wish i voted for: harold and kumar, sexy beast, brick (onreexamination of my ballot i have no idea why i voted for spellbound or the rest of my bottom ten...)

the limits of YCCOM's ambitions -- and it's very good at what it chooses to do -- just don't spell a Film of the Decade for me.

i think that's fair. i just personally like movies with modest ambitions and low-key stories that do them well. ruby in paradise was a '90s Film of the Decade for me, e.g. and ok victor nunez has more of a social agenda than lonergan, but it's all conveyed in these very small strokes. i don't really think you can count on me is "movie of the week" material because it mostly avoids easy melodrama and sentimentality and it doesn't really resolve anything so much as allow the characters to go on with their lives.

(irrelevant personal note, i had an experience as a kid similar to the bar scene. my parents were out of town and i was staying with a friend who lived down the road and we somehow landed up for the evening in the custody of his stepfather, butch -- the only name i ever knew for him -- and butch was not going to let a couple of 9-year-olds interfere with his pool night. so he told us we were going for "pizza" and took us to a grungy joint with two pool tables and what i assume were cheap pitchers of beer. he did buy us pizza at the bar and gave us quarters for the pinball machine, so of course we thought it was the coolest thing in the world. my parents weren't so thrilled about it.)

thanks thread for the Together recommendation. just saw it and loved it!

8/40 - Audition, Sexy Beast, 28 Days Later, The Lives of Others, Finding Nemo, Capturing the Friedmans, In Bruges, Sideways,

Think I forgot to vote for LATE MARRIAGE, hope others remembered :/

I think it fell just outside my top 40, but can't remember offhand. Best sex scene of the '00s, tho.

ok. just one thought here:

Audition is absolutely terrifying if you don't know what you're in for. A friend gave it to me on VHS in the fall of 2000, just like 'hey you'll like this.'

otm. I wrote a similar account upthread of introducing this to my gr w/out letting her know it was a horror film. The atmosphere is sooo tranquil & then (SPOILER) that scene w/ the telephone & burlap-sack dude from outta nowhere..

*gf

Think I forgot to vote for LATE MARRIAGE, hope others remembered :/

― autotuna fish (Tape Store), Saturday, February 6, 2010 1:58 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

aghhhhhhh

AGHHHHHH

oh hey it is a new day, so i assume the positivity clause no longer matters, so i would like to say that Brick is a fucking bag of bullshit and i am sad for the people that got suckered into voting for it. incomprehensible mumbling and idiot plotting does not equal modern noir just because no one can figure out what anyone is saying or what is going on. PIECE OF SHIT.

hate that fucking movie more than anything else thats showed up.

sorry to be such a dick but tons of people have tried to get me to love that movie and i have gotten stuck watching it like 4 times and as far as i can tell it is worthless. sorry dudes. its one of my flashpoint anger movies.