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

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.

For some reason I decided to watch Brick with the subtitles on and it really helped.

nb: I'm like 80% drunk right now

I voted for Brick, but I'll be completely honest and say that I haven't seen it since the theater where I completely loved it. I can't defend it on a point to point basis, other than it felt absolutely true to the spirit of Chandler/et al. when I saw it. And I still think cutting to black (credits) as the first chords of "Sister Ray" cue up is a genius move.

Dr. Morbius, when you say You Can Count On Me (which I haven't seen) is a first-rate TV movie, how does it compare to something like Killer of Sheep? (which is hands-down the best movie I saw in a theater in this decade, RIP revival showings in Dallas.) The only strain of indie movie I rated (or overrated) this decade shared some DNA with KoS ("little naturalistic details," per Eric H), but maybe I've missed some elements that separate it - are indies like YCCOM too comfortable with standard narrative or something?

Movies I've voted for:

100. Morvern Callar (204 pts, 13 votes) - the party scene (after boyfriend's suicide, pre-Spain) set to Aphex Twin is stunning. Despite being a culture (musically, artistically) completely removed from what I experienced it feels absolutely familiar, and I think the dryness, the way Morvern moves from the suicide to partying speaks more to what's really happening here than anything else in the movie. Supermarket scene set to Nancy & Lee is quite beautiful too,

96. High Fidelity (214 pts, 10 votes) - along with Almost Famous, movies that sometimes make me feel not "smart enough to dislike them." Earnest (maybe even dumb) in a way unsuited to ILE, maybe.

86. All the Real Girls (224.5 pts, 12 votes) - Probably not justifiable, honestly, and I don't know if I'd vote for it if I encountered the movie today. DGG's lingering shots of southern weirdness seem less interesting today than before I'd heard of Ralph Eugene Meatyard. Romanticism of the south is all well and good, but DGG does it for a south that doesn't exist and probably never did. I'm not even sure I'd find his portrayal of young love honest - but it seemed that way when I experienced the movie originally.

82. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (231.5 pts, 13 votes) - a great, throwback action movie with fine performances all around, the kind of movie that gets unjustly forgotten as time passes.

66. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (274 points, 17 votes)) - did not vote for it, hated it at the time for Spielbergizing the ending (I thought it should have ended with the toy boy under sea, stuck forever staring at what is illuminated by that light. But I think the movie's champions are probably right, and where Spielberg took it after that (meeting his mother, etc.) is probably richer and more interesting.

don't really get the "tv movie" thing. what tv movie ever is YCCOM like? is that just shorthand for saying "it doesn't have robots in it"?

I'm kind of put off by how much more accessible it is than the guy's other films
-morbs

such a morbs thing to say. dr do u have a link to ur end of decade 100?

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

Me too. Took the afternoon off to see it on my birthday one year and then took about two hours in the pub to get the day back on track. I wasn't just angry with the film-makers, but with any critic or friend who had recommended it to me.

4 out of my top 40 have made it so far: The Piano Teacher, Happy-Go-Lucky, Together, and Amélie. I saw Yi Yi in the cinema when it came out, and I remember liking it, but I have absolutely no recollection of what it was about, so I didn't vote for it. All I can remember is seeing it with some friend, who complained that it was too long and slow, but it didn't bother me.

I would've voted for Audition, but damn IMDb tricked me into thinking it's a 1999 movie, so I thought it was not eligible. I remember seeing it 10 years ago at a film festival, the festival catalogue text for it was pretty vague, so I didn't quite know what to expect. I'd seen a couple of Miike movies before, so I knew something weird might happen, but boy didn't I expect that! I feel kinda sad for people who have been spoiled about the movie beforehand. I haven't seen Audition ever since, but I think it'll remain burned into my memory forever.

13/45 = I think I win. squid & whale, kings & queen, you can count on me, diving bell & butterfly, happy-go-lucky, memories of murder, far from heaven, together, piano teacher, the host, lives of others, in the loop, borat.

However the fact that I voted for quite a few films that weren't even nominated = dave chappelle's block party, curse of the golden flower, etc. means I probably won't win.

I never get to see enough Miike, LOVE what I've seen tho'

Really happy Memories of Murder got in! Had no idea it was so highly regarded, just caught it on TV one evening at random.

I think I've given up hoping that My Summer of Love or Science of Sleep will sneak in.

re:my summer of love, was pawlikowski's earlier (better) film, last resort, eligible?

think so. i prefer MSOL, but only narrowly. science of sleep was dogshit, one of the worst films i've ever seen.

i think i liked YCCOM but if 13GO30 doesn't chart im gonna be very upset.

why don't people wait until it's done and post their lists in full?

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

― Moreno, Saturday, February 6, 2010 6:08 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

aw, this is a good post.

i've put 'must love dogs' on my lovefilm list and well, i don't have high hopes, but we can all dream.

Diane Lane is ridiculously attractive imo

i voted for Last Resort but i guess it won't get in. speaking of Paddy Considine i guess Dead Man's Shoes won't either...

i started to watch Wet Hot American Summer tonight thanks to this thread but turned it off because it was not funny