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

"I'm not sure what you're asking for! Something that could never exist as a $70 million studio film, I think."

DING DING DING

(s1ocki i'm sorry, i misread yr post and was confirming yr point)

Yeah, tipsy, come back: we need you to clarify.

Seriously the defense of b-b-b-but for a big budget studio pic it's great is so lame.

fine let's just limit studio films to garbage like PTA & Mann.

I'm frankly shocked to see Miami Vice here, and rating so highly. Not that I've seen it or have any opinion of it whatsoever. I just must've missed something. Apparently. I only ever heard middling reviews of it. But, yeah, sure, I'll check it out.

the phone chat b/w PSH and Sandler is awfully acted.

― Inculcate a spirit of serfdom in children (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, February 8, 2010 1:21 PM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark

they put up a pretty good struggle against a stupid scenario imo

my problem with Punch-Drunk Love wasn't with the movie itself so much as the choice of Adam Sandler to play the lead.

But isn't part of the idea behind PDL to recontextualize Sandler's emotionally stunted man-child character from Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, etc.?

Sandler an inspired choice for PDL, but only if you'd seen and hated Sandler's previous work.

he's applying hollywood thriller logic and style to actual history and actual issues, which makes it pretty potent imo. it's not perfect, but i think the style of the film is ace, the tension is pretty unbelievable, and the violence is vv difficult to watch.

Munich was pretty grim-faced and "intentionally difficult" for a Dreamworks movie. I'm not sure what you're asking for! Something that could never exist as a $70 million studio film, I think.

― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius), Monday, February 8, 2010 1:20 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

spoken like rahm himself ;)

"fine let's just limit studio films to garbage like PTA & Mann."

It's either good on its own terms or it isn't. I'd argue it's not, but defending it by saying "look at how bad most stuff coming from Dreamworks is" is a weak ass dodge.

Seriously the defense of b-b-b-but for a big budget studio pic it's great is so lame.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Monday, February 8, 2010 2:22 PM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's not what i'm saying. i don't think it's what morbs is saying either. what are you saying, besides "it's full of cliches"? what cliches? why are they bad cliches?

Unless you're Ozu, I don't know how else to render moral quandaries in film – a kinetic medium – without resorting to taut, well-edited action scenes.

i thought PDL was okay when i first saw it, but i think the only thing i liked about it was emily watson and sandler stalking to vegas with his phone in hand to confront philip seymour hoffman.

Deric: Vice is one of those films that a small but vocal minority of critics have been praising for a while on the internet. Little to no mainstream crit-cred when it was released.

I liked PDL fine, but there wasn't much recontextualizing going on. Dude is all pudding pudding pudding, straight up.

by saying "look at how bad most stuff coming from Dreamworks is" is

Find where I said that, xxxp. I don't even fucking know what studio puts out what mosdt of the time, that's a bad habit music obsessives carry over from labels.

I wan't saying "b-b-but for a studio movie"... I was just pandering to the lowered cultural standards which Armond White frequently points out; I won't make that mistake again.

lolz but wrong re: sandler xpost

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

this movie was so fucking sweet btw

― jhøshea

I liked the "verticality" of this (for lack of a better word) -- lots of scenes with the actors (esp. Viggo, with his hair tightly slicked back) standing ramrod straight, shots bookended by walls or slyly-framed architecture. I'm thinking especially of the scene between Mueller-Stahl & the barber behind the restaurant -- AM-S standing on the platform in the background, barber in the foreground, both framed by the lines of the buildings and the walls -- and especially the scene in the bathhouse. It infused everything a sense of tension and enclosure that gave the movie most of its juice.

I'm a softie, tho -- thinking about the plot might make me sad, and the ending was a bit of a whoopie cushion, but I liked everyone in it (even Watts, tho she didn't have much to do after the 1st 30 minutes), liked that the treachery was mostly left unexplained until the aftermath, and had no problem w/ the voiceover (it lent the scene w/ the girl singing right before Viggo paid her a little after-the-fact oomph) or the TWIST.

― David R.

i loved this

when i watch movies i'm not comparing them to other movies on a scale of one to fucking ten, although if i had to choose a grade i'd give this one a V for VIGGO

i agree with all of lauren's posts and i think the fact that it's even possible to observe what she observed shows what a fully imagined world cronenberg creates. the loose ends aren't in the plot, they're in little provocations and niggles that are just irreducibly there, and set my imagination off. he draws my attention to things that other directors don't - the sound of a tattoo needle; jumping up to get the balloon in the netting; the unsatisfying physicality of a useless motorcycle kickstarter - even if the story itself is no great shakes on paper. i like that he decided to do a genre piece and bring that sensibility, rather than do another freakazoid gristle gun hallucination.

- Tracer Hand

Cronenberg's Eastern Promises Spoiler Thread

#51

Eastern Promises
David Cronenberg
2007
Canada/United Kingdom
(348 points, 16 votes)

don't read that thread if you don't want to get spoiled. it just happens to be the only 'eastern promises' thread i could find.

u know i liked a lot about eastern promises but now it's time for me to roll my damn eyes

Seriously the defense of b-b-b-but for a big budget studio pic it's great is so lame.

lol auteur theory

although if i had to choose a grade i'd give this one a V for VIGGO

<3<3<3

is 'a history of violence' going to place?

Okay that was unexpected.

if Promises did, then History must do. I imagine it will be really high up as well.

is 'a history of violence' going to place?

― vincent gallogina (J0rdan S.), Monday, February 8, 2010 11:29 AM (11 seconds ago)

I hope so, because i thought it was better than eastern promises.

yeah 'a history of violence' was in my top 10

this film was a top ten for me, i thought viggo was pretty amazing. vincent cassel was almost equally as good. much, much better than a history of violence imo (which i also really liked.)

I couldn't finish History of Violence, but loved Eastern Promises.

Yeah, tipsy, come back: we need you to clarify.

well i just think munich is too successful as an exciting revenge thriller to be successful as a moral contemplation of vengeance. to work, the audience has to feel the moral conflict, not just have it embodied by bana getting sweaty or brow-furrowed. the scene where they're trying to disarm the bomb is tense, but so are all the action scenes. they're tense for the same reasons any well-made bomb-disarming or assassination scenes are tense. nothing about the film seemed very deeply felt to me (including the sense of israel's perennial insecurity). i felt told, but not shown. culminating in the closing shot of the world trade center, which i thought was unbelievably cheap and manipulative.

Really really really wish Munich hadn't popped up on a srsly busy day at work for me. :(

didn't vote for this, but anything with viggo fine with me

is INLAND EMPIRE going to place

inevitably

(i've said this before, but i think the twin towers shot in gangs of new york was better-earned than the one in munich)

PDL is just appalling

^^^this

Eastern Promises is okay, kinda ho-hum for Cronenberg tho

william hurt hurted it

Before Sunset nearly made my top 40, but in the end I had to leave it out. I agree with the people who said that it does a nice job of updating the youthful romanticism of Before Sunrise with a more adult perspective without totally undermining the original movie, or replacing romance with cynicism. I saw both of the movies roughly around the time they came out, so growing up 9 years between them really gives a nice perspective to both of them. I really, really liked Before Sunrise in my teens/early 20s, but I haven't rewatched it in years, maybe out for the fear that it wouldn't feel as magical anymore. But I do want to hold on to the memory of that magical feeling, even if nowadays I probably relate much more to Hawke and Delpy in Sunset than in Sunrise. The relationship between the two movies, and the characters in them, nicely sums up how I've grown up between them... I'm certainly more mature now, and obviously some of the things I thought and did when I was younger feel naive now, but I don't want to dismiss them as mere youthful foolishness, because I still remember how important things felt back then, and I can still relate to that feeling even if I wouldn't do things the same way now as I did back then.

has anyone suggested breaking this thread up into parts? it's kinda a bitch to have to open the whole thing when you've missed 5 minutes.

bookmark

get one bookmark

oh I probably should have thought of doing that

(i've said this before, but i think the twin towers shot in gangs of new york was better-earned than the one in munich)

This is so so challops, right?

Nothing in Gangs is earned. Stolen, if had at all.

Before Sunset nearly made my top 40, but in the end I had to leave it out. I agree with the people who said that it does a nice job of updating the youthful romanticism of Before Sunrise with a more adult perspective without totally undermining the original movie, or replacing romance with cynicism. I saw both of the movies roughly around the time they came out, so growing up 9 years between them really gives a nice perspective to both of them. I really, really liked Before Sunrise in my teens/early 20s, but I haven't rewatched it in years, maybe out for the fear that it wouldn't feel as magical anymore. But I do want to hold on to the memory of that magical feeling, even if nowadays I probably relate much more to Hawke and Delpy in Sunset than in Sunrise. The relationship between the two movies, and the characters in them, nicely sums up how I've grown up between them... I'm certainly more mature now, and obviously some of the things I thought and did when I was younger feel naive now, but I don't want to dismiss them as mere youthful foolishness, because I still remember how important things felt back then, and I can still relate to that feeling even if I wouldn't do things the same way now as I did back then.

― Tuomas, Monday, February 8, 2010 2:34 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well said. i really feel quite the same.

xp Guys guys both shots suck, okay.

bottom half of the list:

100 Morvern Callar dir: Lynne Ramsay (2002/UK/204 points/13 votes)
099 The Piano Teacher dir: Michael Haneke (2001/Austria/France/208/9)
098 Dogville dir: Lars von Trier (2003/Denmark/208.5/13)
097 Happy-Go-Lucky dir: Mike Leigh (2008/UK/210.5/11)
096 High Fidelty dir: Stephen Frears (2000/US/214/10)
095 Capturing the Friedmans dir: Andrew Jarecki (2003/US/215/13/1)
094 Napleon Dynamite dir: Jared Hess (2004/US/215.5/10)
093 Sideways dir: Alexander Payne (2004/US/215/12)
092 Tropical Malady dir: Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2004/Thailand/219/8/1)
091 Talk to Her dir: Pedro Almodóvar (2002/Spain/220/10)
- ? -
090 Together dir: Lukas Moodysson (2000/Sweden/220.5 points/9 votes/1 1st place)
089 The Lives of Others dir: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (2006/Germany/221/12/1)
088 Memories of Murder dir: Bong Joon-Ho (2003/South Korea/222/10)
087 Minority Report dir: Steven Speilburg (2002/US/225.5/14)
086 All the Real Girls dir: David Gordon Green (2003/US/224.5/12)
085 Almost Famous dir: Cameron Crowe (2000/US/225/11/1)
084 Finding Nemo dir: Andrew Stanton & Lee Unkirch (2003/US/226.5/13)
083 Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle dir: Danny Leiner (2004/US/231/13)
082 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World dir: Peter Weir (2003/US/231.5/13)
081 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring dir: Peter Jackson (2001/NZ/US/236/11)
- ? -
080 The Diving Bell and the Butterfly dir: Julian Schnabel (2007/France/237 points/10 votes)
079 Team America: World Police dir: Trey Parker (2004/237.5/8)
078 28 Days Later dir: Danny Boyle (2002/UK/239/12)
077 The Squid & the Whale dir: Noah Baumbach (2005/US/242/13/1)
076 In the Loop dir: Armando Iannucci (2009/UK/246.5/13)
075 Y tu mamá también dir: Alfonso Cuarón (2001/Mexico/250.5/12)
074 In Bruges dir: Martin McDonagh (2008/UK/251/44)
073 The Triplets of Belleville dir: Sylvain Chomet (2003/France/253/10)
072 Amelie dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet (2001/France/259.5/14)
071 25th Hour dir: Spike Lee (2002/US/261/12/1)
- ? -
070 Ratatouille dir: Brad Bird (2007/US/263 points/13 votes)
069 Far From Heaven dir: Todd Haynes (2002/US/266/13)
068 Elephant dir: Gus van Sant (2003/US/267/12/1)
067 Synecdoche, New York dir: Charlie Kaufman (2008/US/267.5/13)
066 A.I. Artificial Intelligence dir: Steven Speilberg (2001/US/274/17)
065 Kung Fu Hustle dir: Stephen Chow (2004/Hong Kong/278.5/16/1)
064 Kings and Queen dir: Arnaud Desplechin (282/France/10)
063 Wet Hot American Summer dir: David Wain (2001/US/289/15)
062 Borat dir: Larry Charles (2006/UK/US/295/16/1)
061 Audition dir: Takashi Miike (2000/Japan/296/14/1)
- ? -
060 Sexy Beast dir: Jonathan Glazer (2001/UK/298.5 points/15 votes/1 1st place vote)
059 The Host dir: Bong Joon-Ho (2006/South Korea/305/13)
058 You Can Count On Me dir: Kenneth Lonergan (2000/US/408/12)
057 Brick dir: Rian Johnson (2005/US/309.5/12/1)
056 Yi Yi: A One and a Two dir: Edward Yang (2000/Tawain/313/12)
055 Munich dir: Steven Speilberg (2005/US/319/15)
054 Miami Vice dir: Michael Mann (2006/US/338/12)
053 Before Sunset dir: Richard Linklater (2004/US/343/13)
052 Punch-Drunk Love dir: Paul Thomas Anderson (2002/US/347/13)
051 Eastern Promises dir: David Cronenberg (2007/Canada/348/16)

lamp otm