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

lamp otm of course

And Knocked Up was still better than Funny People.

There's a dark, malevolent presence in Steve Carrell that none of these movies are capitalizing on.

iirc Apatow was all like 'don't call it conservative, abortions are great but come on, its called knocked up, what is the film going to be if they get an abortion 10 minutes in and never speak to each other again?'

I might go find my copy of Anchorman, havent seen it in forever.

Hard to argue with. Fair enough, complain about the portrayal of women in Apatow movies, but this abortion-politics obsession in regard to a film whose whole premise rests on her keeping the baby struck me as nuts at the time and still does.

fuck any movie that doesn't have at least 1 abortion

but this abortion-politics obsession in regard to a film whose whole premise rests on her keeping the baby struck me as nuts at the time and still does.

have you considered that the whole premise of it could be objectionable?

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

Comparing Oldboy to Hollywood product reveals its qualities - its narratively brave, I thought it was incredibly unsentimental (unlike our old mate Armond) and pitiless in its characterisation. The element that is most obviously attention-grabbing is the violence, the octopus, etc. This is the bit that hollywood can and does do, but Park does it better than most American directors, more stylishly, more audaciously, with far more wit. Dargis says 'so what " of this virtuosity, but it is a pleasure in itself.

It is an empty film, with nothing to say, really, but its beautiful and entertaining and frequently funny. Why should it be anything more than that? Because it won a prize at Cannes?

I preferred Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, which is more formally adventurous for its genre (many long takes and static set-ups distancing us) and more cynical without seeming quite so calculated...

― David N

omg f'in amazin. really, some of the self-mutilating violence at the end and MINI-SPOILER - that octopus-eating thing in the sushi place was just UNWATCHABLE DISGUSTING EWWWW (how was that appetizing scene _filmed_ i wanna know? hm?!), but it was just fantastic overall. has anyone seen rain looking more atmospheric than during some of those beginning scenes when he's in jail? even the calendar motif, a temporal technique that's _so_ old and overused, was somehow made to lool inventive and fresh. and am i alone in thinkin woo-jin was HOTT??

also, mark p OTM. i found the 2nd half just as strong, and the final "revelation" to be really poignant and moving, and even believabe, not something that "can't be taken seriously." but maybe 'coz im familiar w/ a culture that is all about honor and self-respect.? ..perhaps Western audiences can't digest something so self-denigrating or self-punishing, as concerns of destroying one's reputation in an individualistic society aren't as important as a collectivist Asian one.

― Vic in Alderaan

The movie starts with inexplicable duress, continues as detective story, with the two combatants circling closer and closer, and then switches suddenly into theatrical juggernaut at the final confrontation. It sounds like pretty typical tragedy to me. The film doesn't become a different one at the end; it merely ups the ante and reaches some sort of hyper-dramatic summation of the opening stages. The scene in the high-rise building (i.e. that confrontation) might be my favourite scene in movie history. It's astonishing and well beyond what anyone was expecting (perhaps this is why people rejected it? Outside the comfort zone and all that).

The 'OMG plot twist' aspect of it simply put everything into sharper context. It didn't change anything that had gone before.

― LJ

I actually really like the villain in Oldboy, in that when he turns up, he's this cheery, upscale, successful guy who also happens to be a freaking psychopath. He's like Patrick Bateman crossed with Goldfinger.

- Edward III

Old Boy

#44

Oldboy
Park Chan-wook
2003
South Korea
(378 points, 18 votes, 1 first place)

yeah that apatow response is classic dude missing the point lol

but this abortion-politics obsession in regard to a film whose whole premise rests on her keeping the baby struck me as nuts at the time and still does.

have you considered that the whole premise of it could be objectionable?

― sarahel, Monday, 8 February 2010 22:05 (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

So every movie where someone has been killed or done drugs or drove too fast or- should not be worth viewing or being made? Who the fuck cares about objectionable premises if a film is good. Hell, film buffs still go crazy about Birth Of A Nation.

gah no one has said it can't still be good. calm down. i for one love when people get killed in films.

oldboy fucking rules

LJ wants everyone to know that he likes Oldboy very much, and is actually following this poll closely, even though he is banned, and it would make him distraught to the point of inconsolable if people say mean things about it.

have you considered that the whole premise of it could be objectionable?

― sarahel, Monday, February 8, 2010 10:05 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

you object to the premise of someone having a one-night stand and getting pregnant?

but this abortion-politics obsession in regard to a film whose whole premise rests on her keeping the baby struck me as nuts at the time and still does.

My point wasn't that, it was that the movie never even presented abortion as an viable option. If it had had a scene where she considers it, but the it's explained why this particular woman still wants to keep the baby, that would've been fine by me.

Oldboy=good

Oldboy college student fanbase=me never wanting to see or hear or talk about Oldboy again.

Not just Knockedup, but Juno coming out sort of cements a weird new marketability of unplanned pregnancies as moviegoing fun, and if you were to look at declining poll numbers among the young for abortion rights, you might feel a little frightened. just a little. I doubt these movies are canaries for Supreme Ct. overturning Roe v. Wade, though.

lj is banned? is this because dempsey is out for the season?

Cause women have to justify themselves if they choose not to get an abortion.

"have you considered that the whole premise of it could be objectionable?"

How so? Anyway, I came across a lot of people making the argument (as Tuomas is now) that what the movie needed was a deeper engagement with the abortion debate rather than what you seem to be saying, ie it should never have been made at all. They're different arguments and I think the first one is missing the point.

I actually voted for Sympathy for Lady Vengeance which is weird in retrospect cuz I remember both the other two "Vengeance" movies much better, but my vague memories of LV gave it the nod regardless.

lj asked for self-ban because of his studies or something?

Hallway hammer scene might be the single best action sequence of the decade.

i'm not saying it should never have been made - i'm saying that those who object to its portrayal of women, and the abortion issue should have a problem with the film, itself, rather than just the way it does/doesn't portray those issues, because the film is not about that.

what's wrong with the way it portrays women?

sympathy for lady vengeance is such a shitty movie, one of the worst follow-ups either. (thirst is even worse). i liked old boy mostly but in general this dude is bogus.

I liked Thirst too.

Cause women have to justify themselves if they choose not to get an abortion.

If a movie has a woman in a situation where she has every reason to get an abortion, it'd would kinda internally logical to at least explain why she doesn't. It's not just a political issue, it's a flaw in writing a character.

I also voted for Joint Security Area. Yay for bogus Korean directors!

nobody liked Save My Green Planet?

women can choose to do what they want as long as they justify it to tuomas

That's fair.

Forty-year-old Virgin?????? This is easily the most mystifyingly highly-placed film so far.

I think it was an important film with regards to Hollywood comedies if nothing else.

It changed the game, man.

anchorman wayyyy overrated

3 more to go for the day....

If a movie has a woman in a situation where she has every reason to get an abortion, it'd would kinda internally logical to at least explain why she doesn't. It's not just a political issue, it's a flaw in writing a character.

I think maybe she just kind of decided almost immediately at some level that she wanted to have the kid. I think its not unrealistic to think that happens sometimes. It would have been a very different movie, tonally and otherwise, if it had grappled with the issues around abortion, and it seems a bit unfair to criticize the filmmakers for not making a different movie than the one they set out to make.

These results are like a fantasy sports draft, and we just had a run on closers.

What was that german movie where, SPOILER, this family is contemplating aborting, but they end up deciding not to, and it turns out their baby is hitler?

i believe that's the seminal german film "Our Bad"

I think maybe she just kind of decided almost immediately at some level that she wanted to have the kid. I think its not unrealistic to think that happens sometimes.

co-sign. I know plenty of liberal women for whom aborting the kid wouldn't cross their minds.

And I don't think the movie criticizes, even implicitly, anyone who finding themselves in a similar situation but feeling very differently about it might make the other choice. So I don't think it's pro-life propaganda.

Are any documentaries going to make the cut outside Grizzly Man & Capturing the Friedmans? I'm starting to think not.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/gosfordpark8.jpg

Clive Owen is ace. He was around my flat for a photo shoot - nice guy.

― suzy

I liked Gosford Park, one of Altman's good ones. With an ensemble cast that large it is difficult to to let any one character dominate, though as he showed in Cookie's Fortune one actor pitching it at a completely different level (Glenn CLose's histrionics) can knock the whole film out of whack. That doesn't happen here. The only actor who really does anything diferent is the aforemnetbtioned Owen, who seems to have brooding down toa fine art now.

Kelly Macdonald as our nominal viewpoint character and girl detective also stood out. All in all a nice, tight engaging film. Perhaps slightly let down by its quite poor mystery element (I did not really care who did it and the denoument was unbelievable), and the vague idea of what this cast could have done if it had been a Wodehouse plot. Still, excellent work.

― Pete

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

My wife, a bit of an anglophile, felt that underneath it all this film had much more of an American sensibility - maybe because of all the focus on the class stuff and the particular expression of the distaste for the idea of servants

― Hurting 2

yeah that's fair play. the irony is that 'gosford park' was written by a wealthy conservative aristo guy who probably has servants. whereas there are plenty of brits who have written works of fiction about the beastly upper classes and their treatment of servants. (of course there have been plenty who have not really seen servant-keeping as a social ill.)

― history mayne

gosford park

#43

Gosford Park
Robert Altman
2001
United States/United Kingdom
(379 points, 18 votes)

Oldboy was in my top 5. The only bit I would cut out would be that girl's incredibly whiney voice. Other than that, it's near-perfect.

hahahaha @ omar incl that suzy post

lol

love this movie so much

if anyone knows who has my dvd of it please webmail me

haha herein i am qtd at the time praising a movie that earlier today i forgot which decade it was made