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

I don't think it's pro-life propaganda so much as a sad reflection on a world where women like her have to settle for men like him

― Dan S, Monday, February 8, 2010 5:38 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think it's a joyous reflection on a world where men like me have a chance with women like her

Maybe its just that I was tired when I saw it & I should probably give it another chance b/c, even tho I'll mostly rep for Altman in general (MASH is also overrated imo), I thought Gosford Park was just fucking boring.

slocki you run a porn site?

Ryan Philippe and Kristen Scott Thomas = rowr.

guys btw can we not talk at torturous length about movies that haven't placed yet

guys btw can we not talk at torturous length about movies that haven't placed yet

― ('_') (omar little), Monday, February 8, 2010 4:42 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

a freudian slip?

MASH is also overrated imo

Maybe the only overrated Altman imo, though Gosford does come close. Still, more overrated movies ought to be this extremely good.

I dunno how much of a slip that is, I think it's pretty obv that it'll place

I sorta thought people generally stopped caring about Knocked Up once Superbad came out. (Comments here have disabused me of that idea.)

guys btw can we not talk at torturous length about movies that haven't placed yet

― ('_') (omar little), Monday, February 8, 2010 4:42 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

a freudian slip?

― vincent gallogina (J0rdan S.), Monday, February 8, 2010 5:43 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

NICE.

gosford was very good! i particularly liked.. what's her name, the countess? the older lady who was constantly insulting everyone to their faces. she is a treat.

Maggie Smith?

gosford park to me is an example of sensibilities clashing productively.

Like ILX.

yes, maggie smith. SO FUNNY.

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it.

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

Like Hawks, Ray, and the early Fellini and Scorsese, Kathryn Bigelow understands how to photograph men in crisis — even when the most heartrenching crisis of her early work is whether cop Keanu Reeves will allow bank robber Patrick Swayze one more chance to ride a wave before arresting him in Point Break. Fuck the “pseudo documentary” twaddle of United 93 or even Black Hawk Down: movies are superior to documentaries because they put us inside someone’s head. Someone’s fears. Maybe it was dumb luck that Bigelow got Jeremy Renner as her medium.

- Alfred Soto

The Hurt Locker is very fine; I think it gave me a mild PTSD case. Out June 26. Never foregrounds the politics of the war except in one line of dialogue: "If he wasn't an insurgent, he is now."

― Dr Morbius

I fucking loved this movie soooo much. It's about how fucking disconnected this is. How the war is all little fucking moments that make the whole war but are also life'n'death decisions for the soldiers themselves. It's about different types of soldiers (Guy Pearce being so careful but it doesn't mean shit cause he fucking dies anyway, about the cowboy just going for it, for the young guy who is all macho but in the end is just scared as fuck,...) I think this was an awesome movie. Just so emotional. I loved the sniper scene as well: they are just sitting there in the dry heat, flies moving across their lips, they finally share a juice and some other soldier drinks the other one. I mean, hell, it doesn't mean shit in a way, but it all DOES mean something.

― Nathalie

the "shoot the guy or not shoot the guy" stuff was so freakin' nail-biting, it's rare that suspense scenes are predicated on that particular scenario

― s1ocki

kathryn bigelow

#42

The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow
2009
United States
(383.5 points, 20 votes)

renner is fucking amazing in this movie and also insanely smashable

still dunno what the title of this movie means!

my fav set piece was the one with the car, mainly because of the "are they or aren't they" type characters milling about -- fav shot was probably the overhead shot of renner picking up the one canister and it coming out of the ground looking like a web

That's a pretty impressive showing for something that hasn't made it to DVD yet.

"insanely smashable" in what sense?

I thought this movie was just OK, and haven't seen Avatar, but I pray to Jesus this movie humiliates Avatar in any and every capacity where they are in competition.

that i think he's really hot?

I loved this movie and voted for it. I was a little confused about whether or not it was taking a stand on this guy's character. I know he was portrayed as a thrill-junkie, but his pathology seemed to go much deeper than that, and I found him very disturbing. Really putting others lives at risk to, what, be heroic? What was other peoples' take on this?

The hurt locker was that cardboard box full of defused bomb parts

that i think he's really hot?

Wanted to make sure we were on the same page.

the list is improving. still sad that some good genre films like red eye and cellular prob won't make it when lousy hollywood arthouse/auteur films like sideways do

REALLY wish I had seen HL in the theater. I have the DVD, sitting around & waiting for me to watch it, but I might just hold out, pending its likely theatrical re-release closer to Oscar time. Is this typical of films containing lots o war spectacle, in that a big-screen viewing would be ideal/imperative?

Saw this over the weekend and was unimpressed. Thought it was incredibly well done - the set pieces are outstandingly composed and directed, but thought the "plot" those sequences hung on was a joke. Totally don't get why everyone is praising Renner's performance - thought he was far and away the worst part of the movie. Not that he had much to work with, but he didn't sell me on his character at all. Solid 2.5 out of 5, so probably will win Best Picture and join a long list of mediocre inoffensive fare.

o i c (re: the meaning of "hurt locker")

really amazing film. love it love it love it, hated sitting thru it. i really wanted to see it, but was dreading doing so, and i got exactly that upon viewing: dread. i'm sure all of you m-fers can think of countless similar examples, but i've never seen a movie like this, that deliver that same sustained complete terribleness and constant impending shitty death at all times feeling. w/o being, like, SAW or some garbage

xp i'd recommend seeing HL in theater for the sound more than the visuals

ditto -- I didn't see it in the theater, which maybe contributed to its not blowing me away.

xpost
I wouldn't say that there's a lot of war spectacle in this. It's a tense, tightly constructed movie with relatively small set pieces

I missed Hurt Locker in its original run, but a theater here brought it back for a few weeks in late December/early January, so I saw it then. Was very glad I did -- there's not a lot of conventional "spectacle," but it's a movie that very much rewards the kind of immersiveness that theatrical viewings provide.

Saw this over the weekend and was unimpressed. Thought it was incredibly well done - the set pieces are outstandingly composed and directed, but thought the "plot" those sequences hung on was a joke. Totally don't get why everyone is praising Renner's performance - thought he was far and away the worst part of the movie. Not that he had much to work with, but he didn't sell me on his character at all. Solid 2.5 out of 5, so probably will win Best Picture and join a long list of mediocre inoffensive fare.

― EZ Snappin, Monday, February 8, 2010 6:06 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

can people just stop using the word "inoffensive" to mean "i dont like it"

the hurt locker is not literal, it's actually meant to mean "the worst place you can be in", mentally and physically speaking

there wasn't actually a line of dialogue in the film in which renner says, "i just put all of my HURT into this LOCKER" *pulls box out from under cot*

a plastic bag blowing around in an alleyway, that has just been ied'd

xxxp Yeah and stop using the word mediocre to describe movies which are really excerable.

execrable? this? please to explain

I was actually thinking more of Crash and A Beautiful Mind.

And stop using the word fare unless you mean food.

And use a four-star scale.

xp i'd recommend seeing HL in theater for the sound more than the visuals

The reason i asked is that the handheld-DV, shakey-cam method of capturing combat-related imagery & putting one "in the zone," as it were, can actually translate better to home viewing imo. On a smaller scale, I find that the style can still be disorienting enough to achieve the intended effect, but not to the degree of equilibrium-torture a theater viewing can induce. TBH, I don't even have any idea if this film is done in that style, but comparisons to Black Hawk Down & such lead me to believe it might be.

can't stress how much I love the still omar used for HL

it doesn't have the kind of confusing/obfuscating camera-work of Black Hawk Down

I thought the hurt locker was some military slang for their spaceman bomberman suits?

re: home viewing -- I saw it at home and wasn't zoned. I didn't remember it being particularly shaky-cammy but you might be right about home viewing mitigating that.

There's a lot of handheld work, but I don't recall much shakey-cam.

there was some shakey mo cam iirc, lots of dudes standing around watching the action, arms folded, cross expression on their face

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

this movie is way too long but it has some pretty awesome stuff, i really liked heath ledger as the joker--definitely brings something new to the role, this sort of oopsy little-boy-ness that is deeply creepy. some pretty good set pieces though if it does get way too self-serious by the end.

― s1ocki

I love Nolan's action sequences, thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. In the first film I grant you they were super dark and fast and confusing but no one knew who Batman was then (in terms of the characters / goons he was pasting) and hence it was all about their confusion and terror at this nameless, shapeless thing ninja-ing fuck out of them from the shadows. The fight in his Penthouse in this seemed fine; excellent - it's like it was the POV of a guest there, confused and turning around and not quite seeing exactly who is hitting who clearly but being aware that yes, there's Batman, and yes, there's some goons, and Batman is battering the goons.

― Scik Mouthy

basically a remake of heat if heat was a movie that guzzled balls and was really ugly and boring

xtian bale sux at acting, needed to be a lot shorter and also have more eric roberts and batmanuel, fichtner cameo was pimp

jackie the jokeman martling's stunning performance as the joker was of course mesmerizing~

― cankles

the film is geared to get the audience off on the joker's evil deeds - it's part of the frisson, the sinful deliciousness of bad behavior that we are allowed to witness/condone/participate in as an audience. we can tut-tut and disapprove all of the bad behavior in the film but then you're missing a rather prominent layer of the film, which is entertainment via sadism... something ned touched on above with his (astute) comparison to funny games.

― Edward III

i think i underrated this movie at the time; on reflection, the set-pieces, at least early on, were simply better done than the cut-to-shred crap you get from most blockbusters. it is too long, though, and the final thing where batters taps into the matrix or whatever sucked.

― history mayne

Batman carries on beginning in ... The Dark Knight

#41

The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan
2008
United States
(385.5 points, 21 votes, 1 first place)

there wasn't actually a line of dialogue in the film in which renner says, "i just put all of my HURT into this LOCKER" *pulls box out from under cot*

― ('_') (omar little), Monday, February 8, 2010 6:13 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

Reminded me of this.

Ah well, that was inevitable.