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

I'd probably rank them:

1. the one I've seen most recently
2. penultimate one I've seen
3. the other one

jjj please remove da croupier's last two posts regarding the other thread. moving on.

I only saw the third one - and it felt like watching someone play a videogame. Personally, I'd rather be playing the videogame myself. Matt Damon had about as much character/personality as the little man in Pitfall for the Atari 2600, though playing Pitfall was more rewarding than the Bourne movies, because at least I got to make the guy jump over or fall into the pit of alligators myself.

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

the film is somewhere in between "great" (in parts) to mediocre/embarrassing (in other parts).

the last 30 minutes or so of the film (esp. the bar mitzvah scene) are truely great: only then did The Coen brothers took the film seriously and thoghtfully as they didnt for (most of) the rest of the movie, which is a not-so-much-inspiring take on judaism as philosophy and culture.
the comedy is vulgar on those parts because it was done while the directors didnt take their "job" seriously, and as a result - the characters,the story, the jokes are shallow, and some people would say even anti-semite (as they did).
at least they did made the effort to make the movie into something profound - a piece of art - at the last part,saving it from being their worst movie into being somewhere in the middle between their best and their worst to date.

still - some good sequences there too - the one where Gopnick is fixing the antenna on the roof is brilliant,for example.

― Zeno

Anyway, this is one of their best (like, top 4) and I'd declare it my favorite along with Raising Arizona if there wasn't some slippage into actual cruelty, as opposed to a study of gracelessness under pressure. All the roles are astoundingly well cast. And yeah, it's the most aerious American film about Judaism I can recall since Mazursky's Enemies. Key ambiguous line: "I didn't do anything."

Also, I know the guy who plays the shtetl husband in the prologue (he also did the Yiddish translation). We're in the same vintage film-comedy film buff circle.

― Dr Morbius

I loved loved loved this.

Movie's only weakness was that despite Sy Ableman's character being amusing as all get out I found it somewhat difficult to believe that Gopnik's wife would actually fall for someone that thoroughly unexciting (not to mention so completely unctuous.) But that minor stretch of credulity aside, it was pitch perfect.

― Alex in SF

New Coen Bros, A Serious Man

#39

A Serious Man
Joel and Ethan Coen
2009
United States
(416.5 points, 18 votes)

Awesome.

voted 4 dat 1

really pleasantly surprised by a serious man

they should make more films set in minnesota

i think it's Rosenbaum who takes the view that the Cohens are actually laughing at all their characters and it's a mean-spirited thing. this was pre-A Serious Man tho (maybe c. Big Lebowski?)

the view that the Cohens are actually laughing at all their characters and it's a mean-spirited thing.

we've discussed this quite a bit on other threads.

they should make more films set in minnesota

― nakhchivan, Tuesday, February 9, 2010 12:41 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark

haha everyone or just the coens?

yay

they should make more films set in minnesota

― nakhchivan, Tuesday, February 9, 2010 12:41 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Didn't really thing ASM was up to the level of Fargo or No Country, but damn did that ending get me.

Still haven't seen this as the cinema was closed due to snow the when it was on around here, will have to wait till it appears on DVD.

the cinema was closed due to snow the when it was on around here,

this is amazingly apt

(xpost Which is today, in U.S.)

so weird that ASM basically completely went under the radar at all the major theaters here - bummed I didn't get a chance to see it yet

Ditto here, only the local volunteer run cinema showed it, amazed how poorly it was distributed.

haha everyone or just the coens?

the latter (maybe former too)
the closeness to home seems to limit the tendency towards incurious misanthropy rosenbaum sometimes overidentifies (burn after reading being a nadir) or at least gives it more variety
didn't see gopnik in this light at all

i read the misanthropy, as (over)done in burn after reading, as being the closest thing they've come to overt political anger.

I really love A Serious Man, but I guess I saw it too recently to consider it a best of the decade. Didn't stop me from another 2009 film I saw the first time at the end of the year, but hey.

Three 2009 movies made my list and two have them have already placed.

Actually if you count the Hunger, I guess it would be four, but I doubt that's placing at this point.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/24hourparty.jpg

OK, make sure you sit no where near the front and eat very lightly before the show. Lot of it is made on like a handheld camera so its very shaky - a la Blair Witch. I had to excuse myself twice to go throw up in the bathroom... And I had Cambodian hot&sour soup for lunch so it was particularly nasty and burned on the way up.

otherwise, it was aiight.

― phil-two

The thing is that 24HPP is not a sturdy, coherent genre piece - it's a silly, liberty-taking mess which works because it cheekily presumes that something of interest to a few fanboys can be made fascinating to anyone who watches it (it doesn't always succeed at this because I like a presumption). It doesn't approach the 'dark still heart' because Peter Saville's sleeves have already illustrated the d.s.h. better than anything else could, I think.

― Tom (Groke)

I would have hated the film if it had been all mythic Curtis wandering wordlessly around concrete multi-story car parks: desolation comes in much more diverse and interesting packages than that. I like the fact that there was all this blokeyness going on in direct contrast to the noises and feelings in the music (until the Mondays, at least). One of the points of the film is the Monday's resolution of that conflict.

― Tim

24 Hour Party People

#38

24 Hour Party People
Michael Winterbottom
2002
United Kingdom
(418.5 points, 24 votes)

ayo!

liked this film a lot. i'm curious as to if the "it'll be on the dvd" joke was delivered on on the dvd?

this movie really nails the breaking-the-fourth-wall stuff so hard

xpost it was

that's a pretty big jump in # of votes

beautiful phil-two comment there

It was. and that scene was in the deleted scenes on the DVD. This just barely missed my ballot, but I opted to keep Tristram Shandy instead.

a serious man is a contender for best coen film I think, I loved it. hoping someone will theorize about the intro.

I'm thinking that might be the only Bourne - everyone who likes the trilogy likes all three, diluting the Bourne vote (unless a lot of people were willing to put all of them on their ballot)

Ace. Didn't expect this to place at all, let alone so highly. This freewheeling, pisstaking approach to a rock biopic is so refreshing - makes Ray and Walk the Line seem even more stolid.

u mean A Cock and Bull Story of course, gukbe

oh i guess Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story is the US title

i think everything that worked in this movie didn't in tristram shandy

A while back in a previous household I noticed my DVD collection had dwindled somewhat and over time it halved in size. My only guess is that a friend of a friend of a flatmate might have been helping his or herself, but it was impossible and already too late to keep track of what was missing. Among the best ones were 24hrPP, a real pleasure to watch. Funny and inspiring, even if I'd only been vaguely aware of the Madchester scene when it happened.

this movie really nails the breaking-the-fourth-wall stuff so hard

toilet walls really flimsy amirite

think the two are only superficially similar. no one is really playing themselves in 24 hr party people and the two step in and out of conventional narrative in v different ways

Cock and Bull Story worked for me as well, just as a Coogan/Brydon comedy, but I couldn't make any claims to greatness there

This movie sucks because it didn't magically make every copy of Corbijn's Closer disappear.

so can understand why someone would like one not the other. me, i like em both. xp to myself

does anyone still rate 'in this world'?

On the other hand, I don't really think I understood A Serious Man at all.

This movie sucks because it didn't magically make every copy of Corbijn's Closer disappear.

― Inculcate a spirit of serfdom in children (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 9 February 2010 19:13 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha, i didn't enjoy closer much either.

I would have hated the film if it had been all mythic Curtis wandering wordlessly around concrete multi-story car parks: desolation comes in much more diverse and interesting packages than that

This is a fitting comment, considering Control turned out to be exactly what Tim says, and this definitely made it a worse film than 24HPP. I think the irreverence and the non-idol worshipping made 24HPP one of the best music biopics/histories I've ever seen, and that's quite a feat considering I don't really care about the music/scene it was depicting at all, besides the house bits.

I believe 24 Hour Party People fell at number 41 or 42 on my ballot and sadly got the axe. Great, fun film, though.

(xxxx-post, hahaha)