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

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)

9/40 of mine in!

I like Control as a companion piece. 24 Hour Party People is Tony Wilson's movie - chaotic, boastful, irreverent, idiosyncratic - in which context Ian Curtis seems more daft (and creepy) than tragic. Control is more about 70s Manchester as Curtis perceived it - grim, oppressive, small - and gives him the more conventional biopic deal. I prefer 24HPP but it's nice to get two such different angles on the same story, coming out within a few years of each other.

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

It's a mesmerizing movie but Cronenberg is really playing both sides of the violence coin. It's not just that the movie is explicitly violent but in a number of scenes (especially when the son beats up the bully) there's the typical action/thriller treatment of violence-as-catharsis. I think Sympathy for Mr. Vengenance deals with a number of the same ideas (and is equally pornographically violent) in a more compelling (not necessarily better) manner.

― C0L1N B

I agree with Rosenbaum, who said (in a review that apparently isn't online yet) that the shots of bloody faces don't dwell on the gore in a fetishistic way but linger on them just long enough to convey the real-life consequences of shooting someone in the head.

― jaymc

I loved the film. The acting is certainly not wooden: in the case of Viggo Mortenson, he makes the transitions between cornfed Midwesterner and gangsta like a pro I never expected him to be. Maria Bello quivers and rages with an intensity she's never quite shown before (her greatest moment: the look of disgust she gives Mortenson after their tryst on the stairs). As for William Hurt - well. Talk about a pro. If this had been a play, I would have given him a standing ovation. His ham-on-rye performance summons the pity, terror, and comedy that the film's schematic, over-explicit script (its weakest element) wants us to understand.

― Alfred Soto

as for the sex scenes, i thought they were handled very well... i actually thought they were totally erotic. some douchebag in front of me was taking camera phone pix though and after putting up with it for about 15 seconds i leaned forward in my chair and said in his ear quite loudly, "Put your phone down." apart from that distraction, which well and truly took me out of the movie, i thought the sex scenes were great. maria bello and viggo mortensen are both very sexy, sexual seeming people. i thought that when maria bello said 'we never got a chance to be teenagers together', she didn't mean it to be serious. she meant it as an enigmatic setup to a fantasy that she had always wanted to live out. the sex scene on the stairway is a surprisingly common fantasy among a lot of women. to be raped safely by someone who loves you. this was obviously a little bit removed from that, but it did have the added notion of just being another role playing exercise. i don't know how to get into the mechanics of explaining it, but i've been with girls who have fantasized about that. danger/thrills are sexy to most people.

― firstworldman

The Cronenberg Thread

#37

A History of Violence
David Cronenberg
2005
United States/Canada
(423.5 points, 24 votes)

i was much more moved by 24 hour's treatment, the louie louie gig and the crass, perfect wilson bellringing "hear ye hear ye". plus, you know, laffs. xp

Control was truer to Joy Division's music, 24HPP was truer to the band's personalities. I agree that laffs win.

wait... closer? I thought you meant Control. I didn't mind Closer, but I didn't like Control.

What's "Closer"? They made another Joy Division movie?

http://www.cyber-cinema.com/original/closer.jpg

L-R Ian Curtis, Barney, Hooky and Tony Wilson

closer is the worst movie of all time

Oh yeah, I totally forgot that movie ever existed. Was it any good?

(x-post, haha)

I want to say something about A History of Violence but Alfred's old post pretty much nails it.

history of violence is amazing

yeah alfred's post is great

great opening sequence

those dudes who play the killers at the beginning are pretty great in their small roles, stephen mchattie especially.

I saw it knowing so little about it that I was actually surprised by Viggo's dodgy past. This was before I ruined moviegoing for myself by reading too many reviews and threads.

I'm on-board with both 24HPP and HoV and am glad the latter placed above Eastern Promises. Viggo is a great foil for Cronenberg in both, but HoV just seemed to have more depth to it, it seemed more mythic/fable-like in its construction. only criticism of 24HPP is the handheld action gets kinda nauseating after awhile - but the tone and script and jokes are all A+.

i love love love the scene on the front lawn when you finally find out who viggo is.

Fuuuck yeah to the last three placements, esp ASM

wow i need to watch AHoV again, and this time finish it without being put off by the shitty acting and script? (ie i have obviously misjudged it badly)

really didn't feel the moving camera was a problem in 24 Hour Party People at all. was much more queasy at the sweeping crane-like cgi of stuff like Moulin Rouge.

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

It's definitely the film's intention to be controversial, and watching Heath Ledger ride Jake Gyllenhaal bareback will likely cause some people to squirm, but the film unconsciously reassures their prejudices: two queers can't live together cuz they ain't normal and their lives are sad, so let's watch this movie as our good deed of the year.

A more legitimately controversial film would have shown Ennis and Jack having fun fooling around whenever they got away to Brokeback Mountain, but perhaps Lee thought this would have violated Proulx's intentions.

― Alfred Soto

Yup, I saw it last Friday, right after I finished my Christmas shopping. Yeah, you're right, Jack is probably gay: the Mexico scene of courses reinforces this. But I was the one who argued against Chris Cooper's character being gay in American Beauty long after it became apparent that he obviously was (but that was just me wishing the film was more ambiguous than it actually was).

― jaymc

Lotsa dull dull domestic melodrama, and there's hardly any carnality (or eroticism) in it after the spit-lube. The way the next-to-last scene with the daughter panders to the hetero 'mainstream' made me kinda ill. Bet the Best Picture Oscar, and I wonder if Heath will keep up the Novocaine Mouth in his acceptance speech.

Boys with that brand of bizarre, oversized features can crawl in my tent too.

― Dr Morbius

I don't think this was a gay film at all. It was a conventional "women's picture". It has the same appeal to the same audience as A River Runs Through It, The Horse Whisperer etc etc. It's all about hunky, tough yet sensitive guys who don't say much. The buttsex angle is something of a red herring.

Compare/contrast slash fiction, written and read almost exclusively by heterosexual women.

― dream logic

Come Anticipate "Brokeback Mountain" With Me

#36

Brokeback Mountain
Ang Lee
2005
United States
(425.5 points, 20 votes)

loved HoV until Hurt showed up - can't say i felt the terror or wanted to applaud the comedy of his "ham-on-rye"

never saw BBM lolz

The fact that I voted for so few of the movies that've placed so far makes me feel like I probably voted for, like, everything in the top 25. Because there's a lot of my nominees that I know are still going to place.

i think BBM is a pretty good melodrama

I have to agree with the quoted comments about Brokeback Mountain. It looked beautiful, had fine actors, and it made me cry when I saw it, but it was also a very typical "gayness as tragedy" story, and even as a more universal drama about unattainable love it didn't have anything particularly original to say. A good tear-jerker and a good movie, but not great in any sense.

it might not be want u want it to be, but it's good at being what it is.

i mean, i agree that a truly adventurous movie would show a happy gay couple that nothing bad happens to, but it wouldnt make for a good weepie

it's funny that nobody really makes big hetero forbidden love movies anymore except for maybe titanic

it might not be want u want it to be, but it's good at being what it is.

Well yeah, that's what I was trying to say. But what it is has been done so many times that, even though it was good at it, BBM didn't leave a particularly strong impression on me.

if morbs likes bizarre, oversized features so much then why hasn't he seen Inglorious Basterds yet?

yeah History of Violence totally fell apart at the end for me

xpist

i mean, i agree that a truly adventurous movie would show a happy gay couple that nothing bad happens to, but it wouldnt make for a good weepie

Well yeah, but it's not only that it's a weepie. It's true that being gay in that era and in a place like that was often tragic, and I have no problem if a movie want to depict this, but it also seems to oddly lack any anger and fury towards that tragedy. The movie kinda makes it seem like it's the fate of these noble but oh-so-tragic men to suffer in silence, and to me that doesn't feel right in a movie made in the 00s.

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

Amazing. Like a comedic version of Bad Lieutenant - as in, the plot of the movie is right there in the title, and seldom veers from said plot (or lack therof) - BillyBob is terrific (tho I must admit I have sat through each of his movies, including the abhorrent Pushing Tin - I'm a big fan) and the movie is definitely worth seeing. I'm already psyched for the DVD!

― roger adultery

This is one of the best movies ever, certainly one of the best of the last 5 years. Those sequences with Bernie Mac and John Ritter are pure genius. I can't believe all these "eh its pretty funny I guess" nonsense. Easily better than Ghost World. There is not a wasted line in the film, all the acting is top notch, story is from the Coen bros. so you know its good.

― deej

i watched bad santa again this year, on christmas eve. so many great funny details, esp. all the jokes about the stuff thurman murman is picking up from billy bob. like when he identifies lauren graham as "mrs. santa's sister"

― s1ocki

the only funny "hit in the nuts" gag that I can think of, like, in all of history.

― kenan

BAD. SANTA.

#35

Bad Santa
Terry Zwigoff
2003
United States
(433 points, 20 votes)

Morbs first charmed me when we tousled endlessly on that BBM thread.

sorry the BBM abbreviation keeps making me lol

tousled? I never touched your hair.

I don't think BBM is a great film, but I don't agree with "The movie kinda makes it seem like it's the fate of these noble but oh-so-tragic men to suffer in silence" at all.

It wouldn't necessarily be a problem if it were true either, just because it's a film made in the 2000s.

I'm on a very slow connection, and the reveal of that BAD. SANTA. still as it loaded was hilarious

I'm very, very...ambivalent about BBM now. Maybe now we can watch it as a movie instead of as a Cultural Phenomenon About Spit-Lube.

I really feel like Brokeback's virtues are being taken for granted. It made gay romance safe for straight audiences, but wasn't neutered like something like Will & Grace, and featured two huge stars in the lead roles. That is a big deal, and it's a damned good movie on top of all that.

http://www.thefilmjournal.com/images/idaho.jpg

^^^haven't even seen BBM and I'm 99% positive My Own Private Idaho is the better film, shakespeare soliloquies and all. love that movie.

Brokezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz