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

Really wasn't expecting DD to place. The Swayze stuff, Jenna Malone, and Sparkle Motion kinda redeem it overall, but I'd never vote for it. xxxxxxxxxxxpost

i partly voted for it coz it felt wrong only voting for 'the box' and 'southland tales' -- completist i guess.

liked it, didn't vote for it

I keep forgetting that President Roslyn was in Donnie Darko.

this watered-beyond-belief "dark underbelly of suburbia" shit is what we should REALLY be holding against lynch

Darko is better than ILX gives it credit for, but it didn't come within miles of my ballot.

Donnie Darko posters are in dorm rooms?

(NOTE: I've only seen the director's cut)

From what I've gathered (I haven't seen it) the director's cut enhances the sci-fi side of the movie, which I thought was its weakest element. So maybe you should try the regular cut?

Director's cut is an entirely different (and terrible) movie that retroactively ruins the original entirely as well.

I guess one good film today was inevitable

(94th for me)

Richard Kelly's subsequent career has been a disaster and an embarassment but DD is composed of such a wild range of tropes and subgenres - sci-fi thriller, adolescent coming-of-age story, social satire - and then nails them all with a wonderful emotional resonance. all the acting is top-notch, tons of great throwaway jokes, unique imagery. such a strange movie, so glad it was made.

x-posts

jeezus, what's next, inglourious basterds?!

if yr film's premise is here be monsters, too, in the land of strip malls, i think i hate you a priori

morbs do u ever say anything like it's your opinion rather than objective fact?

the DC basically "explains" and makes explicit everything that was somewhat elliptical and mysterious about the original (which was essentially a mood piece to my mind--not any masterpiece of course). I wouldn't have voted for either.

Oh yeah, I didn't vote for DD either, but I didn't think it was complete shit or anything.

the director's cut is terrible

idk, ppl getting upset about this but 'inglorious basterds' is going to poll higher so

xposts lol

From what I've gathered (I haven't seen it) the director's cut enhances the sci-fi side of the movie, which I thought was its weakest element. So maybe you should try the regular cut?

i don't think you can unlearn that this sorta-ambiguous-i-guess-if-you're-in-high-school film is actually a belabored piece of sci-fi shit.

Director's cut is an entirely different (and terrible) movie that retroactively ruins the original entirely as well.

^^^this.

also lol Dan you liked Crash

director's cut is so awful that's if it's the first version you saw, i'm not sure it's going back to the theatrical release is going to help

i liked it in the cinema btw!

yeah it's too late if you saw DC. you can't unlearn the context it provides.

I'll watch The Box again when it's on cable tho.

Still blown away by the idea that Donnie Darko is popular with college kid dorm walls.

donnie darko is srsly hilar almost as quotable as will ferrel shit high school friends and i used to repeat "shut up kim" 2 each other alla time (um)

i really liked how ambitious and excited and full of ideas it is (even if the ideas are p stupid) i like that theres a bunch of basically superfluous scenes that feel like theyre from different movies. better reconfigured tv pilot than mulldr imo

lol i get 'southland tales' confused with gilliam's 'tideland', i'm sure they're both pretty suckass (i've seen the first ten minutes of 'tideland')

CHUT UP! CHUT UP!

ok i'm now sorry people started explaing why they rate this piece of nonsense. i forgot that ilx loves buffy.

there definitely were a lot of subgenres in darko, "sci-fi thriller, adolescent coming-of-age story, social satire," but they were all pretty superficial, banal takes on them. casting noah wyle and drew barrymore as the beacons of intelligence in a suburban hell is a warnign sign. also a wry conversation about smurfette. also multiple musical slow-down-speed-up setpieces set to entire songs.

Buffy not remotely similar to donnie darko whatsoever?

If you read the director's book you can learn all about the magical elements of the world and how the floating water chest blobs relate to time travel and bunny heads.

best use of furries since the shining, only to be topped by avatar in 2010

I liked Donnie Darko and voted for it, though not very high. I don't like the fact that it thinks it's clever when it's clearly not, but aside from that it's a really well-made film - basically, the director clearly thinks he made a philosophical masterpiece, when what he did was make a great high school movie.

Also, I don't feel like I have to justify anything on this thread. Some of your votes SICKEN me, people.

If you read the director's book you can learn all about the magical elements of the world and how the floating water chest blobs relate to time travel and bunny heads.

yeah I don't think this is gonna convince me that this is a good movie

the director clearly thinks he made a philosophical masterpiece, when what he did was make a great high school movie.

you know if this were true it would kinda be the absolute high school movie!

if yr film's premise is here be monsters, too, in the land of strip malls, i think i hate you a priori

the film's premise is that getting high and riding your bike and time travel are really cool and also sometimes shit gets ~heavy~ like an airplane engine but its peace cuz youll get it in another lyfe

oh, that wasn't my intention in posting that. i think it's the worst thing ever. xp

really loving how pretty much everyone thinks the poll is an absolute disgrace but no one agrees on what're actually the bad films.

According to Kelly and his fictional Philosophy of Time Travel, at midnight on October 2 - a Tangent Universe branches off the Primary Universe around the time when Donnie is called out of his bedroom by Frank, immediately before the appearance of the Artifact, the faulty jet engine. The inherently unstable Tangent Universe will collapse in just over 28 days and take the Primary Universe with it if not corrected. Closing the Tangent Universe is the duty of the Living Receiver, Donnie, who wields certain supernatural powers to help him in the task.

i haven't seen the box so i don't know to what extent this continues there, but with darko and southland tales at least i think kelly's basically taking kind of a collage approach to history (specifically american history, as refracted through pop culture). darko is about the 1980s in the same way southland tales is about the '00s. they're like joseph cornell boxes, and i think they're disquieting and funny and original. darko is more coherent than southland (and i'm not talking about narrative, since that's pretty secondary to both of them -- its mood and themes are less of a jumble), so i voted it higher on my ballot, even tho my favorite parts of southland i probably like more than my favorite parts of darko.

we now return you to your regularly scheduled hating.

oh okay good xp

really loving how pretty much everyone thinks the poll is an absolute disgrace but no one agrees on what're actually the bad films.

― toastmodernist, 10 February 2010 16:55 (15 seconds ago) Bookmark

totally, totally, indisputably the best part of it!

CHUT UP! CHUT UP!

I say this all the time I gotta admit. also the "feces are baby mice" line

ok so here is one more film before i head off to work

i think that may actually be a good take. The Box is very 70s. (xposts)

basically, the director clearly thinks he made a philosophical masterpiece, when what he did was make a great high school movie.

not rly sure this is true... why "clearly"? this kind of response is funny 2 me ne way, there will always be people out there who enjoying condescending to filmmakers. the latter usually aren't booksmart, which is why you end up with loopy but great movies like darko (or zardoz).

the box owns

the box doesn't really do the "collage approach to history," just tacks on kelly's obsession with belabored sci-fi explanations and watery time travel portals to a richard matheson story that SO didn't need them

btw: nice guesswork last night folks, but none of you came up with this one....

also lol Dan you liked Crash
So fucking what? That doesn't change the fact that "Donnie Darko" as I saw it, is a fucking waste of time and pretty much on par in the "so busy thinking it's clever that it isn't noticing that it is actually entirely fucking stupid and awful and an outright abortion of a film that is a crime against art" stakes as bullshit like "Magnolia" and "The Hours".

For whatever other faults "Crash" has, it was very explicit and upfront about its setup and characters; the decision to buy into the story being told is left up to the viewer but the work put into presenting what's going on has been done. Bullshit like "Donnie Darko" basically just says "if we just make everything monochrome and mopey, people who are looking to appear smart in order to cover up for feeling like everyone hates them will fill in enough blanks and finish off our story for us".