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

sounds like you could one day write a movie as funny as superbad

funny thing about movie life in the 00s internet age where blogz & comment box argumentation is a big part of the ecosystem -- the anti-cult! this is a new development, right? a given movie might have had a distributed un-networked tribe of believers in the olden days, but a tribe of haters? that seems like a New Thing.

― goole

i think what happened here is that the "cult" phenom got co-opted just like the notion of "alternative" music; with the rise of sundance and other factors, movies were sold and shilled for as cult and there was a reaction.

I am pretty certain that notorious flops like "Ishtar" and "Waterworld" had vociferous legions of scornful detractors well before people started blogging.

I wouldn't accuse kelly or greenaway of taking their enterprises very seriously. I mean, it's hard to say somebody thinks they're making a philosophical treatise when their film prominently features a prepubescent dance troupe named sparklemotion performing to duran duran's "notorious".

greenaway and his critical followers (might be a UK thing... an 80s UK thing coz he really fucked the dog with 'baby of macon' iirc) take him very seriously indeed. the second sentence is otm. kelly is a p chill bro, so far as i can tell from the commentaries etc. his films are quite goofy.

with the rise of sundance and other factors, movies were sold and shilled for as cult and there was a reaction.

this goes back probably to the 70s, but definitely to the 80s -- repo man and whatnot.

cant think of seeing/reading any real negative opinions of 4m/3w/2d -- wondering aloud, did anyone who has seen it purposefully leave it off their ballot?

i did ~ its a great movie but not a movie that i really loved i guess? glad it placed so high tho

it's hard to say somebody thinks they're making a philosophical treatise when their film prominently features a prepubescent dance troupe named sparklemotion performing to duran duran's "notorious".

srsly - as much as i like donnie darko i mostly like it bcuz its really funny

You absolutely can boil down the director's cut of "Donnie Darko": "your family and friends will be better off if you kill yourself". That core message is the main reason I find it so abhorrent.

― Michael Steele, the first black Superman (HI DERE), Wednesday, February 10, 2010 12:19 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark

granted, I haven't seen the DC of donnie darko, but this is a fundamental misreading of the movie

sounds like the film touched off some personal issues for you so I'm treading carefully here, but if you're going to have a problem with every film where a character sacrifices himself to save the others you're eliminating a pretty wide swath of movies

Eternal Shitshine of the Shitless Shit

sometimes I doubt ILX's commitment to sparklemotion

A Shiteous Man

closest film to DD from a genre standpoint is repo man

whoah can't believe that didn't occur to me earlier! very true

Shittie Sharto

More plz. I love these.

2608 messages, and here we are. In shit.

In the Mood for Shit

O Brother, Shit Art Thou

closest film to DD from a genre standpoint is repo man

which southland tales nods to directly.

I make it just over 4400 messages, which begs the question how many people Tuomas has got kill-filed.

My major issue with the sacrifice is that I didn't understand why he had to kill himself under the plane engine to save the world and then when I read the director's notes to understand why (because of time travel and alternate universe and blob water things) I hated the film even more. So if you're watching DD your choices are between being totally confused as to the point and assuming the confusion is the point (which was not the director's point, since the film is riffing off the vapid fantasy bullshit in his brain) which appears to be what most of you who voted for it are doing (oh, thematically, aesthetically, blah, blah, but no narrative functionality). OR you can actually discover the TRUE meaning of DD, what the director intended and why things are the way they are outside the fact that they look cool when you're tripping, and then you discover that DD is actually the greatest scam perpetuated on humanity -- that he had to kill himself because he didn't die the first time from a fucking plane engine which crashed through his house and fell onto his bed -- BTW: the plane has nothing to do with the story and if you're wondering why the engine came out in the first place, or why the protagonist was CHOSEN, then GOOD LUCK because even the director's bullshit ramblings don't explain it.

This thread has revitalized itself.

thrilled with the placing for 4m/3w/2d. number 5 on my ballot.

srsly - as much as i like donnie darko i mostly like it bcuz its really funny

co-sign.

BTW: the plane has nothing to do with the story and if you're wondering why the engine came out in the first place, or why the protagonist was CHOSEN, then GOOD LUCK because even the director's bullshit ramblings don't explain it.

its a time travel paradox and it makes more sense than the Terminator movies imho

How do he go back in time? What was the paradox?

pls stop talking about DD, it's shit

its very PK Dick-ish in the way it plays with the essential paradoxes involved in time travel - I do think it makes *enough* sense on an emotional and narrative level, but its hardly the SOLE POINT of the film.

Yeah, we're really due for another shit here.

mulholland drive is just a grown-up version of donnie darko

xpost: well like i said, listening to artists trying to explain their work is for me one of the least useful ways to figure out what something "means." richard kelly also said that the box was his attempt to make a normal, mainstream thriller and make some money. i haven't seen it, but it doesn't sound like that's how it turned out. i don't think the guy's exactly a reliable guide to his own work -- either because his brain is broken or because he's an obsessive oddball who has trouble articulating what's going on in his movies or because he's just bullshitting, who knows?

closest film to DD from a genre standpoint is repo man

I may need to watch DD again.. I remember not liking it years ago, but with this in mind I might enjoy it a lot more...

sounds like the film touched off some personal issues for you so I'm treading carefully here, but if you're going to have a problem with every film where a character sacrifices himself to save the others you're eliminating a pretty wide swath of movies

Throughout the entire movie, DD is disaffected, depressed and disconnected with the world around him. As things go on, he realizes it's because he was supposed to die. So he kills himself. The end. There's nothing particularly heroic about it and the aftermath on his family is just as traumatic because no one knows about the sacrifice he made.

The movie isn't at all about sacrificing yourself to save others; that ends up being an excuse to justify killing yourself. With a better script or more competent direction, it could have been a really effective, powerful movie. Instead, it was a mishmash of nonsense that tried to pass itself off as goofy funnies and mind-blowing philosophy and failed at both. Had it been any good at working the self-sacrifice angle, it wouldn't have read as "suicide is okay" to me; even fucking garbage like "Terminator: Salvation" got that part right despite the rest of the movie being unbearable tortured shit.

listening to artists trying to explain their work is for me one of the least useful ways to figure out what something "means."

Runs a close second to listening to critics explain artists' work.

ie, it's not really the events that piss me off as it is the hamfisted, glib, conscience-free manner in which they are handled

I wouldn't say donnie darko was confusing. it presented some puzzles I enjoyed teasing out in my head, which also made it very rewatchable.

but then again I enjoy films with unresolvable narratives (cf my love of mulholland drive, inland empire, audition, 2001 a space odyssey, etc).

xp to mordy

How do he go back in time? What was the paradox?

my reading of it was that he didn't go back in time, he created the wormhole of whatever that sucks the plane back in time and kills him, like it was supposed to originally (before the Bunny guy got him to walk outside and thereby avoid being hit). which of course contains the paradox that if he's dead how does he create a wormhole in the future etc. The principle of going back in time is inherently irrational and has these paradoxes built into it - at some point it just doesn't matter and you accept the paradox (cf. Terminator)

x-post

was 4/3/2 thee first film with more than 1 no.1 vote?

Runs a close second to listening to critics explain artists' work.

and just ahead of ilx poll threads.

probably repo man's relationship to the mainstream on release vs. that of donnie darko support the point

see, i think you guys are somehow able to see scenes like the one where the water is expanding from people's chests and think, "wow, that looks intrsting," and leave it at that. i look at it, then I read about how water is "the Fourth Dimensional Construct (water)," and I get really angry that dude made this nonsense bullshit.

reading DD as pro-suicide is pretty WTF IMO, it's totally just a movie about a kid who creates a perfect teen angst universe.

I thought the whole point of avoiding his death in the first place was so that he could experience love so I dunno how you get a negative KILL YRSELF message out of that

also lolz @ Mordy's inability to appreciate films containing irrational elements

was 4/3/2 thee first film with more than 1 no.1 vote?

(519 points, 22 votes, 1 first place)

i might agree with the mullholland drive thing except for the fact that i don't think lynch be dumb enough to try to explain his movies even to himself.

like Mordy do you get mad at En Chien Andalou and Meshes of the Afternoon too or what

x-post

considering I voted for two lynch films I don't think that's the issue, Shakey. it's not that it's irrational, it's that it's dungeons + dragons bullshit pretending to be deep. read the director's fake sci-fi book and the whole film will make sense to you within the context of his paratext work, and that's what makes it utter shit

Iran & China do not exist, it appears.

― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius),

Armond White correct: Romania overrated.

― Fusty Moralizer (Dr Morbius),

depressing

lamp, dunno how i read two, cheers.

flashing back to classmates in college presenting endless reams of justification for what their bullshit scripts "really meant."

i wonder if any of them have actually gotten to make a movie yet.

"interestingly" enough, 4m/3w/2d was far from the lowest ranking film that had more than one #1 vote.

key to liking DD: ignore Richard Kelly.