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

The thing that I really liked about 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days is that it was bleak in this kinda banal way. It was an interesting contrast with The Lives of Others which dealt with problems of "important people" (freedom of expression, constraints on professional artists). It probably would have been less chilling if I were a guy.

v.tense film

yes it was, and it was a feature length music video

xxpost

i.e., the visuals did really nothing to increase my appreciation of the album but theyd be dead in the water w/o the music

you didn't like the story?

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

I thought it was a well done film with a great cast. The cinematography was superb, really beautiful and it tells the story really effectively and makes it aesthetically appealing. Sure a thriller with post imperialistic critique, anti-racism and criticism of voyeurism could very easilly go wrong(ie so many subjects) but this film never does. I like how Haneke is not a preacher, no decider of right and wrong, he just observes and asks but never answers. He's great at writing dialogue, to saturate silence and make the actors act with body and facial expressions is unerring.

I saw this film at the London film festival and Daniel Auteil was there to answer questions after the film. He should be a stand up comic! He's really witty and funny.

The you know what scene is one of the most shocking things I've ever seen on film even though I should've predicted what would happen. The audience seemed to be just as disgusted.

― Lovelace

viscerally effective -- it's not a problem, obv., it's a skill and a strength. his movies create tension and discomfort (often from really mundane elements) in a way that i can enjoy aesthetically even if it's actually kind of unpleasant. but it seems to me that sometimes the physical force of the filmmaking gets mistaken for intellectual force. his ideas aren't necessarily up to his technique.

― gypsy mothra

It is a successful political film as it has made me discuss this issues with people more than I have for years (in particualr French collonialism and its relationship to British and its own people). Does it bring anything but the subject to the party, probably not.

― Pete

Michael Haneke's CACHE (insert your own accent over the e)

#20

Caché
Michael Haneke
2005
Austria/France
(536 points, 21 votes)

But apparently I am misreading WHY people enjoy these movies, if someone wants to offer a spirited defense of the Invisibles have at it. I don't really see that happening here tbh

I enjoyed the incredibles because I thought it was really fun, liked the story and thought all of the characters were original and well-written. I imagine I probably laughed at the same moments that a 5 year old would laugh. I don't remember noticing any inside-adult jokes except maybe "oh that's a map of oakland" and that's not even a joke.

i dont even remember the story! motley crew of leiji matsumoto aliens has adventure?

Next party I attend I will corner someone in the kitchen to discuss French colonialism.

also lol @ shakey writing "the invisibles." now there's a pixar i'd line up for.

this is not totally borne out in the film's finale, but i loved The Incredibles because it seemed to be about a guy who had a famous, great youth, but because of mistakes (presumably both within and not within his control) he ends up going into this witness protection style program. his family relocates to the middle of nowhere -- he's totally castrated by the government and by his boss. he clearly has issues with anger and responsibility, and the villain of the film turns out to a be a guy he taunted and was cruel to in the past. it's about the sins of arrogance and thoughtlessness being visited upon his family, and the redemption doesn't come through him saddling up again -- in fact IIRC when he does rebecome a superhero he's kidnapped and his family has to save him. so for me it becomes this film about the redemptive power of the family in combating the malaise and violence done upon the adult figure in a middle class capitalism. it's revolutionary road if their children weren't a weight that drowned them but rather the thing which saved them. and since family is very important to me in my life, this spoke very intimately and personally to me as a narrative structure -- i often cling to my family in hard times, so that rang true to me.

interstella 5555 was a scathing critique of consumer culture and evil alien A&R reps!

okay I think mordy enjoyed it for adult reasons more than I did

I'll say this for Caché: it kicked off a run of terrific Juliette Binoche performances.

also lol @ shakey writing "the invisibles." now there's a pixar i'd line up for.

lololol yeah me too!!

i thought he was talking about cache? xxp

The evil Malcolm McLaren/Svengali alien takes these folksy rockin aliens and destroys their identities/skincolor to make them palatable manufactured pop stars on Earth.

i loved caché. upon repeat viewing i thought georges was the least trustworthy person in the film though we're inclined to believe him since it's told from his POV, but i think he made the tapes himself

i like cache a lot but could we stop pretending a well-made thriller is pontecorvo redux?

i'm imagining 4m/3w/2days as a feature length music video

film about the redemptive power of the family in combating the malaise and violence done upon the adult figure in a middle class capitalism

okay can't say I expected this particular read but yeah I see where yr coming from. interesting

Ha I fell asleep during a critical scene in 4mos, and this made the awkward dinner scene probably a lot less charged than intended. It still works as plain awkward dinner scene.

caché shockingly low

film about the redemptive power of the family in combating the malaise and violence done upon the adult figure in a middle class capitalism

^^^ if I read the movie like this I would probably hate it

i actually wasn't sure what you guys were talking about when you kept mentioning caché, but looking over its wiki I think I've seen it. i found it very slow moving and boring, tho.

Caché placing above superbad makes me believe in justice - a totally trivial form of justice that applies to nothing significant and meaningful - but justice nonetheless. Yay ILX.

i didn't think it was pontecorvo, that french-algerian history is an interesting aspect of the film but what became more interesting to me was the reaction of people to being watched and how they change their behavior, and generally how one is inclined to believe georges and sympathize with him since he's the one on whom the film is focused.

no see THAT part WAS interesting to me. i just felt like haneke was gilding the lily with the "colonial imperialism" shit.

caché shockingly low

this is ILX, not the village voice poll of films

it's just like every haneke since benny's video (excepting the piano teacher since he didn't write it): dude just secretly seems to want to make "smart" genre pictures (a noble goal!) but can't resist getting in a few too many digs at bourgie society.

just in general it had me thinking a lot about what assumptions i made based on where the camera is, both the director's and the one that's recording within the film.. assuming georges must have done something because he's being surveilled, majid must have done something because georges makes that accusation, it must be majid who's causing georges to feel guilty, etc. i found it really interesting.

how many digs is too many

i guess my sense would be that if it is a film shot in contemporary france it is more problematic to leave that aspect out of a film, than to put it in.

maybe EVEN the piano teacher (since the [very funny] novel is so unlike the movie) since it's basically melodrama cranked way too tight

caché... i found it very slow moving and boring, tho.

― Mordy

me too.

what genre did you think code unknown was?

keep in mind the piano teacher made my top ten, and cache and time of the wolf would have made a top forty (probably), and haneke for all his lovable faults is one of my favorite directors.

caché shockingly low

ppl had to make space on their ballots for revanche to finish top 10 bro

xxp It was his take on Pixar animation.

code unknown was his "crash"-esque socio-political oscar-bait melodrama

only maybe joking there btw

It was his Nashville.

The problem with Cache was summed up for me by the rabid enthusiasm of smug Brit culture pundit Mark Lawson, who obviously didn't see any connection with the smug French culture pundit in the movie. With its epater-le-bourgeoisie dark-underbelly-of-the-middle-class-intelligentsia bullshit, it was destined to be adored by exactly the kind of people it was trying (pretending?) to attack. I liked the fun whodunnit stuff but found its political points completely bogus.

Village Voice still does film polls?

but can't resist getting in a few too many digs at bourgie society.

isn't this every french film?

it's poignant because she's been saved by her lover and she doesn't even know it...

cue Mad World

― FIST FIGHT! FIST FIGHT! FIST FIGHT IN THE PARKING LOT! (milo z), Wednesday, February 10, 2010 1:39 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

I liked the closing montage's nod to kieslowski's blue

but instead of classical music kelly uses a tears for fears cover, which is another over the top 80s lol

Definitely good to see Cache here, and I would have preferred it higher even though it's not my favourite of his films by a long shot.

(Still haven't seen Time of the Wolf, btw - really need to sort that out.)

again you could see it as just an attack on georges for being oblivious in his happy comfy bourgeois life until someone decides to start messing with him, but i really do wonder if it isn't georges himself who's always been messed up about it and decided to start making the tapes, like he has some guilt he hasn't dealt with and wants to make it someone else's fault for making him feel guilty. but poor majid really never asked to be bothered. i do think that's really interesting and if you want to make it a bigger story about france/algeria history, it is also interesting as far as from whose point of view that history is told, and how it continues to be fraught because one of those nations hasn't processed it.

Time of the Wolf >>> Cache imo

Time of the Wolf is really good.