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

oh let's not bring dumont into this

he's so wrong! SO wrong. i'm not saying i recommend it. but if what you're going for is to really unsettle somebody, there you go. see if i'm understanding the appeal of lynch it is that he is unsettling but i honestly can hardly stay awake.

i'm curious how much people loaded up multiple movies by the same directors on their ballots -- i only did it w/ 2 LOTR movies, otherwise a lot of times if i really liked more than one movie by a director i'd end up only including the one i liked more which was usually also the one less likely to place

one of the things that i liked about humanite is that dumont's camera makes everyone seems legitimately deranged enough to have been the killer. kept waiting for the big reveal that it was the sad-sack repression case cop through the whole movie.

i have seen like two of these movies.

if i'd voted for the full forty i'd probably have voted for two cronenbergs, two miikes, and two joon-hos, along with the two lynchs. but i think that's more about my pet obsessions than any sort of strategery.

haha also maybe two eli roths :/

and by "two" i mean "almost all"

had 6 2x directors on mine

i'm curious how much people loaded up multiple movies by the same directors on their ballots -- i only did it w/ 2 LOTR movies

Assayas got two mentions in my top forty, but c'est tout.

directors w/ two films on my ballot:
takashi miike
david lynch
the coens
park chan-wook
bong joon-ho
peter jackson

directors I'm surprised are not on my ballot at all: polanksi, herzog, cronenberg

i find this so maddening. it's like lynch doesn't do the work to make any of this coherent in any way, and expects the viewer to just believe, somehow, that there is something more there

but it's all the same relentless flat, creepy, grim, dark

so are you saying you don't like lynch

you might like miike, then. same thing, but with the bonus of something blatantly retarded every five to ten minutes or so.

2 lynches, 3 hanekes, 2 joes

IE would still have been stronger if it were leaner, but then again that's my reaction to most films these days. I know most ppl around here seem to like their Lynch freewheeling.

xxp Also bonus of releasing one film a week!

theres a good david foster wallace essay on lynch in one of his nonfic collections

Daria-g I have similar problems with Lynch, but admittedly I haven't seen MD and IE. Might give them a spin but yeah that's basically why I haven't bothered yet.

haha when that lynch thing first ran in premiere it got me stupidly hyped for lost highway. more the fool me.

i dare say lynch isn't going to work for you if your on the net complaining about it as it plays.

Laura Dern should have been all 5 oscar nominees for IE

Tenenbaums >>>>>> Rushmore so hard.

Herzog, fuck yeah. Need to watch Kaspar and Nosferatu soon.

i still hate that kid from the newer lord of the flies b/c of that essay where he is mocking lynch throughout, balthazar getty

put down the bong joon ho

Lynch is pretty easy to mock though.

I mean I love David Lynch films but it's kind of hard not to think the dude is pretty ridiculous.

i love the whole balthazar getty thing in that essay.

you gotta admit, it's a good name.

I think daria's criticisms are valid. One of the things I liked about Inland Empire, though, is the way the narrative keeps folding in on itself, each "version" of the story reflecting and interacting with the others. It creates a unique kind of disorientation that I've only experienced in Lynch's films.

i watched 'mulholland' straight through last week. thought this might be different. seems to have a very limited vocab, yet again.

i suppose i can see how elements that provoke certain expectations, in film, are often screwed up and out of place chez lynch, and those are the only times i find him a little bit interesting - like putting the dramatic horror film strings over top of a scene where nothing much happens. and then he throws you off by revealing that whatever scene just happened was part of the movie they were shooting. but.. it's hard to be that thrown off, when you were never on in the first place, there was nothing to build on. idk..

from said essay:

"The first time I lay actual eyes on the real David Lynch on the set of his movie, he's peeing on a tree. This is on 8 January in L.A.'s Griffith Park, where some of Lost Highway's exteriors and driving scenes are being shot. He is standing in the bristly underbrush off the dirt road between the base camp's trailers and the set, peeing on a stunted pine. Mr. David Lynch, a prodigious coffee drinker, apparently pees hard and often, and neither he nor the production can afford the time it'd take to run down the base camp's long line of trailers to the trailer where the bathrooms are every time he needs to pee. So my first (and generally representative) sight of Lynch is from the back, and (understandably) from a distance. Lost Highway's cast and crew pretty much ignore Lynch's urinating in public, (though I never did see anybody else relieving themselves on the set again, Lynch really was exponentially busier than everybody else.) and they ignore it in a relaxed rather than a tense or uncomfortable way, sort of the way you'd ignore a child's alfresco peeing."

it is kind of hard not to love david lynch, at least as a weird real person rather than a filmmaker.

especially because he talks like carol channing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut6zdE8qWj0

i guess some of it is a bit personal because most all the cinema nerds i've known irl love the guy and when i say i don't particularly THEY take it personal and ugh

i kinda wish he was my uncle. he'd make soap sculptures and when i'd tell him how i was doing he'd say "that's super" in his carol channing voice.

^LOOOL

im curious daria i recall a conversation we had re symbolic communication in the political sphere and yr general distaste for it - u feelin the same abt lynchs chosen mode

Eraserhead was one of my most memorable theater experiences ever and I just love that movie, but I've yet to see most of his other movies, kind of afraid I won't be under the spell of the others like I was with that one. Just started watching Twin Peaks.

heyo uncle david why is poor laura dern's character perpetually insecure, confused, and afraid of her own shadow? srsly most women in his films i'm like CMON LADY TELL THESE PEOPLE YOU ARE SICK OF THEIR SHIT

hmm.. i'm afraid i don't remember.. i'm not sure. i wish he would establish some kind of coherent world that one can relate to even a little bit, that's alive in some way, but if it's deliberately alienating from the start of the film on out, i'm totally unaffected by it. fake upon fake upon fake.

watching Twin Peaks is a good way into lynch-world.

I think Inland Empire is closest to Eraserhead of all of Lynch's movies.

troo

I think lynch is so polarizing because prob more than any other filmmaker he works at an almost purely emotional (meaning non-rational) level. It can thrilling if resonates with you... or incredibly tedious if it doesn't.

i wonder if it resonates with daria? hmmmm....*wondering*

yeah i totally get why people would hate IE, and do not begrudge them. more walkouts than any other movie i've probably seen at a theater.

once saw peter greenaways the falls at a retrospective - 80%+ of the audience were gone by the end

oh, david, what have you done with my favorite nina simone song ;_;