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

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 ;_;

that's just wrong

you didn't like that? I thought it was a great way to end the movie, taking you out of the nightmare

it's nina simone! i mean i don't like to get all precious about what you do with music but sinnerman never struck me as a dance party type of song

incidentally i've seen a couple miike films, i would watch more if i didn't know he can be reliably depended upon to frequently have something unbearably violent and disgusting happen, and immediately zoom in to shoot it close up. cannot handle.

It was a bizarre dance party, though, with all the hookers dancing and Nikki looking like she was relieved to have escaped with her life...

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

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Thursday, February 11, 2010 11:55 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah he gave a talk at my uni once. really funny watching an audience of earnest brainy college students trying to take him at face value and parse his meditation and oneness rhetoric.

Just started watching Twin Peaks.

ha me too only a coupla episodes in but its p good def the best lynch ive watched

daria did u just liveblog inland empire

I also really don't care for david lynch but OTOH I've enjoyed all of his 'normal' movies that I've seen (straight story, elephantman)

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

― ice cr?m

Oddly, I love lots of Greenaway, and The Falls in particular, but have no use for Lynch. Hits a different part of the brain I guess.

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

― kicker conspiracy (b. favre ha ha) (daria-g), Thursday, February 11, 2010 4:14 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

saw him speak at AFI after (before?) inland empire (why didnt u go daria?) and someone asked about the problematic nature of his female protagonists' constant trouble/physical danger, and he str8 up pretended to have no idea what the person meant. what a gagger.

IE is legitimately the scariest movie i have seen in the last 10 years, no exaggeration.

Word. And:

IE would still have been stronger if it were leaner

Wack. The immersion in that world is the trick. Both times I've watched the DVD, I've plunged right into the deleted scenes afterwards. It's just amazing and all-consuming, this nightmare he's created. And just an amazing, mesmerizing film.

If nothing else, I'll back the top three on my ballot (IE = #3) as top-tier film experiences that I'm sure will stick with me for the rest of my life.

i'm curious how much people loaded up multiple movies by the same directors on their ballots

2 Altman, 2 Edgar Wright, 2 Greengrass, 4(!) Tarantino, 2 Lynch.

i haven't see IE because i am sort of afraid of it!

kinda sad In the Mood for Love isn't much higher. Top 3 of decade for me.

generally only voted for one movie per director but not out of any particular impulse only dudes w/two movies on my ballot were fatih akin and alfonso cuarón

I've come to the conclusion that 8 of my nominees are going to wind up in the top 10, and I can only suss out one more beyond that for sure. I think Benjamin Button will probably take that tenth slot?

Ha ha. Did any "Important" award-bait movie ever (deservedly) disappear so completely from the public consciousness as quickly as Benjamin Button did? I had literally forgotten about its existence before it popped into my head as an apropos joke nominee.

i haven't see IE because i am sort of afraid of it!

Take the plunge, ryan! Do what I did the first time: watch it alone, in the dark, with the volume up, and wearing headphones. You'll sleep like a kitten.

mostly i found myself thinking about what i predicted (usually correctly) would be the highest ranking movie by a given director and figuring out whether i agreed, "consensus wrong about Tarantino, right about Scorsese, wrong about Apatow, wrong about the Coens" etc

what do u think is the best tarantino? also i think there was really only one scorsese that was ever going 2 place for this decade~

i dont think thats a bad way to go abt this list - i didnt really think abt my list at all just wrote down all the movies i could think of that i really liked/admired and then fucked with the order. i barely even remembered 20 movies tbh. i did purposefully leave anime off my list since i knew wld be a completely wasted vote

Give or take a Big Fish, Slant list is fucking fantastic so far

I voted for Grindhouse but really more for Planet Terror come to think of it -- only saw the first Kill Bill and didn't love it, haven't seen Basterds -- so that's a poor example

Did any "Important" award-bait movie ever (deservedly) disappear so completely from the public consciousness as quickly as Benjamin Button did?

American Beauty and Crouching Tiger (both much more deservedly)

grizzly man most out of leftfield choice yet imo

i voted for curious case of benjamin button, p high up

i did not vote for the fucking royal tenebaums

zodiac is gonna place right?

for sure

pretty confident about 7 films that haven't shown up yet.

i can't understand the love for the pool scene in Let The Right One In. Yah it looked nice, but the film never committed to being a revenge fantasy until that scene, the whole thing suddenly felt like it was playing to the dudes seeing their token foreign film for the year. Congratulations for making it through a bunch of subtitles and pale people whispering. Here's some righteous bloodletting.