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

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.

Directors with two films on my list:

* Haneke.

* Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Yes, I am one of those horrible people who voted for Amelie, though I did put A Very Long Enagement way above it. AVLE is much less twee and a better showcase for what's great about Jeunet, i.e. his enormous visual imagination.

* Miyazaki. Looks like Ponyo isn't gonna place, which is a bit sad, but it's true that Spirited Away is a better movie as a whole. I just felt Ponyo was a very pleasing return to form after the mess that was Howl's Moving Castle, and some of the underwater scenes in it are among the best things he's ever done.

haven't seen let the right one in, but p stoked for the english-language remake

oh you joker

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.

yeah - Greenaway is a lot more "logical" - The Falls is basically playing with the impulse to catalog, and many of the protagonists in his other films are involved in some sort of scientific pursuit. Lynch, to me, seems really bound up in surrealism/subconscious dream stuff. I'm fond of Bunuel's early films, but they are also considerably shorter than something like Inland Empire. But, for the most part, David Lynch just strikes me as trying to recreate or recapture the same stuff the surrealists did decades ago, and I just shrug.

This is what I wrote in the Inland Empire thread:

I was quite disappointed with this. It looks the cheapness of shooting in digital got Lynch to think he can just shoot scene after scene and put them together into an endlessly long film. It seems like he really fell victim to his worst instincts. His previous films, as surreal as they've been, have at least had some sort of structure, but here he apparently didn't even have a script. There is a reason why the best totally surreal and plotless movies are short films: if you want have a three-hour film which is still interesting you need to have some sort of a structure.

The first hour of Inland Empire was actually quite ineresting, but after that whatever point there was to the film quickly melted into air. There were just endless close-ups to Laura Dern's face and shots of her wandering blandly through different spaces. There were still some interesting scenes in the next two hours; for example the one were she's dying on the street with the homeless people, and then the camera pulls off and it was all a movie. I though the film was gonna end there, but there was still 30+ minutes left of close-ups and wandering through rooms to suffer through. Lynch is still a masterful visualist, and the movie was beautiful to look at, but I strongly suggest that he gets someone else to produce his next film, someone who can put an stop to his wankery when needed.

― Tuomas, 15. elokuuta 2007 16:32 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I agree that Buñuel's early stuff works because it's short, but a 3 hour barrage of surreal imagery simply gets boring. I like most of Lynch's movies because they have at least some sort of plot and character arc that helps to anchor the surreal stuff. But with IE Lynch seems to have given up on that... Pure emotional imagery might work for a 10-20 minute movie, but 3 hours is too much. Some of the individual scenes in IE can still be effective as such, but simply putting them together without any sort of real structure does not make a good movie.

the higher up the placings the less fun this thread is becoming, either because my reaction to movies I didn't like gets more engraged and visceral, or because the movies i liked are being torn apart from others feeling the same way.

maybe next time we should reveal in order #1 up?

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

Thanks, TS. (Big Fish didn't have my support, fwiw, but I sort of like when movies I don't like that aren't also Winking Amelie mingle with ones I do like.)

i gotta say, do NOT watch inland empire on netflix-on-demand. for some of the low-light scenes i might as well have just taken my glasses off.

I am one of those horrible people who voted for Amelie, though I did put A Very Long Enagement way above it

lol you voted for "doggie fart, warms my heart."

Eh?

That's a terrible line of terrible dialogue from that terrible movie.

The only reason I don't hate AVLE about a million times more than Amelie is because the later movie rightly disappeared without a trace.

children of men
city of god
eternal sunshine
inglourious basterds
knocked up
mulholland drive
no country for old men
spirited away
there will be blood
wall-e
zodiac

^one of these won't be in the top 10.

sorry for the speculation.

I'm going out on a limb and predicting it's the comedy on that list that gets knocked down.

zoolander

kncoked up won't be there, but if xzoolander don't make it then i'll be ????

i don't know exactly how well regarded Basterds is around here but i'd be kinda shocked if it was so much higher than both Kill Bills

i think we're all forgetting michael clayton

(which i'm starting to give up on)

and i think i voted for bad santa twice, so look out for that again

God, I hope Knocked Up won't be in the top 10! That would mean Fred Phelps has won.

I WANT TO BELIEVE

we're not supposed to speculate!

xp hey come on. at least it mentions abortion. dozens of films in this list pretend like it's not even an option.

sleepy hollow is a movie about abortion that i expect to see