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

i preferred to Zodiac to Memories of Murder, though i saw Zodiac on the big screen which helped it a lot. plus i heard about Memories of Murder in the new horror to shit your pants to thread (very misleading place for it imo) so i was disappointed.

this is the SFPD the movie is about.

I quite like Fincher but thought Zodiac was one long dowdy apology for having made Se7en.

Didn't Spike Lee have a Zodiac movie too? How was that?

How middlebrow or whatever would it be to say that I preferred Dirty Harry to Zodiac?

Didn't Spike Lee have a Zodiac movie too? How was that?

That was about the Son of Sam.

i don't think the cops are incompetent, they were dealing with a motiveless series of crimes that suddenly started and then suddenly stopped (this was pre-dna technology and pre-computer tracing so there were no btk-style re-emergences that led directly to someone, etc...) they probably made mistakes but it may have been unsolvable.

whoever that person was should probably watch The Wire

i think his real beef was that it didnt tie everything up in the end and is using that an excuse for disliking the movie

the cops IRL would've provided the closure I desperately need in a movie

the olvidados are visible, but forgotten on the margins. it's almost like the secret life of a city you're seeing there. City of God is about the centrality of those people, & the causes, nature and consequences of it. they're quite distant in place & time too, which is obvious but worth noting. i think City of God is still a window on the world of sorts for all its flashiness. think the directors had worked on docs with those kids before the movie.

I love how exploitation criticism basically = they made a movie people might actually want to see. I mean good for them.

Alex you are all bullshit

Fancy that criticism coming from you.

BTW the special features on the Zodiac blu-ray, which include EXTENSIVE interviews both with the actual cops from each jurisdiction, and the two surviving victims, are absolutely amazing. Michael Mageau, the dude who was shot in the opening scene, is just an absolute mess; while Bryan Hartnell, the dude stabbed at the lake, is a successful lawyer. In one segment, Hartnell goes to look at evidence from the crime scene -- including his car door with the Zodiac writing on it -- for the first time in 40 years. It's really something else.

i love zodiac, and put it #30 on my ballot, but it never totally drew me in. dunno, something a bit theoretical about it. no complaints about it ending up so highly though.

zodiac also has some of the most convincing big-city newsroom scenes of any movie i can think of. (or, newsroom of the '70s. it made me sad...)

should rescreen zodiac - fell asleep for like .5 hours the 1st time

― ice cr?m, Thursday, 11 February 2010 18:40 (28 minutes ago)

same here. i don't really understand the fuss - plus i remember it being exceedingly long. i may need to rescreen one day.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/wall-e.jpg

Wall-E is speculative as well but it pulls off the trick of being a crystal clear children's story about a future that's already happening, the film really follows you directly out of the theatre and into the food lobby where they're selling you hot dogs. And the film's 'happy ending' brought to mind Fassbinder's line about Douglas Sirk's films and his talent for turning in a studio-ready happy ending that actually just underlines how difficult things are about to get for everyone involved

What I hate about so much 00's SF film is that they are simply recycling the dystopias first explored much more nightmarishly in the 70's films, not only are most of these new films retreads, they're competing with daily headlines & lack any imagination, they're not adding anything. but there are some iconic images in Wall-E that sum up things so nightmarishly it's up there with some of my favorites

really hard to discuss without add spoilers, but going to wait until more people have seen this, I'm glad I went in totally cold.

after leaving the theatre I finally figured out that those repeated lines of phone dialogue on the ship were hints that everyone's 'best friends' onboard were all A.I.

― Milton Parker

I'm interested in Stanton's steadfast claim that he backed into the earth abandonment/mega-corp stuff by starting with the "last robot on earth" story and taking it from there, as well as his thoroughly disingenuous claim that there's nothing specifically political about it. I was surprised by how guns-blazin' it was at times with Fred Willard and all that.

At the same time, it's a kid's movie, it's more fable-like than anything (if you so desire you could pick apart the plot for quite a while), and the 600 years of padding between the ship leaving earth and the time of the film sort of tempers any accusations of holier-than-thou commentary. People aren't bad, they've just slowly been trained out of being people.

Whatever though--to watch this movie first and foremost for anything other than the virtuosity of the filmmaking is to be kind of retarded. No one anywhere is using all the different dimensions of cinema to their full effect better than Pixar.

― call all destroyer

Just saw it, loved it. Been mentioned already but I think the film's relative lack of dialogue is not merely a key touch but completely essential. Can you imagine if the cockroach was given some 'wacky' voice? Post-Nathan Lane in Lion King that was almost a requirement and kinda still is. I don't think you'll see Disney adapting this as a stage musical anytime soon.

Fred Willard was brilliant even on autopilot Fred Willard mode. Fun to see some of the other credits too --Sigourney Weaver as the ship's computer voices!

― Ned Raggett

just popped in to say that anyone complaining about the happy ending is a fucking retard

― n/a

i cried

haha my god-daughter is named Eva - she is 3 years old and i am sure that once she sees this movie she'll fully think that Eve's name is Eva and exploit that fact (in adorable ways obv) regardless of any explanation re: mispronunciation

did not like peter gabriel song but liked end-credits animation

all in all though i liked this a lot i also found it super depressing. and could not help but think it was like 'idiocracy' with harsh ironies & the black humour replaced by adorable lovey robots and a simplified plot & themes. but i think that's a good thing.

― rrrobyn

Wall-E

#8

WALL·E
Andrew Stanton
2008
United States
(800.5 points, 37 votes, 1 first place)

interview w/ katia lund, the exploitative cur who co-directed city of god

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/cinema/features/katia-lund.shtml

city of god has inherent problems when it comes to glamorization of gangsters but not anymore than scorsese or coppola did - almost a natural byproduct of being a gangster flick imo

Isn't this a byproduct of real life? I mean don't people get drawn into gangs for the chance of a more glamorous life? Gangs = money, that's why they exist.

#8

WALL·E

you people are retarded

^yes

first 30 minutes of wall-e are great, rest is kind of ho-hum

it's been my experience that kids are kinda bored by wall-e and I can't blame them

I can't get the girl-robot's horrible shriek ("WAAALLL-EEEE?!") outta my head.

i haven't seen all the pixars but this is the one i like the least

i think milton is totally OTM

end credits were the bomb

The first 30 minutes of this is one of the greatest works of art in the history of animation.

end credits and the first 20 minutes or so are pretty great - the rest = fuck this shit

it's never that bad. it's just not as good. rest of it is fine.

could never get over the cognitive dissonance of FUCKING DISNEY selling me a movie about consumerism and over-consumption. O RLY. its called co-opting the critique via spectacle and its lame.

I agree that milton's OTM on a theoretical level but the practical execution of the film left me cold

my pet theory is that people gloss over the 2nd + 3rd act problems cause the 1st act is so stunning

truth bomber: whoever made the point that the first 30 minutes of wall-e were good, first 10 minutes of up were good, first 5 minutes of next pixar film will be awesome

First 30 minutes are great, but I think the rest of the movie is nearly as good and the movie wouldn't have worked without them. The harshness of its tone is not nihilistic, you see that some of those fat human beings are nice guys, and could do nice things if kicked behind -- it's the collective lull that's attacked. And I found the love story touching in the second half as well.

The first 30 minutes of this is one of the greatest works of art in the history of animation.

― Your body is a spiderland (polyphonic)

This is very true. However, the next 50 minutes are so bad that they almost ruin it. Almost, but not quite.

would've been funny if all the garbage in the movie and all the spaceships were plastered with the Disney logo (ie a little REALISM)

I'd bet Wall-E is my favorite in the top 10 outside of that other Lynch movie.

could never get over the cognitive dissonance of FUCKING DISNEY selling me a movie about consumerism and over-consumption. O RLY. its called co-opting the critique via spectacle and its lame.

― Wrinkles, I'll see you on the other side (Shakey Mo Collier)

You can say alot about how Disney runs it ship and how they run/control Pixar, but the creative talent at Pixar are not really the ones to go after, are they? Do you think in realizing who owns them they should tone it down and sell the "Disney ideology"??

who cares if it's disney who's behind the film? who do you think owns the studios that release many other films critiquing similar things? same kinda consumerist bullshit, different public face.

I've been trying to get my kids to watch wall-e or up so I can see how they hold up on second viewing but they won't bite

they'd rather watch steamboy or 9

However, the next 50 minutes are so bad that they almost ruin it.

I guess, but every once in awhile there is a scene like the scene with the fire extinguishers, which was so incredible.

do you have any idea how much merchandizing garbage Disney/Pixar are directly responsible for. these people FILL LANDFILLS, its their MO.

x-post

I understand those who say zodiac didn't draw them in. I kept coming back to though, over and over. Went from thinking it was ok to one of my favorite movies. It's such a rich film, almost every note is perfect for me.

Also I've begun to notice beyond all the epistemology there's a lot going on with male friendships/relationships. Something heartbreaking about it.

Probably would have been my #1

we all fill landfills, every major corporation does, books and newspapers are made from trees, etc.

end credits and the first 20 minutes or so are pretty great - the rest = fuck this shit

― Wrinkles, I'll see you on the other side (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, February 11, 2010 7:20 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes

could never get over the cognitive dissonance of FUCKING DISNEY selling me a movie about consumerism and over-consumption. O RLY. its called co-opting the critique via spectacle and its lame.

― Wrinkles, I'll see you on the other side (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, February 11, 2010 7:21 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no, wtf?

we create villains out of obvious targets to make ourselves feel better and more noble (cf dems hating way too hard on repubs and vice versa, when most of us are closer than we think)

we don't read newspapers we read ilx

Also the best hour of Zodiac is the last one! One of those rare movies that winds down.

I think it would be awesome if Oscar Meyer funded Babe: Pig in the City.

we all fill landfills, every major corporation does, books and newspapers are made from trees, etc.

lol way to confuse the point there