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

CHIGURH
Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter.

PROPRIETOR
...Where you want me to put it?

CHIGURH
Anywhere not in your pocket. Or it'll get mixed in with the
others and become just a coin. Which it is.

I love love that "which it is"--makes the movie for me.

"is this a lot of people's favorite Coen movie or would it still take a backseat to a lot of their earlier work?"

My favorite Coen brothers film is the best one I watched recently (so its A Serious Man right now.)

i liked how he was terminator with bad haircut!

it took so many xposts to get that posted damn

Now I'm kinda hoping that out of the 4 movies to come, Children of Men will be the winner. That one felt more fresh and daring and innovative to me than ESotSM or Mulholland Drice (haven't seen No Country for Old Men). MD is a fine film, but there isn't anything in it Lynch hadn't already done (sometimes better) in the 80s/90s, so it doesn't much feel like "best of the 00s" to me.

― Tuomas, Thursday, February 11, 2010 4:05 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

given the high placement of Adaptation and fkn Synechdoche getting in the list i'm starting to get the sinking feeling that Eternal Sunshine is our #1

"for a supposedly realistic take on violence, crime, and evil"

Whuh?

is this a lot of people's favorite Coen movie or would it still take a backseat to a lot of their earlier work?

its not my favorite, I rate their comedies higher than their WE R SERIOUS crime thrillers, pretty much

"Supposedly realistic" is not something you can say about Cormac McCarthy.

"for a supposedly realistic take on violence, crime, and evil,"

sez who? It's pure mythos, just less cartoony than what you guys usu adore (thank Christ).

altho Dorian totally OTM re: it being their "comeback" film. was seriously considering writing them off altogether

meta-references like DD Lewis being like Orson Welles in Citizen Kane - I have only seen TWBB once, and that was shortly after it came out, and it's not fresh in my memory, so rather than make shit up or pound the table about things I vaguely remember, I'll just say that that was my immediate reaction to the film, but I can't back it up too well right now.

lol there's ZERO realism in NCFOM

no country was alright. i'd have cut tommy lee jones monologues out, seemed unnecessary. idk. ambivalent about this story, I think maybe it was short on ideas.

yeah i don't think it was realistic, i didn't treat it that way when i watched it. that's why terminator belongs.

Here's a fun, non-spoilerizing question: what are everyone's highest ranking movies that they're positive aren't going to make it into the top ten? Mine is To Be And To Have at #4.

Half Nelson at #6.

The scene where Chigurh is stitching himself up totally gives off such Terminator vibes, it's kinda cool. Otherwise the movie's kinda irritating to me for some reason.

I saw realist nods in no country - lack of non-diegetic music, the refusal to tie ends up neatly

Here's a fun, non-spoilerizing question: what are everyone's highest ranking movies that they're positive aren't going to make it into the top ten? Mine is To Be And To Have at #4.

cloverfield, #6

My reaction to TWBB was similar to s1ocki's to IB. Difficult to imagine a premise/setting more intriguing to me, and it didn't disappoint in that sense, although i share a lot of the concern about the whole dano mess and the ending.

its pretty clear from Bardem's very first scene that you're dealing with a mythic/unrealistic figure

starting to worry about michael clayton, #1

"I saw realist nods in no country - lack of non-diegetic music, the refusal to tie ends up neatly"

Okay but those two things have very little to do with "violence, crime, and evil".

mine is The Two Towers at #2

i was completely mesmerized by ncfom, the comment i quoted about it being strangely calming of all things is spot-on.

Fat Girl, #7

the comment i quoted about it being strangely calming of all things is spot-on

yup

the refusal to tie ends up neatly

? ends are pretty well tied up. Brolin is dead, coke dealers have their money, Chigurh is a deathless force of destruction that will just continue on and on, TLJ is old and tired and not really good for anything anymore

its pretty clear from Bardem's very first scene that you're dealing with a mythic/unrealistic figure

everybody else seemed to be playing by pretty quotidian rules though

i was irritated by 'no country'.. it was SO violent, but ultimately, you have.. the west + coin flips + terminator guy with weird haircut who goes around killing everybody, and it adds up to... ??

mine is bourne ultimatum at 5 but since the other two got in i'd say 'fantastic mr. fox' at 10

no country was alright. i'd have cut tommy lee jones monologues out, seemed unnecessary. idk. ambivalent about this story, I think maybe it was short on ideas.

― kicker conspiracy (b. favre ha ha) (daria-g), Thursday, February 11, 2010 4:17 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i kinda agree with this but it being an adaptation makes me second-guess my impression of the story and wonder if the way it was told in the book would resonate with me more. but then, reading The Road left me with no desire to read any other McCarthy books so i'll probably never know.

by "neatly" I mean according to traditional narrative conventions

it adds up to a meditation on mortality and humanity's helplessness before it

x-posts

Here's a fun, non-spoilerizing question: what are everyone's highest ranking movies that they're positive aren't going to make it into the top ten? Mine is To Be And To Have at #4.

Mine is Songs from the Second Floor at #1. But only one movie in my top 10 placed here, and that was Happy-Go-Lucky.

'mythic' how? i'm serious. for this to work, i feel like there has to be more to it than that.

They just seem like cardboard cut-outs or meta references to other things, in a knowing "aren't we all so clever" kinda way that I really don't feel like participating in.

That's what i don't get. Absence of sympathy (and my earlier post was flippant) for a character doesn't mean the absence has to be replaced with meta stuff, it's just absent. I think what I liked about Plainview was this slow-burning messianic-ness, where just seeing it (in plain view) was enough, there didn't need to be any sympathy or hatred or awe. It just was itself.

Bardem's character in NCFOM has a similar quality just less manic. Morbius's quote about him being a ghost - i like that, cos i always get annoyed when he ambles off after the car crash.

southern gothic iirc

Okay, I guess I've weeded out Huckabees and Bourne Ultimatum as the two surefire top 10 movies that clearly aren't going to make it at this point. It's just super weird to me that neither one showed up in the top 100, though.

(also the seminal/most critical McCarthy work, imho, is Blood Meridien which is as close to GREAT AMERICAN EPIC as he's ever gonna get)

way preferred A Serious Man to NCFOM. Spirited Away is wonderful, deserved to do as ridiculously well as it did. Only doing this poll did I realise how much animation I like.

re: Orson Welles, how do you feel about Unicron the round, planet-sized robot that eats planets in Transformers being a meta-reference to Welles (well probably more a direct reference to his girth at the time)?

everybody else seemed to be playing by pretty quotidian rules though

― 鬼の手 (Edward III), Thursday, February 11, 2010 9:20 PM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bardem is kind of like omar in the wire in that sense. (i don't think either of them cross the line to characters who literally don't belong in this universe)

Huckabees really bugged the shit out of me except for Marky Mark.

Intolerable Cruelty is better than nearly all the comedies this poll has named.

Blood Meridian is probably unfilmable though.

what are everyone's highest ranking movies that they're positive aren't going to make it into the top ten?

The Aristocrats, my #2.

Had Eureka @ #4 but figured that was a long, long shot.

xp Philip: I didn't see the Transformers movie, so I have no opinion on it.

Intolerable Cruelty is better than nearly all the comedies this poll has named.

The only funny thing in that whole movie was when someone asked the waitress for baby field greens.

I have no idea what the top 2 will be but I don't think Paranoid Park (#4 iirc) and Milk (#2 or #3) will place. Unless they already have and I missed it in this tl;dr thread.