ILX TOP 50 FILMS OF 2000-2004 BALLOTS/VOTING - ends Jan. 3

maybe it will be all comic book movies!!! elektra, x-men, x-men 2, daredevil, spiderman, spiderman 2, yeah i could totally pull it off. not to mention the blades!!!

I hope somebody nominated Cube 2 : Hypercube (or whetever its bullshit name was) 'cos I really want to put it in my worse 3 ballot.

American Wedding / American Pie 3 (Dylan, 2003)
Anchorman (McKay, 2004)
Blade II (del Toro, 2002)
The Bourne Identity (Liman, 2002)
The Bourne Supremacy (Greengrass, 2004)
Bring It On (Reed, 2000)

Charlie's Angels (McG, 2000)
Collateral (Mann, 2004)

Dude, Where's My Car (Leiner, 2000)

Elf (Favreau, 2003)
Finding Nemo (Stanton, Unkrich, 2003)
Gangs of New York (Scorsese, 2002)
Ghost World (Zwigoff, 2001)
High Fidelity (Frears, 2000)
Insomnia (Nolan, 2002)
Jackass: The Movie (Tremaine, 2002)
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (Tarantino, 2003)
Kill Bill: Vol.2 (Tarantino, 2004)
The Lord Of The Rings - The Fellowship Of The Ring (Jackson, 2001)
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Jackson, 2002)
Lord Of The Rings: Return of The King (Jackson, 2003)
Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003)

Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World (Weir, 2003)
Meet the Parents (Roach, 2000)
Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002)
Napoleon Dynamite (Hess, 2004)
Ocean's 11 (Soderbergh, 2001)
Pirates of the Caribbean (Verbinski, 2003)
Snatch (Ritchie, 2000)
Spider-Man (Raimi, 2002)
Starsky and Hutch (Phillips, 2004)
Traffic (Soderbergh, 2000)

Vanilla Sky (Crowe, 2001)

X-Men 2 / X2 (Singer, 2003)
Zoolander (Stiller, 2001)

There are several korean and japanese action/crime/comedy films that I've seen in recent years and quite enjoyed. JSA isn't one of them, really, but I think part of it comes down to this - the foreign films that come to the states come to the states to please the art house crowd; a lot of gen-y college educated people find art house cinema rather dull as of late, and would prefer something actiony, pacey, or as I would call it "well-executed" like Spider-Man 2 rather than Bad Education, by a long shot.

If they brought shit like CASSHERN and IMMORTEL to the little art house in my neighborhood I'd hella go, but mainland china epics, american indies and eurowhatever is so frequently disappointing of late I just can't be bothered.

You know what was pretty fuckin' good, that wasn't on the list, DAS EXPERIMENT.

I call "pacey, actiony, well-executed" BIGSCREEN TV

whatsamatta? didn't you LOVE kiki's delivery service?

also, guess what.

I could see a lot more foreign films through Netflix and DVDs, but I've finally broke down and admitted that I just don't like movies as much on a small screen. Even when I love something, being on my couch, with my little TV or computer, I get too many distractions. Nothing replaces a good cinema experience.

Most baffling use of "r*ckist" evah, or I'm just old.

Also foriegn films tend to play in the arthouse theaters, which are always small and uncomfortable with bad sound systems. thats no fun.

Short answer: Pauline Kael.

I really shouldn't bite here, but Pauline Kael loved and promoted tons of foreign films. What exactly are you getting at?

I dunno what arthouses are generally like outside NYC; I'm sure their dodgy budgets means technical problems, but if it's a challenging and worthy film, you put up with stuff. I saw the third LOTR perfectly projected with a rapt crowd at Lincoln Center and felt grouchy throughout.

Maybe early on, but by the late 70s she almost exclusively supported American "New Hollywood" shit that had felt the influence of post-war Euro cinema but, more importantly, the American filmmakers championed by la politique des auteurs. (This isn't to say that there weren't individual non-American films she supported, but she certainly covered less and less world cinema--this is position is still v. evident at The New Yorker).

I don't really think she soley deserves the blame for lack of interest (and lack of availability (in theaters and the press) is really the main problem) in world cinema, but much of it has to do with the kind of provincial attitudes she fostered.

I don't think the "majority of American critics" is a very good standard with which to judge someone's openness to world cinema.

I don't have a single work for you, I'll look through For Keeps later and pull quotes if you want, but her focus became very American-centric later in her career (and this is taken to its logical extreme by self-confessed Paulettes like David Denby).

Il Postino came out way after Kael stopped writing--you're talking about critics working now.
Kael didn't have to hunt anything down she was based in San Francisco and New York during the high-point of American awareness of world cinema.
Again, I'm not soley blaming Kael, my answer above was pithy, but I do think the attitude that Morbius was describing and the attitude that a film must be first-and-foremost "entertaining" owe a lot to her (even if her actual writing was occasionally a little more nuanced).

It's not merely the championing of American films, but the notion that once Americans started making use of New Wave devices, there was no longer any need to actually see New Wave films (and certainly no reason to pay attention to contemporary world cinema).

She was the most well-known American film critic writing!

And she reviewed plenty of foreign films! For Keeps is a selective look at her work, not a complete bibliography.

I know that, and I've read stuff of hers that's not in For Keeps, it's the just only one I still own.

I don't really like Kael at all and, as I have repeated, I'm not soley blaming her. I think much of this has to do with the Paulettes and what others took from Kael's writing--which was admittedly a little more nuanced. But I don't think it's unfair to associate her with an attitude that largely bears her impress.