Delayed Due To Projection Issues - the 2017 ILX Film Poll Results Thread

couldn't stand this

most things don't need satires -- most things are bad enough!

TOO LOW!

(shrug) I laughed a lot, but it was easily half an hour too long

number 3 on my ballot, it rocks

Agreed that we should put off voting until at least July for the previous year.

Perhaps not quite as good as his masterpiece Play, but a lot better than Force Majeure. I didn't see it as satirizing the art world as much as class structure in Sweden in general. Modern art being just as much an ostentatious display of societal power as the horse statue that get's broken in the first scene. It's not subtle, but I loved it.

The vagaries and varieties of international film distribution ARE fascinating imho, worth discussing here and elsewhere - geographic patterns of taste and fashion map onto the way we receive/view every film that we see. For myself, I just use this poll - and the x film thread - as a diary of things seen and enjoyed. So if I were to look back at this poll sometime, I would remember that I saw Toni Erdmann for the first (and so far only) time in 2017, and then think back to the 'controversy' about it topping the Sight and Sound poll of 2016 w/out it being released in the UK at the time.

I got bored of Toni Erdmann and missed probably the last half -- should I go back and see the last half?

yes

I rarely watch contemp movies a second time and Toni Erdmann benefited from the second viewing.

the birthday party scene and the scene in the park afterwards were both amazing, and iirc they occur in the second half. plus Plainsong at the end!

https://i.imgur.com/MWalOU6.jpg

29. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
d: Frederick Wiseman (doco)
86 points, 6 votes

Ex Libris is very much of a piece with At Berkeley and National Gallery: the day-to-day flow of what happens there, mixed with endless meetings where board members try to figure out ways to secure funding and keep the institution operational. I've thought all of Wiseman's recent films with the exception of Boxing Gym were great, and this one is too. I will say, though, that he finds more interest in those meetings than I do.

― clemenza, Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Oh we saw The Square and liked it recently (tt more than me) but couldn't be bothered to adjust our ballots to include it. Doesn't always hit but it is wonderfully disgusted at many of the right things, and it gets pretty weird towards the end too

The only film I added to new list.

for anyone who has a card from a participating library, the public library streaming app Kanopy has what looks like the ENTIRE Wiseman filmography (except Ex Libris) at the moment, I think maybe inspired by current interest in this film

liked it fine, just not quite enough to vote for.

the NYPL also has all the FW DVDs, which they did not 2 years ago.

https://i.imgur.com/eBNgKed.jpg

26= A Ghost Story
w/d: David Lowery
96 points, 8 votes

I thought this was very bad, presumably there is no ILX quote bigging it up?

hi!

saw it exactly a year ago before a week of laying on the beach, so it was ideal prefatory material

All the quotes so far have been ilxors equivocating so maybe everyone loved it

couldn't get past the Peanuts costume image to the box office

what do you mean? Under a sheet is the best way to look at Casey Affleck.

when there are no quotes, it's because I couldn't find anything being said about the film at all (outside of the (x) movies you saw thread)

https://i.imgur.com/FD98t0d.jpg

26= On Body and Soul
w/d: Ildikó Enyedi
96 points, 6 votes

Just watched On Body and Soul. It was completely different to anything I had imagined it would be...sort of a muted, magic realist melodrama. What a bizarre career the director seems to have had.

― tangenttangent, Sunday, 4 March 2018

Thanks for the reminder.

no memory of that, i see it won the top prize in Berlin. my Letterboxd is very lukewarm on it.

also it played a bunch of US fests last year, no distribution til online this year

It was on MUBI

https://i.imgur.com/MjJmauK.jpg

26= The Big Sick
d: Michael Showalter w: Kumail Nanjiani & Emily Gordon
96 points, 7 votes

let's see:
1) completely unlikeable, unctuous lead
2) you expect there to be some tie-in to the healthcare crisis in a movie called THE BIG SICK, but nope, everything is fine! no bills, no loans, no evil insurance companies
3) not funny at all. it's the epitome of contemporary comedy consisting of simply "making good points," bland moralizing & half-baked drama at the expense of jokes
4) vapid navel-gazing autobiography. again, you expect a movie called THE BIG SICK to make some comment on healthcare in America, but it's just the story of how Kumail and Emily met & got married
5) another piece of post-Louis dross that expects us to sympathize with the most loathsome and untalented people on earth - open mic stand ups. fuck off

― flappy bird, Tuesday, July 18, 2017

completely unlikeable, unctuous lead
2) you expect there to be some tie-in to the healthcare crisis in a movie called THE BIG SICK, but nope, everything is fine! no bills, no loans, no evil insurance companies

The Big Sick as directed by Ruben Östlund.

Michael Showalter was in The State, so no, I haven't bothered to see any of his films.

A Ghost Story and On Body and Soul were both similarly subdued and were both very watchable, but I think I preferred the more enigmatic ending of A Ghost Story

I didn't realize films can be nominated for the foreign language academy award before they have a commercial release in the US

in fact, usually that seems to be the case for most of the nominees

https://i.imgur.com/gxi56Gm.jpg

25. Coco
d: Lee Unkrich & Adrian Molina w: Many Trained Story Technicians
100 points, 6 votes

Happy for the universal outrage I saw for the frozen short. Even my 4 yo was like when is the movie with the Skeletons going to start.

― Jeff, 26 November 2017

i loved coco but i don't really get how you could be into this and not into any other pixar movies? but also i don't really care

― NA, 7 March 2018

I agree with flappy that the big sick was kind of a charmless slog, but uh I didn’t find the title as infuriatingly misleading as he seemed to

Coco might be my favourite Pixar AND Disney movie. It's incredible

yeah I think Coco is my favorite Pixar movie too

Coco might be my favourite Pixar AND Disney movie. It's incredible

more than Three Colours: Blue?

thought about watching Coco before voting; too busy watching Twin Peaks

There weren't 24 better films than coco in 2017 (or 2016/18)

https://i.imgur.com/YiBB5Xy.jpg

24. The Death of Louis XIV
d: lbert Serra w: Albert Serra & Thierry Lounas
102 points, 4 votes

Placed at 40 last year, with 3 votes and 81 points.

GODDAMMIT if only we had strict rules that films which previously placed can't be voted for again. Let's hear from one of those feckless 2017 voters though:

Very much liked Serra's The Death of Louis XIV, both Leaud's expiring king of cinema/France and the unexpectedly clinical payoff. "We will do better next time."

― Dr Morbius, October 24, 2017

been meaning to watch a ghost story for easily a year

just saw this, also just saw Jean-Pierre Leaud in La Chinoise. such bookends