ILX All-Time Film and Morbsies Poll: RESULTS Thread for ILX's Favorite Movies, Films, Cinema, Flicks & Moving Pictures

Surprised (and happy) to see California Split. The Long Goodbye and 3 Women will place higher, and guessing Nashville won't. I left Altman off my list, just to break age-old habits.

Never even heard of Daisies!

Daisies is the Daphne and Celeste of surrealist Czech cinema. It's a wonderfully annoying riot and I hope I voted for it.

really into Czech films and shamefully have never heard of Daisies, will check it out asap

TOO LOW

otm. In my top 20! I love this movie. Rewatched it a few years ago, was still charmed and surprised. (And I agree the whole thing has an implicit dark side, its anarchy is a reaction to oppression.)

...and the anarchy is also condemned as self-indulgence on the part of the main characters, it's not just a celebration of making a mess.

The director actually got into trouble with Czech authorities for depicting wasting food and it set back her career.

Or that was the pretext, anyway.

daisies is dope

hope we get at least one more Czech film

Gahhhhh, forgot to put the Morbs silver medal on The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. Just imagine it's there.

Onto another gold medalist....

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75. THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (John Ford, 1962, USA) [683.63 points; 8 votes; Morbs gold]
S&S: 120 | TSPDT: 93 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "Perhaps the best 'career summation' by a major filmmaker … being a Man of Civilization has its price."

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence is high in the running for best western film of all time. It puts Shane to shame.
― the unappreciated charisma of cows (Aimless), Monday, November 2, 2020 3:02 PM

Wonderful performance from Wayne, but what a sad ending. Stewart's character has been a good man throughout the film, yet is left with a sense of unfulfilment.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, April 12, 2011 10:01 AM

oh you do not need to see very much ford, honestly. man who shot liberty valance is fucking great tho.
― ghost rider, Wednesday, April 11, 2007 10:33 AM

I recently watched Man Who Shot Liberty Valence... well, ok, there are like 50 racially awkward scenes in every John Ford movie, but the one that really stood out in my mind is when the attorney is teaching the class about the Declaration of Independence and the black guy blanks out on the part about "all men are created equal." Fuck off, John Ford.
― A-ron Hubbard (Hurting), Thursday, January 11, 2007 9:02 PM

My two favourite Westerns show up on the same day!

I too can imagine this being my favorite western and maybe one of my favorite movies period once I've gained another 20 or so years.

What a strange way of calling me old!

unused MORBS SEZ (because it was more about Ford as a whole) from the ILX directors poll:

"who are the 27 clowns who don't think Ford is one of the 50 best filmmakers, Christ on a cracker"

followed almost immediately by:

"i really don't get ulcers over what a bunch of ahistorical anime wankers pull out of their hairless butts"

Hoping that's all the John Wayne westerns to show up

What about all the John Waters westerns?

Fine by me

I voted for this and it did make me feel old tbh.

Still, Daisies followed by this; that's variety.

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74. DAYS OF HEAVEN (Terrence Malick, 1978, USA) [683.63 points; 8 votes; 1 first-place vote]
S&S: 121 | TSPDT: 152 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "wd've been much better as a silent … his most overrated. needs a fan cut with music and intertitles, no dialogue"

overblown poesy. Attractively attired doggerel.
― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Monday, December 5, 2005 8:08 PM

"Days Of Heaven" is ALL surface in a way that few films actually are. It's an achievement of some kind, but not necessarily that great for an audience.
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, January 2, 2004 6:06 PM

all films should be "all surface"
― amateur!!st, Wednesday, September 29, 2004 1:27 AM

i think it was pretty (definitely NOT the prettiest movie ever, maybe because nothing in it is ugly, stupid as that sounds) but i got tired of it always being in the late afternoon. the story was incredibly weak, the little girl was charming but unconvincing at times (too charming), i've just realized i don't think anyone in the movie had a name! i wasn't sure about the way-close-up nature shots (plants growing, locusts eating). didn't work for me. also i think the music was wrong for the movie. there were just things that didn't belong, too obsessed with prettiness. yes, all surface! no amateurist i don't think all films should be all surface but who am i to argue.
i would watch this again, if i had to, though.
― caitlin oh no (caitxa1), Monday, December 5, 2005 7:42 PM

By European sensibility, I just meant the pacing of his films. Outside of the famous car chase in Days of Heaven, they tend to be slow.
― clemenza, Saturday, June 5, 2010 12:43 PM (eleven years ago)

theres a car chase in days of heaven???????
― has mia ever been so far as to go even do what more like? (Lamp), Tuesday, June 8, 2010 12:06 AM

Worst Morbs comment yet? Also, too low.

Morbs otm.

Not otm re Liberty Vallance, which frightens me.

How could you want to get rid of the Linda Manz narration. It's like outsider narration.

I disagree with caitlin about the plants and locusts, in my top 25. Also the only good voiceover xp

I don't love Days of Heaven, but it has one of the best (open) endings ever - life continues in a different direction while the film ends simply because we the viewers aren't following that way.

Not a big Malick fan, but I like DoH well enough.

Please no late Malick everyone!

Potential side question: did anyone discover or rewatch anything after they sent their ballot that would have made it? Closest for me might be What Happened Was...

― Chris L

Pontecorvo's Burn!

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73. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (Spike Jonze, 1999, USA) [700.6 points; 10 votes]
S&S: 1,176 | TSPDT: 1,105 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: (asked about what his recent-ish nominees for the ILX comedy films poll would be) "I'll give you freebies: Groundhog Day, Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine"

Malkovich hasn't aged well.
― milo z (mlp), Saturday, May 6, 2006 4:39 PM

Charlie Kaufman scripts are never quite as good as you want them to be for the simple reason that movies, like most stories, operate best from inside the heart, and Kaufman's anti-romances are really only concerned with your mind. But before the plot kicks in, and before things start making "sense," Jonze sets up a brilliant showcase for the plot's built-in disorientation, and Catherine Keener's Stanwyck-on-steroids turn.
-- Pete Scholtes

And Being John Malkovich I downright loved. I thought that movie was underrated even by a lot of people who liked it -- it got a lot of, "Oh, it's so zany, so fresh, so FUN" reviews, when I actually thought it was an intensely philosophical and deeply considered film. I think that movie grapples with some things (about the nature of existence and identity, the perennial struggle for transcendence via the Other, blah blah blah) that don't turn up in many films this side of Bergman. And it's funnier than Bergman.
-- JesseFox

Being John Malkovich was even better, and I think in both cases the PoMo games are not empty flourishes but ways that make very good sense to me as ways of addressing some genuinely interesting subjects.
-- Martin Skidmore

malkovich is maybe a 5 on the comedy scale, feel like it has cohen brothers syndrome where its more just a weirdo mindspace w/elements of black comedy w/o being an actual comedy, they try to say too much abt life to be an actual comedy, the end of malkovich is srsly p dire and not funny too for the record
― lag∞n, Tuesday, March 6, 2012 12:59 PM

guys, I could drop the screenplay for malkovich on the table and point to every other line as a joke. one of the few movies I laugh out loud at. Not only is it a comedy by definition & intended as a comedy by it's creators, but it is hilarius and has tons of classic scenes like the monkey flashback, the dude punching cusack, "let's have sex on the table an make malkovich eat eggs off it." "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO", "Think fast, Malkovich.", or the whole Charlie Sheen scene.
― (he did what!) (Austerity Ponies), Tuesday, March 6, 2012 1:16 PM

I also loved "Being John Malkovich" and I'm not emo.
― Dan (Bah) Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, May 8, 2006 9:22 AM

malkovich was just way too dark for me. as in: i had trouble actually seeing what was going on at times.
― scott seward (scott seward), Monday, May 8, 2006 10:10 AM

really though this movie is way too much concept not enough heart
― HOOS next aka won't get steened again (Hurting 2), Friday, August 9, 2013 9:47 AM

the first half of Being John Malkovich is ingenious. Although based on an extraordinary premise, the film doesn't just indulge in it, but instead uses it to explore themes such as identity, manipulation and celebrity. Strangely, much of this is thrown into the trashcan after we hear the explanation why there is a portal into Malkovich's mind (in my opinion, there was no need for explanation, and the one given was stupid and incoherent). After that, the film is nothing more than a battle of who controls John Malkovich; it suffers the exact fate it kept avoiding for its first half. The last 30 minutes of the film are nothing more than an intellectual masturbation with no direction nor a deeper meaning. The ending, albeit quirky, is unsatisfying and does little to save the movie. A minor letdown in the film is John Cusack. His literary lines and over-the-top acting would work well if Being John Malkovich were just a comedy. But when he tries to play the tragic character and display inner conflicts he simply isn't credible. This is hardly Cusack's fault, though; the dialogue, the characters and their emotional reactions are not crafted in a believable way (the only exception being John Malkovich himself). Whether this is deliberate or not, it ruins much of the films dramatic tension.
― Tuomas (Tuomas), Monday, February 21, 2005 4:51 PM

[after BJM landed #21 in the ILX comedy movie poll]
LOL looking forward to ILX's #1 Comedy of All Time, Eraserhead.
― I will transmit this information to (Viceroy), Tuesday, April 3, 2012 12:03 PM

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malkovich, malkovich, malkovich

it made my list!

classic scott seward comment

Malkatraz! MaSheen!

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72. PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965, France) [705 points; 6 votes]
S&S: 56 | TSPDT: 63 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "God, I hate this board … I'd think you guys could at least bond w/ him over how much he hates Spielberg and Truffaut"

pierrot le fou is hilarious if you're a misanthrope like me
― dean! (deangulberry), Thursday, March 18, 2004 3:36 PM

I rewatched Pierrot recently, and it was definitely longer than I'd remembered, and tougher to get through. A thing I think is important to remember re: France/Vietnam is that they themselves were thrown out of Indochina in the fifties. You know: History repeats itself, as tragedy, then comedy. There is a certain cynicism on Vietnam, which I don't think is there when they discuss Algiers.
― Frederik B, Monday, February 3, 2014 4:52 AM

JLG's 60s run has some very strong use of colour, when he decides to use it.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, January 23, 2020 4:06 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Overdoes it a bit in "Pierrot le Fou" tbh. Overdoes everything a bit in "Pierrot le Fou" tbf.
― Frozen Mug (Tom D.), Thursday, January 23, 2020 4:58 AM

Other than Breathless and Band of Outsiders and maybe Pierrot le Fou, his films have as many dull or awful moments as wondrous ones.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, October 23, 2007 6:16 PM

Pierrot le Fou: So wonderful. A Jules Verne fantasyland.
― -8-(*_*)-8-, Tuesday, March 4, 2003 9:27 AM

would rather watch the Lost Boys than Pierrot le Fou again tbqh
― whyte mayne (corey), Tuesday, September 7, 2010 10:26 AM

my god is Belmondo sexy here

xposty but days of heaven was my #1 and i *like* how surfacey it is. it's distilled cinema and it's incredibly breezy for malick all things considered. the movie ends up feeling almost like an accident and i love that about it -- you can just feel how they found it in the editing process

PLF is p sick tbh

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71. MIRROR (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975, USSR) [708.38 points; 8 votes; Morbs gold]
S&S: 13 | TSPDT: 29 | BOXD: 85

MORBS SEZ: "my favorite (Tarkovsky) is The Mirror fwiw, but Andrei Rublev not far behind"

The Mirror is the best film ever made.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, November 1, 2017 6:23 PM

The Mirror is one of my all time favorite movies
― Dan S, Wednesday, November 1, 2017 6:46 PM

The Mirror is just moments of genius, wall-to-wall - I don't claim to understand it, but I view it more as a toolkit of scenes that the viewer must put together in their own way to form a unique emotional response. (That sounds rather cold and technical, but that's how it worked for me.)
― Girolamo Savonarola, Thursday, September 2, 2004 11:44 AM

I like Tarkovsky, but his theories on time don't scan to me (has any filmmaker taken them seriously?), some of the symbolism is cool when you first encounter them at an impressionable age but it can get tiresome. The films are often great, his dodging of the censors to make the kind of the thing he wanted almost miraculous - but I'm far more agnostic on the overall achievement. Parajanov is far more concrete with his flights of imagination. I like Mirror almost as much for the parts that allude to Soviet politics of a period. It just grounds things, in a way, making the symbolism richer.
― xyzzzz__, Thursday, November 2, 2017 5:17 AM

And so Day 3 comes to a close.

100. ROSEMARY'S BABY (Roman Polanski, Roman 1968, USA) [620 points; 10 votes]
99. LA JETÉE (Chris Marker, Chris 1962, France) [623.33 points; 9 votes; 1 first-place vote; Morbs silver]
98. MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (Miyazaki Hayao, 1988, Japan) [623.9 points; 10 votes]
97. SEVEN SAMURAI (Kurosawa Akira, 1954, Japan) [624.67 points; 9 votes]
96. MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, 1943, USA) [625.71 points; 7 votes]
95. SHOWGIRLS (Paul Verhoeven, 1995, USA) [628 points; 4 votes]
94. ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011, Turkey) [636 points; 6 votes]
93. ERASERHEAD (David Lynch, 1977, USA) [636.9 points; 10 votes]
92. THE GODFATHER (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972, USA) [643.4 points; 10 votes]
91. LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (Alain Resnais, 1961, France) [645.82 points; 11 votes]

90. MANDY (Panos Cosmatos, 2018, USA) [646.5 points; 8 votes]
89. THIS IS SPINAL TAP (Rob Reiner, 1984, USA) [650.91 points; 11 votes]
88. JOHNNY GUITAR (Nicholas Ray, 1954, USA) [651 points; 6 votes]
87. THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (Victor Erice, 1973, Spain) [652 points; 8 votes]
86. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Edward Yang, 1991, Taiwan) [655.5 points; 6 votes; 1 first-place vote]
85. THE LADY EVE (Preson Sturges, 1941, USA) [656.4 points; 10 votes; Morbs silver]
84. CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette, 1974, France) [658.57 points; 7 votes]
83. THE KING OF COMEDY (Martin Scorsese, 1983, USA) [659.82 points; 11 votes; Morbs gold]
82. WILD STRAWBERRIES (Ingmar Bergman, 1957, Sweden) [661.5 points; 6 votes]
81. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (Frank Capra, 1946, USA) [661.63 points; 8 votes]

80. CALIFORNIA SPLIT (Robert Altman, 1974, USA) [663 points; 6 votes]
79. UNDER THE SKIN (Jonathan Glazer, 2014, UK) [665 points; 12 votes]
78. THE WICKER MAN (Robin Hardy, 1973, UK) [668.5 points; 8 votes]
77. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Sergio Leone, 1966, Italy) [670 points; 12 votes; Morbs silver]
76. DAISIES (Vera Chytilová, 1966, Czechoslovakia) [674.29 points; 7 votes; 1 first-place vote]
75. THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (John Ford, 1962, USA) [683.63 points; 8 votes; Morbs gold]
74. DAYS OF HEAVEN (Terrence Malick, 1978, USA) [683.63 points; 8 votes; 1 first-place vote]
73. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (Spike Jonze, 1999, USA) [700.6 points; 10 votes]
72. PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965, France) [705 points; 6 votes]
71. MIRROR (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975, USSR) [708.38 points; 8 votes; Morbs gold]

WOW. Didnt expect it. I prefer Study Guide Tarkovsky to the epics.

Into which of those buckets do you classify Mirror?

Both if necessary.

Too low

Only Tarkovsky epics on my ballot, but Mirror is something else for sure. Visionary.

I like its focus on memory and time. In his words “no other art can compare with cinema in the force, precision and starkness with which it conveys awareness of facts and aesthetic structures existing and changing within time"

Godard and Tarkovsky are my two favourite directors!
Still, Mirror is the one film of his that I don't get on an emotional level. It seems too private to approach, even if you read about it to understand the personal and cultural references. I think in a way his work was helped by having some superficially corny or cliched genre elements - making an historical film, war film or sci-fi gave him a grounding that he lost when he turned to pure artistic self-expression.

it does seem very private and abstract