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

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59. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman, 2008, USA) [768.67 points; 9 votes]
S&S: 490 | TSPDT: 651 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "I thought the first 45 mins was the most unapologetic body-disgust cinema I've seen made by someone other than Cronenberg … I thought it was full of the worst of life! Which admittedly is not something most people want to see."

Its sequel should be called Metonymy Falls, Wisconsin. And then comes Metalepsis, Minnesota: The Vengeance of Adele. those unfamiliar with Greek names for figures of speech and upper-midwestern geography should just trust me that all this is hilarious
― nabisco, Saturday, May 24, 2008 12:29 PM

I couldn't stand this until Dianne Wiest's moment, so I'm in the minority. Hoffman's sad sack act grated on me.
― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, March 15, 2009 1:00 AM

for realz, i'm ready for a moratorium on movies about misunderstood "genius" males who bang lots of women and alienate everyone. i would have loved to see a version of this where dianne wiest was the macarthur-winning PSH character and got to navel-gaze in the company of several doting young men.
― elliot easton ellis (get bent), Sunday, May 24, 2009 1:58 AM

I was just thinking about this movie this morning. I think it can be summed up by the phrase "crippling narcissism"
― Jesus, the Czar of Czars (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 29, 2009 12:08 PM

For me, a film can pretty much say anything as long as I enjoy just looking and listening. Some of the weirder Godard shit, for example, just sweeps me along and I blink and nod and look at the pictures, regardless of how "difficult" the filmmaking is supposed to be. This, though, is the UGLIEST film I've ever seen, on a technical/aesthetic whatever level, I don't know what word to use. On the other hand, a film about something horrific like genocide can make me put aside (or at least qualify) aesthetics in the name of giving me something to think about. But there's nothing to think about here other than self-indulgence. David Lynch, whose films I enjoy but am ultimately indifferent to, kind of walks a line between this nightmare/abjection philosophical shit and just cool visual poetry. Like I say, I'm not a fan, but maybe it works for him, I dunno. But this... The piece-of-shit filmmaking. The cowardice of the little gags (which is all you get really.. people point out that they found the movie "funny," but these are sad little jokes that refer only to the movie itself. That's manipulative, sadistic filmmaking, it's a very high price of admission for a few shitty little jokes and PSH's fucking mug). This actually WAS torture. I can only conclude that was the intent. That this film was an actual weapon. I was revolted by it.
― the fantasy-life of nations has consequences in the real worl (fields of salmon), Thursday, June 11, 2009 1:04 AM

it's my favorite movie, nothing else comes close at all. has been since the night I saw it for the first time. it was on the weekend, and I was so bowled over by it I went by myself again at one of the last showings on a school night that Wednesday or Thursday. I couldn't believe it, it just nailed me to the wall. I think the circumstances at the time - beyond seeing it in a theater and knowing nothing going in - compounded my emotional response significantly. But long after all that, the film still yields so much for me, it is the work of art that we watch Caden struggle and fail to create. And even though my viewing a few weeks ago felt a little tepid or removed, the movie's in the front of my head again. I saw a movie with Dianne Wiest in it today and I was on the verge of tears every time she was on screen. I kept thinking about her reverie toward the end of SNY, "Where is my little girl?...Where is my little girl?..." The only time we see "Eric," Ellen Bascomb's husband and (according to Olive) Caden's lover. It's beguiling but there are no loose ends or unfinished thoughts. But if you watch it again, you should be in a position to be absorbed and overwhelmed, otherwise I imagine the pitch and the speed can be ridiculous. I mean, for how powerful the movie is, it's also really fucking funny. Consistently.
― flappy bird, Sunday, December 30, 2018 3:21 PM

The silence says it all on this one.

Lol at thirty minutes passing and no comment. Another of the 'awesome when you're 17' films. Fuck everyone, amen, amirite!!!

I'm still shocked this placed above Sunrise.

Maybe we have a lot of 17 year old lurkers

I mean I can't talk, I placed Mandy in my 25. (But that's diiiifferent)

Oldboy gonna place next innit

Morbs liked it because, so far as I can tell, it's one of the movies that coddled his misanthropic worldview. So I can understand the lack of commenting enthusiasm.

Synecdoche has some interesting filmmaking but yeah, I mostly remember being pretty irritated by it. I think Kaufman works best in another director's hands. His partnerships with Jonze and Gondry were good balances.

i'll try to keep it positive and say that when this ran during my years managing an arthouse, it was very delightful hearing ticket buyers try & fail to pronounce synecdoche

Here's my first vote to place! I'm surprised it ranked above Being John Malkovich, which I didn't vote for and thought was more beloved.
I don't know what being 17 has to do with liking this. I saw it at 36, a few weeks after my dad died, and it captured the feeling when the pace of time passing starts picking up, the body starts decaying and preoccupation with death sets in. (One of the mordant jokes in this is that Caden Codard starts being consumed with his mortality in early middle age, and winds up living well into his 90s.) I agree that it is remarkably ugly for a great film.

one of the least interesting, most irritating movies i've sat through

This movie is great. 17 year olds would hate it. I have had to swear off Charlie Kaufman for my own well-being however.

I'm very much unqualified to comment (I didn't submit a ballot for this very reason!)... I like the central conceit in this (it's absolutely twinned in my head with Remainder by Tom McCarthy) and given that it's a reflection/rendering of Hoffman's inner world, I wonder if the ugliness is, to some extent, deliberate? This had quite an impact on me when I saw it (I wasn't 17) but I found it gruelling and I've no desire to ever see it again.

I remember looking up when Remainder was published as soon as I read it and discovering to my relief that it was before this came out

(okay I was 21, not 17, when I saw this, but it absolutely pandered to juvenile obsessions with metatextuality, angst and so forth)

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58. GROUNDHOG DAY (Harold Ramis, 1993, USA) [772.46 points; 13 votes]
S&S: 265 | TSPDT: 232 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "Groundhog Day is the last comedy star vehicle that succeeded on every level … it's a real achievement that the film's themes have usurped the day's original meaning."

We should just put Groundhog Day in at number one, and then do a poll to find the other top 99 films of the 90s.
― ailsa (ailsa), Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:19 PM

have seen Groundhog's Day at least 437 times. I have a rather insane obsession with that movie. For a while, every single joke between me and an old friend of mine would start with a reference to Groundhog's Day.
― Allyzay, Monday, December 22, 2003 9:34 AM

Groundhog Day - is this secretly everyone's favourite film?
― pete s, Friday, December 19, 2003 3:49 PM

I never saw Groundhog Day (mostly because it has Andie MacDowell in it).
― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, February 3, 2005 8:27 AM

Groundhog Day: so good that it makes up for the fact that Horsey MacDowell is in it.
― Sanjay McDougal (jaymc), Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:21 PM

Groundhog's Day is distractingly ugly. Not moody ugly or consciously ugly, just boring '80s TV drama ugly. The scene with Murray and MacDowell at the bar is the worst. Other than that, close to perfect.
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Tuesday, February 22, 2005 2:29 PM

MORBS SEZ: "Groundhog Day is the last comedy star vehicle that succeeded on every level … it's a real achievement that the film's themes have usurped the day's original meaning."

We should just put Groundhog Day in at number one, and then do a poll to find the other top 99 films of the 90s.
― ailsa (ailsa), Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:19 PM

have seen Groundhog's Day at least 437 times. I have a rather insane obsession with that movie. For a while, every single joke between me and an old friend of mine would start with a reference to Groundhog's Day.
― Allyzay, Monday, December 22, 2003 9:34 AM

Groundhog Day - is this secretly everyone's favourite film?
― pete s, Friday, December 19, 2003 3:49 PM

I never saw Groundhog Day (mostly because it has Andie MacDowell in it).
― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, February 3, 2005 8:27 AM

Groundhog Day: so good that it makes up for the fact that Horsey MacDowell is in it.
― Sanjay McDougal (jaymc), Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:21 PM

Groundhog's Day is distractingly ugly. Not moody ugly or consciously ugly, just boring '80s TV drama ugly. The scene with Murray and MacDowell at the bar is the worst. Other than that, close to perfect.
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Tuesday, February 22, 2005 2:29 PM

Another non-Morbs medal movie that he was oft to praise on ILX.

And yet, I'm sure he'd be the first to say it's more of a top 1,000 movie than a top 100 one.

my parents took me to this, the first live-action movie i saw in a theater, as a kid. i was too young to get the concept and found it totally inexplicable that i was not only watching boring adults doing things but watching them do the same things over and over. haven't seen it again to reassess, 1 and 1/2 stars

I love Groundhog Day, but it's nothing compared to Sunrise.

Bill Murray should've been in Sunrise.

Young, strapping George O'Brien should've been the groundhog.

and you the otter?

my parents took me to this, the first live-action movie i saw in a theater, as a kid. i was too young to get the concept and found it totally inexplicable that i was not only watching boring adults doing things but watching them do the same things over and over. haven't seen it again to reassess, 1 and 1/2 stars

I mean I can't talk, I placed Mandy in my 25. (But that's diiiifferent)

― imago, Friday, 29 October 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Shame this isn't stopping you.

Morbs liked it because, so far as I can tell, it's one of the movies that coddled his misanthropic worldview. So I can understand the lack of commenting enthusiasm.

― Milm & Foovies (Eric H.), Friday, 29 October 2021 bookmarkflaglink

It's an ok film. Not a top 100 but yeah Morbs otm from the one watch I gave it.

too low

I found Crumb so dislikeable as a person that I couldn't get into the movie at all. List is missing more pure comedies and unabashedly political films so far imo.

Maybe some Adam McKay movies will turn up; two birds with one stone.

Maybe, but I find both McKay's humour and politics boring.

just wait until costa gavras-reitman's opus groundhog'Z day shows up

There's also a chance Groundhog Day might be the closest this list gets to romance.

Depends what you think of Charles Foster Kane's self-love.

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57. IMITATION OF LIFE (Douglas Sirk, 1959, USA) [774 points; 6 votes]
S&S: 112 | TSPDT: 182 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "Sirk is really disturbing... his best films like fever dreams of soap operas. Just because post-contemporary theorists made his arty rep doesn't mean they don't properly explain what made them successful … wow, that moment when Susan Kohner sassily talks all Butterfly McQueen to Lana Turner in Imitation really rules. But God, any scenes w/ John Gavin or Sandra Dee..."

i'm trolling a bit, sirk's ok, you know. but there's a good reason to troll: literally more than any other filmmaker, sirk's present-day rep obtains almost exclusively among people steeped in critical theory, and his 'discovery' in the early '70s came out of the milieu in which french theory, brecht, etc coalesced into what's now mainstream hackademic film culture. i kind of wonder what people get out of his films.
― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Friday, January 6, 2006 6:02 AM

Just wanted to pop back into this thread to mention that I went to a screening of "Imitation of Life" a few nights ago, which, somewhat amazingly (I didn't know this was coming), was followed up by a Q&A with Juanita Moore (who played Annie) and Susan Kohner (the teenage Sarah Jane), along with a few other actresses who had very minor roles. Moore (who's in her eighties now) was really funny and sharp in a "fiesty old lady telling it like it is" mode. Too bad it was moderated by this bearded film professor/Sirk expert who kept asking loaded questions that the actresses weren't much interested in, and interjecting his own (bland) opinions and readings of the movie. (At one point, after an awkward silence when neither of them could answer his question about who else had been tested for their roles, the prof moved along with the comment, "Well, I happen to know the answer, anyway.")
― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, April 9, 2004 2:56 PM

favorite moment in "imitation of life": "look, a falling star!", which i find to be totally inexplicably moving *and* funny, one of those moments where i tend to smile widely and/or make strange little noises in appreciation.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Saturday, April 10, 2004 2:45 PM

last time i watched imitation of life i had like three glasses of whiskey and could barely see the screen at the end through the TEARZ :(
― impudent harlot, Saturday, April 14, 2007 12:59 AM

As perfect a capitalist product as has ever been created in the USA, delivering contradictory pleasures sometimes within a single shot. Classical Hollywood never topped it. … ironic appropriation may be so 1990s, but the "ironic appropriation" of Sirk happened well before that. Also, I think "appropriation" is the wrong word here because Sirk was an ironist. If later audiences are appropriating his films ironically, then they were appropriating them the way Sirk himself conceived them. So while I agree that they're "emotional melodramas that remain detached from the assumptions of the society they depict," that detachment stems from an ironic stance Sirk takes in relation to his characters. In fact, he felt he didn't step back far enough with Imitation of Life. And thank gawd, sez I. One of the very many things which makes it the greatest classical Hollywood film of all-time is that constant oscillation between ironic detachment and intense emotional involvement until they no longer seem like such polar opposites. If Sirk had his way, it might have come off like something by, I don't know, Fassbinder (who I'm definitely NOT dissing here). So the laughter may be signifying not that the audience is "above Sirk's little tricks" but rather perfectly in step with them.
― Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:19 PM

I like the original better.
― the vineyards where the grapes of corporate rock are stored (cryptosicko), Wednesday, September 25, 2013 7:20 PM

Figured somebody would say that
― I Am the Cosimo Code (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, September 25, 2013 7:22 PM

There's also a chance Groundhog Day might be the closest this list gets to romance.

Imitation of Life <3

The sharpest American film about white hypocrisy and moral blindness, and it does so without indicting Miss Lora.

There's also a chance Groundhog Day might be the closest this list gets to romance.

― Chris L, Friday, October 29, 2021 11:18 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Depends what you think of Charles Foster Kane's self-love.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 29, 2021 11:22 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

What about the bromance at the heart of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp?

I just found out that Imitation was his final picture -- what a high point to go out on.

It's a question of how high up the list of priorities of the film 'romance' is compared to, say, escaping the Chicago mob / ferrying people out of Nazi-occupied Morocco / dancing in rain.

Or, indeed, surviving for thousands of years in a living hell.

I didn't participate in the poll, but I'm compiling a viewing list of "classics" that I need to see. This will be one. Last night I watched "Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance". What a picture! Stewart and Wayne! You could hardly ask for a more iconic duo. Apparently Ford needled Wayne relentlessly during the filming, contributing to much tension on set. Maybe it was part of his genius in getting to the performance he wanted, because Wayne has a tendency to seem too relaxed but in this he looks more tense than usual. The contrast between Stewart and Wayne is quite suggestive, with Stewart at his most schoolmarmish but yet somehow still very masculine.

voted for Imitation of Life but I like All That Heaven Allows almost as much

I'd probably pick Written on the Wind as the best Sirk I've seen.

that's a good one too

Did Sirk show up already? I didn't see, been occupied elsewhere.

i'm sick of directors getting credit for abusing their actors. there must be better ways to get a good performance. i doubt it was related to the performance anyway, as ford was a dick to wayne in the past because wayne didn't serve in ww2.

The ribbing must have had added sting since Stewart was a WWII hero.

All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life are interchangeably top 10 territory for me. Lately, the racial spine of the latter has given it the edge.