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

What fun is being into movies if Kiarostami and Hamaguchi aren’t knocking boots with Spielberg and Daffy Duck?

can we please not use "poptimism" here

and it doesn't exist, fucking stop

Wherever two or three of us are gathered together, there is poptimism.

I used to think I was whatever's the film equivalent of a rockist snob. Love experimental/avant-garde films, art cinema, classical Hollywood; loathe horror/slasher flicks (smdh at Chainsaw), franchise films, Disney, the New Hollywood, Oscar bait. But I'm a poptimist (I prefer "popist") for comedy and romance. I love Twilight and am fascinated with Hallmark Xmas movies. And one of my favorite films of the year is Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar. Oh and I looooove Groundhog Day. So, sure, poptimism absolutely counts for cinema.

The stuff that poptimism was pushing back at - media that these people like is inherently unworthy, these are the acceptable range of emotions to portray, add +50 to the views of these serious people - aren't as strong for film as they were for pop music, but they're not not there. And some of them are calling from inside this house!

Alfred, sorry, I guess I'm ignorant of the connotations and I wasn't around when that word was presumably being used here at an overbearing frequency. I just mean that Spielberg and Kiarostami are indeed knocking boots on my list (Daffy Duck didn't make the cut and I don't think I've seen a Hamaguchi).

For the 3 mainstream examples I gave and threw points to, there's no question that personal associations added to their case for my ballot. I realize that's a different thing from an art v. commerce question. But it feels like a more achievable project to lean into those personal biases rather than to try the futile and presumptuous act of thinking I can control for them.

To endorse popular movies isn't Sanneh-esque "poptimism" -- it's liking movies. That's been the case since the Lumiere bros.

Lavator, I wasn't attacking anyone and apologize for doing so. But I've heard some variant on this argument against me for decades. HUH HUH YOU LIKE BRITNEY SPEARS BUT DON'T READ DEAN KOONTZ. The only answer is: "Dean Koontz sucks, there's better supermarket horror writers."

So I sent a 25 then set to work on the Honourable Mentions, when I got to 23 that shoudld've been top 25 (cus my top two are UNIMPEACHABLE) I just threw everything in the air, deleted what I had written and vowed to not participate any further, no comments in here or nowt.
But I just caved and looked up what I originally sent and it's... pretty good? For something that was spewed off the top of my brain on one drunken evening, at least. Like I recalled I'd missed out any NBCeylan but no, Anatolia is there at 20, I'm glad to see it here. And California Split was my Altman, Pierrot Le fou my Godard, and Touch Of Evil at... 3!? Really? I don't know why, but I respect that choice that whoever I was on May 16th made.
My poptimistulist choices were Midnight Run (not gunna place) and I suppose Predator (actually possible), my personal challopsly choice was Michael Bay's Pain & Gain which cmon no, prolly none of them would've been there May 17th or whenever I sobered up, but fuck it I've decided to stand by all of my choices now, these were definitely the top 25 films of all time at the exact moment I wrote them down.

I voted Mean Girls

possession was my no. 1 :)

xps to Alfred, gotcha, all good. Like I said I'm pretty ignorant on the history of the critical conversation. I may be conflating the retrospective reevaluation of ppl like Hitchcock and Sirk and Capra as auteurs with the original Sanneh critique. I am interested in getting a better understanding of where there is overlap there and what the distinctions are.

I did read Dean Koontz in middle school and even then I remember finding it boring and disappointing compared to Stephen King

Morbs would take the good Capra and Hitchcock or an arid avant-gardist.

or = over

yes, quality trumps categorization here as well as anywhere. that's why i'm here!

i like that morbs was genuinely down with what possession was offering until it ratcheted into the spy movie register during the coda

weren't most of us going crazy over The Lady Eve a couple days ago

xp anyway, Fargo is great but not in my top 5 Coens. I am hoping there will be at least 2 more though starting to get to that point of explicit awareness that each inclusion is bumping something big out

Lavator, don't listen to Soto. Poptimism absolutely exists if only by virtue of him saying it doesn't.

If you view poptimism as a lack of snobbery - an absence rather than a presence - a willingness to view Mad Max on the same terms as Murnau - then maybe it becomes more of a palatable concept here

If we're gunna port over music terminology I want to hear what the Poppy Bush Interzone films are

Heathers and Pump Up the Volume. Probably also Turner & Hooch and Tango & Cash but I never saw them.

Lavator, don't listen to Soto. Poptimism absolutely exists if only by virtue of him saying it doesn't.

― Kevin John Bozelka,

Okay. It does exist.

ok this sounds sick. i might sign up for Metrograph just to see it, since it's available... nowhere else? NV, where did u find it?

sorry i'm late. i have the Bluray

this was very funny and gave great architecture

rockism is not akin to liking old european experimental art movies, because classic rock and its modern imitators are in no way the same as experimental / art music, also there is nothing in music really equivalent to either marvel superhero movies or generic Oscar bait, thank god.

but also, there is an anti-intellectual suspicion about art cinema now which I didn't feel in the 90s (when for example channel 4 would have a week-long Louis Malle season), it's a related dynamic but also a very different one & worth examining if it isn't too depressing.

Rockism is the IMDB chart

So movie rockism is The Shawshank Redemption tunnelling into a human face forever?

This thread is fine but it’s nowhere near the top 100 ILX threads about rockism, sorry.

Surely in this analogy Marveletc is equivalent to imagobait widdlywiddlywoo soulless microtonal rubbish, like "look at the technique involved in this CGI bullshit" to what purpose, I ask ye?

fie upon thee

I kinda play film snob for laughs a bit but tbh the choices on this poll that I roll my eyes at I'm not eye rolling because they're popular movies or whatever

xxp if idk poppy was a cultural phenomenon with as much time, money, attention and reach as marvel, then, no sorry that still doesn't work at all.

But my pop canon would have Legally Blonde and Mean Girls and The Hidden and stuff that is fun not like big steamrollery spectacle movies that are like theme park rides and just slide straight off me without any engagement whatsoever

Ten Things I Hate About You would make my list today.

Like it's fine summer blockbusters exist and we all like different stuff just a lot of that is increasingly not my thing as I get old and curmudgeonly

I have a feeling I completely neglected comedy in my ballot

Those of you not exposed to Film4 and Empire magazine may not appreciate the murderous ennui they stoke in me

Oh gods Clueless better turn up on this list ffs

I'm pretty sure >20 of my 25 are funny at points, definitely >15. There's one Kim Ki-Duk film I put at 13 that I have no specific memory of but I'm assuming it wasn't a barrel of laughs

I have quite a few comedies on my ballot, but none made in my lifetime.

Actually maybe 18

I think using Comedy as a genre label maybe poses unique problems, lots of films are funny but evoking laughter isn't their primary goal maybe? Lots of laughs in Hitchcock or Bunuel for example

Like out of the ones that have placed, mind the motel guy in Touch Of Evil? and the way the others start imitating his Autistic bouncing? (haven't actually watched in years so maybe I misremember) maybe ableist bullying decades on but that is definitely improved attempt at humour

Not having to decide whether I could include Problem Child 2 with a clear conscience was one excuse for not putting a ballot together

Sorry for my rambling but as well this thread as another

Fury Road and Persona both on my long list. I think Fury Road is an astonishing piece of filmmaking and myth-making both. Persona I haven't seen in years so I'm mostly going on how much it affected me 20 years ago, but I know it was mesmerizing then.

Had no Coens on my list. Fargo was my favorite of theirs for a good while, it's very entertaining and Frances McDormand is great. But these days I'd take Inside Llewyn Davis, A Serious Man and True Grit over it. (NOT No Country for Old Men, which I'm sure is ahead somewhere.)

Actually it's just occurred to me that my elegy for Morbs would be Dietrichs's line at the end of of TOE: "he was some kind of man... what does it matter what people say?", maybe that's why I put it high?

(or maybe I just watched it the night I wrote the ballot, I dunno)

*hurls himself into fetid river*

awwww