ILX Top Films of 2000-04 RESULTS (yes, really)

srch Paul Schrader on KB as the apex of meaningless collage

http://www.ragtagfilm.com/archives/images/george.jpg

41T) George Washington (Green, 2000), 63 points

I received no comments on this one and can't find much on ILE other than "AWESOME" and/or "MEH."

--Nordicskillz, May 1st, 2003

http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/movie/all_real_girls/01.jpeg

41T) All The Real Girls (Green, 2003), 63 points

ok, i saw this movie on a complete fluke occurance. i was supposed to see irreversible at the gene siskel, but it was sold out. so my friend and i walked down to the esquire and hit all the real girls. i had never heard of david gordon green but my friend said that his influences were quite impressive. after i got out, alls i could do is say wow. i didnt know what hit me and i couldnt really express it in words.
i never got another chance to see it in the theaters, but it haunted me no other movie has. i looked online every day waiting for some news on its dvd release. i counted the days for it to be released for gods sake.
and when i finally watched it again, it broke my heart even more. i think i was just emotionally shocked the first time through, but the second time just broke me down to nothing. this movie is life, it is real. some people want an escape when they hit the multiplex, but that really doesnt do it for me. i want to see life. its just like brian cox says in adaptation in reply to charlie's question about movies having nothing happening in them. surely there are many movies where stuff like this occurs, look at film noir. for example, nothing really occurs in the maltese falcon, no one gets what they want, people die, and you are left with nothing. now, i am not saying that this doesnt happen in real-life, which it obviously does, but it is not the realism that i look for in a movie. i look for the tragic reality of life and human error and regret. this was shown best in the bar scene when our anti-hero was drunk and talking to mary-margaret. "have you ever seen an animal make a mistake?" god, what an amazing line. and it completely shows what paul feels... then the whole mug throwing. powerful stuff there.
surely there were some silly scenes and stuff, but that is real too. who doesnt have silly things happen to them?
dont even get me started on the format or the cinematography, because i could write a book about it. and the constant comic relief of bust-ass... sigh.
i have so musch more to say but i will stop now.
hands down, number one movie of the year for me.
-- todd swiss

oh i don't know about this one at all - i think it's uneven and (dare i say it) BORING (and i generally like "boring" films). Paul Scneider is good and the last scene is nice -him trying to get the dog to go for a swim - but it seems to forced and strains tooo hard for meaning in those small scenes. Its seems to me to be the work of someone who has seen alot of Malick but only borrowed from the surface of his films (the dawn/dusk lighting, the loose structure) but Days of Heaven is so striking because it packs so much into such a tight running time and simultanously seems incredibly slow moving. Theres not enough in All the Real Girls plotwise and yet there are too many "meaningful" moments.
-- jed_

39) Traffic (Soderbergh, 2000), 64 points

I really liked "Traffic", and you must understand the magnitude of my Michael Douglas hatred to understand how amazing that admission is.
-- Dan Perry

I suspect Traffic will be unwatchable in a few decades. It's like Stanley Kramer + Alan Pakula.
-- Amateurist

38T) The Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr, 2000), 66 points, 1 first-place vote

http://www.niagara.edu/neworder/graphics/24hr.jpg

38T) 24-Hour Party People (Winterbottom, 2002), 66 points

35T - Chicken Run, 70 points, 2 first-place votes

35T - Cremaster 3, 70 points, 1 first-place vote

35T - Ocean's 11, 70 points, 1 first-place vote

32T - Songs From The Second Floor, 77 points, 2 first-place votes

32T - Sympathy For Mr Vengeance, 77 points

32T - Talk To Her, 77 points

32T - I Heart Huckabee's, 77 points

32 T - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 77 points, 1 first-place vote

26 - High Fidelity, 84 points, 1 first-place vote

25 - Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, 85 points

24 - Ratcatcher, 86 points

23 - O Brother Where Art Thou, 92 points, 1 first-place vote

22 - Belleville Rendezvous, 93 points

21 - The Pianist, 97 points, 2 first-place votes

20 - Punch-Drunk Love, 99 points, 1 first-place vote

I had a metacomment on the '80s poll results thread that could've been blurbed here bud.

19) The Incredibles (Bird, 2004), 100 points

The best thing, or perhaps the most refreshing thing, about this movie: Brad Bird (the writer / director) eschews How They Became Super-Heroes and just jumps right into the action. The first Spider-Man, the Hulk flick, the upcoming FF flick - they all hinge on establishing the PERSON (foibled, imperfect, angst-ridden) first, and then showing the circumstances that lead to their super-ness, which is all fine & good (it's a key component of what makes the characters iconic), but forces the filmmakers to get all that NECESSARY pre-amble out of the way, perhaps too quickly, to move onto the REAL movie, or (at the very least) creates a jarring disconnect between the origin and what follows. ("Necessary" because, of course, a lot of the appeal of these Marvel characters isn't so much what they can do, but HOW they came to be able to turn green or climb walls.)
The Spider-Man flick is what I'm thinking of here - the origin sequence was fantastic, but when the Green Goblin started attacking, the movie lost a little something, and the climax seemed oddly perfunctory as a result - kind of like watching an hour-long drama, and knowing the killer's going to be revealed in the next 5 minutes because it's almost time for E.R., chop chop. I blame Macy Gray, of course. Even movies like Van Helsing or Underworld are guilty of this - a belabored set-up, shabbily bolstered by crap ass characterization, followed by oodles of special FX and a bunch of supposedly significant plot shenanigans. (In these cases, I blame Kate Beckinsale.)

But, yeah - The Incredibles just hits the ground running. Here's the super strong guy, here's the stretchy girl, here are their kids, and here's what's going on. And it (the story / the characters) doesn't lack for nuance or depth in doing this, either, which is probably the most amazing thing.
-- David R.

18) Together (Moodysson, 2000), 102 points, 2 first-place votes

Together was one of my favorite movies ever, which is why I'm a little disappointed by the turn his work has taken.
-- Symplistic

I don't feel it's pointless.

17) Adaptation (Jonze, 2002), 107 points, 1 first-place vote

Starring Nic Cage and Nic Cage... how the hell can anyone sit through this movie? -- Me.

x-post

16) Kung Fu Hustle (Chow, 2004), 108 points, 1 first-place vote

Kung Fu Hustle (Shaolin Soccer) is also amaz-fuck-ing.
-- Alex in SF

Movie this year I'd most like to take a kid to see: Kung Fu Hustle. Man, if I were 12, that would be the greatest movie ever made.
-- slightly more subdued (Kenan)

15) Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (Tarantino, 2003), 111 points, 1 first-place vote

NOT EVEN TOP 10 ARE YOU HAPPY MORBIUS????

I lay in bed thinking about this, so be kind: Quarantino's action at least in the Crazy 88 fight I'd characterize as cubist action, where the camera pov moves so much that we're as close to seeing the fight in every angle at once. I don't particularly like it from a genre stand point, since it disorients the viewer and dissipates the energy of the scene (both of which contribute to experiences of the viewer trying to re-position himself with respect to the action, which "costs" energy at expense of the action itself). In the end, it was too self-consciously Artistic for me to enjoy on a primary level.
Single-shot sequences, OTOH, allow the viewer to more faithfully serve as a spectator, with fewer mediating removes between him and what's going on. And from a rockistish viewpoint, protracted shots reduce the ability to hide the stuntdoubles from viewers -- meaning that Uma has to have trained a buttload. This verisimilitude is an important point to me, that a star is actually performing these acrobatics, and again building up the image of being there (e.g. less mediation). (Of course, Hollywood is the reverse of the HK system, where martial arts champs become actors, so here's an inherent problem (see: Uma's (sometimes visible) difficulty with her swordwork b/c of her height.).)

But the problem likely isn't solely with Quarantino per se, but Hollywood grabbing onto the udders of the HK cash cow?
-- Leee

I am holding Tarantino personally responsible for the debacles in Iraq and the Occupied Territories and am having a ceremonial sword specially made to cleave him neatly into two pieces which I will then have fried by a short-order chef who looks a bit (wink! wink!) like Charlie Chan and served up to his gormless fans in between two pieces of tasteless American bread.
-- Momus

too many gems to sort through from Come anticipate Kill Bill with me

Eternal Sunshine better be comin' (the one that doesn't spend its last 20 mins going GET IT?)

KB should rank below old Mannix episodes.

14) Before Sunset (Linklater, 2005), 113 points

i was also hoping that Julie Delpy's character would reveal herself to be her character in Killing Zoe and would lead Ethan Hawke into a death spiral of heroin, bank robbery, and depravity.
-- Elvis Telecom

this was excellent. I watched it immediately after watching before sunrise for the first time; before sunrise annoyed me a lot, in a slightly embarrassed "god people in their early 20's in the mid-90's are so cliched" way, but I can imagine, had I seen it when it came out, it could have meant a lot to me. But Before Sunset is extraordinary. It's much more natural, for one thing. And even though you know exactly how it will end, maybe that's part of the charm of the thing. One of the best movies of last year, of course.
-- kyle

Can't find any of Morbius's snipes about Sunset

the characters are sort of supposed to be cliched. and potentially annoying.

You must know by now how bad I am about e-mail. Like that crazy woman with her telephone in Sisters, I never call and I never answer.

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. All the Real Girls
3. You Can Count on Me
4. 25th Hour
5. Mulholland Dr.
6. Talk to Her
7. Together
8. Spirited Away
9. Lost in Translation
10. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
11. Collateral
12. Before Sunset
13. Far From Heaven
14. Y Tu Mama Tambien
15. Spellbound

WORST
About Schmidt
Igby Goes Down
Waking Life

Besides, we already have Morbius to tell us the worst of The Best.

HARDLY ever.

What about the orphan votes? Where did A.I. finish with all these Uma Thurman foot fetishists?

Also, MD at least didn't exploit Richard Pryor.

Is the "Ratcatcher" here the same as the one in the 90's poll??

Yeah, it was the same film.

This was easily the most bizarre of ILX's old school film polls.

It might have been the most bizarre, but out of them all, it easily contains the highest number of films that I've actually seen.

Just noticed this. Wow, I've missed a lot of these.

whenever I see that photo upthread of All The Real Girls I think it's an ad for polio research.

I threw this one a ballot: https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/the-best-films-of-the-decade-so-far-2010-2014

I'll have to 'finish' this year before i can even think about that time frame.

*last year

Yeah, can we wait a few months? (just found out I'm going to Göteborg Film Fest so I'll get to see so many great 2014 films in a few weeks, yayyayyay!!!)