The (Now-Overrated) ILX Top 100 Films of the 2000s Poll Results

"the Animal Collective of movies" - ***** - dog latin

haha napoleon dynamite silent majority

mean-spirited in what way?

xposts

mean-spirited in what way?

it's about ugly people

yay capturing the friedmans

my last minute strategic voting paid off

You people can't vote for one Bob Hope film in the '40s poll, but NapD is hilar

As far as the last two go, I'll cop to liking (or at least laughing at) ND way more than Sideways.

It never gives its oddball characters any dignity, instead it points and laughs at them just like the viewer does. (Not that everyone irl deserves to be given dignity, but why make a movie about those people?)

kids (under 12) i know love napoleon dynamite

lool morbs dont ever change

nappy dynamite? fuk u ilx

― the highest per-vote vag so far (history mayne), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 1:57 PM (4 minutes ago)

ND I thought was pretty funny in places whilst watching it, but made me feel a bit queasy afterwards. Those who bang on about it being a cult classic and so on are, as usual, more annoying than the actual film.

Dogville just voted worse than ND and Sideways. Starting to wonder how high Marley & Me will place.

napoleon himself is hilarious, the film is only alright

Ugh. Mainstream Oscar-approved indie ages worse than any genre.

I'm way behind because I just now saw this via iPhone, but the party scene in Morvern Callar (set to Aphex Twin) is beautiful and justifies it's placement here.

There were a few moments in ND that I liked, but mostly it just made me furious.

Sideways made me want to drink some wine whilst watching it, that's the best I can say.

I knew lots of people hated ND - and with good reason - but I didn't realise Sideways was particularly divisive. What's to hate?

well see individual lists? i wanna blame someone

makes me think of 30 Rock's 'I'm not racist! Remember that time I asked that black guy if he had seen Sideways?!'

A great accomplishment of the movie is that her resolute chirpy cheerfulness is shown to be neither shallow, false nor air-headed. Over the course of the movie, as we see Hawkins' character deal with various difficult situations, we begin to see it increasingly as a wise and almost heroic choice.

I agree, but I don't think the movie paints her approach to life in an entirely positive light. Though it's surely a useful coping mechanism for Poppy herself, it's not very considerate of those in her life who don't share this perspective. The driving instructor is meant to be an unhappy man full of barely repressed anger and resentfulness, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have blown my top if Poppy, giggling and refusing to take anything seriously, had been my student.

Sideways is a good laugh the first time, kind of embarrassing the second.

10% of voters voted for napolean dynamite, can't see where the crime is here

10% of your friends probably liked it

I knew lots of people hated ND - and with good reason - but I didn't realise Sideways was particularly divisive. What's to hate?

I don't hate it, but Payne has a serious problem with smart women.

Dorian: it's middlebrow Oscar American Indie fare. Toxic to ILX.

Payne's best of the decade was his short in Paris je T'aime.

Why make a movie about any people? I don't think it was really all that cruel. I knew plenty of people like Napoleon in secondary school (I was/am one of them), but I don't see it as mocking or mean spirited at all - I see ND as fairly neutral if not sympathetic towards the aspie protagonists. And wtf, it's a funny film, exemplified by the number of people who endlessly (and annoyingly) came to quote it like they did Monty Python (Rex Quan Do, Vote For Pedro, build her a cake, the melon throwing incident etc).

usually ignore film polls but the apoplexy this one has already inspired makes it all worthwhile

nd wtf, it's a funny film, exemplified by the number of people who endlessly (and annoyingly) came to quote it like they did Monty Python (Rex Quan Do, Vote For Pedro, build her a cake, the melon throwing incident etc).

Lots of people quote dumb shit.

I agree, but I don't think the movie paints her approach to life in an entirely positive light. Though it's surely a useful coping mechanism for Poppy herself, it's not very considerate of those in her life who don't share this perspective. The driving instructor is meant to be an unhappy man full of barely repressed anger and resentfulness, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have blown my top if Poppy, giggling and refusing to take anything seriously, had been my student.

― Hoisin Murphy (jaymc), Wednesday, February 3, 2010 7:14 PM (38 seconds ago)

Likewise the guy in the bookstore at the beginning of the movie. It was an uncomfortable scene. It was almost as if she were trying to shame him for being uninterested in her and uncommunicative.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/malady.jpg

God, his films never fail to put me to sleep. I saw Tropical Malady and Blissfully yours and after an hour or so I was in that weird state where you're half-awake, half-asleep. Which is why I really like his films even though I've never managed to see one till the end. There is such a sense of peacefulness that lulls you.

- Jibe

i was scared that tropical malady was going to be too dreadfully slow and i was kicking myself for missing it in the theatre. but i watched it at home and was riveted.

- a spectator bird

Tropical Malady
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2004
Thailand
(219 points, 8 votes, 1 first place)

xpost Middlebrow indie has become such an easy target for so many critics - Anthony Lane and Peter Bradshaw, to name just two, love to use it as a punching bag. Most of the time I agree, but it can be done well - it's not de facto A Terrible Thing. Incredibly unfashionable to defend, obviously.

Payne's best of the decade was his short in Paris je T'aime.

So very true.

I adore The Piano Teacher and thought Dogville was great, so fuck the haters. The former, particularly, is a beautiful, horrible film. I think Andrew L was on the money about capturing that awful loneliness, and Huppert puts in such a good performance there.

I voted for Piano Teacher too, I remember really liking it (if "like" is a good word for such a movie) when it came out. I haven't seen it since though, and it's perfectly possible that I would find it less impressive at 30 than at 22, because at at that age I appreciated this sort of "raw" cinema more than I do now. But still, I can't remember any other movie ever leaving me with such a strong, guttural feeling of sadness after I'd seen it, and I think that counts for something. So I had to vote for it.

Morbs about 100xposts Lynn Ramsey scheduled to shoot "We Need to Talk About Kevin" this year with Tilda Swinton, but maybe you knew that.

That was my first-place vote, if memory serves.

At this point, I'm glad it showed up at all.

does this mean Blissfully Yours not gonna place?

I loved the first section of Tropical Malady and didn't really understand the second dream-part. It was intriguing, though, enough to make my ballot. One thing that struck me was how loud the outdoor ambient sounds were recorded. It really added something to the atmosphere

i rescreened sideways a few months ago - it's an ok movie that got picked up by some annoying critics as an example of "quality moviemaking for adults" and so got saddled with that bs aura

truly a great film.

I must have been high when I praised Sideways. Horrible movie.

I wish Virginia Madsen's comeback had paid off though.

I know I'm overly antipathetic toward movies that are aggressively OK. I'm over being too concerned by it.

It's the same with people.

I'd be cool with aggressively OK people calling me up more often tbh.

i liked sideways quite a bit and voted for it.

boring movies generally worse than bad movies

xxxp to Eric

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v212/etienne_saint/talktoher.jpg

The last few frames of Talk To Her are heart-stoppingly beautiful.

― N. (nickdastoor)

I'm now in a huge argument with a friend about this film (saw last night). I'm frankly appalled by the rape and the way the film sets up the rapist as a person to sympathize with. Despite the otherwise stunning quality of the film and performances, I had a hard time dealing with the horror of the act in question (and I'm usually pretty relative about morality).

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi)

A. is an amazing filmmaker, but one item on his agenda--always--(like John Waters) is gratuitous shock. Intentional bad taste of the sort that isn't really bad taste at all but is, or would be, clearly destructive to society, if it weren't just a movie. The other aspects of his films, lately, have been so lyrical, and successful on an artistic level, that the films trick people into elevating the shock features to the same level as his more "serious" musings. It's very manipulative. But that's okay for an artist, I think.

― Skottie

Talk To Her
Pedro Almodóvar
2002
Spain
(220 points, 10 votes)

wtf does aggressively OK even mean