"I cannot start my day with a confrontation" The 2017 ILX Film Poll Voting Thread - Ballots Due Sunday, March 4th at 7pm EST.

"Yes Darling, But is It Cinema?"
A mini-explanation by Gukbe

The first time I did this poll, I started with the idea that it would be based on Academy rules (commercial release in NY or LA for at least a week in the calendar year). The idea was to limit the number of films eligible and level the playing field (if someone saw a film at a festival and nobody else would see it until the next year, it would dilute the vote by spreading it over years, etc). This was obviously unworkable, if only because other countries have different release dates. For instance, Ladybird isn't out in the UK until March. So I relented, and even if it wasn't necessarily fair to a film that it was screened at a festival (You got to go to TIFF? Awesome, but most of us don't), it would be an arbitrary distinction. So, let people vote for what they feel to head off complaints.

So what's the restriction? Most of us can't see Nocturama in the theater, but there it is, streaming on Netflix. The best I could come up with was that as long as it had a public screening in a cinema, it counts. O.J. felt more TV to me, but it was screened. Twin Peaks is somewhat similar, because even though Lynch considers it a movie, and it wasn't really written episodically (the Bang Bang Club epilogues felt like they were added in rather than part of the whole), I watched it week by week and that's a different experience for me. Other arguments are available, including the excellent Nick Pinkerton piece linked in the Detrius thread. But really, the whole thing was screened at MoMa, so how could I not include it without it being arbitrarily taking a side and not wanting to include it in the results?

If you don't think it counts, make an argument and convince people.

And sorry, Morbs, but I can't dwell on the previous year longer than 3 months.

I'm still working on 2015.

but there it is, streaming on Netflix

ah so that's who sponsors this poll

the whole thing was screened at MoMa

Was this some cynical cash-in? Who were the suckers who went?

They hold free screenings of notable films near the end of the year; I think Twin Peaks was part of that series.

fwiw, were we running this back in their respective years I don't think Berlin Alexanderplatz or Fanny and Alexander or Carlos should've been on the poll. They were made for TV, whatever its cinematic qualities (also whether Lynch considers it a film or not is neither here nor there - it lived on a different format, whatever the odd screening at the cinema might otherwise say) xp = cool thanks. Here Berlin Alexanderplatz got a screening or two. I mean that's fine if you wanted to see it that way and its part of a retro, it just lived in a different way.

I'd rather have a poll anyway - just remarking the result will be odd.

Well personally I'm gonna be voting for stuff that I didn't get to see in a theatre but watched on MUBI or bluray, so I'm already a sinner in thinking something can live in more than one way

But even if TP wasn't obviously better film in 2017 than "film in 2017" was, it placing would still be valuable for annoying the type of person that would be annoyed by it

Well, this has got off to a good start

I'm only going to vote for stuff I watched on my smartphone this year so my ballot is mostly going to be made up of Luke Cage episodes

Berlin Alexanderplatz, Fanny and Alexander & Carlos were all released first in cinemas in the US.

Was this some cynical cash-in? Who were the suckers who went?

At least four critics and two civilian Lynchdorks I know, and about 344 others. Full theater for 3 days.

Carlos was also screened here - the shorter theatrical version (F&A has one as well). Counting those would be to their detriment, depends on the edit.

Twin Peaks was shown in cinema first in France.

So much hand-wringing over something that takes care of itself. With or without Twin Peaks, it seems fairly obvious to me that Phantom Thread will win. Excepting myself and a couple of other people, there's been universal swoon over it on ILX.

Rest assured: I'll do what I can to get A Quiet Passion, The Ornithologist, or The Lost City of Z up there.

Same, plus Personal Shopper and Nocturama

I can't think of anything better 2017 movies than the 5 just mentioned there.

does L’Économie du couple count as a 2017 movie?

Personal shopper feels like it came out ages ago (I still haven't seen it)

I thought it was brilliant, and along with Nocturama and A Quiet Passion it will be my top 3.

Of the following films, which are eligible:

Toni Erdmann, Certain Women, Personal shopper, elle, the handmaiden,the love witch, hell or high water

I think you'll find that at least three of those 'placed' last year, but hey everything's eligible

so i encourage votes for any and all Welles films

Last year's results, fwiw ...

Toni Erdmann	475	18
Manchester By The Sea	379	15
American Honey	300	10
Moonlight	297	11
Things to Come	271	10
Paterson	247	11
Cameraperson	244	9
Embrace of the Serpent	239	10
Certain Women	223	8
Elle	216	9
O.J.: Made in America	209	6
Silence	206	9
Love & Friendship	186	9
The Handmaiden	185	8
Cemetery of Splendour	178	5
The Witch	168	8
Arabian Nights	165	5
I Am Not Your Negro	163	7
Green Room	160	8
Hell or High Water	143	8
The Assassin	143	5
The Neon Demon	141	7
I, Daniel Blake	137	6
Son of Saul	129	5
Hail, Casear!	118	5
Victoria	115	6
A Bigger Splash	114	4
Mountains May Depart	112	4
The Other Side	111	4
The Measure of a Man	108	4
Hunt for the Wilderpeople	92	6
Weiner Dog	91	4
Everybody Wants Some!!	85	5
Little Men	85	5
Childhood of a Leader	83	3
Knight of Cups	83	4
Fire At Sea	82	4
No Home Movie	82	4
Sunset Song	82	3
The Death of Louis XIV	81	3
Loving	77	4
20th Century Women 76	5
Arrival	73	5
Sieranevada	72	2
The Fits	71	4
Jackie	70	4
High Rise	69	3
The Lobster	68	4
Sing Street	66	3
Anomalisa	65	3
Maggie's Plan	65	3
Indignation	63	3
Tower	63	3
Pearl Button	62	2
Rams	57	4
De Palma	56	2
The Love Witch	56	2
Zootopia	56	3
Our Little Sister	50	3
The Club	47	3
Eisenstein in Guanajuato	46	2
Aferim	45	2
La La Land	42	2
Train to Busan	41	2
A Quiet Passion	40	1
Being 17	40	1
Visit or Memories and Confessions	40	1
Weiner	39	2
Chevalier	38	2
The Woman Who Left	38	2
Deapool	37	2
Under the Shadow	37	2
When Marnie Was There	37	2
White Girl	36	1
Tale of Tales	35	3
Dirty Grandpa	33	1
Julieta	33	2
Mustang	33	2
The Nice Guys	33	1
The Red Turtle	33	2
Remainder	32	2
My Golden Days	31	3
Happy Hour	30	1
Kubo and the Two Strings	30	1
Nocturnal Animals	30	2
Standing Tall	30	1
Hypernormalisation	29	2
Right Now, Wrong THen	29	2
The Illinois Parables	29	2
Captain America: Civil War	28	1
Cosmos 28	1
Scarred Hearts	28	1
Keanu	26	2
Nothing Left Unsaid	26	1
The Greasy Strangler	26	1
The Wialing	26	1
Evolution	25	2
Ixcanul	25	1
Kate Plays Christine	25	2
Men and Chicken	25	2
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping	25	2
Supersonic	25	1
Swiss Army Man	25	1
Couple in a Hole	24	2
In the Last Days of the city	24	1
Lemonade	24	1
Mapplethorpe: Look at Pictures	24	1
Queen of Katwe	24	2
Triple 9	24	1
Into the Inferno	23	1
Mimosas	23	1
The Edge of Seventeen	23	1
The Invitation	23	1
A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery	22	1
Aaaaaaah!	22	1
Author: THe JT LeRoy Story	22	1
Christine	22	1
Florence Foster Jenkins	22	1
Passengers	22	1
The Treasure	22	1
Dog Eat Dog	21	1
Kaili Blues	21	1
The Son of Joseph	21	1
Tickled	21	1
Your Name	21	4
Histoire(s) Du cinema 20	1
The Ornithologist	20	1
Girls Lost	19	1
The Hateful Eight	19	1
Don't Think Twice	18	1
Neruda	18	1
Not Film	18	1
10 Cloverfield Lane	17	2
Aquarius	17	1
Creepy	17	1
Eat That Question: Frank Zappa...	17	1
King Jack	17	1
Nocturama	17	1
Serena	17	1
A Town Called Panic: Back in School	16	1
El Sur	16	1
I Am Not A Serial Killer	16	1
Louder than Bombs	16	1
The Jungle Book	16	1
Doctor Strange	15	1
Don't Blink	15	1
In the Shadow of Women	15	1
Captain Fantastic	14	1
Harmonium	14	1
Le Fils de Joseph	14	1
My Friend from the Park	14	1
Neon Bull	14	2
Other People	14	1
February	13	1
Star Trek Beyond	13	1
Sully	13	1
Janis: Little Girl Blue	12	1
Sweet Bean	12	1
Hacksaw Ridge	11	1
Halfway	11	1
Microbe and Gasoline	11	1
The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Maki	11	1
The Sundial Carved with a Thousand...	11	1
Uncle Kent 2	11	1
American Pastoral	10	1
JLG/JLG	10	1
The United States of Love	10	1
Godless	9	1
King Lear	9	1
Sweaty Betty	9	1
Cafe Society	8	1
One Sings, the Other Doesn't	8	1
The Untamed	8	1
In the Realm of the Sense	7	1
Papusza	7	1
The Last Family	7	1

I see The Death of Louis XIV got some votes last year.

This year too

Yeah thanks I knew I'd voted for some of those last year but they definitely didn't get a British release til this year

Perhaps we should make something that placed in the previous year ineligible for the following. I dunno seems unfair on some but I don't wanna vote toni erdmann film of the year 2 years running eg (tbh I might have it at 2 or 3 this time around but still)

Has anything got votes 3 years running yet?

Perhaps we should make something that placed in the previous year ineligible for the following.

I strongly disagree w/ this. I purposely didn't vote for Toni Erdmann last year because I knew I would want to to vote for it in this year's poll, 2017 being the year it got a cinema release in Britain and the year that I first saw it.

I also didn't get to see Scorsese's Silence until the very beginning of 2017, but I didn't include any of the staggered release movies that I also loved in early 2017 (Julieta, Toni Erdmann, Elle). I guess I go by Oscar qualifications, cf. Personal Shopper, which came out in the USA in March 2017 and didn't qualify for the Oscars despite opening in many other countries in 2016. And yeah honestly I feel like putting Twin Peaks in is fishy, as much as Lynch says it's one long movie it's not, it wasn't made for the cinema, it was made for television. I still put it on my ballot because this is a message board poll and I loved Twin Peaks and ultimately idgaf but it's definitely not the same as Fanny and Alexander, which had a 3 hour theatrical cut released to theaters in America before anyone had access to the TV version. anyway

Perhaps we should make something that placed in the previous year ineligible for the following.

I strongly disagree w/ this. I purposely didn't vote for Toni Erdmann last year because I knew I would want to to vote for it in this year's poll, 2017 being the year it got a cinema release in Britain and the year that I first saw it.

― Agharta Christie (Ward Fowler), Sunday, 4 February 2018 20:46 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag

I'm cool with that but it means I'm going to vote for a few films I voted for last year

Toni Erdmann WON last year? i am getting better at forgetting the results of these polls almost instantly.

these slo-mo releases are a good argument for delaying such decisions til July.

sonotgonnahappen.jpg

Poll sent!

Ballot sent!

You guys are voting so early! Have you seen everything? There’s still time to watch some good stuff by female directors:

My Happy Family
On Body and Soul
By the Time It Gets Dark
Berlin Syndrome

I have a ballot ready to go, but I'm holding off sending it until March 1st or so.

I can't see The Florida Project until February 20, so I have to wait until then at least.

But, seriously, those four I listed are very good. I don't want to be the only one who votes for them!

I def wanted to see On Body and Soul when MUBI was showing it but I didn't get round to it. Missed By the Time It Gets Dark in its one week run. Sadly there is only so much time.

I put The Nothing Factory in my ballot.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/28/the-nothing-factory-review-unconventional-workplace-drama

This was like a summation of a lots and lots of political cinema of many colours, and its very knowing on how boring as well as exciting a lot of it was.

You guys are voting so early!

I always think of this as a poll of the films I saw in 2017, so in theory could have submitted my vote on Jan 1st. There's always next year's poll!

I put The Nothing Factory in my ballot.

I avoided this because the Glasgow Film Theatre booklet compared it to Gomes' The Arabian Nights, which I largely disliked, but based on your description I regret that now.

Its miles better than The Arabian Nights, whose 1st part I caught and also despised (oh they are both Portuguese and left-wing! So bloody lazy).

It's very much in the same tradition as Arabian Nights, a tradition that goes from Antonio Reis and gives so many Portuguese films such an ethnographic dimension. There's a bunch of Portuguese documentaries a lot like it, and you see aspects of it in Pedro Costa and Joao Pedro Rodrigues as well, just to name two other major Portuguese filmmakers.

Pedro Costa has a completely different rhtyhm and his films are the result of a specific project and even a politics (there is much empathy for the poor and it delves into Portuguese history and colonial history but its also very resigned about it all as well).

no Ward, no. eg, Phantom Thread is not a 2018 film, not no way, not nohow.

UK Release Date: Friday 2 February 2018

pish tosh

Just looked through the list from last year. I'm voting for at least four that got votes last year.

Also noticed that one of them, Eugene Green's The Son of Joseph, got one vote in English and one in French! Let's consolidate our votes this year, Green fans. Pick a language!

Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the premiere of The Son of Joseph. Great film.

It is great, and the most openly comic film of his I've seen. Of course there's comedy in all his films, and obviously Le monde vivant was pretty silly, but this one is classic farce.

"How do you feel about hipsters?"

"I hate them."

"Me, too!"

The Nothing Factory was some hot, flaming bullshit, and this is from someone who thinks Arabian Nights is one of the best films ever. To compare them is criminal. If you want to watch a film that will clumsily attack you for daring to watch it, for three fucking hours, be my guest. Dismal

oh, I have his new one

It's Dunkirk/Bear, actually.

And I only changed one vote so the old one should be recognizable. It had 'Your Name' at 25.

shit i should've put that on my ballot

wtf is Bear film

The Revenant. Hey, it premiered in 2017 in Denmark. Actually the topselling film of the year.

jesus, DiCaprio w/ Marty is bad enough

Lol, that was way off, Revenant is of course oscar bait 2016 and thr equivalent this year was La La Land. The best selling film of 2017 was of course the wookie film.

what's up, 3am crew. 614 valid votes cast, looking like it'll be a top 52 because of ties.

just got around to watching Ex Libris: The New York Public Library the night before last. didn't watch it in time for the vote, but hope to see it in the rollout

lol at Soto's revised ballot being exactly the same as his OG except with a different #24

― kelp, clam and carrion (sic),

Travel, etc.

If everyone's ready to move into the auditorium and take their seats, the results thread is about to begin.

Straw poll: who's for voting 2018 in February again, and who's for waiting until, say, June?

in on the first, happy to see it whenever it's done
PADDINGTON 2 y'all

would march be a nice compromise

February. I realize there's this compulsion for some to see everything before drawing up a list, but it's just a poll. If you miss something this year, you catch it next year. In general, I hate the modern tendency to rush everything--record and film reviews now, opinions now, year-end lists in early December--but February is perfectly reasonable. A year-end poll in June seems silly to me.

June was a proposed compromise against the much-loved July poll of this year

I thought June was fine esp as a counterbalance to October year end polls

Do it in Feb w/ the Oscars

i guess we won't know who made the real five-baggers unless oscar tells us

June

yeah June, fionnland has a good point about it breaking up the glut of lists/polls this time of year. and those movies that don't make it out of new york or la by march 2019 might be someone's favorite, it's happened to me. but oddly this is the first year ever where I've seen everything of note (except Cold War). somehow everything made it here by the end of the year. but this is the first time this has happened to me 15+ years after leaving new york.

February is perfect for me, personally. It gives me time to go to Gothenburg and catch up in January, and it means I get the list-making over with as the new festival year begins in Berlin. But ok, if the rest of you want to wait until June, I guess that's what we'll do.

ftr

Really, the solution is to always do the poll in late July so nearly everything that opens on one continent the previous year will have had 7 months to spread, like a social disease.

― Dr Morbius

Actually rather agree with the late July idea

― imago

Yeah I was gonna say we should do this in the middle of the year every year to avoid these double placements. I live in a mid-sized city in the USA and often get less than half of the prestige/quality art house films until early the next year, often going all the way into March.

[...]

Certain Women came out in Europe in March 2017, and was released on home video in June. this could've been avoided & could be in the future by delaying the poll til mid-summer

― flappy bird

Agreed that we should put off voting until at least July for the previous year.

― WilliamC

counterpoint:

thought about watching Coco before voting; too busy watching Twin Peaks

― Dr Morbius, July 2017

Morbs hasn't finished watching Twin Peaks yet, so if we hurry we can counteract any objections bcz he's obv still too busy to have watched any 2018 releases

I'm making a vaguely concerted effort to catch up w/ some now-on-streamings at the moment (Madeline² last night), and Shoplifters is coming to a tiny indie in late January, so I'm expecting to be happy both to vote and to run the poll in February (cutting off votes before the Oscars, rolling out a week or so after). But nobody in the delayed results thread this year argued against the expanded catch-up time!

April maybe?

as a compromise

Feb please. June was a one-off.

et tu Whiney

There was a thread recently where there was some debate over when the year-end film poll should be. I thought it would have been here, but I guess not.

Anyway, I wanted to run a political-film poll this summer. Is is possible for the year-end to be over and done with before then?

ayo clemenza

maybe not over and done before the summer, given the fairly whelming opinion to wait ages, but before July?

clicks "submit post," leaves flat to go and see a movie postulating that evil monsters could take over American politics and society by infiltrating the media

I think we should start April 1

That'd be fine, thanks. I'll be retired by then anyway, so really, it doesn't matter.