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

how abt Armond W's "Linklater shoots Paris like it's Hoboken"

this would suggest that he doesn't understand the movie

http://www.mamacitaonline.com/swill/swill_hawke.html

FWIW he (and I) also liked Shaolin Soccer, almost as much, if not AS much.

xpost Julie Delpy is so freaking pretty, I'm going to hurl

13) Ghost World (Zwigoff, 2001), 115 points, 1 first-place vote

Myself and Thompson agree on Ghost World. Very well played, funny and interesting - but the subtext and ending are very poor. Fundamentally the films message appears to be if you are a misanthropist and mess with people you will end up with no friends (no disagreement there). So I worry about the film - and Enid in particular - being cluthced to the bosom of a certain kind of adolescent & post-adolescent girl because the ending is so vague. I certainly read it as a hopeful ending which is more than this character deserves. Where is the mystery bus going? Maybe it would be better to see her six moths later on the streets of some big faceless city...
Very interesting movie though. Oh and Nick - the final scene with Buscemi is back at his mothers with him undergoing therapy.
-- Pete

yowza. i mean, i heart thora and all...
-- jess (dubplatestyl...), November 18th, 2001 7:00 PM.
birch is weighty melons girl from Am Beauty right?
-- Alan Trewartha (alantrewarth...), November 18th, 2001 7:00 PM.
thora birch is what i imagine all my crushes to look like. (bad black dye job + glasses = swoon.)
-- jess

12) 25th Hour (Lee, 2002), 117 points, 1 first-place vote (MINE)

i had to stop myself crying three times (i had company), at 'fuck new york', at under the bridge, and at the dream sequence.. and i dont cry much in movies. wait, maybe i dunno. but you get my point.
-- mitch lastnamewithheld

Mark, remember that the 25th Hour monologue wasn't written by Lee, but by Benioff, the screenwriter--I would imagine that it owes as much to a vaguely similar monologue in Do the Right Thing as to the Scorses models you mention. Anyway it's wonderfully realized visually: the imagery that's referenced as grotesque the first time around reappears as elegaic the second time around. I'm not sure which shot you're referring to toward the end, but the one (throwaway?) shot that gets me is
*spoilers*

in the "25th hour" fantasy where Norton sits for a passport photo. There's a shot, held for just four or five seconds but an eternity in this context, of the man running the photo shop. There's something in the countenance and speech of this kindly eccentric (his ears and mouth riddled with studs, suggesting some of kind of Hell's Angel settled down) that's extremely generous, that cuts through the (hilarious) New Yorker's vision of the Rest of the America that is the bulk of that remarkable conclusion. I dunno, the whole sequence and that shot in particular must have been difficult to pull off--without enough little odd bits of business it would've seemed too ludicrous, too vain...with too much detail it would've seemed like a real forking-paths narrative which was NOT the point--but Lee and Benioff did it.

In this film the criticism of the harsh drugs laws is part and parcel with the shots of the WTC site and the backstories of the broker and the school teacher--something like a sum total of America's mistakes and abuses, responsibilities and blindnesses, fissures and reconciliations. I found the WTC stuff moving and totally germane, not least because it would have been this huge FACT that would continue to come 'round and smack the characters in the face. Philip Seymour Hoffman's stunned "whoah" when he sees the site from above felt like the kind of line that risked risked ridicule (for its seriousness/earnestness/"clumsiness") to achieve truth.

The Russian mobsters verged on cartoonish Scorsese territory, and that one scene threatened to make real some of the xenophobia expressed in the monologue. Oh well.

By "Godard's cartoon swiftness" what do you mean exactly?
-- amateurist

11) Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003), 126 points

tim ernst's gaijin cartoon books adapted to film, featuring two vapid, xenophobic, ugly americans. "japan is a wacky country! they reverse their Rs and Ls! haha engrish!" if this was set in let's say New York, the characters would stand out as even more unlikable, but as is, the setting steals the show, diverting the attention wisely away from the characters and plot. sofia provides visuals and her soft camera tone carries over seamlessly from the 70s suburban michigan of her last film which is impressive, but there is a real lack of depth here, these losers aren't very lovable or redeemable. kevin shields's new songs are pretty good, especially the one early in the film (the 2nd song on the score). i'm gonna get a pirated copy on dvd and see it again, but as is, i was pretty disappointed.
-- gygax!

I'm not really sure how I feel about it. On the one hand, yeah, it's a beautiful movie to look at (we saw it because Nancy is going to Tokyo this winter and didn't really need an excuse to drool over the landscape for two hours), but also yeah, it's a deeply shallow movie. It seemed to suck any of Scarlett J's actual life right out of her (check out her interview in Mass Appeal from a few months back if any of you are still harboring more of a crush on Thora Birch), and just replaced it with this blanked out gauziness, the uber-Trust Fund Hipster. You don't feel sorry for her treatment at the hands of her husband because he's just so fucking awful to begin with; you want to shake and say "what the fuck are you doing here in the first place??" (Yes, I guess the subtext is that their marriage is slowly falling apart - "I don't know who he is anymore" - but why the fuck would she end up with such a awful "arty" hipster schlub in the first place. And why should we care when she's such a tabula rasa! If I wanted to watch something that focused at least 50% of the time on viewing the vacuous, shallow lives of twentysomething BFA's desperately trying to enter into show biz at a distance well...I could have never left NYC.) The laughs are few and far between and usually, like gygax sez, at the expense of those wacky foreigners and their keeerazy habits. Bill Murray's character is the character he played in Rushmore stripped of any remaining will to live (and personality.) He is rapidly approaching a kind of apothesis of "the sad clown"; soon his face is going to be frozen in that kind of winsome grin with the saggy eyes. Still, with my fragile emotional state these days (and the fact that I AM Bill Murray), it was hard not to feel a little twinge at the end. More tellingly, however, I didn't even remember I saw it when I first opened this thread.
-- gabbo giftington

Heh, like I said.

http://www.virgin.net/movies/wallpapers/images/donniedarko_800.jpg

10) Donnie Darko (Kelly, 2001), 127 points, 1 first-place vote

We watched the director's cut of Donnie Darko last night. In some ways it is a total dud. Pointless tacky CGI segments; INXS replacing Echo & the Bunnymen during the gorgeous intro sequence; pointless explanations of the plot practically flicked up onto the screen as pages of a book except so fast you have to pause them to read them. But then again it does make the film a whole lot easier to understand - some might say in a bad way whereas the original leaves a lot open to suggestion. It also makes the whole thing a lot more far fetched than the original.
I never really and completely understood the significance of "dying alone" nor the bit about the spears growing out of people's chests.
-- wogan lenin

What I hate is that thanks to the website and stuff everybody thinks they "know what happened." However, the movie itself didn't tell them...they basically had to do the director's work (you know, telling a story) themselves. Not to mention the just-above-Alicia-Silverstone skills of Ms. Barrymore, the Hal Hartley absurdity of their being either 7 or 400 kids in the town, but never anything in between. The idiotic adolescent fantasy that ones enemies in life are desparate psychotics (but not nice ones, like you). SPOILER: Jena Malone's death was gratuitous enough, but making it so that he knew how to fly back and save her (something you could only understand if you read the website and whatnot) makes it even hokier.
Wonderful acting from the family (especially Mary McDonell) and an impressively audacious debut for the director. But I gag when people tell me this is one of the greatest movies of the year. Far too unpleasant and mismanaged for such a ranking. Not to mention the director's filmschoolish obsession with interminable speed-up-slow-down musical sequences.
-- Anthony Miccio

Another possibility as to why it seems to resonate with so many people despite a lot of different ideas on "what its about" is the soundtrack. It isn't the usual "hip soundtrack" at all - that would imply hauling out a bunch of surefire chart hits, half of which arent even in the film, and releasing the soundtrack before the movie, etc etc etc (I hate this). Yes, there are a few 80s gems, but only a few (oh, and Duran Duran... tch).
But the score. I never hear anyone talk about it the way I always feel like talking about it.

The first thing me and a friend did after we saw the movie was mull over Mike Andrew's reworking of "Mad World", the next was to look for his score (still cant locate it easily though). It is a truly moving, wonderful use of music as mood, and coupled with the visuals, the setting (1988 was my last year of high school) and the overall concepts, I was left deeply moved. Picking the plot apart, while enjoyable, is just another layer to my enjoyment of this movie, and not at all why it is the most affected I think I have ever been by a film (apart from Pi, and it was enhanced greatly by its score also).

I would recommend anyone who liked the film hunt down the soundtrack. Not a scrap of Tears for Fears or Joy Div resides within, and Mike Andrews is a fucking genius.
-- Trayce

There's more talk about this one than all the other movies combined, I think.

everyone in the world hated it except for j hoberman, who thought it was the best movie since citizen kane. i wanna see it.

She still is for anyone with taste!

9) Memento (Nolan, 2000) 134 points, 1 first-place vote

Even the director doesen't know quite how the real story goes. His brother (who wrote the short story) refuses to tell him.
-- Will

anything involving lettering of any sort is such a mistake, I don't know anyone who doesn't eventually get it covered. I'm so glad I didn't do that, not that I don't want to get the one on my stomach covered up anyway.
-- Allyzay (tattoo...), November 12th, 2003 2:46 PM.
but Memento!!! Best tattoos ever!!
-- TOMBOT (find.hi...), November 12th, 2003 2:48 PM.
There are things I agree with you on in theory and things I agree with you on in actuality. If you showed up covered in Memento tattoos, you will find that that is very much a theoretical agreement.
-- Allyzay (eeee...), November 12th, 2003 2:51 PM.

8) Amelie (Jeunet, 2001) 179 points, 3 first-place votes WTF

Justify your dislike of Amelie... 'cause my love for it increases the more I think about it, and I can't help but think that anyone that doesn't feel the same way must secretly be a heartless, soulless automaton (no I don't actually think that).
I laughed throughout, not smirky knowing chuckles but helpless giggles and huge exhalations I might even tentatively call guffaws. And (and don't think that this is a common occurance because, um, it's not) I cried. Yes, actually did, when she guides the blind man down the street, giving him eyes, leaving him bathed in joy (see? you see the stupid phrases the movie makes me use?).
And I also want to bring up that debate between people that watch movies as if they're just plays put to film (fuck David Mamet by the way), and people for whom the visuals of movies are most important while plot can be fucked for all they care (and although it's prob. obvious which camp I feel like I belong to, I don't really think that's the right way to think about things, just my favorite way); and how maybe Jeunet's movies might appeal more to the latter, focusing as they do on the mechanics of immediate situation.
-- Dan I.

But is it not a valid criticism when Amelie in fact does copy many of the devices (people turning into a puddle of water, etc.)used on Ally McBeal? If I wanted to associate Amelie with an unhip television show just for the hell of it, I'd talk about how it was like the West Wing.
-- Nicole

7) Yi Yi (Yang, 2000), 187 points, 2 first-place votes.

6) The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001), 240 points

it is much better than rushmore, which i still love but seems far too strained and cynical compared to the sloppy beauty of tenenbaums. bottle rocket is quite good but something stops it from being really perfect, although at this point i prefer it to rushmore also in that sloppy beautiful way, also the jokes are better but honestly tenenbaums is so far above them both it's not even a comparison, one of the most wonderful films i have ever seen.
-- ethan

upon first viewing i privately decided it was possibly my favorite film i'd ever seen, i've viewed it four times since. um did this happen with anyone else? also more generally do you require time or general social/critical acceptance to truly love a film (tenenbaums reviews mostly lukewarm, 'it's good but no beautiful mind/monsters ball/lotr/amelie!', meanwhile everyone i know who's seen has basically said it was enjoyable but disposable)? in high school whenever 'best movies ever' were discussed in class most kids always just seemed to name the most recent passable film they'd seen, am i just afraid of being short-sighted like that? i feel like i'm going to be proved wrong in a few months and look back and say 'oh how sillyi was' or something, it's terrible. also is royal tenenbaums a great film?
-- ethan

Margot Tenembaum reminded my mom of me, especially the scene where she was with her frontier family in fishnets and black eyemakeup and chopped her own finger off.
-- Ally

Don't get me wrong, I really, really wanted to love The Royal Tenenbaums. I loved Rushmore, and Wes Anderson, so I guess I had very high expectations. But something about Tenenbaums just struck me as sloppy - the story seemed to start out well, but then the story started to degrade. It struck me more as a sketch or a portrait rather than a finished film...I don't know if that's what Wes Anderson was aiming for, but it really started pissing me off after a while. I thought Gene Hackman's brilliant performance was the only thing that really held the story in place; he was like a much-needed backbone for an otherwise (I hate to say it) spineless film. One of the things I like best about Wes Anderson's style is his talent for character development, but for so many of the characters, the development, the empathy just wasn't there. Perhaps it was just because he had so many characters to work with this time around. Anyway, I thought The Royal Tenenbaums was good, but not great.
-- geeta

It won't be and there's enough wrong here nevertheless

Spirited Away will clearly (and deservedly) win.

I could go for that. Too lazy to look, what were the #1s in the previous polls again? Blue Velvet for '80s, I sort of remember.

5) City of God (Meirelles/Lund, 2002)

seriously, this is the best comment on City of God that Google turns up:

My joint fave magic movie moment of 2003 was the torture / shooting of the small Brazilian street kids in City Of God, although I realise that saying it like that makes me look like some kind of sadist paedophile.
-- udu wudu

the followup to that movie moments thread:
camera follows a suitcase being wheeled through hollywood, onto an elevator, down a hallway and into an apartment where it is laid on the floor and unzipped, revealing four feet and eleven inches of gauge to the delight of three eager, big-dicked gentlemen.
^^--intro to weapons of ass destruction 2. highly recommended.
-- brian badword

http://www.ocean-films.com/themoodforlove/secret/images/img_menu.jpg

4) In The Mood For Love (Wong, 2000), 260 points

Finally, "In the Mood for Love" by Wong Kar Wei was a wonderfully melancholy moodfilm of quiet lives and missed opportunities, as visually *rich* a movie as any I've seen since the Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Even a twilight gale-blasted Tottenham Court Road seemed romantic after seeing it.
-- Stevie T

3) Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001) 279 points, 1 first-place vote

SPIRITED AWAY -- or This Week In Acid Casualty Anime Fairy Tales That Will Haunt Your Dreams For A Long Time But Make You Want To Watch Them Over And Over Again

So, I got back from my week long stay in British Columbia (Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo) last night, only to be whisked away to a friend's birthday party and then to a showing of the just-off-the-racks DVD for this little gem of an anime movie called Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki.

Oh.. my.. god. Not to underrate the surreal values of most anime flicks, but this one takes the cake, only because it's disguised as a fairy tale free of violence. And, while, compared to most anime flicks, this is indeed relatively violence-free, the images from this movie will never ever leave my brain -- partially to will, and partially not.

Keep in mind that I'm hardly a movie kinda guy, much less an ANIME kinda guy, and I think this is just one of the movies of the year. Maybe anime connoisseurs will balk at my recommendation... but whatever. And with almost all movies, I recommend the Japanese dialog with English subtitles.

Mind you, I still don't understand most of "Spirited Away", and probably never will. (And that pic at the top really doesn't even touch the surface of what horrific wonders and wonderous horrors are contained within)
-- Donut Bitch

Miyazaki believes in the audience feeling genuine, powerful emotions, terror, confusion, unease, gladness, love. Like in early Disney, eg Pinnochio, not today where it's all filtered for you into a low-key blandness.
I saw Spirited Away several times and it stayed fresh while each time suggesting more to me. Finally i think it's an allegory of the horror of having to grow up and go to work. Chihiro being in fear of her life conveys the death of innocence that we fight against.
-- pete s

90s: Pulp Fiction
80s: Blue Velvet
70s: Taxi Driver

I guess I'd be surprised if something like Spirited Away joined this company.

(XPOST!)