I’m providing below my take on the 60 best films since 2000 as the starting point for the Film Buff mid-2008 review. I’m looking for feedback on ones I might have missed or included and shouldn’t have. If you want something dropped, you have to offer a replacement together with some compelling reasons (Ben – I’m talking to you here) for its inclusion. Garden State and Serenity are not up for discussion, just so you know.
Joey? - Your thoughts on this brilliant list (given you and I are likely the only ones who will ever contribute here) would be appreciated.
The List….
12 and Holding, dir. Michael Cuesta
13 Tzameti, dir. Gela Babluani
2046 dir, Wong Kar-wai
A History of Violence, dir. David Cronenberg
Beat That My Heart Skipped, dir. Jacques Audiard
Brick, dir. Rian Johnson
Brotherhood Of The Wolf, dir. Christophe Gans
Brothers, dir. Susanne Bier
Cache, dir. Michael Haneke
Children of Men, dir. Alfonso Cuaron
Color Of Paradise, dir. Majid Majidi:
Cowards Bend the Knee, dir. Guy Maddin
Death of Mr Lazarescu, dir. Cristi Puiu
Deep Water, dir. Louise Osmond/Jerry Rothwell
Departed, dir. Martin Scorsese
Divided We Fall, dir. Jan Hrebejk
Duck Season, dir. Fernando Eimbcke
Dust, dir. Milcho Manchevski
El Crimen Perfecto, dir. Alex De La Iglesia
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, dir. Michel Gondry
Far Side of the Moon, dir. Robert Lepage
Garden State, dir. Zach Braff
Great Water, dir. Ivo Trajkov
Happy Endings, dir. Don Roos
Head On, dir. Fatih Akin
Hero, dir. Zhang Yimou
Inland Empire, dir. David Lynch
Intacto, dir. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Keane, dir. Lodge Kerrigan
Kontroll, dir. Nimrod Antal
Lady Vengeance, dir. Park Chan-wook
Lantana, dir. Ray Lawrence
Look at Me, dir. Agnes Jaoui
Lunacy, dir. Jan Svankmajer
Machinist, dir Brad Anderson
Man Push Cart, dir. Ramin Bahrani
Maria Full of Grace, dir. Joshua Marston
Memories of Murder, dir. Bong Joon-Ho
Memory of a Killer, dir. Erik van Looy
Mulholland Drive, dir. David Lynch
Mutual Appreciation, dir. Andrew Bujalski
New World, dir. Terrence Malick
Night Watch, dir. Timur Bekmambetov
Nobody Knows, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
Nurse Betty, dir. Neil Labute
Oldboy, dir. Park Chan-wook
Pan's Labyrinth, dir. Guillermo Del Toro
Paradise Now, dir. Hany Abu-Assad
Pretty Persuasion, dir. Marcos Siega
Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, dir. Jane Anderson
Proposition, dir. John Hillcoat
Renaissance, dir. Christian Volckman
Save the Green Planet, dir. Jang Jun-hwan
Serenity, Joss Whedon
Spirited Away, dir. Hayao Miyazaki
Take My Eyes, dir. Iciar Bollain
Time and Tide, dir. Tsui Hark:
Tropical Malady, dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Undertow, dir. David Gordon Green
You Can Count on Me, dir. Ken Lonergan
There you have it. My cards are on the table.
SDW
20 comments:
a compelling list, and compelling reasons WILL be given for changes, but i must think.....
wed: snowed in and the sky is a weird orange colour.
thurs: the giant fleas have come. grandpa is gone.
so you finally got around to watching the new world? i'm calling bullshit....
On what are you calling bullshit?
I told you I watched it but wasn't armed at the time so you probably weren't listening. I thought it was brilliant.
SDW
Hey, fix my formatting errors too
calling bs that you watched it, but you're probably right, i was distracted by your lycopene-laden leggings. i agree it was a brilliant, beautiful film, and definitely deserves to be on the list.
delete: garden state
add: the fountain - a far more affecting tale of the true nature of love and an intensely personal and inventive journey by director aronofsky....maybe braff's film is same, but mid-20s angst and inactivity is far less interesting than time travel and cool visuals.
delete:serenity
add: code 46 - michael winterbottom's sci-fi drops genre conventions but roots his tale very much in the near future (already there?) of the real world, and the two leads are fantastic. sci-fi for people who don't dress up like sulu and wait in line for an autograph and a photo with walter koenig. plus, winterbottom is ignoed on your list, and this is only one i could have chosen along with "in this world" and "24 hour party people"
delete: the departed
add: infernal affairs - not just because it's the original, but because it has everything the remake lacks - that hyper-kinetic hong kong style, gloriously over the top characters and a believably false world where we can actually imagine these events taking place. bahstin? i don't think so. when you watch the two back to back, you notice that the departed might benefit from a defibrillator (sp?).
plus, if you're gonna do a remake, at least give it a decade or two....4 years? weak...
delete: cache
add: lemming - please, please, please get this pretentious piece of art-pap drivel off the list. i know it was heaped with various awards and praised by virtually everyone, but come on - face facts; long, boring, wow-there is strife between the classes in paris. really. michael haneke is the male version of catherine breillat - insufferably "euro" in their sensibilities, and i say that with love in my heart. take the trip down the much darker road of mindfuckery and hitchcockian/lynchian menace with lemming - a film with much more to say, but because it doesn't have chocolat binoche and daniel imineveryfrenchfilm (except lemming) it didn't get shit. i see it now - you felt strange putting cache on the list; you hated it, you really did, but you didn't want to be left out of some rarified air. listen - i'm saving you here - cast off your chains and walk toward the light.
i can't decide what to remove to make room for these two, but in my opiion, they have to be on there: michael clayton: (the best film of 2007, imo - luckily rambo came out in 2008, or this would be a tough, tough claim). a throwback to those awesome '70s lone american hero character-driven drama/thrillers, and with one of the boldest closing shots i've seen in quite some time.
and a scanner darkly: a dark, savage, and bitterly humourous look at our brave new world, with awesome rotoscope animation and one of the most oddly touching and mournful endings i've seen in a long time. keanu's best role.
Wait until you see Chop Shop by Ramin Bahrani - an amazing follow up to Man Push Cart. New York Theater debut is this month!
In my very first post I said Garden State and Serenity were untouchables - because I knew you would want them off the list. Winterbottom...I know what you mean but jesus... Code 46? I thnk I'd take a Sulu convention over that one.
Scanner Darkly was replaced with Renaissance for RotoRoter cool.
Too many Keanu movies!
Spot on with Infernal Affairs - Departed was good but it's better
Cache is still with me after two years and although Lemming is a good candidate, there was something about that damn Cache...
SDW
full support on the extinction of Garden State. I hated this whippy-Zach-Braff-woe-is-me diary entry of a bad music video that's supposed to make you nostalgically cry but instead has you singing your favourite not so indie rock songs. a script or major label sell-out?
voting to nix "New World" in exchange for "Stander." With "The Thin Red Line" Malick perfected a style of narration that was cinematicly poetic (to be base), combining the tension of the Vietnam conflict and one mans journey through a cast of characters that disappear just as fast as they reappear. But as witth anything "poetic," New World began to fall into a self-indulgence where by Malick began to completely rely on the beautiful shots and not the tension of the story - essential I would say New World is a cinematic, as it is essentially the same film as "The Thin Red Line" Pocahontas style.
"Stander" is the bank robbery film re-realized, and set against the back drop of South African beauracracy, yet universally speaking to all those who would love to have the guts to truly fuck the man.
i would love to truly fuck the man, but he'd have to take me out to dinner first...
How about this Thursday Joe? Wear something pretty...
the films on the list that i do agree with 100% are:
13 tzameti, 2046, history of violence, brick, brotherhood of the wolf, colour of paradise, cowards bend the knee, deep water, head on, hero, inland empire, kontroll, lady vengeance, lunacy, machinist, mulholland drive, new world, nobody knows, oldboy, pan's labyrinth, proposition, spirited away, undertow, you can count on me. that's 23.
i think these should be excluded:
beat that my heart skipped, cache, children of men, departed, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, garden state, happy endings, lantana, maria full of grace, memories of murder, mutual appreciation, night watch, nurse betty. that's 13.
while all good films in their own right, i don't feel they deserve inclusion on the shortlist. don't worry, i'm still thinking here - i will provide substitutions.
the rest, i must shamefully admit, i have not seen, so i cannot comment on them in good conscience.
I agree with deleting The Departed whether you replace it with Infernal Affairs or not. For a thriller this movie left me rather un-thrilled and for a drama it left me not really caring about the outcome (and then somehow still managed to disappoint me with the ending).
And, yes, you said that Garden State was not up for discussion but you know how I feel about this one.
Also I think that Memento deserves a place up there as well as The Royal Tenenbaums and/or Life Aquatic. Argue it if you want but my only retort will be "Garden State?".
Oh yeah
and Ratatouille... I haven't even seen it but since you can't go a day without someon asking if it's in I assume it must be the best movie of the last 7 years.
i'm only letting you have one of "tarden state" (no sic) or "god grant me the serenity to accept the things i cannot change". you can't have both. yup, sometimes life ain't fair.
The Fountain should most definitely be up there.
That film is in my top ten for sure. I will have to sooner or later write a post just about The Fountain- and how often i must contest for its greatness.
agreed - post up, stan...
From Ben.
I would substitute:
1) History of Violence: a bad comic book adaptation directed by a hack most famous for another better adaptation "The Fly"
for
American Psycho: a superior adaptation of one of the most complex and compelling protagonists ever brought to film
2) Brick: a film lost in it's own tired cliche
for
Dead Man's Shoes: so refreshingly original it's hard to catagorize, almost as if they decided not to base the protagonist and all other characters on stereotypes...
3) Brotherhood of the Wolf: I've tried three times to watch it.
for
Oldboy: I've watched it three times.
4) Cache: two hours of my life I traded in order to be justified in my hate for this movie
for
The Pledge: Jack in his finest hour, and proof that you can leave some things hanging at the end of the movie and not be an asshoole about it...
5) Cowards Bend the Knee: uninspired, "art" for bourgouis nits.
for
American Astronaut: pure creative genius, the kind of film that shows you can make your film with limited means, not doctor the film to make it look like you had no money...
6) Departed: a wholesale rip-off, regardless of wether it still worked.
for
City of God: no fake, "I'm a gangster"-isms, just life and death on dirt streets and bare feet.
7) Dust: I couldn't make it through it,... maybe there was something there...
for
Revolver: not sure why this thinking man's gangster film hasn't caught on, it's got everything one would want in a film and more... and the performances are top notch.
8) Garden State: moral of the film - dads are uncool and if you yell into a pit it makes you feel better
for
Rodger Dodger: moral of the film - life is complicated, so get your shit together and look for opportunities
9) Happy Endings: seemed pretty standard fair to me...
for
All the Real Girls: breathtakingly original. nuff said.
10) Head On: Again, couldn't get into it, maybe not enough context...?
for
Y Tu Mama Tambien: brilliant.
11) Lunacy: wanky film-punk-art thing. Cool only because it's unwatchable.
for
Punch-Drunk Love: real punk-art film-making, with a human side.
12) Memories of a Murder: Good but I didn't think great. Momentum slipped a number of times.
for
Sexy Beast: A perfect ten. Quoteable from beginning to end. As flawless as it gets.
13) Mulholland Drive: not as epic as "Inland Empire" which is also on the list.
for
Waking Life: revolutionary, creative, and trippy.
14) Night Watch - Russian animation that sometimes looks like real people were involved.
for
The Aura: an intense thriller with very little special effects.
15) Nurse Betty: I liked it, but...
for
Lost in Translation: a hate it or love it film, with emphasis on the love.
16) Pan's Labyrinth: the most one-dimensional villian in recent memory, glaring for the camera... but basically a kids film, which I have no patience for. (just my opinion, of course)
for
Downfall: a much more complex villian.
17) Pretty Persuasion: snotty girl surrounded by stiffs
for
Hard Candy: hard-as-nails thriller that leaves an impression.
18) Save the Green Planet: too weird for me, I guess.
for
3 Iron: a masterpiece of film-making, and you could fit the dialouge on a napkin.
19) Serenity: I watched it, but c'mon, it's a TV episode.
for
Primer: The best film (again, in my opinion) since 2000. A brilliant sci-fi. I've seen it 7 times from beginning to end. And numerous other times as it sucks me in if I even try to walk past when someone else is watching it. Smart, beautifully filmed, and profound.
So that's it. There are are bunch I haven't seen, and, in all fairness, it's always easier to criticize someone else's list, than to put forth your own.
Runner's up if the list was bigger would be:
- Man Who Wasn't There
- Dogville
- Wassup Rockers
- The Staircase
- Wind that Shakes the Barley
- Match Point
- Syrianna
- Dancer Upstairs
- Chopper
- Dinner Rush
- Time
- Twilight Samurai
- Power of Nightmares
- Three Burials of ...
yay! i knew you were hiding out there somewhere! thanks for the reply, ben (even if the post isn't mine) - intelligent, well-put and solid arguments that certainly jogged my memory to a few forgotten gems.....now set up an account and post already!
Post a Comment