GMD Social Poll: Top Ten Films of 2001

[Anom@nder Rake]

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2. Waking Life
3. Ghost World
4. Ichi the Killer
5. The Man Who Wasn’t There
6. Dagon
7. Mullholland Dr.
8. Donnie Darko
9. Session 9
10. Pulse

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

1. Mulholland Dr (David Lynch)

2. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)

3. Das Experiment [The Experiment] (Oliver Hirschbiegel)

4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Christopher Columbus)

5. La Stanza del Figlio [The Son's Room] (Nanni Moretti)

6. Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)

7. Y Tu Mama Tambien [And Your Mother Too] (Alfonso Cuaron)

8. Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)

9. Visitor Q (Takashi Miike)

10. Non Ho Sonno [Sleepless] - Dario Argento

Nice to see Sleepless on another list. Like all of Argento's post-Opera work, I see opinions divided all over about it. Some love that Argento was returning to his giallo roots but I've also seen a lot of bitching about Argento basically making a greatest hits type of movie. Even if it is, who gives a fuck when it's that good? The scene on the train is prime Dario and the Goblin score rocks hard.

 

[CiG]

5. The Man Who Wasn’t There

Good to see this masterpiece on another list.

 

[CiG]

@Einherjar86 hey man, got anything for this year?

 

[no country for old wainds]

1. Mulholland Dr (David Lynch)

2. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)

3. Das Experiment [The Experiment] (Oliver Hirschbiegel)

4. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Christopher Columbus)

5. La Stanza del Figlio [The Son's Room] (Nanni Moretti)

6. Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)

7. Y Tu Mama Tambien [And Your Mother Too] (Alfonso Cuaron)

8. Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)

9. Visitor Q (Takashi Miike)

10. Non Ho Sonno [Sleepless] - Dario Argento

interesting that you like this HP movie so much. do you prefer it to later ones?

 

[Einherjar86]

@Einherjar86 hey man, got anything for this year?

Not sure what the deadline is, so I threw this together pretty quick. Some of these may not hold up today (haven't seen The Score or Joy Ride in a long time), but this is what I think:

1. Mulholland Drive

2. The Pledge

3. The Devil's Backbone

4. Memento

5. Donnie Darko

6. Joy Ride

7. Avalon

8. Training Day

9. The Score

 

[challenge_everything]

interesting that you like this HP movie so much. do you prefer it to later ones?

I think the series in general is underrated amongst cinephiles (as opposed to mad fans). Rowling has great empathy as a writer and the arcs she creates (including for 'lesser' characters like Neville, Draco, Snape etc who in other's hands would be comic relief or token bad guys) are extraordinarily good.

The first HP is the most cutesy and probably my least favourite as a result, but on the other hand it has a glorious sense of awe and wonder (which I appreciate even as an adult) which steadily dims as the series goes on.

 

[challenge_everything]

4. Memento

This is in most databases as a 2000 release although it appears in many parts of the world it wasn't actually screened until 2001, so you can probably have it.

I'm going to stick with it being a 2000 release but it definitely would have made my list otherwise.

 

[CiG]

Memento is definitely a 2000 film, deadline is two days away @Einherjar86 so feel free to edit your list or whatever.

 

[Einherjar86]

oops.

I'll try to adjust soon. If I don't make it in time, just knock Memento out.

 

[challenge_everything]

Memento is definitely a 2000 film, deadline is two days away @Einherjar86 so feel free to edit your list or whatever.

Says the guy who insists First Reformed is a 2018 film

 

[CiG]

Says the guy who insists First Reformed is a 2018 film

Well yeah, because festival dates can lick a nut. Memento was released for the general public in 2000 you slut.

 

[dwellerINTHEdark]

Memento would've held a top 3 spot for me.

 

[no country for old wainds]

i swear the '80s was winning this poll last time i looked

 

[Bloopy]

i swear the '80s was winning this poll last time i looked

It shows 1 vote and that I voted for the 80s. What did you vote for? Might be a forum glitch.

 

[no country for old wainds]

nah i actually went for the '60s despite knowing it wouldn't win. i must've just misread it like a blind retard. i'm perfectly happy if the '90s wins anyway!

 

[no country for old wainds]

i intended to do my list yesterday and ended up in bed sick all evening, blech. definitely doing it today, probably just a top ten though lol

 

[no country for old wainds]

10) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Dir. Peter Jackson)

my relationship to the source material is conflicted, but what i love about it is an otherworldliness and alien threat that doesn't really translate here--jackson is too gooey-eyed, too earnest, frankly too human for tolkien. still, with its focus on a single, linear arc, emphasising more personal, small-scale struggles over the epic spectacle to come, the first lord of the rings film is the one that best sustains a mood and earns it gravitas, and i'm still fond enough (moreso than the first harry potter film from the same year, although that series as a whole far surpasses this one) to list it for this top-heavy year. each jackson epic since has increasingly seemed like a guy with too much time and money being let loose in the CGI playpen, with narrative momentum seemingly no longer a primary (or even secondary, in the hobbit trilogy's case) concern, and it's easy to forget how vivid, moving and awe-inspiring he can be when his talents are harnessed to serve the story.

9) All About Lily Chou-Chou (Dir. Shunji Iwai)

an early digital tone poem on teen angst during the formative days of the internet (and ethereal bjorkian pop) which is every bit as juvenile, irritating and melodramatic as teenagers tend to be (probably why i avoided seeing it for so long, but since iwai's a bride for rip van winkle was my second favourite film of 2017 my interest was renewed), yet also contains a core of solitude, rage and despair that lingers hard. japan was far more fascinated and unnerved by the internet, and the plight of its youth at the turn of the millennium, than western cinema during this period (perhaps not surprising that the emergence of radical new technologies should concern that particular nation more than others), and while the country's most enduring response will pop up later on this list, i would recommend this bleak thing over sion sono's more sensationalised, uneven and really pretty nonsensical suicide club from the same year (although i'd recommend that too for its high points).

8) The Pledge (Dir. Sean Penn)

“there are such devils.” director sean penn openly references M and anticipates the 10x more distressing KEANE with this story of a retiring cop haunted by a promise made to a murdered child's mother, analogising audience and protagonist by frustrating his genre expectations along with ours, implicating our urge to exploit in the pursuit of knowledge, adrenaline and catharsis. penn can't resist the occasional hackneyed storytelling device (i.e. the psychiatrist) or rote emotional signpost, but mostly lets the material breathe, sorrow and anxiety blooming slowly with the seasons. he's also very good with actors--it's the cast that really sells the film's sense of location, isolation, community. and fuck, what a cast: jack nicholson in understated mode, benicio del toro in full weirdo mode, aaron eckhart in full dickhead mode, tom -definitely not a child molester- noonan, helen mirren, robin wright, harry dean stanton, mickey rourke, sam shepard, vanessa redgrave, patricia clarkson, and on and on... this is some cameo porn for the ages.

7) What Time Is It There? (Dir. Tsai Ming-Liang)

hardly anything happens in this movie. a recently bereaved man has a fleeting encounter with a woman who is leaving for paris and becomes obsessed with france, changing various clocks in taipei to french time and watching french movies, while the woman has a series of movie-ish encounters of her own. despite tsai's signature "slow cinema" deadpan, this is a very personal, melancholy and subtly hilarious film about the value of cinema as a balm for grief and loneliness.

6) Millennium Actress (Dir. Satoshi Kon)

here's the yang to perfect blue's yin; both are an elaborately layered series of meta-fictions which blur the line between fantasy and reality, but where its predecessor was cold and deeply disturbing, millennium actress is romantic and exhilarating, a little less focused but overpouring with joy and creativity. like the previous entry, another loving ode to the movies from a place of trauma.

5) Spirited Away (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki)

miyazaki's worldview never really spoke to me, nor his penchant for mawkish sentiments, but his imagination is another matter, on full display here. this was my fantasia when i saw it in the cinema as a 14 year old entirely ignorant of japan and its films and animations, and yet, now that i have reams of anime under my belt, this remains a unique enchantment, an indelible nightmare. i'm lost again each time i return.

4) Pulse (Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

slant magazine voted pulse as the best horror film of the 21st century, and i'd be hard pressed to disagree. it's surely the best directed and shot--easily one of the most hauntingly, oppressively shot films i've ever seen, in fact, with nods to antonioni and hitchcock. it's the rare film that becomes stranger and deeper with each rewatch, and more prescient too, diagnosing a desperate sickness underpinning our state of being in the age of modern technology, a disconnection and desensitisation that becomes ever more pervasive. those huge, dehumanising totems of industrialisation dotting the landscape may be abandoned now, but their replacements are only more advanced, insidious extensions of the same impulses, suggests kurosawa, and while the threat of another hiroshima has passed, our new existential destination may amount to the same thing. there's an awful lot to unpack here, but the fact that this ending is seemingly intended to be a happy one tells you all you need to know about kurosawa's feelings on modern japan.

3) The Royal Tenenbaums (Dir. Wes Anderson)

still probably the best film of wes anderson's career, the royal tenenbaums is an epic family drama of bottomless feeling, although his claustrophobic stylisation prevents that from being immediately apparent. rather, the much-maligned "quirk", as well as being crucial to the extraordinarily detailed, precise and emotionally loaded visual storytelling, disarm the viewer to the messy undercurrents of buried pain, resentment, grief, shame and love that reveal themselves to be driving these initially comical familial dynamics, and make something archetypal seem entirely new and devastating. many of my favourite films are those which sneak up on me when i least expect it, and this is a quintessential example.

2) Mulholland Drive (Dir. David Lynch)

this is lynch's Genesis, his vision of the Fall. an innocent can't resist biting at the apple that is the hollywood dream factory, and is sullied completely and absolutely, her seduction ultimately reducing her to something pathetic, monstrous, doomed. for lynch, hollywood is a religion to which his relationship is complex and conflicted, but defined above all by its monstrous intensity: a shining obsession, a distrust, a revulsion. with mulholland drive, this most overwhelmingly vivid of all filmmakers forces us to drown in its spellbinding fakeries with him. we are, after all, complicit in this devilry, this worshipping and this crushing of the brightest and most beautiful among us.

my one complaint, as i've said before, is that the goofy digressions add little for me, and i wish the film stayed focused on the two women from beginning to end. then again, maybe that would make it too hard to bear.

1) The Man Who Wasn't There (Dir. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)

the saddest film of the coens' careers, the man who wasn't there may also be their most direct argument against the accusations of cruel misanthropy--or, perhaps worse, cosmic indifference--that have plagued their whole careers. ed never considered himself to be a barber and, as it turns out, is far, far from who he appears to be on the surface; so, we might infer, are the coen brothers themselves. take that metaphor as far as you like, but ultimately what this film boils down to is the story of a man who loves his wife with all of his being, but has no tools for expressing it directly. instead, he does so--disastrously--through action. her character, and her fate, is not only heartbreaking by the coens' standards but, i would argue, by any filmmakers' standards, and it wrecks me with every viewing. so do any number of ed's lines, flat and emotionless and crying out to be understood beyond their surface meaning. he'd tell you the most beautiful love story ever told, if only he knew how.

Spoiler

“I don’t know where I’m being taken. I don’t know what I’ll find beyond the earth and sky. But I’m not afraid to go. Maybe the things I don’t understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away. Maybe Doris will be there. And maybe there I can tell her all those things they don’t have words for here.”

sometimes i think this may be my favourite film.

---------------

Spoiler

1. the man who wasn't there
2. mulholland drive
3. the royal tenenbaums
4. pulse
5. spirited away
6. millennium actress
7. what time is it there?
8. the pledge
9. all about lily chou-chou
10. the lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring

 

[CiG]

You crushed it man, always worth waiting for your slow ass to post your list. I desperately need to buy a copy of The Royal Tenenbaums and rewatch it, because I remember liking it a lot. Also a bunch of stuff I've never even heard of here that sound/look interesting, especially All About Lily Chou-Chou and What Time Is It There? and I guess Pulse too, even though I thought I had already seen it and disliked it, I might be mixing it up with one of the other plethora of late 90's/early 00's Japanese horror films.

Okay so I'll start doing the results tonight, cheers to everybody who gave me a list. I think this is possibly the biggest turnout of these games so far.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

list ranked. I might try to watch The Fast and the Furious again later tonight and see if it makes the bottom half.