MC Consensus - Best of the Decade So Far

[Spinal]

Submit your TEN favorite films from this year and in a week I will give you a top TWENTY FIVE. All films with an IMDb date of 2010 or later will be eligible including films from the current year.

The point system is as follows

1st Place- 10 points
2nd Place - 8 points
3rd Place - 7 points
4th Place - 6 points
5th Place - 5 points
6th Place - 4.5 points
7th Place - 4 points
8th Place - 3.5 points
9th Place - 3 points
10th Place - 2.5 points

(Point system is weighted to give your top film a boost and to minimize the discrepancy between the films in the bottom half of your list.)

There will be no restrictions on short films. A list must have ten films to be eligible. If you list more than ten films, I will assume that the top ten films are the ones you want to receive points. If you do not list your films 1-10, I will assign the points from the top on down.

If you decide to edit your ballot, please make a new post indicating the changes. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

If, for some reason, you would like to like to submit your ballot via private message, I will accept those as well. However, your ballot will be revealed after the final results are posted.

You may begin now.

[Dukefrukem]

Nit pick: Shouldn't it be from 2011-now?

[Spinal]

Nit pick: Shouldn't it be from 2011-now?

No, it should not.

1980-1989
1990-1999
2000-2009
2010-2019

[Peng]

1. Toy Story 3
2. Cloud Atlas
3. Before Midnight
4. The Tree of Life
5. It's Such a Beautiful Day
6. Two Days, One Night
7. Boyhood
8. A Separation
9. Warrior
10. Her

[Pop Trash]

1. The Tree of Life
2. Margaret
3. Greenberg
4. Her
5. The Social Network
6. Bones Brigade: An Autobiography
7. Holy Motors
8. The Immigrant
9. Under the Skin
10. Let Me In

[Melville]

1. The Grey
2. Margaret
3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
4. The Act of Killing
5. Her
6. The Turin Horse
7. Oslo, August 31st
8. Nymphomaniac Vol I
9. Leviathan (the Russian one, not the fish one)
10. Moonrise Kingdom

HMs: Leviathan (the fish one), Drive, Another Year

[Spinal]

I switch these around all the time. Today it feels like this ...

1. Pina
2. Inception
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
5. The Tree of Life
6. It's Such a Beautiful Day
7. The Act of Killing
8. The Illusionist (Chomet)
9. Under the Skin
10. Spring Breakers

[TGM]

1. Frozen
2. Interstellar
3. Dredd
4. Drive
5. Sucker Punch
6. Inception
7. Tangled
8. The Social Network
9. Les Miserables
10. Guardians of the Galaxy

[Ezee E]

Ask me in twenty minutes and it's probably different:

1. The Grey
2. Social Network
3. Place Beyond the Pines
4. 12 Years A Slave
5. Drive
6. Gone Girl
7. Blue is the Warmest Color
8. Django Unchained
9. Life of Pi
10. Birdman

[transmogrifier]

1. The We and the I (81)
2. Confessions (78)
3. Boyhood (76)
4. What We Do in the Shadows (76)
5. A Touch of Sin (75)
6. The Wind Rises (75)
7. Paranorman (75)
8. A Separation (74)
9. Elena (74)
10. Zero Dark Thirty (74)

[Russ]

1. Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen
2. World of Tomorrow
3. Confessions
4. Bibliotheque Pascal
5. Girl Walk // All Day
6. The Act of Killing
7. Holy Motors
8. The Grand Budapest Hotel
9. Moonrise Kingdom
10. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives



Final Cut used to be difficult to find. It's now on YouTube in its entirety. Here's a nice clip:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYGLqN4-GTE

[DavidSeven]

1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. A Separation
3. Before Midnight
4. Spring Breakers
5. Killer Joe
6. Inception
7. Martha Marcy May Marlene
8. In Bruges
9. Damsels in Distress
10. Stories We Tell

Probably missing something.

[Winston*]

Pretty rough, and ordered fairly arbitrarily aside from my number 1.


The Act of Killing
Another Year
The Tree of Life
Two Days One Night
Holy Motors
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Amour
The Master
Under the Skin
Calvary

[Ivan Drago]

1. The Tree of Life
2. Black Swan
3. Django Unchained
4. Under The Skin
5. Gravity
6. The Act of Killing
7. Shame
8. The Social Network
9. Exit Through The Gift Shop
10. It’s Such A Beautiful Day

[EyesWideOpen]

I haven't watched a movie in almost a year and a half but here goes:

1. Moonrise Kingdom
2. Drive
3. Black Swan
4. Stoker
5. Scott Pilgrim vs the World
6. Rango
7. Girl Walk // All Day
8. Django Unchained
9. I Wish
10. Her

[Lazlo]

1. Gravity
2. Drive
3. The Social Network
4. Cloud Atlas
5. Zero Dark Thirty
6. Interstellar
7. Life of Pi
8. The Master
9. Her
10. The Tree of Life

I guess...

[Irish]

1. The Wolf of Wall Street
2. Greenberg
3. Silver Linings Playbook
4. Bill Cunningham New York
5. Certified Copy
6. Starred Up
7. Dragon
8. The Rover
9. Coherence
10. Force Majeure

[Sycophant]

1. Tale of Princess Kaguya
2. Stories We Tell
3. Calvary
4. Moonrise Kingdom
5. Frances Ha
6. Snowpiercer
7. Boyhood
8. I Wish
9. Journey to the West
10. The Wind Rises

HMs: Bridesmaids, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Damsels in Distress, Scabbard Samurai, Pacific Rim

[Stay Puft]

1. Certified Copy
2. Oslo, August 31st
3. The Wind Rises
4. The Act of Killing
5. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
6. To the Wonder
7. Upstream Color
8. The Four Times
9. Eden
10. We are the Best!

[Mysterious Dude]

1. 12 Years a Slave (2013)
2. Wadjda (2012)
3. The Selfish Giant (2013)
4. Boyhood (2014)
5. Tomboy (2011)
6. Birdman (2014)
7. Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
8. It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
9. The Artist (2011)
10. The Tree of Life (2011)

[Raiders]

1. The Tree of Life
2. Certified Copy
3. It's Such a Beautiful Day
4. This is Not a Film
5. Moonrise Kingdom
6. Leviathan (the fish one)
7. Under the Skin
8. Girl Walk // All Day
9. The Tale of Princess Kaguya
10. Inherent Vice

[Watashi]

1. It's Such a Beautiful Day
2. The Wind Rises
3. The Tree of Life
4. Girl Walk // All Day
5. Before Midnight
6. The Social Network
7. The Grand Budapest Hotel
8. Margaret
9. Inside Llewyn Davis
10. Senna

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. The Tree of Life
2. Before Midnight
3. Inception
4. Cloud Atlas
5. The World's End
6. Upstream Color
7. Kill List
8. The Social Network
9. Snowpiercer
10. It's Such a Beautiful Day

[ContinentalOp]

1. Drive
2. Midnight in Paris
3. The Raid
4. Attack the Block
5. Carlos
6. The Kid with a Bike
7. The Grandmaster
8. Silver Linings Playbook
9. The World's End
10. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

[MadMan]

Oh I love these.

1. Drive (2011)
2. Django Unchained (2012)
3. The Social Network (2010)
4. The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)
5. Interstellar (2014)
6. Midnight In Paris (2011)
7. The Guest (2014)
7. Birdman (2014)
8. Let The Fire Burn (2013)
9. Hugo (2011)
10. Whiplash (2014)

[dreamdead]

1. Tree of Life
2. A Separation
3. Upstream Color
4. It’s Such a Beautiful Day
5. The Act of Killing
6. Before Midnight
7. Tabu
8. Certified Copy
9. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
10. Oslo, August 31st

HMs: Girl Walk // All Day, Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen, Inside Llewyn Davis, Meek’s Cutoff, A Touch of Sin

I would also recommend that people check out Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen, which successfully blends mundane if not actively generic films together with classics in a vibrant exchange of motion and energy. Anyone that loves Girl Walk // All Day should appreciate it... thanks for the heads-up, Russ!

[EyesWideOpen]

Dogtooth is 2009.

[Russ]

I would also recommend that people check out Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen, which successfully blends mundane if not actively generic films together with classics in a vibrant exchange of motion and energy. Anyone that loves Girl Walk // All Day should appreciate it... thanks for the heads-up, Russ!
Thanks! There's a really good in-depth article in Senses of Cinema (http://sensesofcinema.com/2013/feature-articles/creativity-beyond-originality-gyorgy-palfis-final-cut-as-narrative-supercut/) about the film that you might enjoy.

[Gizmo]

1. Black Swan
2. Shutter Island
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. Boyhood
5. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
6. Amour
7. Dallas Buyers Club
8. The Artist
9. Before Midnight
10. The Wolf of Wall Street

[Henry Gale]

So many choices I love in this thread that I can't believe I'm not putting on my list, but (for now):


The Tree Of Life [EDIT: originally Enter The Void, but IMDb date is 2009, new #10 added]
Holy Motors
The Look Of Silence
Her
Drive
It's Such A Beautiful Day
The Cabin In The Woods
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance)
Boyhood
Black Swan


But not putting Black Swan, Ex Machina (already), The Act of Killing, Certified Copy, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Scorsese's last three films, Spring Breakers, Scott Pilgrim and World's End, We Are The Best!, Amour, Chomet's The Illusionist, Inherent Vice, Queen Of Versailles, Lego Movie (even to simply stand as an overall Lord/Miller achievement award), anything Fincher's done in this great stretch, Midnight In Paris, Princess Kaguya, 127 Hours, To The Wonder, either Wes Anderson film, Inception (hell, maybe even Interstellar after another watch), Under The Skin, or This Is Not A Film just feels wrong.... And I'm not even sure that's everything I loved to their level, just what I remember.

[Spinal]

So many choices I love in this thread that I can't believe I'm not putting on my list, but (for now):


Enter The Void
The Tree Of Life
Holy Motors
The Look Of Silence
Her
Drive
It's Such A Beautiful Day
The Cabin In The Woods
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance)
Boyhood


But not putting Black Swan, Ex Machina (already), The Act of Killing, Certified Copy, Exit Through The Gift Shop, Scorsese's last three films, Spring Breakers, Scott Pilgrim and World's End, We Are The Best!, Amour, Chomet's The Illusionist, Inherent Vice, Queen Of Versailles, Lego Movie (even to simply stand as an overall Lord/Miller achievement award), anything Fincher's done in this great stretch, Midnight In Paris, Princess Kaguya, 127 Hours, To The Wonder, either Wes Anderson film, Inception (hell, maybe even Interstellar after another watch), Under The Skin, or This Is Not A Film just feels wrong.... And I'm not even sure that's everything I loved to their level, just what I remember.

Enter the Void is not eligible. So, you get one more. :)

[thefourthwall]

1. The Tree of Life
2. The Act of Killing
3. It's Such a Beautiful Day
4. Boyhood
5. The Social Network
6. Before Midnight
7. Upstream Color
8. Under the Skin
9. Whiplash
10. Another Year

[right_for_the_moment]

1. Certified Copy
2. The Tree of Life
3. Margaret
4. Her
5. Melancholia
6. The Wolf of Wall Street
7. Somewhere
8. The Turin Horse
9. Contagion
10. Exit Through the Gift Shop

[Spinal]

I'm thinking I probably won't get around to the final tally until the weekend.

I hope to have a top 25. But if there isn't enough data to warrant that, it may be a top 20 instead. We'll see.

[Dukefrukem]

I'll post mine tonight.

[Idioteque Stalker]

1. The Wolf of Wall Street
2. The Tree of Life
3. Upstream Color
4. Margaret
5. Certified Copy
6. Under the Skin
7. Spring Breakers
8. Stranger by the Lake
9. Exit Through the Gift Shop
10. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

[Henry Gale]

Enter the Void is not eligible. So, you get one more. :)

I thought about this, and now see you stated IMDb dates were the criteria, but the movie wasn't shown or released outside of festivals until May of 2010 in France. So as much as I'd personally consider it 2010, since the public didn't see it 'til then, and it would've never been in many 2009 year-end lists or Best of 2000-2009 decade ones at that time...

I'll slot Black Swan in at #10.

[Spinal]

I thought about this, and now see you stated IMDb dates were the criteria, but the movie wasn't shown or released outside of festivals until May of 2010 in France. So as much as I'd personally consider it 2010, since the public didn't see it 'til then, and it would've never been in many 2009 year-end lists or Best of 2000-2009 decade ones at that time...

I'll slot Black Swan in at #10.

I hear ya. It would have been on my list too. Thanks for the edit.

[Dukefrukem]

1. Inception
2. The Raid: Redemption
3. Upstream Color
4. Black Swan
5. Interstellar
6. Cabin in the Woods
7. Gravity
8. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
9. Gone Girl
10. Melancholia

[Barty]

1. Inception
2. Cloud Atlas
3. Birdman
4. Black Swan
5. Boyhood
6. The Grey
7. The Social Network
8. Tangled
9. Melancholia
10. The Wolf of Wall Street


Surprisingly hard to order.

[Mr. McGibblets]

1. Looper
2. Contagion
3. A Separation
4. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
5. Inside Llewyn Davis
6. Haywire
7. Damsels in Distress
8. Django Unchained
9. The World’s End
10. The Social Network

[Boner M]

There are fish in the Russian Leviathan too, you sillies.

1. The Tree of Life
2. Journey to the West (Tsai Ming-Liang)
3. Oslo, August 31st
4. The Turin Horse
5. Holy Motors
6. Le Quattro Volte
7. Margaret
8. Like Someone in Love
9. Leviathan ('12)
10. The Master

[Idioteque Stalker]

There are fish in the Russian Leviathan too, you sillies.

If there is Russian in the fish Leviathan then I just fucking give up.

[Melville]

There are fish in the Russian Leviathan too, you sillies.
I was too caught up in the hopelessness to notice the fish. Unless the whale was a fish.

By the way, did you get my invitation to meet up in Toronto? Or are you back in Australia now?

[Dukefrukem]

I wanted to fit Melancholia on my list.

Edit: awe fuck it.

[Watashi]

A wild boner appears!

[Spinal]

This is last call. I will start revealing results today.

[Spinal]

What did your original ballot look like, Duke? I need to know what you took out. Thanks.

Never mind. I remember. It was Argo.

[Spinal]

All right, 25 films and only one tie. Not bad. Just gotta do some double checking and then we can begin.

[Spinal]

#25

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/df03037b-5711-4ec3-bd52-eb81b6c35026_zps8gpildjr.jpg
It will get better. Everything will be alright ..... Except it won't, you know.

Oslo, August 31st

Director: Joachim Trier

One day in the life of Anders, a young recovering drug addict, who takes a brief leave from his treatment center to interview for a job and catch up with old friends in Oslo.

The movie is very loosely based on the French book Le feu follet, a 1931 novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.

Won Best Film and Best Cinematography at the Stockholm Film Festival.
Motivation of the jury: "In this film we get to know the man who had all possibilities in a fantastic world, but failed to do anything with it. It is an uncomfortably honest character; both to himself and the world around him. Clever dialogue with an underlying tone of humour, breathtaking cinematography and truthful acting makes this film a perfect portrait of the director's generation."

"The surface of Oslo, August 31st is as cool and crystalline as a Scandinavian lake, but at its core is a benevolence for the life we all share and tears for the man who can no longer share in it." -- Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Sample IMDb thread titles
Sux on Many Levelz
Rich Kid, No Future?
Explain it to me

[Dukefrukem]

I liked Oslo a lot, but enough to be in my top 10 of the decade.

[Spinal]

#23 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Hayao-Miyazaki-The-Wind-Rises-650x344_zpsnvzkepca.jpg
Inspiration unlocks the future.

The Wind Rises

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

A look at the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the man who designed Japanese fighter planes during World War II.

Miyazaki's final feature-length film. After the first screening of the film, Miyazaki said it was the first time he ever cried during the screening of his own movie.

Nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the Academy Awards.
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes.
Won Best Animated Film, New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

"Even if Hayao Miyazaki's career is complete, a work like this serves to remind us of the shining beacons he's left behind him, the testaments to pursuing beauty in the face of so much ugliness, themselves lasting reminders of the quiet rewards of determination." -- Jesse Cataldo, Slant Magazine

Sample IMDb thread titles
How Frozen won over this I will never understand.
Is This A Pro Nazi Movie
So He Saved The Worst For Last?

[Spinal]

#23 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/03-_natthakarn_aphaiwonk_sakda_ka ewbuadee_jenjira_pongpas_zpsnz zaounw.jpg
Heaven is overrated. There is nothing there.

Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives

Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave - the birthplace of his first life.

Inspired by the 1983 book A Man Who Can Recall Past Lives by Phra Sripariyattiweti of Sang Arun Forest Monastery, Khon Kaen. The film consists of six reels each shot in a different cinematic style. The styles include, according to the director, "old cinema with stiff acting and classical staging", "documentary style", "costume drama" and "my kind of film when you see long takes of animals and people driving".

Won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won Best Language Foreign Film, Toronto Film Critics Association Awards.

"If anything, Joe's sense of dream logic is more naturalistic than Lynch's, more grounded in the knowable world - as much, that is, as we can know about nature - and the luminous Uncle Boonmee is no exception." -- Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline

Sample IMDb thread titles
Cattle
Pretentious Tripe (and then some)
why so damn slow?

[Spinal]

#22

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Interstellar-desert-header_zpshkwtfbqp.jpg
Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.

Interstellar

Director: Christopher Nolan

A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival.

The method of space travel was based on physicist Kip Thorne's works, which were also the basis for the method of space travel in Carl Sagan's novel Contact. According to Thorne, the largest degree of creative license in the film are the clouds of the ice planet, which are structures that probably go beyond the material strength which ice would be able to support.

Won Best Visual Effects at the Academy Awards. Also nominated for Original Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Production Design.
Nominated for Best Original Score at the Golden Globes.
Named Worst Film in the Village Voice Film Poll.

"An exhilarating slalom through the wormholes of Christopher Nolan's vast imagination that is at once a science-geek fever dream and a formidable consideration of what makes us human." -- Scott Foundas, Variety

Sample IMDb thread titles
my favorite plot hole
Moon landing poll: Real or hoax?...
I wonder how Eskimoes fared...

[Spinal]

#21

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/1327869166_liam-neeson-the-grey-b_zpsmgnvby5e.jpg
Once more into the fray. Into the last good fight I'll ever know.

The Grey

Director: Joe Carnahan

After their plane crashes in Alaska, six oil workers are led by a skilled huntsman to survival, but a pack of merciless wolves haunts their every step.

In his glowing review of this film, Roger Ebert stated that in his long career, this was the only time that he actually walked out of his next scheduled screening because it affected him so. "After The Grey was over, I watched the second film for 30 minutes and then got up and walked out of the theater. It was the first time I've ever walked out of a film because of the previous film. The way I was feeling in my gut, it just wouldn't have been fair to the next film."

Won Best Actor (Liam Neeson) at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards.

"What is surprising is how poetic the movie is, partly thanks to its high-lonesome sound design and the desolate beauty of its visuals, but mostly because of its star, Liam Neeson." -- Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline

Sample IMDb thread titles
Did REALISM piss in their coffee?
If Allegory, does it matter that acts to survive don't make sense?
Guys...it's a movie

[Spinal]

#20

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/django-unchained-1_zpsgj96wdbz.jpg
Kill white people and get paid for it? What's not to like?

Django Unchained

Director: Quentin Tarantino

With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.

Christoph Waltz dislocated his pelvic bone while training for his part. Waltz's injury necessitated that King Schultz's early scenes on horseback be accommodated by a horse-drawn wagon instead. Holds the all time record for most uses of the word "nigger" or some version of it in a motion picture, with 116 uses.

Won Best Supporting Actor (Christoph Waltz) and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Also nominated for Best Picture, Cinematography and Sound Editing.
Won Best Supporting Actor (Waltz) and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes.
Won the MTV Movie Award for Best WTF Moment.

"The film doesn't play it safe, so neither will I. Instead, I'll say that it finds Mr. Tarantino perched improbably but securely on the top of a production that's wildly extravagant, ferociously violent, ludicrously lurid and outrageously entertaining, yet also, remarkably, very much about the pernicious lunacy of racism and, yes, slavery's singular horrors." -- Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal

Sample IMDb thread titles
Racism wasn't that bad here is proof
Appeasing the anti white gods in hollywood is the only road to success.
I'm saying this word as a test

[Melville]

Haven't seen The Wind Rises, but I'm a fan of all the others so far.

The IMDb thread titles are great.

[Pop Trash]

Gawd, I could probably list about 100 films I liked more this decade than Interstellar.

[Spinal]

#19

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/holymotors_2228984b_zps8kcjlbk z.jpg
Who knows if we'll laugh in the next life?

Holy Motors

Director: Leos Carax

From dawn to dusk, a few hours in the shadowy life of a mystic man named Monsieur Oscar.

Edith Scob, who plays chauffeur Céline, starred in the French horror classic Eyes Without a Face , by director Georges Franju. Franju's cinema is the object of several homages throughout the film. It was French director Claire Denis who suggested Kylie Minogue for the film.

Won Award of the Youth at Cannes.
Won Best International Feature and Best Cinematography, Chicago International Film Festival. ("For images that were achingly beautiful and inventive, and somehow managed to be always perfectly in sync with the confounding universe of the narrative.")
Won Best Foreign Film, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards .

"An electrifying, confounding, what-the-hell-just-happened exercise in unbounded imagination, unapologetic theatricality, bravura acting and head-over-heels movie-love." -- Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

Sample IMDb thread titles
Why do art films make people so angry?
It's that dude from Radiohead's video to 'Rabbit in Your Headlights'
STREAMING ON NETFLIX WITHOUT THE pipe

[Spinal]

#18

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Under-the-Skin-feat-Scarlett-Johansson_zps2ljrrzjv.jpg
I just... wanted to get away from it all.
Yeah? Why here?
Because it's... It's nowhere.

Under the Skin

Director: Jonathan Glazer

A mysterious woman seduces lonely men in the evening hours in Scotland. Events lead her to begin a process of self-discovery.

The men lured into the van by Scarlett Johansson's character were not actors. Glazer had hidden cameras installed in the van and only informed the men afterwards that they were in a movie. Selkies are mythological creatures found in Scottish, Irish, and Icelandic folk lore. Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land.

Nominated for Best International Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won British Film of the Year, London Critics Circle Film Awards.
Won Best Depiction of Nudity, Sexuality, or Seduction from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.

"What's under the film's surface is intriguing enough, but it's the surface itself that holds you in a dark trance. A portrait of alienation filmed from the alien's point of view - or is it just a woman's? - the movie's a cinematic Rubik's Cube that snaps together surprisingly easily, yet whose larger meanings remain tantalizingly out of reach." -- Ty Burr, Boston Globe

Sample IMDb thread titles
metaphor about plutocrats using pussy power to subjugate men
Wouldn't you question why you are in a pitch black place but could see?
Stunt penises?

[Spinal]

#17

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/raeven-lee-hanan-tom-hanks-cloud-atlas-warner-bros-crop_zpsbuohm4or.jpg
From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.

Cloud Atlas

Director: Tom Tykwer, Andy and Lana Wachowski

An exploration of how the actions of individual lives impact one another in the past, present and future, as one soul is shaped from a killer into a hero, and an act of kindness ripples across centuries to inspire a revolution.

Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski directed the 1849, 2144, and 2321 segments of the film. Tom Tykwer directed the 1936, 1973, and 2012 segments. Because of the nature of casting on the film, the directors told the actors to think of their roles as a "genetic strain" rather than a series of individual parts, with actions in one story-line affecting another.

Nominated for Best Original Score at the Golden Globes.
Won Best Production at the Bavarian Film Awards.
Named Worst Film of the Year by Time Magazine.

"Even as I was watching Cloud Atlas the first time, I knew I would need to see it again. Now that I've seen it the second time, I know I'd like to see it a third time ... Surely this is one of the most ambitious films ever made." -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Sample IMDb thread titles
Where is earth ?
Worst Asian face make up in history
I've had this movie on my shelf gathering dust for over a year...

[EyesWideOpen]

Cloud Atlas is a bad movie. Sorry MC.

[Raiders]

There are fish in the Russian Leviathan too, you sillies.

Haven't seen it... was just following Melville's cue.

[Peng]

Loved, loved the IMDB thread titles.


Cloud Atlas is a bad movie. Sorry MC.

You're forgiven.

[Spinal]

#16

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/a-separation_zps7xhegjcm.jpg
What is wrong is wrong, no matter who said it or where it's written.

A Separation

Director: Asghar Farhadi

A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.

In September 2010, Farhadi was banned from making the film by the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, because of an acceptance speech held during an award ceremony where he expressed support for several Iranian film personalities. The ban was lifted in the beginning of October after Farhadi claimed to have been misperceived and apologized for his remarks.

The first Iranian film to be awarded an Oscar. The first Iranian film to be awarded a Golden Globe.
Won Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Also nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
Won Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes.
Won Best International Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won Best Foreign Film at the César Awards.
Won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.

"Farhadi is no mere formalist. His film is a spiritual investigation into the rise of women and the descent of male privilege in Iran, and a look at the toll that has taken. In a movie of flawless acting, it is [Peyman] Moaadi - terse, proud, angry, haunted - who shows us that rare thing: a soul in transition." -- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Sample IMDb thread titles
Tehran looks modern!!!!!
No mention of America, The Great Satan?! Unrealistic...
fkkkkkkkk me

[Spinal]

#15

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/AR-140119779_zps7nqeuki7.jpg
I think anybody who falls in love is a freak. It's a crazy thing to do. It's kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity.

Her

Director: Spike Jonze

A lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with his newly purchased operating system that's designed to meet his every need.

Samantha Morton was originally the voice of Samantha. One legacy of Morton's casting is the name of Theodore's operating system. Both lead female roles take the same name as their lead actresses, Amy from actress Amy Adams and Samantha from Morton, but since she had to be re-cast at the last minute, the OS's name stayed Samantha.

Won Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards. Also nominated for Best Picture, Original Score, Original Song and Production Design.
Won Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes.
Won Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America.
Won Best Depiction of Nudity, Sexuality, or Seduction from the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.

"A delicate, droll masterwork, writer-director Spike Jonze's Her sticks its neck out, all the way out, asserting that what the world needs now and evermore is love, sweet love. Preferably between humans, but you can't have everything all the time." -- Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

Sample IMDb thread titles
Rich White Hipster Problems.
Rate the Movie's Creepiness from 1 to 10.
Serious wardrobe question

[Spinal]

#14

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Still-from-Upstream-Color-008_zpscsc3pxd2.jpg
I have to apologize. I was born with a disfigurement where my head is made of the same material as the sun.

Upstream Color

Director: Shane Carruth

A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives.

The film that Kris is editing at the beginning of the movie is A Topiary, the film that Shane Carruth had begun production on before deciding to film Upstream Color instead.

Nominated for Best Director and Best Editing at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance. ("Sound Design - A film that we thought had absorbing use of sound and incredible aural inventiveness.")
Won the Citizen Kane Award for Best Directorial Revelation, Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival

"If you've ever sat at your desk wondering whether there's more to life, or been kept awake by an insidious hum in the darkness, this will speak to your soul - even as its enveloping, disturbing, uplifting story sends your mind reeling with giddy possibilities." -- Trevor Johnston, Time Out London

Sample IMDb thread titles
Worst movie of 2013 -- Grown Ups 2 or Upstream Color?
Will this make my head hurt?
Is this movie pertentuous?

[Pop Trash]

Cloud Atlas is a bad movie. Sorry MC.

Dis iz da tru tru...that said it's the type of bad movie I admire for existing. It is wildly ambitious at least.

[Spinal]

#13

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/hero_WolfOfWallStreet-2013-1_zpsxjidvnuo.jpg
There's no nobility in poverty. I've been a poor man, and I've been a rich man. And I choose rich every fucking time.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Director: Martin Scorsese

Based on the true story of Jordan Belfort, from his rise to a wealthy stock-broker living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption and the federal government.

The word 'fuck' and its numerous conjugations are said 569 times, making this the film with the most uses of the word in a main-stream, non-documentary film. The real Jordan Belfort says the model for his get-rich-quick, and by-any-means, ruthlessly unscrupulous disposition was Gordon Gekko in Wall Street.

Nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Jonah Hill), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture.
Won Best Actor - Musical/Comedy (DiCaprio) at the Golden Globes.
Won the MTV Movie Award for Best WTF Moment. Also nominated for Best Shirtless Performance (DiCaprio).

"If it had been a drama, The Wolf of Wall Street might have been unwatchable: There's simply too much of everything. But Scorsese and screenwriter Terence Winter hit on the genius idea to turn the story into a riotous comedy, one that keeps topping itself every time you think it can't possibly get crazier." -- Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald

Sample IMDb thread titles
Pure comedy ... until he beats his wife ...
What drug is he doing out of the hooker's b-hole?
Bald crotch?

[Winston*]

Is this movie pertentuous?

Awesome.

[Spinal]

#12

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/margaret_zpsaxexddws.jpg
Because... this isn't an opera! And we are not all supporting characters to the drama of your amazing life!

Margaret

Director: Kenneth Lonergan

A young woman witnesses a bus accident, and is caught up in the aftermath, where the question of whether or not it was intentional affects many people's lives.

Originally scheduled for release in 2007 but Lonergan spent a further 4 years struggling with Fox Searchlight Pictures over the final cut, resulting in several lawsuits. Lonergan was contractually obligated to deliver a cut of 150 minutes but his preferred version ran close to three hours.

Won Actress of the Year (Anna Paquin), London Critics Circle Film Awards.
Won Best Actress (Paquin), Best Supporting Actress (Jeannie Berlin) and Best Screenplay in the Village Voice Film Poll.

"Ambitious, affecting, unwieldy and haunting, it's an eccentric, densely atmospheric, morally hyper-aware masterpiece that refuses to follow the strictures of conventional cinematic structure, instead leading the audience on a circuitous journey down the myriad rabbit holes that comprise modern-day Manhattan." -- Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

Sample IMDb thread titles
Since I saw the sex scene, I began to hate having sex with women
Too much yelling
pretentious? maybe, but at least it wasn't Tree of Life...

[Spinal]

#11

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/91o9OrQUMmL._SL1500__zpsn1xpp7 ls.jpg
We're in love. We just want to be together. What's wrong with that?

Moonrise Kingdom

Director: Wes Anderson

A pair of young lovers flee their New England town, which causes a local search party to fan out to find them.

Before filming, neither Kara Hayward nor Jared Gilman had ever seen a typewriter in person. This is the first Wes Anderson film without any involvement of Owen Wilson.

Nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
Nominated for Best Picture - Comedy/Musical at the Golden Globes.
Nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography and Best Supporting Male (Bruce Willis).

"The usual complaints and caveats about Anderson - he's precious, his characters have no grounding in the real world - can be made about Moonrise Kingdom, but so what? This is his seventh feature, he has been working with a gang of collaborators in front of the camera and behind, and his worldview gets richer, and more revealing, even as the view from his lens gets smaller, closer, almost two-dimensional in its oddball tableaux." -- Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

Sample IMDb thread titles
I was thinking Anna Kendrick was going to be in this
Did Bruce Willis have real hair in the movie?
So then. Everybody's OK with...

[MadMan]

I loved Moonrise Kingdom but it did not make my list. Same thing applies to Upstream Color.

[transmogrifier]

I don't know, MC. I feel like we are drifting apart......maybe it's time we saw other people.

[Dukefrukem]

16-11 are all great entries. You can put them in any order and I'd be fine with it.

17 Cloud Atlas is a shocker.

[Irish]

Thread of the year? Spinal's write ups are excellent and those IMDb references are priceless.

Keep em coming

[Spinal]

#10

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1195028/images/o-BEFORE-MIDNIGHT-facebook.jpg
Like sunlight, sunset, we appear, we disappear. We are so important to some, but we are just passing through.

Before Midnight

Director: Richard Linklater

We meet Jesse and Celine nine years on in Greece. Almost two decades have passed since their first meeting on that train bound for Vienna.

Although the movie features naturalistic dialogue, every scene was heavily rehearsed, rigidly followed the script and involved no improvisation. When Céline recalls a black-and-white film from her teenage years which had a powerful impact on her, particularly a scene in which a couple visit Pompeii and see the bodies mummified by the volcanic explosion, she doesn't name the film, but it is Viaggio in Italia which is loosely based on James Joyce's short story, The Dead.

Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Academy Awards.
Nominated for Best Performance by an Actress - Comedy/Musical (Julie Delpy) at the Golden Globes.
Nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Female Lead (Delpy) at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won Best Screenplay in the Village Voice Film Poll.
Won Best Woman Storyteller, Best Screen Couple and Best Equality of the Sexes, Women Film Critics Circle Awards.

"It's a rare and powerful thing to confront something honest and real on the big screen. It stays with you in a way that nothing else can. Before Midnight is fiction but it might as well be a documentary." -- James Berardinelli, ReelViews

Sample IMDb thread titles
The 'First World Problems' Trilogy
This movie is like watching paint dry
The Seinfeld of films

[Spinal]

#9

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/black-swan_zpszoqjbin1.jpg
The only person standing in your way is you.

Black Swan

Director: Darren Aronofsky

A ballet dancer wins the lead in Swan Lake and is perfect for the role of the delicate White Swan but slowly loses her mind as she becomes more and more like the Black Swan.

Darren Aronofsky first approached Natalie Portman about making a film set in the dance world in 2001 when Portman was 20 years old. Aronofsky envisioned it as a film loosely based on The Double: A Petersburg Poem by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Won Best Actress at the Academy Awards (Portman). Also nominated for Best Picture, Director, Cinematography and Editing.
Won for Best Performance by an Actress - Drama (Portman) at the Golden Globes. Also nominated for Best Picture - Drama, Director and Supporting Actress (Mila Kunis).
Won four Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature, Director, Female Lead (Portman) and Cinematography.
Won the Marcello Mastroianni Award (Mila Kunis) at the Venice Film Festival.

Portman was also named Best Actress by:
BAFTA Awards
Screen Actors Guild Awards
Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA
Austin Film Critics Association
Awards Circuit Community Awards
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards
Central Ohio Film Critics Association
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards
CinEuphoria Awards
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards
Denver Film Critics Society
Fangoria Chainsaw Awards
Florida Film Critics Circle Awards
Golden Schmoes Awards
Houston Film Critics Society Awards
Indiana Film Journalists Association, US
International Online Film Critics' Poll
Iowa Film Critics Awards
Italian Online Movie Awards
Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards
Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards
New York Film Critics, Online
North Texas Film Critics Association, US
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Awards
Online Film & Television Association
Online Film Critics Society Awards
Palm Springs International Film Festival
Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards
Rembrandt Awards
SESC Film Festival, Brazil
Scream Awards
Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards
St. Louis Film Critics Association, US
Teen Choice Awards
Utah Film Critics Association Awards

"Wild and woolly, the movie is a breathtaking head trip that hails from a long tradition of backstage melodramas: 42nd Street, A Star Is Born, All About Eve, and, yes, that kitschy '90s relic, Showgirls." -- Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer

Sample IMDb thread titles
why was she peeing standing up
Did Aronofsky just hire anyone who was Jewish...?
was this c**p really made by the director of noah?

[Spinal]

#8

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/boyhood-review-2_zpsj0muazbp.jpg
We're all just winging it, you know? The good news is you're feeling stuff. And you've got to hold on to that.

Boyhood

Director: Richard Linklater

The life of Mason, from early childhood to his arrival at college.

Richard Linklater cast his daughter Lorelei Linklater as Samantha because she was always singing and dancing around the house and wanted to be in his movies. At about the third or fourth year of filming, she lost interest and asked for her character to be killed off. Had Richard Linklater died during the 12-year shoot, Ethan Hawke would have taken over the directorial duties.

Won Best Supporting Actress (Patricia Arquette) at the Academy Awards. Also nominated for Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Hawke), Director, Original Screenplay and Editing.
Won Best Picture - Drama, Director and Supporting Actress (Arquette) at the Golden Globes. Also nominated for Supporting Actor (Hawke) and Screenplay.
Won Best Director and Supporting Female (Arquette) at the Independent Spirit Awards. Also nominated for Best Feature, Supporting Male (Hawke) and Editing.
Nominated for Movie of the Year at the MTV Movie Awards. Lost to The Fault in Our Stars.

"I'm as reluctant to stop writing about this movie as I was to stop watching it: At 166 minutes, it flies by, and you don't want to leave that world. But one thing is certain: This isn't the last word. People will be writing about this film for years - and looking at it to discover the lost history of our time." -- Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Sample IMDb thread titles
Was amazing but Ellar Coltrane's acting seemed to get worse
Does Ethan Hawke always play himself?
So the movie could have been called 'Mom Marries Alcoholics'

[Dukefrukem]

Ooof.

[Spinal]

#7

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Certified-Copy_zpseotibtky.jpg
I'm afraid there's nothing very simple about being simple.

Certified Copy

Director: Abbas Kiarostami

In Tuscany to promote his latest book, a middle-aged British writer meets a French woman who leads him to the village of Lucignano. While there, a chance question reveals something deeper.

In Iran, it was automatically banned by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance because it had been produced in western culture. Juliette Binoche's attire in the film particularly came under scrutiny. It was finally granted public release in Iran in 2011. Editing was taking place throughout the whole shoot so three days after filming was complete, a first assembly rough cut was ready.

Won Best Actress (Binoche) and Award of the Youth at Cannes.
Won Best Foreign Language Film, San Francisco Film Critics Circle.

"Perhaps Kiarostami's intention is to demonstrate how the reality is whatever the artist chooses, and that he can transfer from original art to a copy in midstream. Or perhaps that's not possible. Perhaps I have no idea what he's demonstrating." -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Sample IMDb thread titles
Is Kiarostami going to die?
Juliette Binoche's cleavage
reminded me of house-sitter at first

[Spinal]

#6

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Inception_zpsugwbj6ty.jpg
Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate.

Inception

Director: Christopher Nolan

A thief who steals corporate secrets through use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO.

In an effort to combat confusion, television broadcasts in Japan include text in the upper-left corner of the screen to remind viewers which level of the dream a specific scene takes place in. Nolan has said that the snow-based third-level dream was inspired by his favourite James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Won Best Cinematography, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing and Visual Effects at the Academy Awards. Also nominated for Best Picture, Original Screenplay, Original Score and Art Direction.
Nominated for Best Picture - Drama, Director, Screenplay and Original Score at the Golden Globes.
Won Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Won Best Scared-As-Shit Performance (Ellen Page) at the MTV Movie Awards.
Won a Hall of Shame distinction from the Women Film Critics Circle Awards. ("For making sure that one & only one 'good' female character is on hand for the express purpose of killing the one & only one 'bad' female character so none of the men have to do it.")

"Nolan blurs the distinction between dreams and reality so artfully that Inception may well be a masterpiece masquerading as a summer blockbuster." -- Lou Lumenick, New York Post

Sample IMDb thread titles
Has anyone seen Paprika and still like Inception
The Simpson parody is far more intelligent than inception
I found Ellen Page's attractiveness to be a distraction

[Spinal]

#5

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/ryan-gosling-in-drive-007_zpsmedvexcs.jpg
You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours.

Drive

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

A mysterious Hollywood stuntman and mechanic moonlights as a getaway driver and finds himself trouble when he helps out his neighbor.

Despite the driving storyline, director Nicolas Winding Refn does not have any interest in cars. He doesn't hold a driving license and has failed his driving test 8 times. Albert Brooks shaved his eyebrows for his role to make his character more emotionless.

Won Best Director at Cannes.
Nominated for Best Sound Editing at the Academy Awards.
Nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Brooks) at the Golden Globes.
Nominated for Best Feature, Director, Male Lead (Ryan Gosling) and Supporting Male (Brooks) at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won Best Supporting Actor (Brooks) in the Village Voice Film Poll.

"Low-key, sleek and sophisticated, Drive provides the visceral pleasures of pulp without sacrificing art. It's cool and smart. Some critics might even call it European." -- Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

Sample IMDb thread titles
why doesnt he talk?
Was the Driver a robot or hybrid?
Those toothpicks..

[Spinal]

#4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/wishfulfillment2_zpsl8pr31fw.j pg
Did I adequately answer your condescending question?

The Social Network

Director: David Fincher

Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg creates the social networking site that would become known as Facebook, but is later sued by two brothers who claimed he stole their idea, and the cofounder who was later squeezed out of the business.

Mark Zuckerberg remarked that, despite some of the film's inaccuracies, they got his clothing right. Jesse Eisenberg, who is diagnosed with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, said in an interview that one of the hardest things about the role was having to deliberately speak and behave in a manner he had struggled against in his own personality his entire life.

Won Best Adapted Screenplay, Original Score and Editing at the Academy Awards. Also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor (Eisenberg), Director, Cinematography and Sound Mixing.
Won Best Picture - Drama, Director, Screenplay and Original Score at the Golden Globes. Also nominated for Best Actor (Eisenberg) and Supporting Actor (Andrew Garfield).
Won Best Film, New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
Won Best Film, Actor (Eisenberg) and Screenplay in the Village Voice Film Poll.
Won Best Adapted Screenplay, Writers Guild of America.

"The power of The Social Network is that Zuckerberg is a weasel with a mission that can never be dismissed. The movie suggests that he may have built his ambivalence about human connection into Facebook's very DNA. That's what makes him a jerk-hero for our time." -- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

Sample IMDb thread titles
People only enjoyed this because it was about Facebook
Everybody spoke the same and had the same sense of humor
who the hell talks that fast in a bar?

[Spinal]

#3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/The-Act-Of-Killing-008_zpsl4rtrsf5.jpg
Is it all coming back to me? I really hope it won't. I don't want it to, Josh.

The Act of Killing

Director: Joshua Oppenheimer (with Christine Cynn and Anonymous)

A documentary which challenges former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish, including classic Hollywood crime scenarios and lavish musical numbers.

The co-director, as well as 48 other members of the film crew in 27 different positions, are credited as 'Anonymous' because they still fear revenge from the death-squad killers. The project started focusing on the family of the victims, but a lot were arrested as Oppenheimer was doing the interviews with them. In that process he started meeting torturers, so he decided to refocus the story on them.

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards.
Won Best Documentary at the BAFTA Awards.
Won Best Documentary at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Nominated for Best Documentary at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won Best Documentary Feature in the Village Voice Movie Poll.
Did not receive a nomination from the MTV Movie Awards.

"More terrifying than any horror film, and more intellectually adventurous than just about any 2013 release so far, The Act of Killing is a major achievement, a work about genocide that rightly earns its place alongside Shoah as a supreme testament to the cinema's capacity for inquiry, confrontation, and remembrance." -- Nick Schager, Village Voice

Sample IMDb thread titles
Pussy Warts...WTF?
Hermann needs to be in real movies.
A snuff film, finally

[Spinal]

#2

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/9_e_Don-Hertzfeldt-_Its-Such-a-Beautiful-Day_zpsls9mekki.jpg
I am in pain.

It's Such a Beautiful Day

Director: Don Hertzfeldt

Bill struggles to put together his shattered psyche.

No computers were used during production. The first installment, Everything Will Be OK, was released in 2006 and won the 2007 Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize for Short Film. The second installment, I Am So Proud of You was released in 2008 and won 27 film festival awards. The third and final chapter of the trilogy, It's Such a Beautiful Day, shares the same name as the feature length movie and was released in 2011 to similar acclaim.

"Hertzfeldt reaches for the stars, and takes his protagonist with him. Call the finale Kubrickian or Malickian, but for my money Hertzfeldt’s sense of humour gets him further than either." -- Nick Bradshaw, Sight & Sound

Sample Netflix reviews
"THE ENDING WAS NICE BUT THE BEGINNING TO MIDDLE WAS CRAZY. BUT ITS ART AND I APPRECIATE THE BEAUTIFUL ENDDING"

"simple. to the point. life and death and incoherence. watch. listen. it was good."

"This was many levels of everything scary, beautiful, tragic, and thoughtful. Watch while baked."

"This is the kind of film that would be shown and appreciated by someone at Sundance, but not much anywhere else."

"I watched the first 30m half of this and was genuinely confused why anyone would find this interesting or entertaining. It's a bit of random narration, then random violence, then confusing weird things, repeat ad nauseum. It plays old like the old Saladfingers flash videos, which also were strange and humorless. There is genuinely no point as far as I can tell, and don't wish to waste another 30m of my time."

[Winston*]

Cool top 3.

[Spinal]

#1

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/tree-of-life_zpsaykudzvy.jpg
Look at the glory around us ... trees, birds. I lived in shame. I dishonored it all, and didn't notice the glory.

The Tree of Life

Director: Terrence Malick

The story of a family in Waco, Texas in 1956. The eldest son witnesses the loss of innocence and struggles with his parents' conflicting teachings.

Dissatisfied by the look of modern computer generated visual effects, Malick approached veteran special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, who was responsible for the visual effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey, to create the visual effects for the film using bygone optical and practical methods. This marks the first feature film Trumbull has provided the effects for in 29 years, his last being Blade Runner.

Won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Nominated for Best Picture, Director and Cinematography at the Academy Awards.
Won Best Film and Director in the Village Voice Film Poll.

"Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I've seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it lacked Malick's fierce evocation of human feeling. There were once several directors who yearned to make no less than a masterpiece, but now there are only a few. Malick has stayed true to that hope ever since his first feature in 1973." -- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Sample IMDb thread titles
So, is this worse than 'The Fountain'???
Anyone who calls this film visually impressive needs to study science.
I knew about Nature, but WTF is "Grace" ??

[Spinal]

1. The Tree of Life (134)
2. It's Such a Beautiful Day (62.5)
3. The Act of Killing (55)
4. The Social Network (53.5)
5. Drive (52)
6. Inception (44)
7. Certified Copy (41.5)
8. Boyhood (41)
9. Black Swan (39.5)
10. Before Midnight (39)
11. Moonrise Kingdom (37.5)
12. Margaret (36.5)
13. The Wolf of Wall Street (35.5)
14. Upstream Color (33.5)
15. Her (31)
16. A Separation (30)
17. Cloud Atlas (28)
18. Under the Skin (27)
19. Holy Motors (26)
20. Django Unchained (25.5)
21. The Grey (24.5)
22. Interstellar (22.5)
23t. Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives (22)
23t. The Wind Rises (22)
25. Oslo, August 31st (21.5)

As you can see, The Tree of Life received over twice as many points as the next closest film.

[Pop Trash]

It's kind of insane that The Master didn't even crack the top 25 here, but it was #1 on The AV Club's list.

[Spinal]

One ballot was counted that was not posted in the thread. It was from Kurosawa Fan.

1. It’s Such a Beautiful Day
2. The Tree of Life
3. The Act of Killing
4. The Master
5. 13 Assassins
6. The Raid
7. Exit Through the Gift Shop
8. The Grand Budapest Hotel
9. The Conjuring
10. Paranorman

[Spinal]

It's kind of insane that The Master didn't even crack the top 25, when it was #1 on The AV Club's list.

Very surprising. I had to triple check to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

It was the last film I cut from my own top 10.

[Winston*]

Good list. Only films I don't care for are Interstellar, Cloud Atlas and The Social Network. Haven't seen Oslo, August 31st, Before Midnight or Boyhood.

[TGM]

Interestingly enough, while the yearly countdown lists here are usually radically different from my own choices, I'm actually quite pleased with how a lot of this one turned out. Good stuff here.

[transmogrifier]

Not really a fan of these at all.

1. The Tree of Life (134)
9. Black Swan (39.5)
11. Moonrise Kingdom (37.5)
15. Her (31)
20. Django Unchained (25.5)
22. Interstellar (22.5)

[Pop Trash]

1. The Tree of Life - 10
2. It's Such a Beautiful Day - n/s
3. The Act of Killing - 7
4. The Social Network - 9
5. Drive - 7
6. Inception - 8
7. Certified Copy - n/s
8. Boyhood - 8
9. Black Swan - 8
10. Before Midnight - 8
11. Moonrise Kingdom - 9
12. Margaret - 9
13. The Wolf of Wall Street - 7
14. Upstream Color - 6
15. Her - 9
16. A Separation - 8
17. Cloud Atlas - 5
18. Under the Skin - 9
19. Holy Motors - 9
20. Django Unchained - 8
21. The Grey - 8
22. Interstellar - 6
23t. Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives - n/s
23t. The Wind Rises - n/s
25. Oslo, August 31st - n/s

[Stay Puft]

Great presentation, Spinal. Thanks for doing this! (The IMDb thread titles were funny but nothing made me laugh harder than the list of award nominations for The Act of Killing.)

My ratings for the ones I've seen:

1. The Tree of Life - 8
3. The Act of Killing - 10
4. The Social Network - 4
5. Drive - 5
6. Inception - 6
7. Certified Copy - 10
9. Black Swan - 4
11. Moonrise Kingdom - 7
14. Upstream Color - 9
15. Her - 5
16. A Separation - 9
17. Cloud Atlas - 5
22. Interstellar - 7
23t. Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives - 9
23t. The Wind Rises - 9
25. Oslo, August 31st - 10

[Watashi]

Cool list. I'm glad stuff like The Grey and Interstellar made it.

1. The Tree of Life (10)
2. It's Such a Beautiful Day (10)
4. The Social Network (10)
5. Drive (9)
6. Inception (9)
7. Certified Copy (9)
8. Boyhood (9)
9. Black Swan (6)
10. Before Midnight (10)
11. Moonrise Kingdom (7.5)
12. Margaret (10)
13. The Wolf of Wall Street (8)
14. Upstream Color (7.5)
15. Her (6)
16. A Separation (9)
17. Cloud Atlas (5)
18. Under the Skin (9)
19. Holy Motors (6)
20. Django Unchained (6.5)
21. The Grey (9)
22. Interstellar (8.5)
23t. The Wind Rises (10)
25. Oslo, August 31st (8)

[Peng]

1. The Tree of Life (9.5)
2. It's Such a Beautiful Day (10)
3. The Act of Killing (8.5)
4. The Social Network (9)
5. Drive (8.5)
6. Inception (8.5)
7. Certified Copy (9)
8. Boyhood (9.5)
9. Black Swan (9)
10. Before Midnight (10)
11. Moonrise Kingdom (9)
13. The Wolf of Wall Street (8.5)
14. Upstream Color (7)
15. Her (9.5)
16. A Separation (10)
17. Cloud Atlas (9.5)
18. Under the Skin (9.5)
20. Django Unchained (7.5)
22. Interstellar (8.5)
23t. Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives (8.5)
23t. The Wind Rises (8.5)

[Dukefrukem]

You guys really think The Social Network is a better movie than Gone Girl?

[Dukefrukem]

Only haven't seen 4.

1. The Tree of Life (0.0)
2. It's Such a Beautiful Day (n/a)
3. The Act of Killing (9)
4. The Social Network (9)
5. Drive (9)
6. Inception (10)
7. Certified Copy (8)
8. Boyhood (5)
9. Black Swan (9)
10. Before Midnight (n/a)
11. Moonrise Kingdom (7)
12. Margaret (n/a)
13. The Wolf of Wall Street (9)
14. Upstream Color (9)
15. Her (9)
16. A Separation (9)
17. Cloud Atlas (7)
18. Under the Skin (4)
19. Holy Motors (7)
20. Django Unchained (8)
21. The Grey (8)
22. Interstellar (9)
23t. Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives (9)
23t. The Wind Rises (n/a)
25. Oslo, August 31st (9)

[Peng]

You guys really think The Social Network is a better movie than Gone Girl?

Loved Gone Girl, but yup. Gone Girl is great fun in its black, pulpy heart, but The Social Network just resonates way more.

And I totally didn't peg Uncle Boonmee to be your kind of thing at all.

[Dukefrukem]

Loved Gone Girl, but yup. Gone Girl is great fun in its black, pulpy heart, but The Social Network just resonates way more.

And I totally didn't peg Uncle Boonmee to be your kind of thing at all.

That's exactly what dreamdead said. And just as you said above, it resonated with me in a really peaceful way.

[EyesWideOpen]

1. The Tree of Life / C-
2. It's Such a Beautiful Day / A-
3. The Act of Killing / A-
4. The Social Network / B
5. Drive / A+
6. Inception / A-
7. Certified Copy / B
8. Boyhood / n/a
9. Black Swan / A+
10. Before Midnight / n/a
11. Moonrise Kingdom / A+
12. Margaret / D
13. The Wolf of Wall Street / n/a
14. Upstream Color / A
15. Her / A
16. A Separation / A
17. Cloud Atlas / D
18. Under the Skin / n/a
19. Holy Motors / B
20. Django Unchained / A+
21. The Grey / A-
22. Interstellar / n/a
23t. Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives / A-
23t. The Wind Rises / n/a
25. Oslo, August 31st / A-

[TGM]

You guys really think The Social Network is a better movie than Gone Girl?

Without question.

[Spinal]

I don't really get the appeal of The Social Network. Never did. It bums me out that Aaron Sorkin's work is considered excellent writing. I find it to be completely overwrought and inelegant. Too much talking.

[Dead & Messed Up]

For what it's worth, I'm generally not a fan of Sorkin and find his dialogue self-impressed and his characters same-sounding, at least in my limited experience. It's a bit like listening to Kevin Smith's best impression of David Mamet, if that makes any sense. I'm not sure why it clicked so well for me in The Social Network, but I think it's because the key mains (the Winklevii, Zuckerberg, and Parker) are young, arrogant collegiate dicks, which is about as accurate a source for Sorkin's words as I can think of.

Too much dialogue... I mean, it has more than any normal two films require, but I don't think I've ever felt bored watching it and listening to the characters. That opening scene is a static two-person shot/reverse, but it's like a swordfight.

[Pop Trash]

I don't really get the appeal of The Social Network. Never did. It bums me out that Aaron Sorkin's work is considered excellent writing. I find it to be completely overwrought and inelegant. Too much talking.

And if you were the inventor of match/cut, you'd have invented match/cut.

[baby doll]

So far nobody's been able to mount a convincing defense of The Tree of Life, which as I've said plenty of times before, is a string of pearls without a string. I believe I've also voiced my objections regarding The Act of Killing, which I found painfully repetitive: the reenactments get more elaborate as the film proceeds, but excepting the teddy bear scene, none of them are very effective. The Social Network is skillful and entertaining, which is about the most I can say for any Fincher movie; the deep resonance y'all are seeing in it is lost on me. Drive was watchable enough but not really my thing; I prefer earnest indie Gosling (The Slaughter Rule, Half Nelson) to beefcake-icon-for-closet-queens Gosling.

Inception is fanboy nonsense. Copie conforme would've been on my own list had I voted. Boyhood is touching, but I prefer Before Midnight, which has a more focused narrative. Black Swan is stupid; Aronofsky is a perfect example of a talented filmmaker who's been completely ruined by money.

Moonrise Kingdom is all kinds of awesome (especially Bob Balaban), but I slightly prefer The Grand Budapest Hotel, which may be my favorite of all of Anderson's films (and I'm a big fan). I've only seen the shorter cut of Margaret but even that was pretty great. The Wolf of Wall Street is Scorsese's most entertaining film in twenty years. Her was cute enough but there's not a lot happening visually, just Phoenix reacting to shit his talking computer says.

A Separation is terrific and Modest Reception (written and directed by an actor who's appeared in some of Farhadi's earlier films) is equally good if not better. I like Under the Skin but it's a bit derivative, as are all of Glazer's films. Holy Motors is pretty wonderful, though not quite as great as Mauvais sang or Les Amants du Pont Neuf. Django Unchained was fun but I'm not in any hurry to see it again.

Uncle Boonmee would probably be on my own list as well. The Wind Rises is probably the weakest Miyazaki I've seen, dramatically dull and populated by boring characters; for latter day Ghibli, I prefer Arrietty the Borrower.

I haven't seen It's Such a Beautiful Day, Upstream Color, Cloud Atlas, The Grey, Interstellar, or Olso, August 31st.

[Henry Gale]

1. The Tree of Life ‒ 9.7
2. It's Such a Beautiful Day ‒ 9.5
3. The Act of Killing ‒ 9.3
4. The Social Network ‒ 8.9
5. Drive ‒ 9.5
6. Inception ‒ 9.2
7. Certified Copy ‒ 9.1
8. Boyhood ‒ 9.4
9. Black Swan ‒ 9.3
10. Before Midnight ‒ n/a
11. Moonrise Kingdom ‒ 8.8
12. Margaret ‒ n/a
13. The Wolf of Wall Street ‒ 9.3
14. Upstream Color ‒ 8.9
15. Her ‒ 9.6
16. A Separation ‒ 9.2
17. Cloud Atlas ‒ 8.9
18. Under the Skin ‒ 9.1
19. Holy Motors ‒ 9.6
20. Django Unchained ‒ 9.0
21. The Grey ‒ 9.1
22. Interstellar ‒ 9.0
23t. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives ‒ 7.7
23t. The Wind Rises ‒ 8.6
25. Oslo, August 31st ‒ n/a

I ain't mad at it.

[dreamdead]

So far nobody's been able to mount a convincing defense of The Tree of Life, which as I've said plenty of times before, is a string of pearls without a string.

I'm away from my computer for the next few weeks, but there have meticulous defenses on the structure of Malick's film in scholarly texts. A lot of the beginning of the film sets up recurring images and symbols, so Pitt's character collapsing at the airport upon learning of his son's death gets echoed later when he willingly genuflects at the church, the dinosaur confronted with the choice between punishment or grace gets echoed with the son considering dropping the car on his dad while he works under it. There are three or four other segments like that that testify to a considered structure and deny an arbitrary editing structure, which is usually your critique of it...

Sorry I can't be more detailed at this time.

[baby doll]

I'm away from my computer for the next few weeks, but there have meticulous defenses on the structure of Malick's film in scholarly texts. A lot of the beginning of the film sets up recurring images and symbols, so Pitt's character collapsing at the airport upon learning of his son's death gets echoed later when he willingly genuflects at the church, the dinosaur confronted with the choice between punishment or grace gets echoed with the son considering dropping the car on his dad while he works under it. There are three or four other segments like that that testify to a considered structure and deny an arbitrary editing structure, which is usually your critique of it...

Sorry I can't be more detailed at this time.Recurring motifs aren't a structure, as a motif can be repeated and varied endlessly. I don't think I ever said the editing, or even the sequencing of events, was arbitrary (there's a baggy sort of chronology), only that the boyhood segment was episodic enough that it could be extended indefinitely, and a lot of scenes strike me as fairly redundant (Oh, the dad's being mean again).

[transmogrifier]

For me, it's the voice-overs I can't stand. Vapid and facile and just bloody endless.

[Dukefrukem]

I don't really get the appeal of The Social Network. Never did. It bums me out that Aaron Sorkin's work is considered excellent writing. I find it to be completely overwrought and inelegant. Too much talking.

Agreed. The first third is great, but the rest of the film is so damn dry. By the midpoint I'm just like I don't care anymore. Even Fincher can't hold my interest. I haven't looked at my official spreadsheet for the rating I gave it. I think it's in the 8s not that I"m thinking about it.

[Dukefrukem]

Tree of Life is fanboy nonsense.

Fixed.

Inception however, is the most intelligent sci-fi film since the 60s. Hardly has anything to do with Fanboism.

[Grouchy]

Oof, The Tree of Life. I'd watch it again to see if I missed anything, except... nah, not even joking.


You guys really think The Social Network is a better movie than Gone Girl?
I do, but both are very good.

The absence of The Master is wrong. Also, seeing Boyhood ranked over Before Midnight made me realize that I find the former one overrated.

[Pop Trash]

I ain't mad at it.

Henry Gale is for lovers.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I dunno, I think it's a solid list.

Thanks for collating/presentation, Spinal! Fun times.

[Pop Trash]

I think my only $0.02 is that I don't really get the hype for Shane Carruth. Or at least the two films he has made so far.

[Spinal]

Perhaps not surprisingly, Best Picture Oscar winners did not fare well, although Birdman came closest, being the last film to miss the final cut.

[Irish]

I don't really get the appeal of The Social Network. Never did. It bums me out that Aaron Sorkin's work is considered excellent writing. I find it to be completely overwrought and inelegant. Too much talking.

I thought it fun for a one-time view. Like most of Fincher's stuff, it's ponderous and self important and has a terrible aesthetic (which in this case, doesn't fit the material at all).

Sorkin is fine in small doses. I don't know anyone who considers him a great writer. He'a too much a one trick pony & too repetitive on top of that. I find his entertainment value comes from the crazy patterns of his dialogue, not from his stories. He's similar in that way to Elmore Leonard and David Mamet (although I think both of them are better writers on the whole).

[Irish]

Fixed.

Inception however, is the most intelligent sci-fi film since the 60s. Hardly has anything to do with Fanboism.

Duke, get help. It's the middle of the day and you're already high.

;)

[Pop Trash]

I love the bookends of The Social Network. The opening scene of a guy in a bar surrounded by dozens of people getting dumped by his girlfriend ("You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.") and then the final scene of Zuckerberg alone in an office with his laptop endlessly refreshing his ex-girlfriend's facebook to see if she will 'friend' him.

[Irish]

4. The Social Network / 7
5. Drive / 6
6. Inception / 4
7. Certified Copy / 9
8. Boyhood / ugh
9. Black Swan / 9
10. Before Midnight / ugh, except for the last 30 minutes
13. The Wolf of Wall Street / 10
15. Her / 6
18. Under the Skin / ugh
20. Django Unchained / 6
21. The Grey / 5
22. Interstellar / 7

[Dead & Messed Up]

Irish, Established Linkhater.

[Spinal]

("You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.")

Ugh, this is exactly why I don't like him. That line is all snark and little honesty. It draws attention to the writer. It doesn't feel genuine coming from the character. I mean, that's like Diablo Cody-level stuff right there.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Oddly, that line doesn't bother me nearly so much as the awkward final line by Rashida Jones, where she's all, "You're just trying so hard to be an asshole." To which I always think, "Yeah, he succeeded. He made it to asshole."

[Lazlo]

Good list overall! Love that Cloud Atlas is having some staying power. I'll echo the "weird that The Master didn't make it" comments, though I think I only had it at like 9 on my list.

Really need to watch The Tree of Life again, though I definitely recall being enraptured on the first viewing.

I love The Social Network and I think it's probably Fincher's best movie. Probably.

Hooray Nolan movies!

Guess I really ought to get around to watching It's Such a Beautiful Day. There really is no excuse now.

[Gizmo]

Pretty poor top 5 in my opinion.

1. The Tree of Life (7.5)
2. It's Such a Beautiful Day (n/a)
3. The Act of Killing (6)
4. The Social Network (8)
5. Drive (8)
6. Inception (8.5)
7. Certified Copy (8)
8. Boyhood (9)
9. Black Swan (10)
10. Before Midnight (8.5)
11. Moonrise Kingdom (9)
12. Margaret (n/a)
13. The Wolf of Wall Street (8.5)
14. Upstream Color (n/a)
15. Her (8.5)
16. A Separation (8.5)
17. Cloud Atlas (n/a)
18. Under the Skin (n/a)
19. Holy Motors (n/a)
20. Django Unchained (8.5)
21. The Grey (n/a)
22. Interstellar (8.5)
23t. Uncle Boonme Who Can Recall His Past Lives (6)
23t. The Wind Rises (n/a)
25. Oslo, August 31st (n/a)

[Dukefrukem]

Duke, get help. It's the middle of the day and you're already high.

;)

Do we have to have another intelligent sci-fi discussion?

[Irish]

Do we have to have another intelligent sci-fi discussion?

Refresh my memory--- what does that mean?

[Dukefrukem]

Refresh my memory--- what does that mean?

Where you teach me what's an intelligent sci-fi movie and what's a chase movie?

[Irish]

What? No no. Mostly I was just fucking with you. :D

While I don't think much of it, I know it's a long favorite of yours and don't wanna piss on the parade, etc etc

[Spinal]

Here are your near misses:

Birdman 21
The Raid 19.5
Gravity 19
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya 19
Girl Walk All Day 18.5
Zero Dark Thirty 17.5
12 Years a Slave 16
The Master 15.5
Confessions 15
Greenberg 15
Inside Llewyn Davis 15

The Master didn't even make the top 30!

[Dead & Messed Up]

Haha, suck it, PTA-holes.

[Raiders]

Consensus lists always feel so silly in the end, because while some placement may be surprising, this is always mostly just a parade of the most widely seen good movies. If 25 people voting had seen films such as Kaguya or This is Not a Film, Fincher's film isn't finishing in the top 5.

[Winston*]

Consensus lists always feel so silly in the end, because while some placement may be surprising, this is always mostly just a parade of the most widely seen good movies. If 25 people voting had seen films such as Kaguya or This is Not a Film, Fincher's film isn't finishing in the top 5.

Isn't this point kind of undercut by It's Such a Beautiful Day being number 2?

[Raiders]

Isn't this point kind of undercut by It's Such a Beautiful Day being number 2?

I think a lot more people have seen that, thought I guess that is a particularly nice surprise. My point remains that when we all start from different points, the results will almost always just reinforce what films we have all seen.

It isn't a knock on this, it is essentially unavoidable in an open consensus, I was just remarking how interesting it would actually be to have something like this on an even playing field.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I don't know that an open playing field is really possible with this ragtag bunch of misfits, but maybe if we all put aside our differences we could win regionals.

[Ezee E]

Social Network is great. There's definitely some lines that seek attention, but I feel like some of that works for Zuckerberg's character.

I rewatched shortly before this list came out and liked it a lot more than I remembered. The destruction of a friendship was tough to watch now that I knew what to expect from the dialog and the story.

[Gizmo]

I don't know that an open playing field is really possible with this ragtag bunch of misfits, but maybe if we all put aside our differences we could win regionals.

Well, we could take these 35ish films, try and watch the ones you haven't, then come back in 2 or 3 months and rank just these....


EDIT: I use these match-cut lists to figure out what films I should be trying to see that I may not have otherwise planned on checking out.

[Peng]

Isn't the "even playing field" thing assuming that people have the same preferences (thus another consensus)? What if like, someone has seen both The Social Network and The Tale of Princess Kaguya, loved both, and still had the bad taste of liking the former more than the latter (aka me)?

[Dukefrukem]

EDIT: I use these match-cut lists to figure out what films I should be trying to see that I may not have otherwise planned on checking out.

Same. I never would have watched Drive if it weren't MC.

[Lazlo]

Isn't the "even playing field" thing assuming that people have the same preferences (thus another consensus)? What if like, someone has seen both The Social Network and The Tale of Princess Kaguya, loved both, and still had the bad taste of liking the former more than the latter (aka me)?

Yeah, you still have to account for taste. I've seen both Princess Kaguya and This is Not a Film and neither came anywhere close to my list. They probably wouldn't be in my top 100 for the half-decade. Just not my bag. Hard to say how much the "widely-seen" problem Raiders is pointing to is really a problem.

People like different stuffs! This is the stuffs that most of us can agree on.

[Spinal]

I mean Girl Walk // All Day got 18.5 more points than The Avengers. Certainly, it's an advantage to be widely seen. But it's not everything.

[Pop Trash]

Ugh, this is exactly why I don't like him. That line is all snark and little honesty. It draws attention to the writer. It doesn't feel genuine coming from the character. I mean, that's like Diablo Cody-level stuff right there.

Or Shakespeare level stuff amirite?! Old Bill, always drawing attention to the writer.

[MadMan]

I voted for Birdman. Tree of Life is great but #1? Meh. Cool list still and thanks to Spinal for putting this together. And for reminding us all that IMDB.com is the cesspool of the Internet.

[Spinal]

What I learned from perusing the IMDb message boards is that every movie is the worst film ever, is way too slow, is trying too hard to be artsy, is confusing and is a vehicle for left-wing politics.

[baby doll]

Inception however, is the most intelligent sci-fi film since the 60s. Hardly has anything to do with Fanboism.What makes Nolan such an insufferable filmmaker is that he never lets you forget how intelligent he is. The allusions to Greek mythology, noir lighting, portentous music, and DiCapprio's scowling are applied with all the subtlety of a whore's makeup in order to beat the viewer into mental submission. There's more real intelligence (and feeling) in any episode of Futurama than there is in all of Nolan's movies combined.

[Dukefrukem]

That might be my favorite DiCapprio performance ever. The Beach a close second. And the Wolf maybe third. The only reason why I didn't put Wolf on my list, and I have it highly ranked, is because of how absurdly long the movie is.

[Idioteque Stalker]

The only reason why I didn't put Wolf on my list, and I have it highly ranked, is because of how absurdly long the movie is.

Fastest long movie ever.

[Dukefrukem]

No way. The whole drug tripping sequence with the car and at the country club could have been cut. Excruciating.

[Lazlo]

No way. The whole drug tripping sequence with the car and at the country club could have been cut. Excruciating.

The quaalude scene where he can't get into the car? The best bit of physical comedy in years and years? Major loss if that's taken out.

[Idioteque Stalker]

I admit the whole sequence is kind of in poor taste, but it's the perfect turning point/climax for a movie that revels in poor taste. It's horrible but I could not stop laughing. Leo seriously nailed it.

[Mysterious Dude]

The quaalude scene has almost no impact on the plot, but it's worth every second because it's hilarious.

[Pop Trash]

No way. The whole drug tripping sequence with the car and at the country club could have been cut. Excruciating.

Neg rep.

[Pop Trash]

What I learned from perusing the IMDb message boards is that every movie is the worst film ever, is way too slow, is trying too hard to be artsy, is confusing and is a vehicle for left-wing politics.

It's all true!

[TGM]

Yeah, the quaalude scene is one of the best scenes in that whole movie.


Fastest long movie ever.

That would be Interstellar. ;)

[Ezee E]

Couldn't imagine Wolf working without the quaalude scene.

[MadMan]

Sometimes I think you people are crazy. And that's why I post here.

[Dukefrukem]

Couldn't imagine Wolf working without the quaalude scene.

Really? Because there weren't 600 other scenes in the movie of them doing drugs?

[Lazlo]

Really? Because there weren't 600 other scenes in the movie of them doing drugs?

So cut one of those if you must, not arguably the best scene in the movie. But excess and its horribleness is one of the themes of the movie, so it's right to be a bit overstuffed.

[Dukefrukem]

So cut one of those if you must, not arguably the best scene in the movie. But excess and its horribleness is one of the themes of the movie, so it's right to be a bit overstuffed.

I'm just trying to make it watchable again- 3 hours is inexcusable.

[Irish]

That's one of the rate movies that needs a massive runtime in order to work at all. 90, 120 minutes and nobody would notice it. The message (or rather, the pointed lack of message) wouldn't land.

Three hours of being bludgeoned with hedonism and laughing at it and the we arrive at "Sell me this pen" and realize the joke is one us .

It's brilliant.

I don't think you could cut anything without losing the force of the whole thing. If I was gonna criticize it, I'd criticize it for being another movie from Martin Scorsese about men acting out and the corrupting power of the American Dream. I've lost count how many times he's return to that well.

[DavidSeven]

Wolf of Wall Street at #13 is the one that really makes me raise my eyebrow. Not that I hate it or anything. It just feels eminently disposable. A popcorn movie with a hard R rating.

What was that quote from Fincher describing The Social Network? Something like, "it's a little glib" and "not earth-shattering." Well crafted movie, but Fincher's belittling of it is sort of spot on.

I really liked Django and Interstellar, but I can't help but feel like these are second-tier works of prominent directors. Hard to believe they are considered legitimately better than first-tier work of other long established directors (for me, that includes Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, Korine's Spring Breakers, Cuaron's Gravity, etc.).

I like/dislike the rest to varying degrees, but they all seem MatchCut-y enough so I can't pretend to be surprised.

[Yxklyx]

1. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)
2. The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg)
3. The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino)
4. Inception (Christopher Nolan)
5. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
6. Magic Magic (Sebastián Silva)
7. The Kids are Alright (Lisa Cholodenko)
8. Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley)
9. Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy)
10. Another Year (Mike Leigh)

24 hours? That's mad!

[Ezee E]

Really? Because there weren't 600 other scenes in the movie of them doing drugs?

Yeah, but it's the quaalude scene that's basically the summation of it all.

[Spinal]

24 hours? That's mad!

?

The thread was up for over a week.

[Raiders]

Yeah, you still have to account for taste. I've seen both Princess Kaguya and This is Not a Film and neither came anywhere close to my list. They probably wouldn't be in my top 100 for the half-decade. Just not my bag. Hard to say how much the "widely-seen" problem Raiders is pointing to is really a problem.

People like different stuffs! This is the stuffs that most of us can agree on.

Not sure what this has to do with anything. All I am saying is that much of the list is going to be made up of more widely seen films and thus fairly predictable. The only way to get real accurate results and thus allow for perhaps true surprises based on everyone's actual preferences and not selection bias, is to only vote for films everyone has seen. It's not feasible at all, and I am not suggesting we ever attempt it. I was only making an observation about how I feel about the outcome of most lists we do.

[Lazlo]

Not sure what this has to do with anything. All I am saying is that much of the list is going to be made up of more widely seen films and thus fairly predictable. The only way to get real accurate results and thus allow for perhaps true surprises based on everyone's actual preferences and not selection bias, is to only vote for films everyone has seen. It's not feasible at all, and I am not suggesting we ever attempt it. I was only making an observation about how I feel about the outcome of most lists we do.

I think I agree with you here in the sense that you can't have real unbiased results without doing something super unfeasible. But your initial post cited two movies that probably more people have seen than you realize. Also, "actual preferences" are likely on display here. Preference plays into what sort of films you see as well as what sort you vote for.

Just using myself as an example, I've seen ~110 movies from each year from 2010-2014. Seems like a pretty large sample size. I voted for movies I genuinely liked and many of them made the final list. Yeah, some of the results were predictable, but that doesn't mean that people are voting for these movies in some haze of "I only sort of like this movie and it probably would be replaced by something different if I'd only seen that different movie. Shucks, I won't vote for Inception because it's not this hypothetical movie." I'm just a bit confused as to why the results need to be discounted because most people have seen The Social Network (for example).

I thought there were some surprises in the results. I thought the consensus on Cloud Atlas was much more mixed.

Or maybe I'm completely missing your point and am being needlessly combative. It's been a long month at work.

[Peng]

Not sure what this has to do with anything.

He's responding to me responding to the post implying that the Fincher film is clearly below in quality to the other two suggested films, so the clear reason it is above them is that not many people bother to watch those two yet. Hence, the elaboration on taste, including his.

EDIT: I posted this before seeing the above post.

[Raiders]

I maintain that more people here would prefer those two films to Fincher's, but let my own pot shot at the film (which I like, but that's an awfully high finish) not derail my point, which was a fairly obvious observation in any case.

[MadMan]

Get avatars people :p