MC Yearly Consensus - 2001

[Spinal]

Submit your five favorite films from this year and in a week I will give you a top ten. IMDb dates will be used.

The point system is as follows

1st Place-5 points
2nd Place-4 points
3rd Place-3.5 points
4th Place-3 points
5th Place-2.5 points

There will be no restrictions on short films. A minimum of three films must be listed. You may edit your post freely up until the time that the thread is locked, which will be in about a week. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

You may begin now.

IMDB Power Search (http://www.imdb.com/list)

[Spinal]

1. Mulholland Dr.
2. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
3. Y tu mama tambien
4. The Piano Teacher
5. Fat Girl
--------------------------------
6. The Deep End
7. Amelie
8. The Man Who Wasn't There
9. Series 7: The Contenders
10. Kira's Reason: A Love Story
11. Pulse
12. Ghost World

Twelve four-star films for me this year. First five are Top 100 films for me.

[Raiders]

1. Pulse
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. Pistol Opera
4. What Time is it There?
5. Late Marriage

[Eleven]

1. Mulholland Dr.
2. Pulse
3. Millennium Actress
4. Fellowship of the Ring
5. The Royal Tenenbaums

HMs: Frailty, The Devil's Backbone, Spirited Away.

[Sycophant]

1. The Royal Tenenbaums
2. Millennium Actress
3. Happiness of the Katakuris
4. Shaolin Soccer
5. All About Lily Chou-Chou

HMs: Spirited Away, Pulse, Moulin Rouge!, Ghost World, Visitor Q, Mulholland Drive, Distance

Damn good year.

But I'm planning on watching Mullholland Drive in the next couple days, SO ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.

EDIT 3/17/08: Threw in Mulholland Drive and Distance as HMs.

[Weeping_Guitar]

1. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
4. The Man Who Wasn't There
5. Amelie

[dreamdead]

1. Mulholland Dr.
2. Pulse
3. What Time is it There?
4. The Piano Teacher
5. All About Lily Chou-Chou

HM: Spirited Away

[MadMan]

1. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. Ocean's 11
4. Amélie
5. Zoolander

[Spinal]

Top Songs of 2001:

1. "Lady Marmalade" Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mya & Pink
2. "Fallin'", Alicia Keys
3. "I'm Real", Jennifer Lopez
4. "Family Affair", Mary J. Blige
5. "Butterfly", Crazy Town
6. "Thank You", Dido
7. "Don't Tell Me", Madonna
8. "He Loves U Not", Dream
9. "Gone", 'N Sync
10. "Love Don't Cost A Thing", Jennifer Lopez

source: musicoutfitters.com

[Russ]

1. Mulholland Dr.
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. Pistol Opera
4. Moulin Rouge!
5. Visitor Q

hm: Metropolis, Y tu mamá también, Fellowship of the Ring, Amelie, Spirited Away

Pretty good year.

[dreamdead]

Those of you with Visitor Q on your HM on on your list... could you explain why?

Here are my thoughts:
So Miike's exploration of reality-tv taken to the extreme in Visitor Q is simultaneously interesting and interminable. The first ten or so minutes, coupled with the finale where the father attacks the bulleys, all work and possess several shocking, deplorable scenarios with which Miike indicts contemporary culture's fascination with recording humiliation/pain/alienation. However, the film also has a certain ephemeral quality to it in that much of the film's excess (see almost all the lactating sequences) do little but add to Miike's persona of an extreme director. The middle's repetitions of thematic elements just pushes this film over to the absurd until it loses any sense of true ribald critique. If this one had about twenty minutes trimmed off of it, it'd be more effective as cultural critique. As it is, it's merely a study in how uncomfortable you get watching it.

[Sycophant]

Those of you with Visitor Q on your HM on on your list... could you explain why?
My initial reaction in 2004 was very similar to yours. These are my thoughts from my last viewing a year ago.

Wow. When I originally watched Visitor Q two and a half years ago, I read it way too serious or just didn't have a sense of humor or something. Turns out that instead of a fucked up exercise in sheer depravity, it's actually the darkest of dark comedies with what is actually a very sweet family message.
The film is an exercise in extremes, but not as much an exercise in the extremes of what Miike can do to shock, but taking the tropes of the family drama to an incredibly dark and dark comic extreme.

[dreamdead]

The film is an exercise in extremes, but not as much an exercise in the extremes of what Miike can do to shock, but taking the tropes of the family drama to an incredibly dark and dark comic extreme.

And I understood that while watching it yesterday, but there's something... deplorable isn't the right word... transparent and thus simplistic about formulating a dark comedy around such extreme acts of humiliation. Like you, I find the scenes at the end, where the daughter reunites with her family, oddly affecting. Even the sustained shot of father and daughter suckling on the mother's breast has a... charm to it..

However, in order to get there, we must endure scenes of repetitive masturbatory fantasies, lactation sequences, and dick-in-a-dead woman bits. And maybe Miike is trying to deconstruct why some modes of comedy are fair game while others are not, but at the end of the day my ambivalence and subsequent repulsion for such scenes negated any purpose they might have had. It ultimately becomes a matter of respect for the characters. For me, Miike sustained the excess in too many places, whereas the film could have worked had the contrasts been brought out more. Instead, we meet the family from hell and no one is "normal" enough for empathy to be had.

[Yxklyx]

Didn't we skip one of the 20s?

[Spinal]

Didn't we skip one of the 20s?

20s and the 2000s are alternating.

[Yxklyx]

1. Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
2. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)
4. Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)
5. Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)

6. Sex and Lucia (Julio Medem)
7. Millenium Actress (Satoshi Kon)
8. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell)
9. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
10. What Time Is It There? (Ming-liang Tsai)

[Watashi]

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
2. A.I.
3. Mulholland Dr.
4. The Royal Tenenbaums
5. Monster's Inc.

-----

6. Moulin Rouge!
7. Gosford Park
8. The Pledge
9. Spirited Away
10. In the Bedroom

[Spinal]

Time Man of the Year for 2001:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/rudolph_giuliani.jpg

Rudolph Giuliani

[Sycophant]

Oh, Rudy.

That's an interesting cover photo.

[ledfloyd]

1. Mulholland Dr.
2. Amelie
3. Ghost World
4. Waking Life
5. Vanilla Sky

[soitgoes...]

1. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
2. Gosford Park (Robert Altman)
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)
4. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
5. Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
---------------------------------------------
6. The Others (Alejandro Amenábar)
7. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
8. Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
9. The Man Who Wasn't There (Joel Coen)
10. The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke)

[Spinal]

The following television programs debuted in 2001:

The Fairly OddParents
That's My Bush!
The Lone Gunmen
Six Feet Under
The Amazing Race
Alias
Pop Idol (UK)
Pardon the Interruption
24

The #1 television program in the Nielsen ratings for 2001:

Survivor: The Australian Outback

[Russ]

Those of you with Visitor Q on your HM on on your list... could you explain why?

It’s only with his most recent films that I’ve started to regard Miike as one of modern cinema’s great voices, and it’s in that sense that I hold Visitor Q (not on first viewing, but certainly on subsequent ones). The fact that he portrays modern Japanese familial relationships as extravagantly overboard as he does makes the final life-affirming act all the more astonishing. Of course, it’s all a parade of cutting-edge perversity and its permeating effect on society and, by extension, the modern family unit. Who can’t identify with the fundamental conflicts portrayed: distant parents, alienated children and tormenting outside forces comprise the most dysfunctional of families. The ambiguous nature of the title character aside, this metaphorically rich (and repulsive) classically-structured tale (dark depths – enlightenment – redemption) somehow manages to transcend the stomach-churning and darkly comic shock value imagery to culminate in a revelatory climax that turns the preceding events on their ear: it’s one of hope, much-needed optimism and a very * ahem * nurturing poignancy. I thought the central conceit of framing the goings-on in a shot-on-DV world of reality television provided the film with just the right mixture of absurdity and urgency. When the family members experience various epiphanies in the final act, attributed to the symbolic redemptive presence that exists inside everyone (the omniscient ‘Visitor Q’ catalyst), they, along with the audience, experience a sense of liberation that can only come with the most genuine of emotions. Miike filmed this as a part of a series (the “Love Cinema”series”) and for all the disgusting, shocking, reprehensible material on display, it’s pretty amazing that he manages to both further the connecting theme and subvert it’s very meaning.

[Kurious Jorge v3.1]

1. The Piano Teacher
2. Mulholland Drive
3. The Royal Tennenbaums
4. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
5. Ghost World

[EyesWideOpen]

1. Moulin Rouge
2. Ichi the Killer
3. Mulholland Drive
4. Vanilla Sky
5. Amelie

[Spinal]

Fun Facts for 2001:

* Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President Slobodan MiloÅ¡ević surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/milosevic-4.jpg

* Officials announce that one of the Taliban prisoners captured after the prison uprising at Mazari Sharif, Afghanistan is John Walker Lindh, an American citizen.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/_1777469_lindh300ap.jpg

* Pope John Paul II sends the first papal e-mail from a laptop in his office.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/_1671540_laptop300ap.jpg

* Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks the single season home run record with his 71st and 72nd home runs of the year.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/g_bonds_195.jpg

* In the Netherlands, the Act on the Opening up of Marriage goes into effect. The Act allows same-sex couples to legally marry for the first time in the world since the reign of Nero.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/burns_smithers.jpg

[origami_mustache]

1. Visitor Q
2. What Time Is It There?
3. Address Unknown
4. The Royal Tenenbaums
5. Amelie

Y tu mama tambien
Pulse
Waking Life
The American Astronaut
Mulholland Drive



Those of you with Visitor Q on your HM on on your list... could you explain why?
.

Posted a paper I wrote on the film here (http://www.match-cut.org/showthread.php?t=637).

[Stay Puft]

1. Millennium Actress
2. The Piano Teacher
3. Mulholland Drive
4. Shaolin Soccer
5. The Royal Tenenbaums

[Boner M]

1. Mulholland Drive
2. A.I.
3. Ghost World
4. What Time is it There?
5. The Royal Tenenbaums

6. Millennium Actress
7. Time Out
8. The Piano Teacher
9. The Man Who Wasn't There
10. Late Marriage

Great year.

[trotchky]

1. Donnie Darko
2. The Piano Teacher
3. Fat Girl
4. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
5. Y tu mama tambien

[Melville]

1. Mulholland Dr.
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. Winged Migration
4. Spirited Away
5. Time Out

So close:
6. Ghost World
7. Metropolis
8. Millenium Actress
9. The Piano Teacher
10. The Man Who Wasn't There

[dreamdead]

D'oh. Edited to include Tsai's film. Gone is Miyazaki's... :sad:

[Mysterious Dude]

1. Waking Life
2. Bully
3. Y Tu Mama Tambien
4. Moulin Rouge!
5. Metropolis

6. La Pianiste
7. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
8. Series 7: The Contenders
9. Hell House
10. Ichi the Killer

[Grouchy]

1. Mulholland Dr.
2. The Devil's Backbone (El Espinazo del Diablo)
3. Moulin Rouge!
4. The Man Who Wasn't There
5. Spirited Away

What happened with 1949? I never saw the results.

[monolith94]

1. Amelie
2. Millennium Actress
3. Metropolis
4. Mulholland Dr.
5. The Royal Tenenbaums

[Kurosawa Fan]

1. Amelie
2. In the Bedroom
3. The Royal Tenenbaums
4. Mulholland Dr.
5. The Man Who Wasn't There

6. Tape
7. Lantana
8. Y Tu Mama Tambien
9. Dogtown and Z-Boys
10. Donnie Darko

[Rowland]

The Man Who Wasn't There is my least favorite Coen movie. Maybe I should give it another shot.

[Kurosawa Fan]

The Man Who Wasn't There is my least favorite Coen movie. Maybe I should give it another shot.

I loved it. It clicked with me instantly, unlike Lebowski which grew on me quickly. If 2001 weren't such a strong year, it'd be ranked higher.

[Ezee E]

1. Amelie
2. Black Hawk Down
3. A.I.
4. The Gray Zone
5. Frailty

I can't be the only one that has Frailty.

[Kurosawa Fan]

I can't be the only one that has Frailty.

I've seen it, and liked it, but it's nowhere near my list.

[Ezee E]

Dogtown better than Frailty?

Well, at least I have someone sitting next to me on the Crazy Train now.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Dogtown better than Frailty?

Well, at least I have someone sitting next to me on the Crazy Train now.

You know that's the documentary, correct?

[Spinal]

Frailty is my #32.

[Kurosawa Fan]

Frailty is my #32.

Out of?

[Spinal]

Out of?

72.

[Kurosawa Fan]

72.

That's about right with me too. Going out of 10, it'd be a 6 or 6.5.

[Ezee E]

You know that's the documentary, correct?
Ah okay. Haven't seen the doc.

[Gizmo]

1. Mulholland Dr.
2. Amelie
3. Blow
4. The Fellowship of the Ring
5. The Royal Tennenbaums

[zazen]

I forget where I am.

1. In Praise of Love (Jean-Luc Godard)
2. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
3. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. The Son's Room (Nanni Moretti)
5. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)

[Spinal]

I forget where I am.

Have you tried Ginkgo biloba?

[Yum-Yum]

1. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
2. Mulholland Dr.
3. Sex and LucÃ*a
4. Ghost World
5. Lost and Delirious

6. Manic
7. Sugar & Spice
8. Donnie Darko
9. The Piano Teacher
10. Josie and the Pussycats
111. Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell

[MacGuffin]

1. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
2. Millennium Mambo (Hsiao-hsien Hou)
3. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
4. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki)
5. Waking Life (Richard Linklater)

[Llopin]

1. What Time is it There? (Ming-Liang)
2. Distance (Kore-eda)
3. Failan (Song)
4. Spirited Away (Miyazaki)
5. Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
--------------------------
6. Electric Dragon 80.000 V (Ishii)
7. Tape (Linklater)
8. Gaichu (Shiota)
9. One Fine Spring Day (Hur)
10. Ghost World (Zwigoff)

[Qrazy]

Need to round-out my Koreeda viewings.

[Sycophant]

Well, Mulholland Drive was wonderful. However, it won't quite be unseating those top five after this first viewing. But it's probably in sixth. It's not Lynch's fault that 2001 was such a fine year.

[Sycophant]

Need to round-out my Koreeda viewings.Always a good idea. Distance is pretty great. I'm actually missing a few of his films, including the one everyone's seen, Maborosi. I'll be remedying that situation soon.

[Spinal]

Well, Mulholland Drive was wonderful. However, it won't quite be unseating those top five after this first viewing. But it's probably in sixth. It's not Lynch's fault that 2001 was such a fine year.

Below Happiness of the Katakuris and Shaolin Soccer? Really?

Ah well. Glad you liked it. I think David will be doing just fine.

[Sycophant]

Below Happiness of the Katakuris and Shaolin Soccer? Really?

Ah well. Glad you liked it. I think David will be doing just fine.Yeah. I probably love those two movies more than my family.

[baby doll]

1. La Pianiste (Michael Haneke)
2. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
3. Gosford Park (Robert Altman)
4. Éloge de l'amour (Jean-Luc Godard)
5. L'Anglaise et le duc (Eric Rohmer)
6. Y tu mamá también (Alfonso Cuarón)
7. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
8. What Time Is it There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
9. Waking Life (Richard Linklater)
10. Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis)

[Rowland]

This year is so fucking good, it's impossible to make a list I'm satisfied with.

[Spinal]

One more day.

[Robby P]

1. The Pledge
2. Heist
3. Mulholland Drive
4. Monster's Ball
5. The Score

That was rather difficult.

[Lazlo]

1. The Royal Tenenbaums
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
3. Moulin Rouge!
4. Amelie
5. Ghost World

[Pop Trash]

1. Donnie Darko
2. A.I.
3. Ghost World
4. In the Bedroom
5. Y tu Mama Tambien

6. Waking Life
7. Mulholland Dr.
8. The Piano Teacher
9. Dogtown and Z-Boys
10.Freddy Got Fingered

[Spinal]

Probably won't get to this until tonight, so you've got some more time.

[Spinal]

#10

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/MillenniumActress-photo_13_hires.jpg

Millennium Actress

Director: Satoshi Kon

Country: Japan

A movie studio is being torn down. A TV interviewer has tracked down its most famous star, who has been a recluse since she left acting some 30 years ago. He delivers a key to her, and it causes her to reflect on her career.

The character of Chiyoko herself is somewhat reminiscent of Setsuko Hara, a famed Japanese movie star of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, who likewise withdrew suddenly from public life. The film played on only six screens during its initial American release. It has been speculated that the limited release was due to Kon's refusal to allow Go Fish Pictures to re-edit the film chronologically, as early studio notes had requested.

“Breathless and jolting, Millennium Actress is a sprint along the surface of the reservoir of unconscious images filled from years of cultural assimilation in our medium of choice ... It's no surprise that Millennium Actress is a critical darling, as it's about how film--or any art--only becomes important when an audience that respects it enough to engage it on multiple levels opens it up to a broader dialogue.� -- Walter Chaw

[Spinal]

#9

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/mr-3.jpg

Moulin Rouge!

Director: Baz Luhrmann

Country: Australia/USA

A young poet living in 1899 Paris, defies his father by joining the colorfully diverse clique inhabiting the fantastical underworld of Paris' legendary Moulin Rouge. In this seedy but glamorous haven of sex, drugs and newly-discovered electricity, the poet finds himself plunged into a passionate love affair with the club's highest paid star and the city's most famous courtesan.

Won Academy Awards for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. Originally, the green fairy was going to be a long-haired muscle man with a giant sitar and Ozzy Osbourne was hired to provide the vocals. Eventually it was changed to the current Tinker Bell incarnation, but Osbourne still gives voice to the fairy's guttural scream when it turns evil.

“Luhrmann is a tricky director. I'm not sure how he does it, but his movies have a way of reshaping themselves in your memory after the fact -- it's as if they have viruses built into them that spring to life a day or so later, mysterious microorganisms that go to work in your brain to smooth out a movie's flaws and heighten its most sensual or exhilarating moments. I know because the virus worked on me.� -- Stephanie Zacharek

[Raiders]

... really???

[Boner M]

Eew, Stephanie, really? I thought you were cool.

[Boner M]

... really???

really?
Heh.

[Spinal]

#8

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/dougghostworld.jpg

Ghost World

Director: Terry Zwigoff

Country: USA

Enid and Rebecca are both outsiders in a world slowly being engulfed by fake 50's diners and Starbucks. Enid must attend an art class to graduate high school as Rebecca gets a job. When the two play a joke on a much older, geeky record collector, Enid finds a fellow soul and begins to discover the complexities of becoming an adult in the modern world.

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and was the first film to be nominated in this category based on a graphic novel or comic book. Won two Independent Spirit Awards: Best First Screenplay and Best Supporting Male (Steve Buscemi). The drawings in Enid's sketchbook were done by Sophie Crumb, daughter of Robert Crumb.

"[Ghost World] bests most other teen comedies right off the bat. If you got a kick out of Crumb, this film will crack you up. But that's not what makes Ghost World special. The picture marks itself as a true original because it pierces its adolescent heroines' comic bravado to reveal the cluelessness behind it.� -- Carla Meyer

[Stay Puft]

#10

Millennium Actress

Nice. I didn't think it was going to make it.

[Spinal]

... really???

Would it were not so.

[Spinal]

#7

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/what-time.jpg

What Time Is It There?

Director: Tsai Ming-liang

Country: Taiwan

When a young street vendor with a grim home life meets a girl on her way to Paris, they forge an instant connection. He changes all the clocks in Taipei to French time. As he watches François Truffaut's The 400 Blows, she has a strange encounter with its now-aging star.

Earned the Grand Jury Prize and Best Director at the Chicago International Film Festival. Jean-Pierre Léaud, the lead actor in The 400 Blows and others in the Antoine Doinel series, makes a cameo appearance. When 400 Blows premiered at Cannes, he was 14. When this film premiered at Cannes, he was 56.

"Tsai has devised a storytelling style here that is both a natural evolution of his previous filmmaking and his most fully realized directing to date, with scenes that also combine the seemingly disparate methods of Ozu, Robert Bresson and Jacques Tati. In finding his own way, Mr. Tsai sets loose shock waves of comedy, which both unleash a wave of euphoria in the audience and communicate the pleasure he gets from filmmaking.� -- Elvis Mitchell

[Ezee E]

Hmm... I'm surprised that nobody mentioned The Others as well. I completely overlooked it until I saw Moulin Rouge listed.

[Spinal]

#6

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/ai-1.jpg

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

Director: Steven Spielberg

Country: USA

In this futuristic fairy tale, a highly-advanced robotic boy hopes to become a real boy so that he can win back the affection of the human mother who abandoned him. Like Pinocchio, he goes on a long journey hoping to find his Blue Fairy, who can make his dreams come true.

Earned Academy Award nominations for Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score. Stanley Kubrick worked on the project for 12 years before his death, but along the way decided to let Steven Spielberg direct, saying it was "closer to his sensibilities." The two collaborated for years, resulting in Kubrick giving Spielberg a complete treatment and lots of conceptual art for the film prior to his death.

"The very end somehow fuses the cathartic comfort of infantile wish fulfillment ... with a feeling almost too terrible to acknowledge or to name. Refusing to cuddle us or lull us into easy sleep, Mr. Spielberg locates the unspoken moral of all our fairy tales. To be real is to be mortal; to be human is to love, to dream and to perish.� -- A.O. Scott

[Spinal]

#5

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/69215069_ph1.jpg

The Piano Teacher

Director: Michael Haneke

Country: Germany/France

A piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory is only able to 'feel' by exacting cruel punishment on her students. Behind her icy façade, she is a sexually-repressed woman with a long list of sadomasochistic fetishes. She meets a charming engineering student in his twenties and becomes obsessed with him.

Earned Best Actress (Isabelle Huppert), Best Actor (Benoît Magimel) and the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes. Isabelle Huppert really played the piano in the film. She had studied piano for 12 years. As preparation for her role as a piano teacher, she resumed practicing a year before the film was started.

"The Piano Teacher is a portrait of a woman in power coming undone. A professor at the prestigious Vienna conservatory, an expert in Schubert, she spends her free time visiting pornography dens and mutilating her genitals. When was the last time you read about Schubert and genital mutilation in the same sentence? That's the range of this movie.� -- Mick LaSalle

[Spinal]

#4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/FellowshipOfTheRing1.jpg

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Director: Peter Jackson

Country: New Zealand/USA

In the lands of Middle Earth, the Dark Lord Sauron forged a Ring of Power to control all the peoples and creatures of Middle Earth. The Ring was taken from him and fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit from The Shire - a place of complete innocence. The Ring was then passed onto young Frodo Baggins, with one task set before him - to destroy the Ring of Power.

Earned Academy Awards for Best Makeup, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects and Best Original Score. The hobbits needed to appear about three to four feet tall - tiny compared with the seven-foot Gandalf. This was often accomplished using forced perspective, placing Ian McKellen consistently closer to the camera than Elijah Wood in order to trick the eye into thinking McKellen is towering.

"Robustly ranging from the cozy nook of a hobbit's parlor to the blasted pitch-pots of darkest Mordor, visualizing Nordic elves and subhuman, blue-faced orcs, staging wizard wars with the panache of a Hong Kong master and building slowly to a boffo ending, Peter Jackson's adaptation is certainly successful on its own terms ... With the release of The Fellowship of the Ring, American critics of a particular age (and possibly gender) have their own Harry Potter.� -- J. Hoberman

[dreamdead]

Interesting. I like that Tsai is getting more respect and recognition; this is the film that just grows stronger with reflection. A little surprised that Spielberg doesn't make the top 5, whereas Haneke does. Yet this is the film where Haneke displays his most mature story in the midst of his misanthropic tendencies (though I still need to get to Time of the Wolf).

[Spinal]

#3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/amelie_web7.jpg

Amelie

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Country: France

Amélie is a shy waitress in a Montmartre café. After returning a long-lost childhood treasure to a former occupant of her apartment, and seeing the effect it has on him, she decides to set out on a mission to make others happy and in the meantime pursues a quirky guy who collects discarded photo booth pictures.

Earned Academy Award nominations for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film. The traveling gnome was inspired by a rash of similar pranks played in England and France in the 1990s. In 1997, a French court convicted the leader of Front de Libération des Nains de Jardins (Garden Gnome Liberation Front) of stealing over 150 gnomes.

"[Audrey] Tautou is the very definition of gamine: Her smile is impish, her dark eyes resonate with warmth and sly intelligence, and she has the coltish grace of a young Audrey Hepburn. Equally enchanting is director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Paris; his affection for his Montmartre neighborhood is palpable.� -- Claudia Puig

[Spinal]

#2

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/royaltenenbaumsSPLASH.jpg

The Royal Tenenbaums

Director: Wes Anderson

Country: USA

Three grown prodigies - all with a unique genius of some kind - and their mother are staying at the family household. Their father, Royal had left them long ago, and comes back to make things right.

Earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Earned Best Actor (Gene Hackman) from the National Society of Film Critics. Throughout the movie everyone wears the same clothing (or some variation of the same clothing). Anderson did this intentionally so that it would appear that the Tenenbaums are trapped in the era of their heyday while time moves on.

"One of the pleasures of the movie is the way it keeps us a little uncertain about how we should be reacting. It's like a guy who seems to be putting you on, and then suddenly reveals himself as sincere, so you're stranded out there with an inappropriate smirk.� -- Roger Ebert

[MacGuffin]

Far out, man.

[Spinal]

#1

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/more/mulholland02.jpg

Mulholland Dr.

Director: David Lynch

Country: USA/France

A bright-eyed young actress travels to Hollywood, only to be ensnared in a dark conspiracy involving a woman who was nearly murdered, and now has amnesia because of a car crash.

Earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Director (David Lynch). Won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. Originally filmed in 1999 as a made-for-TV pilot, new scenes were filmed one year later to wrap up the open ending which had been left unresolved in the original version so that a TV series could follow. The Cowboy has no eyebrows.

"As difficult as Mulholland Drive may appear at first glance, every trajectory in this metaverse is the equivalent of dreams spiraling into REM sleep. Roads and hallways fire action potentials spontaneously and continuously while sex organs engorge with blood and waking lives become the vital magnifying glasses through which sense is made of runaway chaos.� -- Ed Gonzalez

[Spinal]

2001:

1. Mulholland Dr. (92)
2. The Royal Tenenbaums (62)
3. Amelie (44)
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (32)
5. The Piano Teacher (24)
6. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (23)
7. What Time is it There? (22)
8. Ghost World (21.5)
9. Moulin Rouge! (18)
10. Millennium Actress (16.5)

Near Misses:
Spirited Away (15.5)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (15)
Pulse (13)
Donnie Darko (12.5)
Y tu mamá también (12)

[Watashi]

Amelie, The Piano Teacher, Ghost World?

Meeeeeh.

[Spinal]

Amelie, The Piano Teacher, Ghost World?

Meeeeeh.

12 stars.

[ledfloyd]

hmm, we really need to do something about moulin rouge being on the list. it's unacceptable.

[Ezee E]

Amelie, The Piano Teacher, Ghost World?

Meeeeeh.
Monsters Inc isn't half of what any of those movies are.

[Watashi]

hmm, we really need to do something about moulin rouge being on the list. it's unacceptable.
I know, it's way too low.

[Watashi]

12 stars.
4 1/2 stars.

[Melville]

I haven't seen Moulin Rouge, but I'm surprised that Match Cut prefers it to Spirited Away. Did somebody stuff the ballot box?

[Spinal]

4 1/2 stars.

Lunacy!

EDIT: Unless you switched recently to the one-and-a-half star scoring system.

[Grouchy]

Only Amelie keeps it from being perfect.

EDIT: The Man Who Wasn't There should've taken its place.

[Yxklyx]

The RT Consensus which went by US Release Date went:

1. Mullholland Drive (D. Lynch)
2. Memento (C. Nolan)
3. The Fellowship of the Ring (P. Jackson)
4. Amelie (J. Jeunet)
5. Moulin Rouge (B. Lurhmann)
6. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
7. Royal Tenenbaums (W. Anderson)
8. Ghost World (T. Zwigoff)
9. The Man Who Wasn’t There (Coen Bros.)
10t. In the Bedroom (T. Field)
10t. In the Mood for Love (Wong K.)