Yearly Consensus 2000 (Deadline Sep 9, 9pm PST)

[Bosco B Thug]

The Day I Became a Woman (Marziyeh Meshkini), Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (Agnès Varda)

Aw. I won't change my list, but if I had remembered that these were 2000, I may have sacrificed YCCOM. Excellent films, surprised no one threw in the latter yet.

[baby doll]

Aw. I won't change my list, but if I had caught that these were 2000, I may have sacrificed YCCOM.

Well, at least I made you feel guilty.

[Bosco B Thug]

Well, at least I made you feel guilty.

Guilty about not retaining dates, not about Battle Royale.

[B-side]

Wow. Haven't thought about this in awhile. Did you ever see McCormick's recent feature film? It was dismissed for being typical indie/quirky but I'm still curious.

I haven't. That's still the only film of his I've seen.

[Lazlo]

1. The Princess and the Warrior
2. You Can Count on Me
3. High Fidelity
4. Traffic
5. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

1. Mark Ruffalo - You Can Count on Me
2. Benicio Del Toro - Traffic
3. Jennifer Connelly - Requiem For a Dream
4. Tom Hanks - Cast Away
5. Franka Potente - The Princess and the Warrior

[baby doll]

I'd be disappointed if Ben Kingsley didn't win this.

I've always thought that Kingsley's acting in Sexy Beast wasn't all that hot as a performance per se, but rather, it was seeing Kingsley doing something radically different than what he's known for that made his work here noteworthy. That is, if Kingsley hadn't won an Oscar for playing Mahatma Gandhi, we wouldn't be talking about his work in Sexy Beast. (Incidentally, I think Ray Winstone is being shortchanged in the voting here, as he provides a necessary contrast with Kingsley's performance.)

[Thirdmango]

I easily have enough to vote, but seeing some of these lists it reminds me of some movies I need to watch (In the Mood for Love) so I'll vote probably around sep. 9th.

[baby doll]

True, but his performances lately have been a little ho-hum. Plus, seeing him cavorting around with trophy wives (or whoever they are) at every awards show doesn't help much.

I don't know what this has to do with anything.

[soitgoes...]

1. The Heart of the World (Maddin)
2. Dancer in the Dark (Trier)
3. Wonder Boys (Hanson)
4. Yi yi (Yang)
5. Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang)

HMs: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, In the Mood for Love, Happy Times, Outer Space, You Can Count on Me, Best in Show, The Gleaners and I and The Vertical Ray of the Sun

1. Björk, Dancer in the Dark
2. Tony Leung, In the Mood for Love
3. Mark Ruffalo, You Can Count on Me
4. Michael Douglas, Wonder Boys
5. Ellen Burstyn, Requiem for a Dream

Awesome year for Chinese language films.

[Derek]

Ridiculous year. One of the strongest top 5's ever.

1) As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (Jonas Mekas)
2) Code Unknown (Michael Haneke)
3) Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr)
4) Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
5) In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai)

[

Show Spoiler

6 Eureka (Shinji Aoyama)
7 Hamlet (Michael Almereyda)
8 You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan)
9 Vertical Ray of the Sun (Anh Hung Tran)
10 Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson)
11 Platform (Jia Zhang-ke)
12 The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin)
13 Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)
14 Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors (Hong Sang-soo)
15 High Fidelity (Stephen Frears)
16 Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson)
17 Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky)
18 Esther Kahn (Arnaud Desplechin)
19 O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel Coen)
20 Best in Show (Christopher Guest)

]

Performances:

1) Mark Ruffalo - You Can Count on Me
2) Summer Phoenix - Esther Kahn
3) Ellen Burstyn, Requiem for a Dream
4) Tony Leung - In the Mood for Love
5) Nien-jen Wu - Yi Yi

[Spinal]

Ridiculous year. One of the strongest top 5's ever.

Truth.

[Llopin]

1. Werckmeister Harmonies
2. Yi Yi
3. Eureka
4. The Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors
5. High Fidelity

1. Naomi Fujiyama, Kao
2. Christian Bale, American Psycho
3. Shin'ichi Tsutsumi, Monday
4. Fernando Ramallo, Krámpack
5. Xun Zhou, Suzhou River

[Melville]

No other votes for Joaquin Phoenix? The movie wasn't very good, but he was awesome in it.

[baby doll]

No other votes for Joaquin Phoenix? The movie wasn't very good, but he was awesome in it.

He was better in The Yards, which also happens to be a very good movie.

[Spinal]

Kinda disappointed with the Bale lovefest going on here.

[dreamdead]

Kinda disappointed with the Bale lovefest going on here.

Indeed. A perfectly dandy performance, but its rendering of a skin-deep person remains caught at that level since the film doesn't go beyond that...

Incidentally, I switched my performance vote to Wu Nien-jen of Yi-Yi, so I'm just noting that change in case Spinal is already collating...

[Spinal]

Indeed. A perfectly dandy performance, but its rendering of a skin-deep person remains caught at that level since the film doesn't go beyond that...

Incidentally, I switched my performance vote to Wu Nien-jen of Yi-Yi, so I'm just noting that change in case Spinal is already collating...

Got it. Thanks.

[ContinentalOp]

1. In the Mood for Love
2. You Can Count on Me
3. Brother
4. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
5. Animal Factory

1. Ben Kingsley- Sexy Beast
2. Willem Dafoe- Animal Factory
3. Mark Ruffalo- You Can Count on Me
4. Maggie Cheung- In the Mood for Love
5. Tony Leung- In the Mood for Love

[B-side]

Indeed. A perfectly dandy performance, but its rendering of a skin-deep person remains caught at that level since the film doesn't go beyond that...

Disagree entirely. The film goes well beyond that, and Bale's performance is as sharp and nuanced as they come.

[StanleyK]

Films:

1. Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky)
2. In the Mood for Love (Kar Wai Wong)
3. Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan)
4. The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin)
5. Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson)

Also very good: For the Birds, O Brother, Where Art Thou?



Performances:

1. Tony Leung (In the Mood for Love)
2. Maggie Cheung (In the Mood for Love)
3. George Clooney (O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

[baby doll]

Disagree entirely. The film goes well beyond that, and Bale's performance is as sharp and nuanced as they come.

He's definitely fun to watch (it was, as they say, "a star-making performance"), but nuanced? The character is presented in such extreme terms that the script precludes even the slightest bit of shading (not necessarily a bad thing, as it suits the film's purposes).

[B-side]

He's definitely fun to watch (it was, as they say, "a star-making performance"), but nuanced? The character is presented in such extreme terms that the script precludes even the slightest bit of shading (not necessarily a bad thing, as it suits the film's purposes).

A performance can be nuanced without a character necessarily being so.

[baby doll]

A performance can be nuanced without a character necessarily being so.

Would you care to explain?

[B-side]

Would you care to explain?

The character of Patrick Bateman may be a "surface" character -- and intentionally so as the film is a satire of 80s excess and corporatism -- but the manner in which Bale exudes a cold sexuality and macabre humor is nuanced.

[Raiders]

1. Werckmeister Harmonies
2. Esther Kahn
3. As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
4. The House of Mirth
5. George Washington

[

Show Spoiler

6. The Heart of the World
7. In the Mood for Love
8. Together
9. Code Unknown
10. The Gleaners & I
11. You Can Count on Me
12. Yi yi
13. Hamlet
14. The Way of the Gun
15. Songs from the Second Floor

]
There's probably 10 more films I would consider near-great from this year as well. It helps that I've seen more from this year than any other.

Performances
1. Summer Phoenix, Esther Kahn
2. Danny Huston, Ivansxtc.
3. Mark Ruffalo, You Can Count on Me
4. Juliette Binoche, Code Unknown
5. Gillian Anderson, The House of Mirth