The MoFo Top 100 of the Nineties Countdown

Badash Mofo

08-27-13

Both. Tastes change, participants change.

Younger people are probably more likely to have evolving tastes, too.

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#31 on SC's Top 100 Mofos list!!

Guaporense

Animation nerd

08-27-13

Originally Posted by Miss Vicky

I still maintain that the variation between this list (and the Milennium list) and the most recent All Time Top 100 has to do with it being a different set of voters rather than a change in taste. Also the age of the voters seems to be getting younger. It could be a false impression, but I feel like we have a lot more teens and twenty-somethings voting this time.

Even though the films are becoming more mature on average?

Well, young people that still are insecure about their adulthood like to have mature films on their favorites list to prove to themselves and others that they are indeed mature persons.

Miss Vicky

MoFo's Resident Bitch

08-27-13

Originally Posted by Guaporense

Well, young people that still are insecure about their adulthood like to have mature films on their favorites list to prove to themselves and others that they are indeed mature persons.

Are you sure you're not describing yourself?

Also, I must say that I don't believe that your condescension is unintentional. At all.

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Deadite

Badash Mofo

08-27-13

Here we go again.

Guaporense

Animation nerd

08-27-13

Originally Posted by Miss Vicky

Are you sure you're not describing yourself?

Half of my top 10 is children's movies.

Also, I must say that I don't believe that your condescension is unintentional. At all.

I see. Well, what can I do?

MovieFan31

BANNED

08-27-13

Originally Posted by Guaporense

Well, young people that still are insecure about their adulthood like to have mature films on their favorites list to prove to themselves and others that they are indeed mature persons.

You are indeed right about this.

HitchFan97

You get to me

08-27-13

Originally Posted by Guaporense

Well, young people that still are insecure about their adulthood like to have mature films on their favorites list to prove to themselves and others that they are indeed mature persons.

*Ahem*. Speak for yourself.

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Deadite

Badash Mofo

08-27-13

If you people start fighting today, I'm going to pull the pin on this grenade:

gandalf26

We've gone on holiday by mistake

08-27-13

I still think it's a massive swing for a film 42 on all time list and 14th on that list from the 90's films and not even make this list.

Miss Vicky

MoFo's Resident Bitch

08-27-13

Originally Posted by Guaporense

I see. Well, what can I do?

Put more thought into the actual words you choose and consider those on the receiving end, rather than just trying to boost your own over-inflated ego.

From reading the posts on these boards, I'd say most of our younger members are actually genuinely quite mature. The only things that give them away are the films they haven't yet seen and the occasional discussion about school.

Guaporense

Animation nerd

08-27-13

Originally Posted by HitchFan97

*Ahem*. Speak for yourself.

I don't intend to point any fingers. It's just an hypothesis.

For instance, the older users like Mark F and Honeykid have movies like Jaws and Star Wars on their top 10's while among the younger users you will find only strictly adult films. Maybe that's because when we watch more movies we begin to value the magic of the classic blockbuster.

Guaporense

Animation nerd

08-27-13

Originally Posted by Miss Vicky

Put more thought into the actual words you choose and consider those on the receiving end

I see, I will try to be more careful. I am quite lazy so I don't usually read my posts after posting. I should be more careful to not offend anyone.

rather than just trying to boost your own over-inflated ego.

That's my parents fault! Problem is that I am almost autistic so I don't have great sensibility to the feelings of others and so I fail to take that into account when I write my posts.

From reading the posts on these boards, I'd say most of our younger members are actually genuinely quite mature. The only things that give them away are the films they haven't yet seen and the occasional discussion about school.

Yes, they are indeed quite impressive. I would never guess that users like Hitchfan and Cobbyth were under the age of 20, I would think, from their posts and taste, to be persons around the age of 30-60.

HitchFan97

You get to me

08-27-13

Originally Posted by Guaporense

That's possible. I expect my tastes to change plenty in coming years, anyways.

stevo3001

Msg

Registered User

08-27-13

I found Magnolia an interminable and self-parodically overwrought miseryfest.

Frightened Inmate No. 2

ding-dong daddy from dumas

08-27-13

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Goodfellas
3. The Big Lebowski
4. The Shawshank Redemption
5. Fight Club
6. Se7en
7. Reservoir Dogs
8. LA Confidential

Also, Magnolia is pretty overrated.

wintertriangles

It's all painted cold

08-27-13

Originally Posted by Frightened Inmate No. 2

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Goodfellas
3. The Big Lebowski
4. The Shawshank Redemption
5. Fight Club
6. Se7en
7. Reservoir Dogs
8. LA Confidential

Also, Magnolia is pretty overrated.

These two ideas are incredible and hilarious in juxtaposition.

Deadite

Badash Mofo

08-27-13

Magnolia is an epic emotional roller coaster ride, full of great performances, and its use of music is brilliant.

Daniel M

...

08-27-13

Magnolia is a great film, not my favourite PTA but a

maybe. Seeing as JayDee posted his review I am going to copy my reply!

Originally Posted by JayDee

The best way I can think to describe it is that I felt like Magnolia was the work of a magician

All good so far...

but not in a positive way.

... what the **** are you trying to say! No, seriously now here's what I have to say...

I felt like I was being treated to a case of misdirection, that Anderson was attempting to convince me I was seeing something that wasn't really there. With its epic 3 hour running time, countless number of characters and its numerous inter-weaving story threads it felt like it was trying to create the sense that you were watching something deep, profound, exceptional and unprecedented.

It does. But a lot of films do this. A film I know that you love is Forrest Gump, I give it
for similar reasons, it feels forced, like the director is deliberately placing things that aren't natural to bring the emotions out of you. So I ask the question, and it's a question to myself as well, why does this work for some films and not others and differ from person to person? What makes you fall in love with a character, a film, and make you go along with the magical journey?

Except that personally I didn't really find that to be the case. Instead I found it to be bloated, pretentious, convoluted, contrived and self indulgent. To me the film just felt extremely smug and oh so pleased with itself.

I understand why this could be a problem with PTA in general, he's a confident director and all his works are extremely ambitious, he is going to rub people up the wrong way with the way he combines elements of other directors and puts them together and attempts to make a 'masterpiece', as he admitted with There Will Be Blood. I don't think he's particularly innovative, and understand that he takes a lot from other works, but I just think he knows how to maximise certain elements of direction to make a film work, at least for me. His films do feel big and possibly pretentious, perhaps he hasn't earned the respect to make such titles yet, and I understand you hate 2001: A Space Odyssey too, but I feel he has the ability to do so.

This was particularly true of its opening sequences which depict 3 urban legends which apparently prove that sometimes the seemingly impossible does actually open; basically freeing the film from any duty to adhere to logic. These resulting breaks from reality feel tonally ridiculous and just plain silly; I'm looking at you, frogs that fall from the sky! And the moment that the characters all came together for a big sing-a-long?

I thought this was part of the film and it's kind of irony. From the beginning of the film you kind of expect everything to come together in perhaps an even more contrived way. But instead nothing really comes together and the only thing linking these characters are similar issues and problems in their lives. I can imagine PTA thinking about the ending, adding the frogs, and smiling, laughing almost at the audience. I thought the ending of The Master was very similar. In fact I think the plots are very similar, in both films we expect characters to come full circle, to end at a definitive point, we think we know what's going to happen, but by the end things just don't turn out that way.

For me it again felt like an attempt to manipulate my feelings towards the film, that by merely making it weird and different it aims to convince me that means it's artistic or beautiful. The whole thing just felt oh so self-aware.

Possibly, the ending is a very gutsy move for me, and I found that part of the beautiful irony. Thinks aren't normal, this isn't just some normal tale where everything plays out how you expect. It is self-aware, but I don't think this is a bad thing.

While I know that many people adore Anderson's direction I actually find that it can be quite irritating, especially when it comes to his trademark, Scorsese-aping, long tracking shots which don't seem to serve any purpose to the actual film itself except to show off his technical proficiency with a camera.

Out of interest how do you feel when directors like Scorsese and Altman use such shots. Most of the time I feel they're used with reason, the carefully follow characters and the directions, and helps further the idea of a connection between certain things, like everything is continuous. I can't take about particular scenes from this film as well as I can Boogie Nights though, so I'll leave it at that.

I know that many people feel Anderson is the voice of his generation but I've got to say that outside of There Will Be Blood (which I thought was fantastic) I don't really feel like his films speak to me personally.

Have you seen Punch-Drunk Love? That's a charming little film not too similar to his other works, and it's quirky in a way you might enjoy. But yeh I can understand why his other works may leave people cold. Boogie Nights is a dark, depressing, pessimistic film set in a brutal world, so is Sydney to a lesser extent. The Master and There Will Be Blood both have potentially dislikeable characters, I wouldn't be surprised to hear such a statement from anyone.

And quite often I feel that his stylised direction just overwhelms what he is actually attempting to say.

One of the best things about Scorsese use of tracking shots for me is how it just all blends in naturally, he's showing off without us realising in a way, maybe PTA's do seem more obvious sometimes, it's taking me a few viewings to notice all of them in some of his films, and like I said earlier I think in some scenes they work well in capturing what he's trying to say, displaying a character's emotions, showing connectivity and continuity etc.

I was able to identify and appreciate the themes that the film was attempting to touch on - guilt, remorse, loneliness, fate, coincidence, the sins of the father and the lasting effect it has on the children etc and its obvious religious/biblical connotations but I don't really see how it needed 3 hours to muse on them.

Fair enough, if you don't connect with the film this comment is always going to be present about the length, but for some people you are so engrossed and entertained by what's in front of you, you don't want it to end. And for me and many overs the long running length flew by. I thought the main theme was about the relationships between parents and their children, I didn't think the biblical stuff was in anyway important by the way.

Some stories do undoubtedly need such immense running times to cover everything they want to, but I didn't think this was one of them. So many of the characters and their stories seemed to be similar that it became repetitive and redundant. I imagine you could easily have trimmed some of the characters and stories, and left a good deal on the cutting room floor and still been able to tell the exact same story.

But with as much power? The cutting between scenes and slow build up of atmosphere in each characters stories is part of the film's brilliance for me, it all ticks along quietly, sometimes more subtle than others, but you can feel a real tension building, something dark coming, a storm brewing. Even subtle touches like the weather readings help reinforce this idea that something is about to happen. It feels like we are about to witness the end of the world, its strangely unsettling but delightful at the same time. I guess you wouldn't like Short Cuts either.

You could argue that its point is relevant in portraying how so many of us are linked by these identical emotions and experiences but for a piece of cinema much of it just felt superfluous to me. And so often I just felt that the scenes went on so much longer than was really necessary. And even with its mammoth running time the film still manages to leave some unresolved threads.

Yeh, I've pretty much covered my thoughts on this.

I will concede to a couple of things in the film's favour. I'll give it that its a very ambitious undertaking, even if I felt it rather crumbled under the weight of such ambition. But I'll never level out severe criticism to a film-maker for being ambitious. I think it's a good thing for Hollywood to have distinctive voices such as Anderson and Tarantino, even if I don't always appreciate their efforts.

And the other point I'll concede is that across the board it is superbly acted. That is especially true in the case of Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman who were both superb in portraying quite disparate characters. Cruise was amazing as the spectacularly arrogant and despicable Frank T.J. Mackie who is eventually revealed to be hiding a deep pain. He is tremendous in the scene where he is confronted by the reporter about the truth regarding his past, saying so much with just his facial expressions as opposed to words. It's got to be one of his best performances. Cruise's scenes were a joy because they had by far the most energy and life about them. Imagine that, making something interesting. The other top performance would be Hoffman's, who is as impressive as ever as male nurse, Paul. Other impressive showings amongst the ensemble are delivered by the likes of William H. Macy, Jason Robards, Philip Baker Hall and Melora Walters. The one performance I had some reservations about was Julianne Moore's. At times I thought she was good but when expressing her grief I felt that on occasion she went way too big with it to cringingly hysterical effect.

I'm glad you appreciated the acting. It really is magnificent and I loved how PTA handles the ensemble cast. I have no complaints about anyone, the same goes with Boogie Nights. I think your criticism about Moore is a bit harsh though, for me she gives possibly the best performance and the most powerful.

I love PTA films because he combines what we've seen before with family a lot. Boogie Nights is all about family, despite being cold and set in a harsh world as I said it somehow had a personal effect on me and was a very powerful story. I find him to deal with relationships greatly, and really felt the parent/child theme that was so strong in this film.Neither am I claiming that I have seen the truth of the film that you have failed to spot. You guys love it, and that's great. I'm just delivering my own uneducated viewpoint on the matter.

Cobpyth

As Time Goes By

08-27-13

I pretty much agree with what Daniel responsed, except this:

Originally Posted by Daniel

I don't feel that way about Magnolia and The Master. They are both very different films, in my opinion, and seem to deal with their characters in very dissimilar ways, if you ask me. I can see that there is a sort of connection between both films, in terms of the troubles and the issues of the characters, but I felt that the outcome was very different.

SPOILERS!!!

I don't completely agree about 'nothing coming together' in Magnolia. I felt many things happened and revolved, ESPECIALLY during and after the exodic climax. I mean, in some sort of way, every character comes 'full circle' in it. Not always in a positive way, but every story had its own satisfying closure, in my opinion.

In The Master, I believe PTA did something completely different with his main character(s). PTA explores the motivations and issues of his characters in a much more subtle way here. In this film, the main character, Freddie Quell, ends up with a sect, a community, and tries to discover the answer to his issues and emptiness by putting himself in the hands of Lancaster Dodd. Only this time, there are no sudden insights. There are no frogs that make him see everything from a new perspective spiritually or emotionally. Still, we feel like the character learned something and that we learned something with him. It was all some sort of therapy. He finally realized something himself. He runs away, but he doesn't regret what happened to him.
In the ending scene, we seemingly see the same man as in the beginning, but somehow it's very different. He seems much more 'free' and 'dissolved' than he was in the beginning. Somehow there still is a circle. He dealt with life. Brilliant film.

Magnolia is more 'dealing with drama of the past and the present', while The Master is more a search for a purpose, something to live for.

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Last edited by Cobpyth; 08-27-13 at 09:39 PM.

Deadite