The MoFo Top 100 of the 2000s Countdown

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Surprisingly I’ve never loved Shaun of the Dead the same way others do. But I still think it’s really good and it deserves to be here. I like Hot Fuzz more myself, but realize this one is usually thought of as the best in the Cornetto trilogy. So it makes sense it’s higher.

I’ve only seen The Departed once. And it was a long time ago. Always meant to watch it again but never got around to it. So honestly I can’t say what my opinion on it is. I remember it to be good enough but not as great as its reputation…



Society ennobler, last seen in Medici's Florence
• I saw The Departed in the theater when it came out. Somehow, couldn't impress me much and I even forgot about it till about five months ago when I accidentally came across it on the telly and re-watched some segments.

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• Noticing its popularity, I saw Shaun of the Dead about a year ago. Honestly, can't understand why people watch movies like this.


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my stats

Top 100 seen 44/82.
(seen one pointers 3/38 • seen 101-110: 5/10)
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My list:
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4. Snatch [#71.]
5. The Royal Tenenbaums [#35.]
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8. Sideways [#39.]
9. Amores perros [#81.]
10. The Wrestler [#54.]
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12. The Pianist [#31.]
14. The Man Who Wasn't There [#84.]
...

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Not on my ballot Top 100 movies I'd support:  
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"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." M.T.



Still makes me laugh. Good times. Thanks for posting, HK.
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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."



Two more very good movies that didn’t make my list. Both would have been on a list of my 50 I would think.

Two viewings in on The Departed and I find it highly entertaining with great characters and performances. I always want a little more from m Nicholson’s character. That might be what keeps it below movies like Goodfellas and Wolf for me.

Only watched Shaun once, but it was quite the surprise. Really entertaining and funny. I will check it out again at some point.
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Letterboxd



Right on I had Shaun of the Dead at #17. Very watchable, rewatchable, just fun to watch, and smart. If there was a real zombie apocalypse I would prefer it to be like this.

3. Yi Yi (2000)
4. Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)
5. City of God (2002)
6. Caché (2005)
9. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)
17. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
22. The Aviator (2004)
25. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)

As for the others that have shown, Oldboy is very good and maybe 10 years or so ago it would have made my list. O Brother is not my favourite Coen bros film but I do like it and as others have said, that soundtrack is great. It's not even my type of music and I enjoy it quite a bit. I do like The Departed but kind of place it upper mid-tier Scorsese. I think that was my initial impression and figured that might change with a recent rewatch, but it didn't, felt pretty much the same. I get why it's loved by many, though.





I have gone through this before, but again, as a hardcore, longtime, die hard megafan of Marty Scorsese I find The Departed to be in the bottom third of his filmography quality-wise and therefore frustrated that it was the movie that finally got him his Best Director Oscar. It is not terribly unusual for the Academy to reward somebody later in their career for lesser work. For one with a Scorsese connection, there's Paul Newman. To a movie fan who isn't up on Oscar trivia, to find that Paul Newman won an Oscar is not at all surprising. But then if you asked them which performance he won for you'd likely get guesses of Cool Hand Luke, Hud, The Verdict, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Hustler, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and maybe even Slap Shot before you would have to tell them nope, it was for The Color of Money. Newman is not bad in that film, at all. He's quite good. He's usually quite good. He's Paul frickin' Newman. But were it not for the fact that he won his belated Oscar for The Color of Money it is not a performance that he would be linked to very strongly.

And that is The Departed, for this Scorsese fan. It's not a bad movie, certainly. It just isn't objectively one of his five or so best (for me I rank it twentieth). But it is the one that got him that Oscar. That Marty didn't win for Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, or The Irishman and wasn't even nominated for Taxi Driver, The Age of Innocence, Silence, The King of Comedy or Casino but won for The Departed.... Honestly and truly I would rather he had never won at all and remain forever in the ranks of Hitchcock, Kubrick, Altman, Lumet, and every great foreign language director who ever lived as brilliant filmmakers who never won Best Director at the Academy Awards than to have him win for The Departed. Like Newman's win, in fifty years and to more casual fans they will assume he won for one of his bona fide classics.

But hey, people love it, so whatareyougonnado? It did fall completely off of the MoFo All Time 100 reboot, which was my happiest surprise of that particular countdown (for the record GoodFellas was #3 there, Taxi Driver #14, and Raging Bull #49). I knew of course The Departed would remain on this list, but at least it slipped a little.

As for Shaun of the Dead I love that movie but it is Top 50 for me, not Top 25, and thus not on my ballot. Very glad to see it make the collective list and happily surprised by how high it got. Gives me hope that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World will place well in the eventual 2010-2019 countdown (start the early campaigning now).
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra



I just sat and watched Casino because of this post

I feel it falls a little in the last half of the 3rd act, but yeah, I've always preferred it to the other, often-considered-better, Goodfellas.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
I loved Shaun of the Dead, another one that could or should have been on my list (they're adding up).

I thought that the The Departed was meant to be commercial. The quick orchestration of what happens at the end isn't that much different than the ending of The Godfather except that it involved more major characters. I never saw anything in the flick that wasn't strictly placed there for commercial reasons although I'm not accusing Scorsese of pandering at all. It was a well-told story in my opinion with a few shocks basically. The only scene I thought literally was borderline pathetic was the final one with Nicholson, but you see, that one dragged on and on, and the others didn't give you a chance to breathe before they got you.
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The trick is not minding
Haven’t seen Shaun of the Dead yet.


The Departed is a fun film, but it’s dialogue is overwritten which tends to lend itself to over acting. Too many lines that don’t land well.

“This ain’t reality TV!”
“What doe you want? For him to chop me up and feed me to the poor?!”

It’s a shame that this was the film that won Marty his coveted Oscar, because as good as it is, it’s fairly in the middle of the pack.



Two more from my list. How’s that for a slice of fried gold?

Thief mentioned in the trivia section that 28 Days Later was inspired by the Resident Evil games. Well so was Shaun of the Dead. As a fan of the video game franchise this makes me happy. Ironically no actual Resident Evil movies will be making the countdown.

Whenever a while goes by since I’ve seen The Departed it always makes me think it’s not that good, probably from all the negative reactions to it on the internet. Then I watch it again and love it all over again. I live in Massachusetts and saw it opening night with my friends in a packed theater. During the shocking climax the guy in front of us stood up and yelled, “That’s the Boston police department for yah!” And dragged his lady out of the theater.
What city?



Let the night air cool you off
OMG, totally forgot about that. Brilliant
Seriously. That may be the best thing ever posted on the forum. I can't get over how brilliant the part where the woman is being consoled and the subtitles are telling guapo not to worry and that Miyazaki will come out of retirement soon. So good. That really was a time and a place.



Seriously. That may be the best thing ever posted on the forum. I can't get over how brilliant the part where the woman is being consoled and the subtitles are telling guapo not to worry and that Miyazaki will come out of retirement soon. So good. That really was a time and a place.
I laughed hard at that and a bunch of other stuff but I think The Very Brady Sequel line hit me hardest.



Yeah I had to watch the SC/90s/Downfall video again. It's just great.

Where is SC anyway? I guess I disappeared for a while so can't really say anything. Probably has an alt account. An active one! Not that I did but I could see SC doing that.



Where is SC anyway? I guess I disappeared for a while so can't really say anything. Probably has an alt account. An active one! Not that I did but I could see SC doing that.
He's had several alts that have been banned. Not sure if he has one currently.

He claims he purposely locked himself out of his main account by making it so that he can't change or recover his password, or something to that effect. He keeps following me and unfollowing me on Letterboxd under various names and did the same on Facebook until I stopped accepting his friend requests there.



Critics




Critics thoughts on our #20, Shaun of the Dead...



It currently has a 92% Certified Fresh Tomatometer score among critics, and a 7.9/10 score on IMDb (with 539,000 votes).

Roger Ebert gave it ★★★ and said:
"Shaun of the Dead has its pleasures, which are mild but real. I like the way the slacker characters maintain their slothful gormlessness in the face of urgent danger, and I like the way the British bourgeois values of Shaun's mum and dad assert themselves even in the face of catastrophe."
Meanwhile Claudia Puig, of USA Today, said:
"The movie bogs down and the humor seems to dry up, though the blood continues to well, spurt and spew."
As for our MoFo reviewers, @Prospero said:
"Most of the performances are good, and the directing, camerawork and editing are all great. The brilliant script is filled with sharp-edged satire (many of the humans in the beginning are very zombie-like to begin with), and jokes aplenty... If you have a strong stomach and a good sense of humor, you should see this movie, and soon."
And @Golgot said:
"Unfortunately, the sitcom roots seem to show through a bit, as the comic premises lose some of their strength as the film progresses. There are still plenty of nice little jokes dotted around, but after a while it's the references and the horror-aspects itself which have to carry the film. And to be fair, they achieve a couple of good scares, and even have some truly effective and involving scenes. But overall the mix of comedy and horror does feel a bit clunky in places."
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