The MoFo Top 100 of the 2000s Countdown

Literally just realized something else about Up I'll have to make a note of and revise the essay with.

There's just no end to this stuff.

I didn't participate by sending a list, so everything I say should be regarded with suspicion but the part I liked in "The Royal Tannenbaums" is when one of the Wilson (brown haired) says the name "Margo", and Gene Hackman asks (bewildered), "Margo TANNENBAUM?" (attached to "I'd like you meet my ADOPTED daughter")


Kill Bill 2 is better than Kill Bill, which I didn't like so much. You know the lead actress isn't going to die in the first 5 minutes, so I have to sit there (forever) and watch Uma kill 50 samurai one by one, with "OK, let's move on", and knowing exactly what was going to happen... Kill Bill 2 had some dialogue at least, but thought it was just alright, kinda like how I feel with the Cohen Brothers but liked "No Country For Old Men" a little more.

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Something you have to look Up?

Rushmore is Wes Anderson.

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I have seen Up twice (once in a theater full of delighted children and adults). It does very little for me, which just kind of makes me sad, like a food having a lovely spice that everyone else is able to taste but I can't. I don't even necessarily have criticisms of the film, it just didn't click with me either time I watched it. It looks great. The voice performances are strong. I just don't feel it. Sorry. (Actually, the only thing I have "against" it is when people try to convince me why I should love it. I literally see everything they're pointing out, it just fails to connect with me.)

Its lingering (and seemingly never-ending) impact on my professional life is that "Squirrel!" has become shorthand for talking (sometimes nicely, sometimes not) about children with ADD/ADHD.

I saw both Kill Bill films in the theater and had a good enough time. But my goodness you can basically hear Tarantino masturbating in the background of both of them, and I've never been inclined to revisit either film. They were huge in the 2000s, so of course at least one of them belongs on the list. Watching a lot more films--especially Japanese films---in the meantime has exposed just how many of the things I liked were pretty liberally borrowed from other movies. Give me Blind Woman's Curse any day.

Kill Bill made my list. I’m quite the Tarantino fanboy.

Up is so ****ing good and it sucks I couldn’t find room for it on my list.

Rank 'em.

Of the last four reveals, I've seen three. Much like Finding Nemo, The Incredibles is a film I only saw because of my high school summer job. I didn't find it particularly interesting, but I've been wanting to give it another chance because both my room mates absolutely love it.

I watched both the Kill Bill volumes back-to-back on the movie network one night, so it's hard to remember exactly which parts were from which film. I was unimpressed, but still sat through them both....almost. I actually missed the end of Vol 2 as something better came on. A few years later my room mate at the time convinced me to watch them again (marathon style as well), and my impression was the same. At least I finally saw the conclusion though!

I watched Up for a animated film tournament here, and I have to say the opening is absolutely fantastic. If this were a short film, it would be an easy yet heartbreaking 10/10. However once the adventure part of the film sets in, it starts to lose me.

Seen: 39/68

My List:
05. The Lives of Others (2006) - #41
06. Millennium Actress (2001) - DNP
08. Mother (2009) - #96
10. Iron Man (2008) - #83
11. Paprika (2006) - #64
16. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) - #76
20. Moon (2009) - #48
25. Bon Cop, Bad Cop (2006) - 1-pointer

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I can't help but disagree with the idea that this film is cold. If anything, his later films have the calculated staging that make the presentation feel icy, with the exception of maybe Moonrise Kingdom. I look to a scene as simple as Ben Stiller's character lying on the floor, then his son decides to lie on the floor beside him. That one act is simple, heartfelt and warm. It doesn't do much to further the loose plot of the story, but it does a lot for the characters, where they are and where they need to be. On the surface, I understand that the film might feel like it's keeping people at a distance, with the neglect and cold father being at the centre.

Ben Stiller's character has immense growth in the film. In an effort to become nothing like his father, he alienates his own family. He has to face his own inner turmoil and his shortcomings with his own father before he is able to see the overbearing protectiveness of his own children.

But then I look to the female characters, specifically Paltrow, and see that Anderson never really had a strong female character in any of his films since then. They all feel one-dimensional after this film and I think that might be because he has yet to collaborate with a female writer. Something I think might take his films in a new direction that I would eagerly look forward to.

Anderson has become "too Anderson" and with each new film every review seems to be "This is his most Wes Andersony film yet" So with that direction that he seems to be going in, I still appreciate the inner workings of what Tenenbaums offers.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

*sigh*

Fine, take my rep.

Haven't seen Kill Bill Vol 2...I can't stand Tarantino or his movies, so don't plan on watching it.

I've seen Up and the opening segment is very special but the rest of the film goes Down-hill from there I didn't like Ed Asner as the old man Carl, he didn't seem to have much personality to me. I'd like to have seen Jack Black do the voice of Carl. I just about hated the little kid, he was made way too stupid for me to like. While I liked Dory in Finding Nemo, I never warmed up to the kid. I kept wishing he would just go away and stop ruining the movie for me.

Two great Pixar films! I put Up in the top tier and The Incredibles near top tier but just under. So we're thinking WALL-E will be the highest ranked and Ratatouille comes in 2nd?

The Royal Tenenbaums is probably my 3rd favourite Wes Anderson. I actually rank them in release order, Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums. I know, crazy, Bottle Rocket at the top! After those first three it's hit and miss for me.

Tarantino is always a hit for me, or at least it seems that way. The Kill Bill films are great but ya I would rank 1 over 2 like it seems the group did.

Also, Yoda's essay on Up! Seems like a great opportunity for a video essay. It would help those of us kids who can't read good. Or maybe even a cool new feature for the site!

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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."

16. Up (2009)

I film that had tears in my eyes on two separate occasions. Everyone likes to acknowledge the perfect opening sequence that had everyone crying their eyes out and it is indeed a perfect opening sequence. I like to acknowledge the moment Carl opens the book and sees that Elle didn't stop her adventure book, just continued it in a different way. Him recognizing that her adventure was her life with him touched my heart and I had to hide my face a bit from my wife while watching the film. I have to keep the cold ice emotionless robot exterior or I'll never hear the end of it, hahaha.

Imaginative, colourful, funny and heartfelt. Up is everything that Pixar does right and hasn't really been able to recapture since. Who wants to watch a movie about an old man flying his own house with balloons as a film? It was an odd story that soars above the rest and earns high marks from me.

I'm a Tarantino fan and a fan of Kill Bill, but it did not make my list.


5. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
14. Sin City (2005)
16. Up (2009)
20. Battle Royale (2000)
24. Won't Make It.
25. American Psycho (2000)

I wouldn't disagree that the narrative, and the journey the characters go through in this film, is filled with emotion. Both repressed and clearly visible. Out of all of Anderson's films, I think the script of this film is brimming with ideas regarding the need we have of family, and the hurt they often bring. It's a big reason it was a favorite movie of mine for a long time. Each character represented something to me, and those things they represent were definitely based in emotion.


And as for his sense of style here, it is off the charts. Rarely has a director brought such meticuluous perfectionism to his work. Rarely is there so much to discover in the backgrounds of every shot. It is a marvel in so many ways. The kind of artistic statement that when I first watched, actually filled me with despair, as it made me realize that as a creative person myself, how much further I had to go to compete with such a thing. An impossible distance. A humbling experience, but the kind of thing that ends up just making love the whole idea of art so important to me.


But then what happened with this recent viewing. For the record I would still give it an 8/10. High praise from me. But it just felt diminished. Not reaching the potential I remembered it reaching. And it think it is the incongruency of the films two greatest virtues. Extremely well thought out script, which requires a deeply empathetic approach to get it all properly on screen. And a director finally having within his grasp to finally make the movie he probably always had in his head, as he now had both the experience and the money to realize these visions. The problem is I just think he went too far on the latter. I can't even think of a single frame of this film that doesn't feel like it is being firmly held in place. His over abundance of talent and ideas just feels....stiffling. Especially after 2 straight hours of it.



I feel the material this script offered for this movie really required moments to feel (at least occassionally to provide contrast) spontaneously lived in. Or natural. Maybe just knock down the preciousness a bit for a few minutes from time to time. Because it doesn't do this, the whole film feels like a catepillar in a jar that has no holes punctured in the lid. We get a sense it should be turning into a butterfly anytime soon. But instead it just suffocates.



Rushmore (even if you aren't a big fan) has such easy breezier moments as these in abundance. Moments where characters move around, like people. Where characters seem to be thinking as they talk, and not reciting everything exactly in that Anderson dead pan style. Even simple scenes of Max walking through campus, scenes that seem like they may have just been done in one take, while insignificant in the big scope of the narrative, are enough to provide that relief. They are the holes in the lid. Offering that sense of reality that I just couldn't get back to in my recent viewing of RT.


All of that said, I don't remotely begrudge anyone for retaining their complete love of the film. I wish I was still there. But I just have to be real to my own experience with the movie, even if it goes against the previous twenty years of my total devotion to it.

This actually occurred to me semi-recently (as in the last couple of months) because I've been watching more of those on YouTube.

It would be a ton of work, but I've gotten a lot better at video editing over the last year, and I think it would be quite good. There's a very good chance this'll happen.

I'm not sure it would or could become a regular thing, stuff like this takes a lot of time and effort, and that's before you get into the perfectionism problem (I'm not kidding when I said I was tweaking the essay for years). But the best version of the essay is, probably, a video version, so I probably will at least start work on something like that and see where it goes.

i remember liking Up but haven't seen it since release. didn't vote for any Tarantino because I'm not 14 anymore.

BOOM, goes the dynomite!

Any thoughts yet of which MoFos you might cast in the various roles to reenact parts?

I'm pretty sure I like Kill Bill: Vol. 2 more than Vol. 1 as I prefer its greater emphasis on characterization, though Vol. 1 also has a lot to offer and I'm sure it will place higher in this list.

Up didn't make my ballot, but it's close to my favorite Pixar film.

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I’ll put it in spoilers because it might tip off how I voted in this countdown.