The MoFo Top 100 of the 2010s Countdown

I watched Holy Motors for this countdown, and while it's not my type of movie, I thought it was very interesting and I look at it in a positive light.

I loved The Shape of Water. In general, I haven't enjoyed fantasy films since I was about 14, but it's not because I don't want to. The Shape of Water is for adults, and that helps a lot for me, but I felt like a kid again watching it.

5. The Shape of Water (#52)
21. Certified Copy (#84)
22. Knives Out (#74)

Since we are on the half way, to sum up... Most of the reveals so far were pretty much expected.
Considerable part of these are even kind of surprise not being in the upper half, considering their high popularity in the social medias and film forums, such as:
53. The Revenant (2015)
55. Nightcrawler (2014)
57. The Hunt (2012)
60. Joker (2019)
61. The Favourite (2018)
62. Moonlight (2016)
64. Manchester by the Sea (2016)
65. Gone Girl (2014)
73. Hell or High Water (2016)
86. 1917 (2019)
...
That's make me wonder what's going to be placed upper there, aside of the seven or eight canonized titles that everybody knows...

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Having second thoughts on "Holy Motors". In the sense that it was original and intriguing, to a point. With that being said it is up to a 2.5/5 on my craptastic meter.

Shape of Water is one I need to revisit at some point after someone said something about it that totally reframes my understanding of the story.

I really enjoyed Holy Motors, but not in that deep way that would make it a favorite.

Excellent a couple from my top 10. I watched Holy Motors at the Vancouver International Film Festival, final night, final film, and I tell you who besides me was loving it - the whole audience. Great experience. I can also remember that first time I watch Under the Skin, alone, in the dark, maybe, but it was also an experience on its own and I thought about both movies long after the credits. I still do think about them now and then.

4. Holy Motors (2012)
8. Under the Skin (2014)
12. Joker (2019)
14. The Turin Horse (2011)
18. What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
22. Moonlight (2016)

The Revenant was good in many ways but didn't care for it too much overall. I didn't like The Shape of Water, thought it was average, and I swear 15 minutes passed by after the credits ran and I haven't thought about it since.

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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."

Also is it me or anyone else experiencing weird spacing after submitting a post. I think I'm editing every post lately to remove the extra lines.

I've found this for a few years now especially when copying and pasting from word docs. MoFo seems to add extra lines that need removed.

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Nice review. We rated it about the same. At least it didn't break the top 50, which is encouraging... Here's my commentary from 5 years ago:

The Shape of Water (2017)

The film could best be described as an R-rated adult fairy tale. It has evidently garnered Hollywood's imprimatur as one of this year's "it" films, which will likely be reflected on Oscar night.

The acting and technical craft work were first rate, creating technicolor characters and spooky moods. There are Sally Hawkins as the lonely mute girl; Richard Jenkins as the girl's neighbor and confidant; Michael Shannon as the evil Colonel; Octavia Spencer as the girl's co-worker; and Michael Stuhlbarg as the soviet spy with a heart.

But the sole popularity of the film will depend upon it's emotional appeal to those captured by the poignant story of a poor mute girl who finds love and fulfillment with a humanoid amphibian; the Cinderella meets The Creature from the Black Lagoon aspect. For those focusing on the story line, it might seem more nearly like a cliche-ridden farce-- a DC Comics treatment of a fairy tale.

Being so similar to the melodrama of silent films, "Water" could have almost been shot without dialogue. We have the pitiful damsel, Elisa, wonderfully played by Sally Hawkins. Next is the Simon Legree character, Col. Strickland, who is overwritten to the extreme that anyone capable of that degree of sadistic viciousness could only be locked in an institution for the criminally insane. Michael Shannon outdoes himself in this role that is perfectly in his wheel house. Richard Jenkins as Giles, the other noteworthy fine portrayal behind Hawkins', provides another downtrodden character to befriend Elisa, and who we don't realize is the obligatory gay until another man recoils from his tender touch (the Neanderthal homophobe!).

Moving ahead to the talkie era, as the co-worker we have a Hattie McDaniel character ("You know ain't none of them men any good, honey!") played by Octavia Spencer. Rounding out the top five, Michael Stuhlbarg plays the mad scientist, Dr. Hoffstetler, who also doubles as a --what else-- evil Russian spy. If Hitchcock's belief is true that the better the villain the better the movie, then in a movie with a villain for the ages (and other nasties thrown in to boot) will be a shoo-in for greatness.

There will likely be two general reactions to this film. The first, like my wife's, representing the instinctual female point of view, will be an identification with the Elisa character, and an empathetic arousal over Elisa's finding tenderness and love from a beast who carries her away to happiness in the world's waterways. The second , like mine, might be a recognition that the fairy tale of a beast in shining armor has its tender side, but that the other facets of the story are ridiculous to the point of silliness. After all, if one is willing to take the love story aspect seriously then it's a likely that one could also take in stride the similar preposterous other portions. But if the entire premise seems ridiculous then none of it would be particularly digestible.

And finally, Hollywood has in recent years reached nearly to the rock bottom of sexual deviance and aberration themes. The only things left were bestiality and necrophilia. Evidently they've decided to normalize the former, and leave the latter for a future trump card. At least in Beauty and the Beast,
the beast returns to human form, whereas in The Shape of Water we have full-on bestiality. We're

left with the proposition that lonely introverted people can find emotional and sexual fulfillment with animals. And that its pursuit is acceptable and touching.

Hide your pets, folks!

Doc's rating: 7/10 for acting/crafts/technical; 3/10 for story; average 5/10

I liked your review Doc, it was a good read. Yes we did have a lot of the same thoughts on The Shape of Water. I could sum up that movie with the odd adage: 'it has everything but the kitchen sink'

When you phrase it this way, I feel like I should have liked it a lot more!

The Shape of Water was ok. Disappointing considering the director.
Haven’t seen Holy Motors yet, but it’s been on my watch list for years. And every year I say “I’ll watch it soon.”

And then I don’t.

The Revenant - Forgot to say, I haven't seen, I can't say way I've never been that interested in it. My general impression is that there's some beautiful cinematography, but I got the sense I wasn't going to feel like I got much from the story, but I'm not sure where I got that impression from. The only Ińárritu I've seen has been Amores Perros.

The Shape of Water - For some reason I keep watching del Toro movies and I will keep being disappointed. I think the only time I didn't feel disappointed was Cronos for some reason.. Even with setting my expectations so mild, I often find myself feeling like he has some type of promise of creativity that never feels realized to me. I liked the imaginative vision of Pan's Labyrinth, but then felt the story itself was fairly... simple. Maybe more than one-dimensional, but less than two-dimensional. 1.7-dimensional. Anyhow, The Shape of Water, I just watched this finally this past October and checking my review... "no heart." I guess I was very tepid on it.

Holy Motors - I was honestly wondering if this one would make it. For a while, I basically thought about it as, "that enjoyably, odd little movie I watched in theaters at the beginning of the decade, which topped a lot of 'best of' lists for that year (probably mine even, but in any given year I don't know how many new releases I see that I'm heads over heels for), that I mostly remember as being a lot of fun. But not one that I've really thought of much since." And it just kind of became the movie in my memory of the odd movie that I enjoyed in the year I saw it, but apparently didn't leave that much of a long term impression. Then Annette came out and I was like, "wait, how many movies from this director have I seen and just not pieced them together?" That's still roughly where I am (the answer is currently 4, but one of them, I can't even figure out which one it was. Just that it was the second movie in a double feature of Carax movies).
Anyhoo, for SpelingError, my decade-old recollection is the movie is one big metaphor for all of the things that go into the movie making process. All the appointments are all the different people or crowds a director, star, or film-maker has to interact with and what roles they have to play with them. I seem to recall it feeling like it mostly tracked when I watched it. Take it for what you will.
Good on all of you people for remembering this movie existed and voted for it. No votes.

The Shape of Water was one of my last cuts. I really liked the film.

Revealed ballot so far:

7. Under the Skin (2014)
8. The VVitch (2015)
10. World of Tomorrow (2015)
14. Anomalisa (2015)
20. It Follows (2015)

Good job, year 2015.

Revealed ballot so far


4) The Raid 2
25) Winter Brothers

The Revenant was my 23rd pick and barely made my list, but it's such a great movie, it'd be a crime for it not to make the list. Inarritu is a wonderful director and I really liked some of the handheld camera stuff he did, which for me handheld action shots can either work beautifully or be a massive jarring and discombobulated failure. All his stuff is just top notch. Less popular than fellow Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, I think Inarritu's films are more consistently great and push storytelling further.

Anyway.

I love westerns, IF you could even qualify The Revenant as a western; I can hear arguments on either side of that discussion. Anyway the story was captivating, even more so that it is a true-ish story and it's perhaps the best "man in wilderness" survival movie since Jerimiah Johnson. I can forgive the bear attack CGI, which was serviceable, but was clearly CGI and I don't fault the film for that, as it was still a gruesome, gruesome scene to watch and powerful. Another film, up higher on my list, without giving it away, also had what I consider poor CGI or computer effects, which for me to assess it, I completely took that out of the equation and evaluated it on the premise of "if that bad CGI didn't exist, would I like the movie?" Anyway. DiCaprio, even though he himself is not a draw for me, and I don't particularly find him enthralling in his films, like all his stuff he picks GREAT movies and also gives GREAT performances. Tom Hardy on the other hand IS a draw for me and I find him to be one of the most intense and best actors of today and his channeling of Tom Berenger in Platoon is just great, great stuff. He's one of those actors, I would watch in an average or bad film, just because he's in it.

As far as a couple of others recently popping up on the list.

Nightcrawler I thought had a great start, but it spiraled out of control and became a bit too far fetched for me, as it didn't seem consistent with its gritty Taxi Driver like start and went too far into the thriller/horror mode for my tastes.

Holy Motors I've only seen once and I just didn't care for it or get it. Really not my thing entirely. A couple of the episodes were interesting, but it's nothing I'll likely watch again for awhile, but I could see myself giving it another chance some day.

Under the Skin, I liked it well enough, but it had limited appeal for me as the story seemed one note and didn't really evolve a lot and it hit a great note, but it kept playing that note or riff without having a lot of forward momentum in the story or premise. It really reminded me of one of my favorite guilty pleasure films from the 1990s, Species. As a side note however, regarding Under the Skin and Scarlett Johansson, I think it's typical Hollywood privilege spoiled elitist behavior for her to make her career in films like Under the Skin and make more money than likely each member of movieforums combined will make, yet complains about being sexualized in her films. Typical tone-def, out of touch with reality, ivory tower nonsense coming from a person who will never again know going to a shit 9-5 job they hate with zero purpose who gladly accepted her paycheck for a film like Under the Skin. It's stuff like that, which give these pampered people awful names.

I still need to watch The Shape of Water.

Oh and my list so far, the few that have showed up:

4. The Hunt
10. The Witch
23. The Revenant

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I had one from my list appear at no. 100, I've missed the last 49 spots. Thats got to be some kind of record.

You either have really good taste or really bad taste













I'm sure it's good taste!

OK, I always had unconventional opinions concerning Del Toro. I admit to almost loving Hellboy, but finding The Devil's Backbone overrated, while having one important problem with Pan's Labyrinth. So I had no idea what to expect with The Shape of Water. Polarized movies are quite the discussion point. I could've loved it like Fatal Attraction or found it overrated like Fat City.

Gotta say, this was the one Del Toro movie where I didn't find anything wrong with the balance between plot progression and mystique, excluding Hellboy because superhero movies will naturally do that. Style is important, but should never be the primary focus. This had quite a bit of style, but the focus was character, and the most important characters had multiple sides. Even when a subplot ends, it sets up another one, so the short-lived subplots are never wasted. In other words, the movie never loses sight of itself by being too lost in any one facet, almost completely driving itself on the gloomy teal colorization to display the general boredom of life, which a cleaner like Elisa would get. No wonder she fell in love with a fishman, as the fishman was not a part of this normal life that looked down on her for being a mute.

The movie didn't really explore any new themes, but that hardly bothers me at all considering how long this world has spent in the film industry. I guess if I had to fault the movie for anything, it's that the romance doesn't really "feel" as romantic as other romance movies can. I guess it would have to be a challenge to get right, considering our two lovers are a mute and a fishman, two people that don't fit the average moviegoer's lifestyle. But still, the truth is that it COULD have been done, so I'll take a couple points off, but I won't punish it too harshly.

98/100

Now that I finally watched a movie to add to an updated 25, I'll be posting the revelations of my old ballot and a separate new one.

Old Ballot:
4. Endgame
8. A Separation
15. Gone Girl
18. Inside Out

New Ballot:
4. Endgame
8. A Separation
15. Gone Girl
16. The Shape of Water
19. Inside Out

Seen 27/50

Rateyourmusic's film divison classifies "northern" films as a subdivision of westerns, so that might help. Of course, The Revenant is classified as both a northern and a revisionist western. :P