ILX All-Time Film and Morbsies Poll: RESULTS Thread for ILX's Favorite Movies, Films, Cinema, Flicks & Moving Pictures

Synecdoche has some interesting filmmaking but yeah, I mostly remember being pretty irritated by it. I think Kaufman works best in another director's hands. His partnerships with Jonze and Gondry were good balances.

i'll try to keep it positive and say that when this ran during my years managing an arthouse, it was very delightful hearing ticket buyers try & fail to pronounce synecdoche

Here's my first vote to place! I'm surprised it ranked above Being John Malkovich, which I didn't vote for and thought was more beloved.
I don't know what being 17 has to do with liking this. I saw it at 36, a few weeks after my dad died, and it captured the feeling when the pace of time passing starts picking up, the body starts decaying and preoccupation with death sets in. (One of the mordant jokes in this is that Caden Codard starts being consumed with his mortality in early middle age, and winds up living well into his 90s.) I agree that it is remarkably ugly for a great film.

one of the least interesting, most irritating movies i've sat through

This movie is great. 17 year olds would hate it. I have had to swear off Charlie Kaufman for my own well-being however.

I'm very much unqualified to comment (I didn't submit a ballot for this very reason!)... I like the central conceit in this (it's absolutely twinned in my head with Remainder by Tom McCarthy) and given that it's a reflection/rendering of Hoffman's inner world, I wonder if the ugliness is, to some extent, deliberate? This had quite an impact on me when I saw it (I wasn't 17) but I found it gruelling and I've no desire to ever see it again.

I remember looking up when Remainder was published as soon as I read it and discovering to my relief that it was before this came out

(okay I was 21, not 17, when I saw this, but it absolutely pandered to juvenile obsessions with metatextuality, angst and so forth)

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58. GROUNDHOG DAY (Harold Ramis, 1993, USA) [772.46 points; 13 votes]
S&S: 265 | TSPDT: 232 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "Groundhog Day is the last comedy star vehicle that succeeded on every level … it's a real achievement that the film's themes have usurped the day's original meaning."

We should just put Groundhog Day in at number one, and then do a poll to find the other top 99 films of the 90s.
― ailsa (ailsa), Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:19 PM

have seen Groundhog's Day at least 437 times. I have a rather insane obsession with that movie. For a while, every single joke between me and an old friend of mine would start with a reference to Groundhog's Day.
― Allyzay, Monday, December 22, 2003 9:34 AM

Groundhog Day - is this secretly everyone's favourite film?
― pete s, Friday, December 19, 2003 3:49 PM

I never saw Groundhog Day (mostly because it has Andie MacDowell in it).
― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, February 3, 2005 8:27 AM

Groundhog Day: so good that it makes up for the fact that Horsey MacDowell is in it.
― Sanjay McDougal (jaymc), Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:21 PM

Groundhog's Day is distractingly ugly. Not moody ugly or consciously ugly, just boring '80s TV drama ugly. The scene with Murray and MacDowell at the bar is the worst. Other than that, close to perfect.
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Tuesday, February 22, 2005 2:29 PM

MORBS SEZ: "Groundhog Day is the last comedy star vehicle that succeeded on every level … it's a real achievement that the film's themes have usurped the day's original meaning."

We should just put Groundhog Day in at number one, and then do a poll to find the other top 99 films of the 90s.
― ailsa (ailsa), Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:19 PM

have seen Groundhog's Day at least 437 times. I have a rather insane obsession with that movie. For a while, every single joke between me and an old friend of mine would start with a reference to Groundhog's Day.
― Allyzay, Monday, December 22, 2003 9:34 AM

Groundhog Day - is this secretly everyone's favourite film?
― pete s, Friday, December 19, 2003 3:49 PM

I never saw Groundhog Day (mostly because it has Andie MacDowell in it).
― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, February 3, 2005 8:27 AM

Groundhog Day: so good that it makes up for the fact that Horsey MacDowell is in it.
― Sanjay McDougal (jaymc), Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:21 PM

Groundhog's Day is distractingly ugly. Not moody ugly or consciously ugly, just boring '80s TV drama ugly. The scene with Murray and MacDowell at the bar is the worst. Other than that, close to perfect.
― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Tuesday, February 22, 2005 2:29 PM

Another non-Morbs medal movie that he was oft to praise on ILX.

And yet, I'm sure he'd be the first to say it's more of a top 1,000 movie than a top 100 one.

my parents took me to this, the first live-action movie i saw in a theater, as a kid. i was too young to get the concept and found it totally inexplicable that i was not only watching boring adults doing things but watching them do the same things over and over. haven't seen it again to reassess, 1 and 1/2 stars

I love Groundhog Day, but it's nothing compared to Sunrise.

Bill Murray should've been in Sunrise.

Young, strapping George O'Brien should've been the groundhog.

and you the otter?

my parents took me to this, the first live-action movie i saw in a theater, as a kid. i was too young to get the concept and found it totally inexplicable that i was not only watching boring adults doing things but watching them do the same things over and over. haven't seen it again to reassess, 1 and 1/2 stars

I mean I can't talk, I placed Mandy in my 25. (But that's diiiifferent)

― imago, Friday, 29 October 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Shame this isn't stopping you.

Morbs liked it because, so far as I can tell, it's one of the movies that coddled his misanthropic worldview. So I can understand the lack of commenting enthusiasm.

― Milm & Foovies (Eric H.), Friday, 29 October 2021 bookmarkflaglink

It's an ok film. Not a top 100 but yeah Morbs otm from the one watch I gave it.

too low

I found Crumb so dislikeable as a person that I couldn't get into the movie at all. List is missing more pure comedies and unabashedly political films so far imo.

Maybe some Adam McKay movies will turn up; two birds with one stone.

Maybe, but I find both McKay's humour and politics boring.

just wait until costa gavras-reitman's opus groundhog'Z day shows up

There's also a chance Groundhog Day might be the closest this list gets to romance.

Depends what you think of Charles Foster Kane's self-love.

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57. IMITATION OF LIFE (Douglas Sirk, 1959, USA) [774 points; 6 votes]
S&S: 112 | TSPDT: 182 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "Sirk is really disturbing... his best films like fever dreams of soap operas. Just because post-contemporary theorists made his arty rep doesn't mean they don't properly explain what made them successful … wow, that moment when Susan Kohner sassily talks all Butterfly McQueen to Lana Turner in Imitation really rules. But God, any scenes w/ John Gavin or Sandra Dee..."

i'm trolling a bit, sirk's ok, you know. but there's a good reason to troll: literally more than any other filmmaker, sirk's present-day rep obtains almost exclusively among people steeped in critical theory, and his 'discovery' in the early '70s came out of the milieu in which french theory, brecht, etc coalesced into what's now mainstream hackademic film culture. i kind of wonder what people get out of his films.
― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Friday, January 6, 2006 6:02 AM

Just wanted to pop back into this thread to mention that I went to a screening of "Imitation of Life" a few nights ago, which, somewhat amazingly (I didn't know this was coming), was followed up by a Q&A with Juanita Moore (who played Annie) and Susan Kohner (the teenage Sarah Jane), along with a few other actresses who had very minor roles. Moore (who's in her eighties now) was really funny and sharp in a "fiesty old lady telling it like it is" mode. Too bad it was moderated by this bearded film professor/Sirk expert who kept asking loaded questions that the actresses weren't much interested in, and interjecting his own (bland) opinions and readings of the movie. (At one point, after an awkward silence when neither of them could answer his question about who else had been tested for their roles, the prof moved along with the comment, "Well, I happen to know the answer, anyway.")
― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, April 9, 2004 2:56 PM

favorite moment in "imitation of life": "look, a falling star!", which i find to be totally inexplicably moving *and* funny, one of those moments where i tend to smile widely and/or make strange little noises in appreciation.
― amateur!st (amateurist), Saturday, April 10, 2004 2:45 PM

last time i watched imitation of life i had like three glasses of whiskey and could barely see the screen at the end through the TEARZ :(
― impudent harlot, Saturday, April 14, 2007 12:59 AM

As perfect a capitalist product as has ever been created in the USA, delivering contradictory pleasures sometimes within a single shot. Classical Hollywood never topped it. … ironic appropriation may be so 1990s, but the "ironic appropriation" of Sirk happened well before that. Also, I think "appropriation" is the wrong word here because Sirk was an ironist. If later audiences are appropriating his films ironically, then they were appropriating them the way Sirk himself conceived them. So while I agree that they're "emotional melodramas that remain detached from the assumptions of the society they depict," that detachment stems from an ironic stance Sirk takes in relation to his characters. In fact, he felt he didn't step back far enough with Imitation of Life. And thank gawd, sez I. One of the very many things which makes it the greatest classical Hollywood film of all-time is that constant oscillation between ironic detachment and intense emotional involvement until they no longer seem like such polar opposites. If Sirk had his way, it might have come off like something by, I don't know, Fassbinder (who I'm definitely NOT dissing here). So the laughter may be signifying not that the audience is "above Sirk's little tricks" but rather perfectly in step with them.
― Kevin John Bozelka, Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:19 PM

I like the original better.
― the vineyards where the grapes of corporate rock are stored (cryptosicko), Wednesday, September 25, 2013 7:20 PM

Figured somebody would say that
― I Am the Cosimo Code (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, September 25, 2013 7:22 PM

There's also a chance Groundhog Day might be the closest this list gets to romance.

Imitation of Life <3

The sharpest American film about white hypocrisy and moral blindness, and it does so without indicting Miss Lora.

There's also a chance Groundhog Day might be the closest this list gets to romance.

― Chris L, Friday, October 29, 2021 11:18 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Depends what you think of Charles Foster Kane's self-love.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, October 29, 2021 11:22 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

What about the bromance at the heart of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp?

I just found out that Imitation was his final picture -- what a high point to go out on.

It's a question of how high up the list of priorities of the film 'romance' is compared to, say, escaping the Chicago mob / ferrying people out of Nazi-occupied Morocco / dancing in rain.

Or, indeed, surviving for thousands of years in a living hell.

I didn't participate in the poll, but I'm compiling a viewing list of "classics" that I need to see. This will be one. Last night I watched "Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance". What a picture! Stewart and Wayne! You could hardly ask for a more iconic duo. Apparently Ford needled Wayne relentlessly during the filming, contributing to much tension on set. Maybe it was part of his genius in getting to the performance he wanted, because Wayne has a tendency to seem too relaxed but in this he looks more tense than usual. The contrast between Stewart and Wayne is quite suggestive, with Stewart at his most schoolmarmish but yet somehow still very masculine.

voted for Imitation of Life but I like All That Heaven Allows almost as much

I'd probably pick Written on the Wind as the best Sirk I've seen.

that's a good one too

Did Sirk show up already? I didn't see, been occupied elsewhere.

i'm sick of directors getting credit for abusing their actors. there must be better ways to get a good performance. i doubt it was related to the performance anyway, as ford was a dick to wayne in the past because wayne didn't serve in ww2.

The ribbing must have had added sting since Stewart was a WWII hero.

All That Heaven Allows and Imitation of Life are interchangeably top 10 territory for me. Lately, the racial spine of the latter has given it the edge.

As much as going through old film threads has confirmed I've more or less mellowed with the years, I still stand behind my disgust at NRQ for his Sirk stances.

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56. THE 400 BLOWS (François Truffaut, 1959, France) [779.33 points; 9 votes]
S&S: 25 | TSPDT: 24 | BOXD: 107

MORBS SEZ: "The 400 Blows was reasonably highbrow to US audiences, I'd say."

best movie ever? yes, it is.
― fritz, Tuesday, February 19, 2002 7:00 PM

It's bollocks. Self-pitying, self-glorifying, ooh ooh ooh bollocks. It's dull and self-concious, and anyone reading this can probably name about 50 nouvelle vague films that are better. The 400 Blows is the sort of movie people like my ex-boyfriend short list as "a masterpiece". It's way too "I just started film school, ooer" for me, and quite frankly no film pisses me off as much as The 400 Blows, besides Titanic. Oh, and Waking Life, that really pissed me off.
― Ally, Tuesday, February 19, 2002 7:00 PM

It's self pitying, definetly. But thats part of the point. I think part of what Truffaut was trying to do was show a young man destroying his own life. The cages he find himself in throughout the movie can be seen as self-made. Oh, and come on people that final "whoa, I'm fucked" shot at the end is totally priceless.
― Ryan, Tuesday, February 19, 2002 7:00 PM

my only walk-out: "400 Blows"
― Dr. Alicia D. Titsovich (sexyDancer), Monday, October 30, 2006 1:13 PM

the end of 400 blows gives me chills every time.
― cutty (mcutt), Monday, March 28, 2005 7:38 PM

Without having seen more than 400 Blows, I can confidently pronounce upon Truffaut's overratedness.
― Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gentleee as you move (Leee), Wednesday, November 30, 2005 3:55 PM

Godard must've made 20 movies better than "The 400 Blows". I'm not certain whether "Breathless" is one of them.
― Kris, Wednesday, February 20, 2002 7:00 PM

Part of my students' final project this semester!

As much as going through old film threads has confirmed I've more or less mellowed with the years, I still stand behind my disgust at NRQ for his Sirk stances.

Still haven't read it. His book on All About Eve was exactly what I wanted from it, so I'll give it a shot soon.

Interestingly enough, most of the mentions of this one on ILX are (by and large) negative, and I guess I kind of understand given the trajectory of Truffaut's career and reputation thereafter. But accusations of sentimentality are ill-founded given the all-time ending.

Alfred's too much a dilettante in his snobbery.

― dor Dumbeddownball (Eric H.),

Has anyone read Born to Be Hurt?
― Through with “What’s the Buzz” (James Redd and the Blecchs)

Yep. Almost as exhaustive as the AAE book.