Topic: 00s Movies Draft - Selection Thread (No Discussion)

[Musketeer Gripweed]

Action & Blockbuster - Batman Begins

[Samie]

Action- Man on Fire

[dis_1]

Category 3 Adventure/Fantasy

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
https://letterboxd.com/film/o-brother-where-art-thou/



Dir: Joel Coen
George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill
John Turturro as Pete
Tim Blake Nelson as Delmar O'Donnell

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/oRNa5VzKP6Q" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/oRNa5VzKP6Q</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/9d2aBkiwXwg" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/9d2aBkiwXwg</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/cc92SeRjt8U" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/cc92SeRjt8U</a>

[Sheer Magnetism]

Team America: World Police (2004) - Action/War/Western

Wherever you fall on Team America's dick-pussy-asshole view of global diplomacy (one that does pretty much reflect the Ukraine situation), Team America is objectively hilarious, the puppets are amazingly expressive, the songs are brilliant and the voice acting is terrific. If many of the film's highlights - "America, fuck yeah!", Matt Damon, "Everyone Has AIDS", Kim Jong Il singing 'I'm so Lonely' - have ascended to meme legend status, pretty much every scene is great and there's a goldmine of amazing bits. And it functions excellently as a basic three-act action film, with car chases, fighter jets, cities being destroyed and a grand world-saving rescue.

Here are just a couple of my favourite scenes. In the first, some of Team America are forced to come face to face with Kim Jong-Il's fearsome panthers, while others encounter a tied up Susan Sarandon. The second is their take on the sorrowful End of Act 2 ballad.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/QQOWp3tLb2s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/QQOWp3tLb2s</a>

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/2z3GJiZqDCI" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/2z3GJiZqDCI</a>

[NICHOLLS]

After my heavy double-pick of The Pianist & Requiem for a Dream, I need a double dose of feel-good sweetness for my roster (two films full of inspiration, wit, humour and warmth):

Jean-Pierre Jeunet's beautiful Amélie (2001) / Cat 8. Wildcard:




...and Wes Anderson's magical Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) / Cat 7. Animation/Family:

[dis_1]

Category 7 Animation/Family

A Scanner Darkly (2006)
https://letterboxd.com/film/a-scanner-darkly/



Dir: Richard Linklater
Keanu Reeves as Bob Arctor/"Fred"
Robert Downey Jr. as James Barris
Woody Harrelson as Ernie Luckman
Winona Ryder as Donna Hawthorne/Audrey/"Hank"
Rory Cochrane as Charles Freck

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/hkjDUERgCQw" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/hkjDUERgCQw</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/ilE7jqbgZ50&amp;t=322s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/ilE7jqbgZ50&amp;t=322s</a>

[Samie]

Animation/Family- ENCHANTED

[Musketeer Gripweed]

Wildcard - Gangs of New York

[Max_powers]

Shrek (2001) - Animation

[Sheer Magnetism]

Bad Santa (2003) - Comedy/Musical

Bad Santa has a heart, eventually, but also some fantastic early scenes with Billy Bob as a drunken wreck playing the cuntiest Santa Claus around, together with a great supporting cast that includes Bernie Mac, John Ritter, Lauren Graham and the excellent Tony Cox ("Well, these lips were on your white pussy last night"). It is to cinema as Fairytale of New York is to music, and I mean that in the best possible way.

Fun fact: the scene below, which is hilarious, originally had Billy Bob hurling a racial slur at one of the plastic reindeer. He was drunk in real life shooting the scene too.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/0-ydykr4P40" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/0-ydykr4P40</a>

[Lastrador]

Dogville (2003) - Cat. 8 Wildcard + Indie flick

[Crosby Nick]

Training Day (2001) - Crime

[El Lobo]

The 40 Year Old Virgin - Comedy

[red mongoose]

Love Exposure (2008) - Action
Director - Sion Sono

"The movie focuses on three teenagers: Yu (Takahiro Nishijima), an innocent pretty boy; Yoko (Hikari Mitsushima), the troubled girl he loves; and Koike (Sakura Ando), a young recruiter for a cult known as the Zero Church ... The three have a lot in common, aside from proximity: each has a (very) problematic relationship with his or her parents; each one has problems with sex and sexuality; and each one has a problematic relationship with religion."

"The story of a teenage boy named Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an 'up-skirt' photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing – which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian – dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with the guilt that's a legacy of his Catholic upbringing."

... and it's four hours long. Don't watch this unless you have the patience of a saint and the ability to relax every mainstream habit you have formed watching normal films. Because this is all the way out there. If you can get through it, and "absorb" it the way you would absorb French New Wave or other experimental films, you will be richly rewarded, even if you don't really understand how or why. I wouldn't begrudge you a session or two of mental health counseling after watching it, but I am of the opinion that it is a glorious, messy, romantic masterpiece.

[AndyMuller]

Catch Me If You Can - Drama

[tubby]

Hotel Rwanda - War - 2004

[Betty Blue]

This Is England (2006) - Drama

[vivabobbygraham]

Sideways - 2004 - Drama - Dir: Alexander Payne

[Hazell]

Michael Clayton (2007) - Crime

Director: Tony Gilroy



&

Cloverfield (2008) - Wildcard

Director: Matt Reeves

[vivabobbygraham]

Super Size Me - 2004 - Wildcard - Dir: Morgan Spurlock

[red mongoose]

A Very Long Engagement (2004) - Wildcard


Again, I'd strongly recommend the source material, written by Sebastien Japrisot. It belongs with the best fiction about WWI, and Jean-Pierre Jeunot does a tremendous job in capturing its spirit, infusing the screen with his trademark beige and yellow palette. Audrey Tautou is as charming and bewitching as ever. As romantic as anything you'll ever see.

[AndyMuller]

Ip Man - Wildcard/Foreign Language

[El Lobo]

Castaway - Wildcard

[Lastrador]

The Host (2006) - Cat 6. Horror/Sci-Fi

[Max_powers]

The Man Without a Past (2002)- Comedy

Trailer

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/WgGvlyuJ628&amp;ab" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/WgGvlyuJ628&amp;ab</a>

Review by Ebert and Roeper

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/idGFRMGq7Ac&amp;ab" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/idGFRMGq7Ac&amp;ab</a>

Plot: A man arrives in Helsinki and is beaten and robbed of all his belongings. He is beaten so badly that he suffers from Amnesia and forget who he is. He falls through the cracks of the society and becomes homeless and starts living in shipping container. He makes friends and finds love and rebuilds his life in this new community he finds himself in.

The quote from Jim Jarmusch at the start of the trailer perfectly describes the film. Aki Kaurismaki films are like if Wes Anderson directed a Ken Loach film. They have the deadpan humour and visual flair of a Wes Anderson film but usually follow characters at the margins of society rather than rich white people.

The actors in his films show little to no emotion at all. They just read the lines from the script verbatim. What makes the films work is the comedic timing and the fact that when there is even the slightest bit of emotional contact, you really notice it and feel the warmth. A touch of hands, a loving stare and acts of kindness feel so much more powerful in a film where you are denied all melodrama and emotion.

Plus this film has a brilliant soundtrack.

[Musketeer Gripweed]

Comedy - School Of Rock

[Samie]

Wildcard- Frost/Nixon

[dis_1]

Synecdoche, New York 2008 Directed by Charlie Kaufman

quite a personal film for me, arriving at a point in life which resonated deeply with me

will fill in later.....

[dis_1]

Category 8 Wildcard

Synecdoche, New York (2008)
https://letterboxd.com/film/synecdoche-new-york/



Dir: Charlie Kaufman
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Caden Cotard
Samantha Morton as Hazel
Michelle Williams as Claire Elizabeth Keen
Catherine Keener as Adele Lack
Emily Watson as Tammy
Dianne Wiest as Ellen Bascomb / Millicent Weems
Jennifer Jason Leigh as Maria

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/j1LZ9EOMqsY" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/j1LZ9EOMqsY</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/6_LJ8NoxlCE&amp;t=391s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/6_LJ8NoxlCE&amp;t=391s</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/rjqYpsuBrPU&amp;t=14s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/rjqYpsuBrPU&amp;t=14s</a>

[Sheer Magnetism]

Gosford Park (2001) - Wildcard: it's on Netflix if anyone's interested.

I had three or four possibilities for the wildcard and even though there are a couple I love more, I had to go with what I think is the best film yet to be picked. Gosford Park has suffered a bit because of its association with Julian Fellowes' Downton Abbey, but it's by far the superior piece of work, with a superb cast of old and young British thesps and brilliant direction by Robert Altman.

You get a real feel not only for each individual character but how they interact with each other and how the social order is maintained. You can tell it's an Altman film too, the way the camera moves and different pieces of dialogue overlap with each other is reminiscent of MASH, The Player or Nashville. And that editing is just perfect. It creates a naturalistic feel that prevents the script from ever feeling stuffy or artificial:

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/ESapy1TMmUI" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/ESapy1TMmUI</a>

[tubby]

Iron Man - Adventure - 2008

[NICHOLLS]

Creepy and moving in equal measure, in Guillermo del Toro's poetic tale, the horrors of war & the evil of men are intwined within its Gothic backdrop...



The Devil's Backbone
(2001)

Cat 6. Horror/Sci-Fi

[Crosby Nick]

The Descent - Adventure (2005)

[Betty Blue]

Alright, let's end on some Scorsese -

The Aviator (2004) - Wildcard

[Musketeer Gripweed]

Sorry I missed the tickly bit of the draft. My dad passed away last week and I wasn't around much. I didn't even get a chance to vote for myself, I think. No idea now.

[Lastrador]

Sorry I missed the tickly bit of the draft. My dad passed away last week and I wasn't around much. I didn't even get a chance to vote for myself, I think. No idea now.

Oh, mate. I'm so very sorry about your loss. Was hoping things would get better for you Oldman.

My condolences to you and your family. RIP.

[El Lobo]

Sorry I missed the tickly bit of the draft. My dad passed away last week and I wasn't around much. I didn't even get a chance to vote for myself, I think. No idea now.

Sorry to hear mate

[Sheer Magnetism]

Really sorry to hear, Musketeer. I went through something similar a year ago, hope you and your family are getting through it all right.

[Max_powers]

My condolences buddy. 

[NICHOLLS]

Thoughts are with you bro