The 00s Draft: Discussion Thread - Page 22

Who is playing it straight in that movie? I think Stiller gets dinged by us film nerds because he's everywhere. But he has a pretty shrewd comedic mind, and he's not afraid to be ugly or be the constant butt of the joke. I thought he was fantastic in this as a guy that has had a ton of success, but is on the downward slide (and is finally realizing it) and is so insecure and jealous of Lazarus. Plus, absolutely everyone in the movie is smarter than he is. I thought it was a pretty great performance/character.

 

The scene I'll always remember from Away We Go is the monologue where Chris Messina's character talks about his wife's miscarriages while she dances on stage. Heartbreak! Good choice.

 

Black Book seems just so utterly misogynistic when it comes to it's main character, that it was hard for me to dig. I did like van Houten's performance quite a bit, though. 

 

Edited by Kevin Matchstick - 12/7/11 at 3:12pm

You know that scene in The Mist, when they go into the drugstore? And the giant spiders and Bill Sadler really loses his shit?

 

Horrifying.

 

More so, since I suffer from a rather severe case of insect phobia myself.

 

If there's a scarier movie than The Mist, I can't think of it right now.

 

...........

 

Speaking of wailing Gerard.... There's another movie that I can't believe no one has drafted. Maybe it's too populist? (Though, I find that an odd reason in a draft that already features Hobbits, Spider-Man, Batman plus Wolverine and his amazing friends) Maybe people have forgotten it? Maybe they've forgotten it's from this decade? I don't know. But, for my money, it's one of the top five blockbusters and still far superior to all of the movies it subsequently informed. None of which actually would deserve to be drafted.

 

Maybe I'm speaking too soon. We still have one more round to go, after all.

Cheerfully withdrawn!

 

Meeee toooooo....

 

I have to be the one naysayer on The Mist.  Apologies to Fuzzy (District 9 and History of Violence are spectacular picks!).  I was with it until the face-palm of an ending.  I preferred how Stephen King ended the story.  It was much more compelling than what I saw as a tacked-on, pretentious, sophomoric "twist" that made no sense relative to the reality of being a parent.  The perfect contrast to The Mist is The Road, which ends with a similar painful dilemma, but which plays out much more truthfully to human nature.  There I said it.  I know I go completely against the grain on this, but I wanted to blow a hole in the movie screen after I had rushed out on my lunch break to see it in the theater!  It felt like a complete betrayal of the story. 

My own opinion is, though I liked The Mist, not as many people would have had a problem with the ending if the film itself had earned the authenticity such a strong statement requires.  I've never seen anything from King, or Darabont for that matter, that didn't feel a little bit cartoonish, or at least caricatured.  The ending was a gutsy sucker punch.  A harsh reproof of those who would lose hope in uncertain, even bleak times.  Despite my reservations about the people behind it, I felt the film did enough to earn the ending, but a truly great film would have left no doubt. (Though that may have made general audiences hate it all the more, I don't think they would have considered it a cop out.)

 

I dunno. Different parents do different things. I think the hero's actions at the end of the story are believable. He truly believes that's the best option and it makes a lot of sense. To want to spare such pain and horror from the people you love? I think it's a believable moment of self-sacrifice.

 

What was definitely not necessary was Tom Jane actually saying: "It was all for nothing!" I wish I could delete that line from the picture.

Erix, maybe so, but it didn't ring true to me.  At all.  And I know I'm in the minority.  Even Stephen King loved the ending.

 

And Bailey, I think you're right that it wasn't earned because of its massively wrenching tonal shift from the rest of the film, but I don't consider it gutsy.  It struck me as contrived to seem gutsy.

Edited by yt - 12/7/11 at 4:17pm

It's embarrassing how few films I've seen from today's picks. Of the one's I saw:

 

- Love the Speed Racer pick, nooj. What Matrix is to me, Racer is to you.

 

- Laughed hard during Tropic Thunder in the theater, but haven't revisited. I think it'll hold up. The cast is solid, and while the jokes ebb and flow I agree with folks who say it tilts way more on the positive side.

 

- I wanted to like Away We Go, and there is much to like it in. But I just couldn't get past the premise. How does this couple not have any friends that they have to travel the country to get advice from crazy, fucked up people? It just seemed so random, and the crazy families seemed crazy for the sake of the movie. I really did like Rudolph and Krasanski in it though.

 

- I didn't hate 500 Days, but I didn't love it either. It felt like a one and done. Really the only part I really dug was the split screen where he imagines what would happen at the party juxtaposed with what actually happens. That was kind of genius. I'm curious if your last pick is a particular film that folks either love or hate. I'm on the love side, so I hope you go there.

 

If you haven't seen Pedro Almodovar's stuff, get on it. I think I've drafted him in every eligible draft, which is why i didn't pick one of his films this time. But believe me, he has several eligible films that are strong 1st or 2nd rounders. Ditto Sophia Coppola. I know many Chewers tire of her, but I can't get enough. Again, as she is always a staple in my drafts, I'm going in a different direction. But know in my heart she's the bees knees.
 

Everyone knew it was nooj's. You just don't steal something that meaningful from a person.

 

Just wait until next round!
 

What?! I think Tropic Thunder is funny, but a signature comedy? More crazy talk. What is going on in this draft? People have lost their minds!

 

I agree, crazy talk. I loved the film up to the point when Steve Coogan bites the dust, but then it moves from being a great classic to being merely good. 

As far as I'm concerned, the two funniest films of the decade have yet to be drafted.

Round four of the draft began with the first spotting of Vin Diesel, with Eileen sampling the sci-fi grab bag "Pitch Black. Not sure about that film surfacing on anything other than a "Best movies to ever air on USA" draft, but one can consider it overflow from the thick sci-fi contingent of this decade. Only three Best Picture Oscar winners have surfaced thus far, with Nexus snapping up "The Hurt Locker," and MrTyres grabs the third and final eligible Spike Jonze title in "Where The Wild Things Are." Making a sneaky-brilliant pick is Kevin Matchstick with the brilliant genre piece "Pontypool," which wouldn't have been out of place in Round Two, while EvilTwin grabs another Coen brothers effort in "The Man Who Wasn't There"; there could have been a Coen brothers film drafted each and every day of this draft, and no one would blink.

 

Richard Dickson succumbs to his film love and selects the genre-appreciation doc "Not Quite Hollywood" over what remains a strong pool of remaining documentaries. Meanwhile, Bravejoe just had to jump ahead in line for "The Two Towers," taking all LOTR films off the board, and Raspberry Leper grabs another Coen piece, "Burn After Reading." HunterTarantino makes a nice under-the-radar pick with "American Splendor" and Hammerhead gets the first (hopefully last) Adam Sandler film of the draft in "Punch Drunk Love." Glisten drafts en espanol with "The Devil's Backbone" while Judas Booth grabs "Michael Clayton," proving the most repeated phrase in this thread, "George Clooney is having a great draft."

 

Erix decided to teach us how to speak English with this knife, grabbing "Gangs Of New York," while Anyawatchin probably makes the draft's worst overall pick in the saccharine piece of shit "Love, Actually" - must have a helluva theme we don't know about. Ratty picks Greg Mottola's "Adventureland," while I probably reached for "Morvern Callar," a film I absolutely loved that remains one of the decade's best. Bendrix picks the second funniest eligible Jake Kasdan choice with "Walk Hard," and Tim K goes obscure for the little-seen animated film "Mary And Max," while Moltisanti wraps it all up with the underrated Kevin Costner western "Open Range," and remains the one poster I am scared will threaten my Round Five selection. 

 

103. Pitch Black

104. The Hurt Locker

105. Where The Wild Things Are

106. Pontypool

107. The Man Who Wasn't There

108. Not Quite Hollywood

109. The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers

110. Burn After Reading

111. American Splendor

112. Punch Drunk Love

113. The Devil's Backbone

114. Michael Clayton

115. Gangs Of New York

116. Love, Actually

117. Adventureland

118. Morvern Callar

119. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

120. Mary And Max

121. Open Range

I really took a shine to SIN CITY after my first viewing. Rourke's segment is still highly entertaining but the rest hasn't aged well and it just goes on forever and ever.

 

Still, Gugino.

 

 

 

 

You sure about that? 

 

Idea for a non-bonus bonus round:  Instead of picking up a spare sixth film, or everyone just flooding a "leftover" thread with too many titles to count, let alone discuss, what about including all the draft groups in a single day (each group separated by an hour instead of two) where everyone gets to pick the two biggest snubs they feel are left on the board?  You could either use the spot to mention the best films remaining that perhaps didn't go with your draft, or well known titles that you can't believe are still left.  By limiting the number of films we mention, and going in roughly the same order, we can have the opportunity to discuss the titles, and why or why not they might have fallen out of favor.  Just a thought.

Is it possible that Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder is both very funny and yet still stops the movie in its tracks every time they go to him?  I think so.

 

My thoughts exactly. Sure it was a novelty seeing Tom Cruise all uglied up for the first time, but I just find that he plays his asshole character so well that he puts me off. There's nothing to like about Les Grossman once the character is no longer a surprise, I just wanted Les to go away and die a horrible death.  

LOVE.

 

Man, I couldn't decide which way to go this morning. I typed in like 5 diff choices, before deciding to go with Michael Mann's underrated thriller. Cruise and Foxx are both brilliant. It's especially fun to see Cruise playing so coldly nasty. The whole film is like a waking nightmare for Foxx's character, and I love that he has to find buried qualities deep within himself in order to survive. A perfectly executed, breathless piece of cinema.

I give Watchmen credit for swinging for the fences, and can't really knock it for only hitting a triple.

Love COLLATERAL until the ending. Cruise should have won and gotten away. He's far too competent at his job to make that many errors at the end and get killed by an amateur. It's a complete betrayal of his character and kinda kills the movie for me.

I thought it just should have ended right when Foxx crashed the cab.

What I love about Collateral is the look and the lengths Michael Mann and his DPs went to to achieve that.  It's one of the most beautiful movies set in a city that I've ever seen, and the fact that it's L.A. makes it even more beautiful, because there are so many loving tributes to New York at night, but so few about L.A.

 

I agree with Dickson on Watchman, but it's so funny that Alan Moore hates even the idea of it. 

Dear Zachary is like a feature length version of a Dateline episode where they make you wait and wait for the absolute worst outcome imaginable. I think the best thing about that movie is its poster.   

 

We goin' for a walk, boy.

Dear Zachary is another one of those films where all the funniest parts are in the trailer.

Ah Watchmen.  Now theres a bloated, ultra-serious superhero movie I can get behind.  Love the pick, Justin. 

I dig COLLATERAL which is as good an action film as it gets for the first two thirds. The ending is conventional, but it doesn't erase the goodwill.

 

WATCHMEN gets an A for ambition. If Snyder was better with actors, he might have matched that A, although I still think WATCHMEN is a solid movie. Not the next comic book movie I thought would go in the draft, but certainly one I thought would go.

 

I know Devin shit all over LARS AND THE REAL GIRL when it came out, and it does have issues, but I think it's a very solid film with Gosling doing all he can with the material.

Love WATCHMEN, warts and all. Surprised it lasted this long.

Yep.  That's where the movie dies for me.  It's A+ up until then.  

Wow, six years later and people are still missing the point of the ending of Collateral.

I was inches away from taking Dear Zachary in the third round. I rarely cry at movies, but that freaking wrecked me. It's as raw and personal as anything you're ever going to see, and if you go into it blind it's just one body blow after another.

SomethingClever: Draft's going by US release date, and it wasnt released till March 2010 here. Sadly. That film is pretty damn great. But, yeah. New pick.

 

I seem to remember a stretch of time where mentioning Watchmen was met with the same bitchfest usually reserved for The Dark Knight. Color me pleasantly surprised it didn't here.

 

Warts and all, and by warts, I mean Malin Akerman's a terrible Silk Spectre, I love Watchmen to death. Snyder took the unfilmable and nailed as much of what it was on film as possible, with enough of his own touches to sweeten. The beats he misses are small by comparison to what he gets 100% right.

 

And looking back over my draft, a theme came out: Escapism. My picks all have characters using storytelling in various forms to make themselves or others a better world, and all the perils that go with it. In which case, I'm kinda proud that it ends with Watchmen; with the cautionary tale of the decade's biggest genre gone literally and figuratively nuclear. In a decade defined by 9/11, the search for someone/thing to save us all ending with Adrian Veidt's greatest practical joke pleases the shit out of me.

Totally agree.  People wanted it to do for film what Watchmen did for comics, but an adaptation of Watchmen was never going to do that.

I thought the rules were traditionally it had to play more than one festival, and that an Oscar qualifying run counted as a release.

Malin isn't that bad. He needed an actress that looked like she could physically do the fight scenes and would get naked. She did all of that and wasn't embarrassing. The real mistake was with Matthew Goode.

We've covered this ground in other threads, though. It's a great pick and one that I was considering.

I like Lars well enough, but it's hard to buy that an entire town would indulge this guy's eccentricity.

 

Haven't seen Watchmen or Zachary. Vastly prefer Collateral over the other Mann film, which I'm surprised hasn't surfaced. But Molti has gotten his 5th yet. So there's a chance it'll show up.

 

And yeah, an Oscar nom seems like it would qualify a film.

Considering the eligibility rules for the Oscar, yeah, a nomination would seem to qualify a film.

It's easy to say Collateral is diminished by the third act, but, for me, a better way of identifying the movie's main issue is that Mann seems to want to make a movie showing that existence is like jazz, but the screenplay is the exact opposite of jazz.  Nothing about it feels like improv designed around a theme.  It's entirely too considered for that.

I think Bailey nailed it with his "extra round" idea, by the way.

I'll back you on Bring It On, Diva.  It was on my list as a potential fifth rounder for my all-comedy roster.   Also, the stage musical version that just played here in Los Angeles is actually fantastic.  

Ah, Bring It On, back when I would have probably committed a felony for Eliza Dushku.

If you were to add up every minute spent watching each of the drafted-thus-far films (based solely on finding it whilst aimlessly flipping channels), I may have spent more time watching Bring It On than any other movie. Dushku in that cheerleading outfit = I'mma watch.

I'm on the email list for the production. You better believe when/if it hits NYC, I'm there!

 

We're perky, we're cute

We're popular to boot

We're bitchin', great hair

The boys all love to stare

We're popular, we're hot

We're everything you're not

Who are we, just guess

Boys love to touch our chests.

We cheer and we lead

We act like we're on speed

You hate us cuz we're popular

But we don't like you either

We're cheerleaders, yea

Cheerleaders, roll call!

 

 

Yeah, I just typed that off my head. :P

Love BRING IT ON. On Beaks' Top 100 of the decade, BRING IT ON made it, but not THE DARK KNIGHT. Fanboys couldn't get past that. The fury was funny to see.

 

By the way, Dushku is great, but movie belongs to Dunst. She's fantastic.

Collateral lasted a WHILE. So did my other possibility Sin City and Watchmen.

 

Back to the drawing board. Let's see if my other pick from round 4 survives...

While I don't hate the idea, I'll say that I like the generic Bonus round because those are usually films YOU champion for whatever reason and want other people to see, but due to draft limits they didn't make the cut. A "Snubbed" list would be more relevant if this were a "Best of the Decade" draft because by definition these are films that are generally considered great by the populous, but weren't drafted. Different discussion.

I take back what I said about Love Actually.

 

Fucking Hearts in Atlantis, yt? Really?

 

You have worse taste than Stephen King.