in no particular order
City of God
Y Tu Mama Tambien
The Ring
Amores Perros
LotR
Monsters Inc
Kissing Jessica Stein
Donnie Darko
The Royal Tennenbaums
Igby goes Down
In no order:
Dancer in the Dark
Versus
Punch Drunk Love
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Battle Royale
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Vidocq
The Others
In no particular order
Storytelling - Not quite as good as happiness but stil head and shoulders above most intelligent cinema
Ichi The Killer - Takashi Miike reinvents the gangster movie
Visitor Q - Takashi Miike gets seriously wierd and darkly funny
Battle Royale - Provocative cinema at its best
Donnie Darko - Very complex and very clever
Monsters Inc. - Pixar at their very best
Almost Famous - By far the best Cameron Crowe film
High Fidelity - Damn nearly perfect
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - Incredibly beautiful film
Requiem For A Dream - Serves as the best anti-drug movie ever made
My favorites so far:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Amelie
Lord of the Rings
Requiem for a Dream (definitely agree with sirtonyh here!)
Finding Nemo
A.I. (if you discount the last 20 minutes or so)
High Fidelity
X2 (as a paragon of the summer blockbuster)
Honorable mention to Pirates of the Caribbean, for Johnny Depp’s brilliant performance (and for being an awesome and hilarious swashbuckler in its own right).
Gangs of New York
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Road to Perdition
Gosford Park
The Ring (right on, Anniee)
Spellbound
The Fast Runner
28 Days Later…
that’s all I can think of.
To be fair, part of the reason I place it so high may be because I know some of the background of the movie. It was made on a 20 million dollar budget. There was no wire work, many of the action scenes were done on a single take with rehearsal in the morning and shooting in the afternoon. That they were able to make a movie where the action is constantly compared to The Matrix on a shoe string with no time amazes me. And where I never really buy Keanu Reeves as Neo in the Matrix, Christian Bale never really comes across as anything less then a bad ass.
The director impressed the hell out of me and I can’t wait for Shadow World, his next, to come out in September.
Oops, the new movie coming out is Underworld, 09-19-03.
Kangaroo Jack. Better than The Godfather.
In no particular order:
About Schmidt
Catch Me if You Can
Both LOTR films
Finding Nemo
Blackhawk Down
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Cast Away
Mulhulland Drive
The Lord of the Rings, both movies
Unbreakable
Moulin Rouge
Gladiator.
Its all I can come up with right now.
I was going to protest this, but you mentioned Gosford Park and I immediately fell asleep. Now I feel refreshed and don’t feel like arguing.
My votes (be forewarned, most of these were gasp POPULAR!) :
Fellowship of the Rings
The Two Towers
X-Men 2
Moulin Rouge
Finding Nemo
Spirited Away
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Adaptation
Pirates of the Caribbean
The Royal Tennenbaums
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Requiem for a Dream
Memento
Donnie Darko
American Splendor
Amores Perros
The Secret Lives of Dentists
Road to Perdition
Spellbound
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
The Pianist, that film moved me more then I can remember being moved by a film before.
I feel guilty I haven’t seen either LOTR films now…and I’m a Kiwi
Why? I thought it was one of the most pretentious “They’ll give me an Oscar Fer Sure!” pieces of tripe I’ve ever seen. Every shot ended with a pan up to the sky. I couldn’t tell if I was watching a war movie or a nature documentary. There were lots of pretty things to look at, but no characters to identify with.
By all means, corndog man, rent The Poor and Hungry. They’ve got it at Black Lodge Video. You won’t be disappointed.
Snatch