BOT's Top 100 Movies of All Time - Hindsight is 2020 Edition

[TalismanRing]

10 hours ago, titanic2187 said:

I am glad In the Mood for Love finally made the cut, been putting that film in my the greatest film list for long but seem no one bother to care what is the film all about

9 hours ago, Plain Old Tele said:

95?!?!

I had it at #12 - the only vote in the top 15.

 

 

[grey ghost]

When are we doing a top 100 favorite list?

 

I didn't submit a list because I felt this list should really be mostly oscar stuff from before the 1990's and I'm no expert of that time period.

[Rorschach]

13 minutes ago, grey ghost said:

When are we doing a top 100 favorite list?

...um....right now....in this very thread you just commented in.

[The Panda]

This one makes me cry every time 😭

 

Criminally low guys, go watch this movie!

 

 

 

"Meet me in Montauk."

 

About the Movie

 

Synopsis

 

"A man, Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend Clementine underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realizes that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Everyone has that one movie that changed their life first. Even if many films thereafter astound, mesmerize and enchant you, you’ll always remember the first that made you capable of even seeing other films in those kinds of ways. For me, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, released in March of 2004, is that very film. When I first saw it, I didn’t necessarily get it—I understood it to some degree, but I didn’t get it, and yes, there is a difference. But, it hooked me somehow; it hypnotized me in a way that no other film had up until that point. It begged me to watch it again, and again, and again.  Ten years later, and I still watch it, with fresh eyes and a sense of wonder, of whimsy, and of intense admiration. But, I have never written about it until now. I sometimes wonder: had I been this present-version-of-myself back in 2004— would I be able to write about it? Even now, I feel as though the film shapes itself into something slightly different with each viewing as I grow and learn and change. The film remains stagnant on the other hand, though, maintaining its ever-rightful place as my favorite film, and it deserves its own kind of birthday/anniversary homage from me. This post will serve as not only a retrospective review, but also a consideration of what, if any, legacy has this film left us with.

 

Analysis and praise aside, I wonder if we’ve been given anything in the last ten years remotely similar to this film. Gondry’s last two films—The Green Hornet (2011) and Be Kind Rewind (2008)—were far less well-received and, having seen them both, I would argue that they were a bit of a downgrade in terms of his usual precision and originality in delivering mind-bending narratives and the matching aesthetics. I like Science of Sleep (2006), but that feels much more art-house and intimate in nature, which is neither a good thing nor a bad thing necessarily in comparing to Eternal Sunshine. Jim Carrey gives what I deem to be one of his best performances and since then, I don’t think we’ve seen enough dramatic work from Carrey, and he’s underrated in that realm as a result. Kate Winslet is always amazing, but this film seemed like such an intriguing role for her. Many of her roles since—acting talent notwithstanding—have been more predictable than the wholly-unpredictable, neon-haired Clementine.

 

Maybe I’m generalizing. But, my point is, I don’t think Eternal Sunshine has been reincarnated, not widely or effectively at least, because it simply cannot be done. Sure, 500 Days of Summer (2009) was an unconventional, non-linear romance told with musicality by Marc Webb, but with none of the same sci-fi to propel its offbeat nature in quite the same way. And yes, The Adjustment Bureau (2011) had romance and sci-fi and dealt with destiny and agency, but where was the musicality in its inconsistent tone?  Eternal Sunshine weaves in and out of so many conventions but also defies them and makes its own seemingly on the spot. It is singular and unique and that is why, I’d argue, it is so timeless. I think the film has aged gracefully over these ten years and will continue to do so, and if it isn’t considered a true classic already, I like to think that it will be remembered as such eventually. And as ever-evolving as my own interpretations have been of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind over these last ten years, I’d never wish for anyone to take away my similarly-evolving memories of the film. Because, nobody should forget the first film that made them love movies."

- Sara Grasburg, Celebrating Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

 

From the Filmmaker

 

"“I was pretty hurt,” Carrey said. “Michel likes to have real feelings in the scene and real chemistry, so he hired Ellen Pompeo, who’s a wonderful actress. But she reminded me completely of Renée. Her look was similar. And I said, Bastard! And it ends up that she’s not even in the movie.”  “I don’t think they look alike,” Gondry said, denying Carrey’s theory altogether.  “We actually had really good chemistry. It was odd,” Carrey continued. “It was almost too much. If it had been in the movie, it’s competing [with Clementine].”  At the time of filming, Carrey had already established himself as a comedian with real acting range, having starred in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon. Still, he may not initially have seemed like the right fit for self-loathing Joel Barrish, a character so quiet that Carrey had to be aggressively mic’d while speaking his lines. But Gondry—a huge Carrey fan who said he rewatches Liar, Liar every year—said he knew Carrey should play the part when he went to see him on the set of the comedy Bruce Almighty. When Carrey was in-between scenes, Gondry saw a different side of him: “It’s the exact feeling when you walk into a party and you feel everybody knows each other but you,” explained the French filmmaker. “I always saw Jim like that. Like he doesn’t belong.”

 

So Carrey signed on for the film, excited to try something new. Gondry had one concern, though; his debut film, Human Nature (also written by Kaufman), was about to hit theaters, and he was pretty sure it was going to be a box-office flop, which could very well scare away the big movie star he had just hooked. “Michel and I sat in this restaurant, and he made me sign a napkin saying when Human Nature came out and was a bomb, I wouldn’t let him go,” Carrey recalled with a laugh. Human Nature ultimately made under $1 million, but that didn’t deter Carrey or Winslet from Eternal Sunshine.  Gondry, for his part, remembered knowing Winslet was exactly right for the part of the kooky, bewigged Clementine because she was the only person unafraid to give notes on Kaufman’s script. “I was really surprised by her honesty,” Gondry said. “Then I believed her when she said it was a great project.”  Once on set, the actors had to learn how to do things the Gondry way. He hates the word “action,” for example—so Gondry would simply start filming certain scenes without warning. His reasoning? “You say ‘action,’ and everybody becomes a piece of wood,” said Gondry. “And when you say ‘cut,’ everything becomes fluid and alive. So the word ‘action’ became like my enemy.”"

- Yohana Desta, Vanity Fair

 

 

Why It's the Greatest

 

Critic Opinion

 

"The movie, written by Charlie Kaufman (who won an Academy Award for his work in 2005), bears more than a superficial resemblance to Alain Resnais’s 1968 masterpiece Je T’aime, Je T’aime, in which a lover’s death spurs a man to attempt suicide. He survives, and because he clearly has no will to live, he gets recruited for a dangerous scientific experiment in which he’s sent back in time one year, for a single minute. The experiment goes haywire; instead of reliving a single minute, he winds up reliving his entire fated romance, snippet by snippet, completely out of order, with no control over what’s happening.  Eternal Sunshine has more humor and a more legible romance than Resnais’s grimly nihilistic, harrowing classic, as well as tropes that speak to the moment of its release. Clementine, played with unusual vibrancy by Winslet—who’d never get a role this quirky again—is very clearly a riff on the manic pixie dream-girl trope that haunted films of the aughts, though the term itself was not coined until 2007. But she’s also older than that archetype—both of the leads are. And her wild impulsiveness, a point of attraction for the usual dream girl, is here a bit more double-edged. It’s this zany unpredictability, after all, that led to her deciding to erase Joel from her memory without a proper breakup. Nowadays, we call this ghosting; somehow, in 2004, it was harder to fathom.

 

It’s Joel’s own constant depression, meanwhile, that pushes Clementine to such extremes. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t talk much because he thinks he’s got nothing going on—a sorta-funny sad sack whose creative energies seem stifled by the rigmarole of the everyday. A guy whose dissatisfaction seems incurable—a guy who’s a little unbearable, in other words. The film’s fascinating conjecture is that the manic pixie girl and indie hero probably aren’t actually very well suited for each other—not because either one is a villain, but because of basic incompatibility. And yet they choose in the end to give their romance a shot anyway.  Joel has more control over his hallucinatory encounters with the past than the hero of Resnais’s movie. The boundaries are more porous; he can hear the technicians in his apartment, played by Ruffalo, Woods, and Dunst, chatting and smoking weed and talking shit. He can interact with Clementine; he can feel his memories slip away as they happen. These are the moments that make Eternal Sunshine so indelible, even 15 years on. Most of the movie plays out like a spotlit labyrinth of banal events that suddenly become radical and strange as faces, gestures, and details gradually start to disappear. A car falls from the sky; distinct events bleed into each other nonsensically. In Joel’s mind, Joel and Clementine being to run ahead of the memories once Joel realizes he’d rather have them—keep the pain—than pretend Clementine never existed.

 

As heavy as Eternal Sunshine can get, it also never loses its puckish playfulness. Ruffalo and Dunst stoned in their underwear, jumping on Joel’s couch, remains one of the movie’s great joys; a scene back in Montauk, in which the memory of a house crumbles to bits with Joel and Clementine still in it, is still a harrowing, and fascinatingly literal, depiction of a mind being cracked open. Still, I suspect that we mostly remember the film for the serious questions it posits. The film is undeniably a fantasy. But the feelings that Eternal Sunshine evokes couldn’t feel more grounded in the real devastation of a lost love—or the blissful fatedness of a new one."

- K Austin Collins, Vanity Fair

 

User Opinion

 

"It's really...

 

...good."

 

- @CoolioD1

 

The Panda's Haiku

 

Blameless vestal's lot

 

World forgetting, world forgot

 

Each wish is resigned

 

 

Factoids

 

Placement on Prior Lists

 

2012 - 46, 2013 - 60, 2014 - 63, 2016 - 38, 2018 - 51

 

Director Count

 

Mel Brooks - 1, Alfonso Cuaron - 1, David Fincher - 1, Michel Gondry - 1, Rian Johnson - 1, David Lean - 1, Hayao Miyazaki - 1, Adrian Molina - 1, Akira Kurosawa - 1, Richard Linklater - 1, John McTiernan Bob Persichetti - 1, Peter Ramsey - 1, Rodney Rotham - 1, The Russo Brothers - 1,  Martin Scorsese - 1, Lee Unkrich - 1, Kar-Wai Wong - 1

 

Franchise Count

 

Before Trilogy - 1, Marvel Cinematic Universe - 1, Pixar - 1, Predator - 1, Scorsese -1, Spider-Man - 1, Star Wars - 1, Studio Ghibli - 1 

 

Decade Count

 

1950s - 1, 1970s - 1, 1980s - 3, 2000s - 4, 2010s - 5

 

 

 

[Eric the Clown]

5 minutes ago, The Panda said:

This one makes me cry every time 😭

 

Criminally low guys, go watch this movie!

 

 

 

"Meet me in Montauk."

 

About the Movie

 

Synopsis

 

"A man, Joel Barish, heartbroken that his girlfriend Clementine underwent a procedure to erase him from her memory, decides to do the same. However, as he watches his memories of her fade away, he realizes that he still loves her, and may be too late to correct his mistake."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Everyone has that one movie that changed their life first. Even if many films thereafter astound, mesmerize and enchant you, you’ll always remember the first that made you capable of even seeing other films in those kinds of ways. For me, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, released in March of 2004, is that very film. When I first saw it, I didn’t necessarily get it—I understood it to some degree, but I didn’t get it, and yes, there is a difference. But, it hooked me somehow; it hypnotized me in a way that no other film had up until that point. It begged me to watch it again, and again, and again.  Ten years later, and I still watch it, with fresh eyes and a sense of wonder, of whimsy, and of intense admiration. But, I have never written about it until now. I sometimes wonder: had I been this present-version-of-myself back in 2004— would I be able to write about it? Even now, I feel as though the film shapes itself into something slightly different with each viewing as I grow and learn and change. The film remains stagnant on the other hand, though, maintaining its ever-rightful place as my favorite film, and it deserves its own kind of birthday/anniversary homage from me. This post will serve as not only a retrospective review, but also a consideration of what, if any, legacy has this film left us with.

 

Analysis and praise aside, I wonder if we’ve been given anything in the last ten years remotely similar to this film. Gondry’s last two films—The Green Hornet (2011) and Be Kind Rewind (2008)—were far less well-received and, having seen them both, I would argue that they were a bit of a downgrade in terms of his usual precision and originality in delivering mind-bending narratives and the matching aesthetics. I like Science of Sleep (2006), but that feels much more art-house and intimate in nature, which is neither a good thing nor a bad thing necessarily in comparing to Eternal Sunshine. Jim Carrey gives what I deem to be one of his best performances and since then, I don’t think we’ve seen enough dramatic work from Carrey, and he’s underrated in that realm as a result. Kate Winslet is always amazing, but this film seemed like such an intriguing role for her. Many of her roles since—acting talent notwithstanding—have been more predictable than the wholly-unpredictable, neon-haired Clementine.

 

Maybe I’m generalizing. But, my point is, I don’t think Eternal Sunshine has been reincarnated, not widely or effectively at least, because it simply cannot be done. Sure, 500 Days of Summer (2009) was an unconventional, non-linear romance told with musicality by Marc Webb, but with none of the same sci-fi to propel its offbeat nature in quite the same way. And yes, The Adjustment Bureau (2011) had romance and sci-fi and dealt with destiny and agency, but where was the musicality in its inconsistent tone?  Eternal Sunshine weaves in and out of so many conventions but also defies them and makes its own seemingly on the spot. It is singular and unique and that is why, I’d argue, it is so timeless. I think the film has aged gracefully over these ten years and will continue to do so, and if it isn’t considered a true classic already, I like to think that it will be remembered as such eventually. And as ever-evolving as my own interpretations have been of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind over these last ten years, I’d never wish for anyone to take away my similarly-evolving memories of the film. Because, nobody should forget the first film that made them love movies."

- Sara Grasburg, Celebrating Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

 

From the Filmmaker

 

"“I was pretty hurt,” Carrey said. “Michel likes to have real feelings in the scene and real chemistry, so he hired Ellen Pompeo, who’s a wonderful actress. But she reminded me completely of Renée. Her look was similar. And I said, Bastard! And it ends up that she’s not even in the movie.”  “I don’t think they look alike,” Gondry said, denying Carrey’s theory altogether.  “We actually had really good chemistry. It was odd,” Carrey continued. “It was almost too much. If it had been in the movie, it’s competing [with Clementine].”  At the time of filming, Carrey had already established himself as a comedian with real acting range, having starred in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon. Still, he may not initially have seemed like the right fit for self-loathing Joel Barrish, a character so quiet that Carrey had to be aggressively mic’d while speaking his lines. But Gondry—a huge Carrey fan who said he rewatches Liar, Liar every year—said he knew Carrey should play the part when he went to see him on the set of the comedy Bruce Almighty. When Carrey was in-between scenes, Gondry saw a different side of him: “It’s the exact feeling when you walk into a party and you feel everybody knows each other but you,” explained the French filmmaker. “I always saw Jim like that. Like he doesn’t belong.”

 

So Carrey signed on for the film, excited to try something new. Gondry had one concern, though; his debut film, Human Nature (also written by Kaufman), was about to hit theaters, and he was pretty sure it was going to be a box-office flop, which could very well scare away the big movie star he had just hooked. “Michel and I sat in this restaurant, and he made me sign a napkin saying when Human Nature came out and was a bomb, I wouldn’t let him go,” Carrey recalled with a laugh. Human Nature ultimately made under $1 million, but that didn’t deter Carrey or Winslet from Eternal Sunshine.  Gondry, for his part, remembered knowing Winslet was exactly right for the part of the kooky, bewigged Clementine because she was the only person unafraid to give notes on Kaufman’s script. “I was really surprised by her honesty,” Gondry said. “Then I believed her when she said it was a great project.”  Once on set, the actors had to learn how to do things the Gondry way. He hates the word “action,” for example—so Gondry would simply start filming certain scenes without warning. His reasoning? “You say ‘action,’ and everybody becomes a piece of wood,” said Gondry. “And when you say ‘cut,’ everything becomes fluid and alive. So the word ‘action’ became like my enemy.”"

- Yohana Desta, Vanity Fair

 

 

Why It's the Greatest

 

Critic Opinion

 

"The movie, written by Charlie Kaufman (who won an Academy Award for his work in 2005), bears more than a superficial resemblance to Alain Resnais’s 1968 masterpiece Je T’aime, Je T’aime, in which a lover’s death spurs a man to attempt suicide. He survives, and because he clearly has no will to live, he gets recruited for a dangerous scientific experiment in which he’s sent back in time one year, for a single minute. The experiment goes haywire; instead of reliving a single minute, he winds up reliving his entire fated romance, snippet by snippet, completely out of order, with no control over what’s happening.  Eternal Sunshine has more humor and a more legible romance than Resnais’s grimly nihilistic, harrowing classic, as well as tropes that speak to the moment of its release. Clementine, played with unusual vibrancy by Winslet—who’d never get a role this quirky again—is very clearly a riff on the manic pixie dream-girl trope that haunted films of the aughts, though the term itself was not coined until 2007. But she’s also older than that archetype—both of the leads are. And her wild impulsiveness, a point of attraction for the usual dream girl, is here a bit more double-edged. It’s this zany unpredictability, after all, that led to her deciding to erase Joel from her memory without a proper breakup. Nowadays, we call this ghosting; somehow, in 2004, it was harder to fathom.

 

It’s Joel’s own constant depression, meanwhile, that pushes Clementine to such extremes. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t talk much because he thinks he’s got nothing going on—a sorta-funny sad sack whose creative energies seem stifled by the rigmarole of the everyday. A guy whose dissatisfaction seems incurable—a guy who’s a little unbearable, in other words. The film’s fascinating conjecture is that the manic pixie girl and indie hero probably aren’t actually very well suited for each other—not because either one is a villain, but because of basic incompatibility. And yet they choose in the end to give their romance a shot anyway.  Joel has more control over his hallucinatory encounters with the past than the hero of Resnais’s movie. The boundaries are more porous; he can hear the technicians in his apartment, played by Ruffalo, Woods, and Dunst, chatting and smoking weed and talking shit. He can interact with Clementine; he can feel his memories slip away as they happen. These are the moments that make Eternal Sunshine so indelible, even 15 years on. Most of the movie plays out like a spotlit labyrinth of banal events that suddenly become radical and strange as faces, gestures, and details gradually start to disappear. A car falls from the sky; distinct events bleed into each other nonsensically. In Joel’s mind, Joel and Clementine being to run ahead of the memories once Joel realizes he’d rather have them—keep the pain—than pretend Clementine never existed.

 

As heavy as Eternal Sunshine can get, it also never loses its puckish playfulness. Ruffalo and Dunst stoned in their underwear, jumping on Joel’s couch, remains one of the movie’s great joys; a scene back in Montauk, in which the memory of a house crumbles to bits with Joel and Clementine still in it, is still a harrowing, and fascinatingly literal, depiction of a mind being cracked open. Still, I suspect that we mostly remember the film for the serious questions it posits. The film is undeniably a fantasy. But the feelings that Eternal Sunshine evokes couldn’t feel more grounded in the real devastation of a lost love—or the blissful fatedness of a new one."

- K Austin Collins, Vanity Fair

 

User Opinion

 

"It's really...

 

...good."

 

- @CoolioD1

 

The Panda's Haiku

 

Blameless vestal's lot

 

World forgetting, world forgot

 

Each wish is resigned

 

 

Factoids

 

Placement on Prior Lists

 

2012 - 46, 2013 - 60, 2014 - 63, 2016 - 38, 2018 - 51

 

Director Count

 

Mel Brooks - 1, Alfonso Cuaron - 1, David Fincher - 1, Michel Gondry - 1, Rian Johnson - 1, David Lean - 1, Hayao Miyazaki - 1, Adrian Molina - 1, Akira Kurosawa - 1, Richard Linklater - 1, John McTiernan Bob Persichetti - 1, Peter Ramsey - 1, Rodney Rotham - 1, The Russo Brothers - 1,  Martin Scorsese - 1, Lee Unkrich - 1, Kar-Wai Wong - 1

 

Franchise Count

 

Before Trilogy - 1, Marvel Cinematic Universe - 1, Pixar - 1, Predator - 1, Scorsese -1, Spider-Man - 1, Star Wars - 1, Studio Ghibli - 1 

 

Decade Count

 

1950s - 1, 1970s - 1, 1980s - 3, 2000s - 4, 2010s - 5

 

 

 

[Ethan Hunt]

The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and Fight Club drops hurt 

[The Panda]

 

 

"It's constant - -the moment. It's just... It's like it's always right now, you know?"

 

 

About the Movie

 

Synopsis

 

"Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, Richard Linklater's BOYHOOD is a groundbreaking story of growing up as seen through the eyes of a child named Mason (a breakthrough performance by Ellar Coltrane), who literally grows up on screen before our eyes. Starring Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as Mason's parents and newcomer Lorelei Linklater as his sister Samantha, BOYHOOD charts the rocky terrain of childhood like no other film has before. Snapshots of adolescence from road trips and family dinners to birthdays and graduations and all the moments in between become transcendent, set to a soundtrack spanning the years from Coldplay's Yellow to Arcade Fire's Deep Blue. BOYHOOD is both a nostalgic time capsule of the recent past and an ode to growing up and parenting."

 

Its Legacy

 

"MY YOUNGEST DAUGHTER, a recent college graduate, moved out of our house—her childhood home—into her first apartment this week. I am thrilled for her, a little sad for me. Her passage into adult life seems like an auspicious time to be writing about Boyhood, which brilliantly and poignantly follows the trajectory of a child’s path from wide-eyed six-year-old to contemplative eighteen-year-old. Director Richard Linklater shot the film over the course of twelve years, so we watch the characters age, change, and evolve. It’s something like a time-lapse photo of a life, the closest thing to a lived life that film has yet to capture.

 

I have seen the movie six times, which, with its three-hour duration, accounts for the better part of a day. At times I identify with young Mason (played endearingly by Ellar Coltrane) as he finds his way along the sometimes-rocky trail to adulthood. Other times I empathize most with his mother, Olivia, winningly played by Patricia Arquette. She stumbles her way to wisdom, making some serious mistakes along the way.  Lest you think me a time-wasting fanatic, let me explain: I didn’t watch it consecutively. I saw it first at a film festival, then several months later again before reviewing it for USA Today. Shortly thereafter, I rewatched it to conduct a Q&A with Linklater, and another time to moderate a discussion with Ethan Hawke, who plays Mason’s father. My fifth viewing came as I prepared to write an essay for the best-director prize I was giving Linklater at the Los Angeles Film Critics Awards ceremony. The last time was with the daughter who just moved out. She wasn’t as moved by it as I was. It was too male-centric for her. I saw the universal human condition, filtered through the often-mystified eyes of a child.

 

To me the film is about the process of finding and becoming one’s true self. It’s about how we grow and develop and learn how to cope with change—our own, that of those we love, and some that feels inexplicable and forced upon us. We take one step forward, two steps back, and maybe a few sideways. We trip and fall and get back up. Life is not linear, plot-driven, or thematic. Boyhood captures all that complexity in its quiet, unassuming way."

- Claudia Puig, Image Journal

 

From the Filmmaker

 

"Linklater, who has always been sympathetically anti-establishment, explains: "Other kids were straighter. The whole thing was a choice between the artistic and the societal. There were kids who would have grown up to be athletes, student council presidents, made their parents proud. Ellar was the kind who was going to be his own guy, he had not come out of a cookie cutter."  It is the "mysterious" and "ethereal" that best define what is a miraculous performance in the film – it seems not to be a performance at all. Linklater once told Ethan Hawke: "If I see you act, the whole thing falls apart." Naturalness is the key to the best of his work. Today, Ellar sits with his legs stretched out on a coffee table, wearing leather sandals, as if about to go on holiday. He has a nose ring and the eyes one remembers and he laughs a lot. His voice is lazy, takes its Texan time. His thoughts are anything but. Linklater – or Rick, as his friends call him – is also casually dressed and easy-going, giving in to laughter at the slightest excuse. One feels there is a family likeness here that extends beyond their laid-back aura to their thinking. It becomes obvious before even the first five minutes have passed that these men are talkers; they spark off each other – meeting them is the closest one can come to stepping into a conversation in a Linklater film.

 

What is also clear is how paternal Linklater feels about this experiment. From the outset, his decision was that the children (his own daughter, Lorelei plays Mason's sister, Samantha) would not see any footage before the film was finished. What was it like, when the time came, for Ellar to witness himself growing up on screen?  "It was brutal," he says, in the gentlest tone. "There is this tiny person that I only intellectually or abstractly know is me. I am told it is me but don't remember being that person. The film shows how you change over time and how experiences accumulate and shape the person you become. But the strangest part is that I also recognise myself in that tiny person. I realise how little I have changed – how little anyone changes. Stuff happens to you but, deep down, you are the same person."

 

He has forgotten "so much of the filming. My memories begin about halfway through." It was right to insist they wait: "I can't even imagine what it would have been like to watch it when I was 13. God, it would have wrecked me." His family, he reveals, have been "floored" by it. You can see how weird it must be for his parents because it is Ellar's invented childhood preserved on screen, his actual childhood has gone.  Did Linklater ever feel uncomfortable about involving the children in the project? "It was just this thing – if your parents send you to summer camp and you keep on coming back and then turn 13 or 14 and they say: 'Do you still want to keep going to that summer camp?' And you go: 'Yeah, that has been fun every year.' I think it was fun to be part of – that was the goal. I never had an ethical concern because, in my heart, I always felt it would be a good, positive thing in their lives."  Having said that, his daughter, one year, asked whether it might be possible to kill off her screen character. And now she tells him that watching the film is emotionally challenging. "She found it more so than Ellar. He is being cool about it but there are gut-wrenching elements to being so depicted. I always took solace that they have young-adult mind-sets now and will hopefully have some perspective.""

- The Guardian

 

 

Why It's the Greatest

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Everyday is probably the clearest precedent for Boyhood – Richard Linklater’s 16th feature – but it was likely conceived after it. That’s because Boyhood, which follows one youngster from first-grade to college, was shot in Texas in increments over the remarkable period of 12 years (2002-13), using the same core cast – Ellar Coltrane as the boy, Lorelei Linklater (the director’s daughter) as his sister Samantha, Patricia Arquette as mother Olivia and Ethan Hawke as father Mason Sr. – every step of the way.  Linklater approaches potentially epic, elephantine material in characteristically unassuming fashion; from his debut Slacker (1991) up to Before Midnight (2013), the director has always been more interested in hanging out with his characters and observing their interactions with their environment than imposing artificial dramatic arcs.

 

Boyhood proceeds in brisk, implacably linear chronological fashion, and despite its 165-minute running time, is astonishingly minimal. Save for one or two alcohol-related family blowouts and painful separations along the way, it is a quiet film of tender moments, micro-details and sudden, barely discernible editorial ellipses – sometimes the only way to initially ken that significant time has passed is to spot the lengthening or colour change of a character’s hair, or the unheralded sprouting of a goatee on a teenage chin.  It’s the subtle accrual of details, argues Linklater, that defines a life, not the big moments. Instead of wedding ceremonies and clichéd depictions of awkward virginity loss, Linklater luxuriates in the minutiae: a cruelly enforced haircut here, a trip to the bowling alley there. He even begins the film in a quietly subversive way by starting after the recent separation of Mason and Samantha’s parents. In a more orthodox film, this would surely be the launching point for the drama.

 

Young Mason starts off as an open-faced blank canvas, watching the world around him go by. In the early stages, his older sister Samantha is more of a presence, stealing scenes with hilarious, diva-ish antics.  Yet over time, and no doubt reacting against the alpha-male pathology of his mother’s heavy-drinking partners after Mason Sr., Mason transforms into an archetypal Linklater character: the type of curious, selectively garrulous, gently nonconformist dreamer essayed by Wiley Wiggins in Dazed and Confused (1993) and Waking Life (2001). Accordingly, the film becomes less a study of ‘boyhood’ as a universal concept, and more specific to Mason, coming of age in contemporary America."

- Ashley Clark, Sight & Sound

 

User Opinion

 

"The great thing about this movie is the acting and writing is so natural and organic. It's also impossible to ignore the massive achievement of filming a narrative feature over 12 years. Even though there's other films like the Up documentaries that have documented the lives of several people over the course of more than a decade, for a film that is actually scripted, and requires the dedication of so many actors and crew members, that it's just astonishingly unique and brilliant. It's a gimmick, yes, but gimmick is not an intrinsically bad word. Personally, that's why Richard Linklater should win Best Director at the Oscars this year, because of his dedication to such an enormous project, along with making a great film at that.  Just a great movie that'll definitely stand the test of time." - @Alpha

 

The Panda's Haiku

 

Hot Texas Suburbs

 

Growing up isn't easy

 

In the home of Bush

 

 

Factoids

 

Placement on Prior Lists

 

2012 - N/A, 2013 - N/A, 2014 - N/A, 2016 - 73, 2018 - 98

 

Director Count

 

Richard Linklater - 2, Mel Brooks - 1, Alfonso Cuaron - 1, David Fincher - 1, Michel Gondry - 1, Rian Johnson - 1, David Lean - 1, Akira Kurosawa - 1, Hayao Miyazaki - 1, Adrian Molina - 1, John McTiernan Bob Persichetti - 1, Peter Ramsey - 1, Rodney Rotham - 1, The Russo Brothers - 1,  Martin Scorsese - 1, Lee Unkrich - 1, Kar-Wai Wong - 1

 

Franchise Count

 

Before Trilogy - 1, Marvel Cinematic Universe - 1, Pixar - 1, Predator - 1, Scorsese -1, Spider-Man - 1, Star Wars - 1, Studio Ghibli - 1 

 

Decade Count

 

1950s - 1, 1970s - 1, 1980s - 3, 2000s - 4, 2010s - 6

 

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by The Panda

[Eric the Clown]

Why does the Boyhood graphic say "Directed by Michel Gondry"?

[The Panda]

1 minute ago, Eric Skywalker said:

Why does the Boyhood graphic say "Directed by Michel Gondry"?

Fixed lol, had forgotten to edit that from the prior entry.

[Borobudur]

32 minutes ago, Ethan Hunt said:

The Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind and Fight Club drops hurt 

Just come back from the 2018's edition of top 100.

 

The submission dropped from 61 to 36 this round. That was harsh! wonder where are these people going.....

[The Stingray]

Predator is disturbingly low...

[SLAM!]

Well, Richard Linklater is the first director to have two films on the list!

[Ethan Hunt]

41 minutes ago, SLAM! said:

Well, Richard Linklater is the first director to have two films on the list!

And if he doesn't have at least one more we're going to riot

[4815162342]

18 minutes ago, Ethan Hunt said:

And if he doesn't have at least one more we're going to riot

 

He already has one too many 

[Ethan Hunt]

I had 5 Linklater movies on my list (and Boyhood actually wasn't one of them)

[The Panda]

8 hours ago, Borobudur said:

Just come back from the 2018's edition of top 100.

 

The submission dropped from 61 to 36 this round. That was harsh! wonder where are these people going.....

I mean in 2018 the list was going on right after Infinity War.

 

This year it’s in the middle of a pandemic in which no movies are being released.  Makes sense forum activity has dipped since then.

[DAR]

1 hour ago, Ethan Hunt said:

And if he doesn't have at least one more we're going to riot

Let’s go Dazed and Confused

[Tower]

2 hours ago, 4815162342 said:

 

He already has one too many 

Two too many, and if Before Sunrise makes it, it will make three...

Edited July 16, 2020 by Tower

[Ethan Hunt]

12 minutes ago, Tower said:

Two too many, and if Before Sunrise makes it, it will make three...

banned

[The Panda]

I'll be off to a slow start this morning but should still be able to fit in 10 or so today

 

 

 

"So long partner." (Until a dumb fourth movie comes out)

 

About the Movie

 

Synopsis

 

"Woody, Buzz and the whole gang are back. As their owner Andy prepares to depart for college, his loyal toys find themselves in daycare where untamed tots with their sticky little fingers do not play nice. So, it's all for one and one for all as they join Barbie's counterpart Ken, a thespian hedgehog named Mr. Pricklepants and a pink, strawberry-scented teddy bear called Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear to plan their great escape."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Eleven years and eight films later, Pixar brought the Toy Story series back for another spin – but as the fans of the previous films have already grown, the Toy Story series encounters its own sense of growth in the same way. But like the toys themselves in this belated third entry, the franchise has already endured having been forgotten in so long despite having been treasured by longtime fans of Pixar. Now with the challenge of having to reintroduce the familiar Toy Story characters to a new generation of audiences, but also keep the best traits around for those who have stuck so closely with two of Pixar’s very first leaps to the screen. With Lee Unkrich (who previously co-directed Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo) now taking over the position of directing from John Lasseter, it’s easy enough to say that a new enough voice has not only managed to reaffirm that the Toy Story films have never lost that touch that made them resonate with audiences back when they came out, but also a sign for what was to come of letting the series grow in our hearts for so long too.

 

Toy Story 3 also has that distinction of being the third animated film (following Beauty and the Beast and Pixar’s preceding film, Up) to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, but also that of being the first sequel nominated in the category without any of its predecessors being nominated. As a means of capturing the legacy and the importance that the Toy Story franchise has carried for so many over the years, such an honour feels right. But of course when speaking about what the film manages to achieve, Toy Story 3 isn’t only one of the best animated sequels ever made but it feels like the perfect way to pass the baton from one generation of viewers and storytellers to the next. It may not be the best of the series (I still hold it out for the first film), but if anything else can further reaffirm what made Toy Story or Pixar’s films in general so important to many over the years, it’s the way in which they touch viewers over time – by welcoming in as many people as they can. And for someone who’s grown up on these films for as long as I can remember, I can’t help but admit that ending never fails to make me tear up, but feel happy too. It just feels warming to know that the legacy is in good hands, and will be passed on beautifully."

- Jaime Rebanal, Cinema from the Spectrum

 

From the Filmmaker

 

"DId you worry that young audiences might not relate to the idea of a child fleeing their parents’ nest?
 

LU: ‘No, we never worried about that. The story is universally appealing, I think everyone can relate to it in their own way. I think the youngest kids who maybe don’t have a notion of empty nesters or the kid leaving home for college can relate to the toys. The toys don’t know what the future holds and they want Andy to love them. The love of a “parent” [Andy] and the idea that it’s going to come to an end, the toys fretting about what’s going to happen, I think that’s definitely an idea kids can relate to.’

 

Does the voice talent have any influence over the script and animation?

‘The actors don’t really have any influence over the script – we pretty much come to them with what we’ve written. Some of the actors like to improvise a little like Michael Keaton [voice of Ken]; in his case he’d take a line that we had written and play with it a bit. Very often what he improvised ended up in the movie just because it was so funny.  However, the actors definitely have an influence on the animation because we record all the voices before we animate any frames. So the animators are listening to the performances and that’s their springboard to create the physical performance.’

 

Do you prefer to have your voice cast working together or recorded separately?

‘It’s always individuals. Every once in a while we’ll get a couple of actors together: Tom Hanks and Tim Allen would do five or six recording sessions over the course of a few years. One of my challenges is to get performances from them that feel spontaneous, that feel like they’re talking to somebody else. I’m often acting with them myself and then I have to take all the different voices and combine them in the editing room in a way that makes it feel like they’re really in the room together.’"

- TimeOut Interview with Lee Unkrich

 

 

Why It's the Greatest

 

Critic Opinion

 

"For those who haven't seen, or don't remember, the first two films (it's been, incredibly, 15 years since the first one came out), the toys in question are owned by Andy, a little boy who was perhaps 7 when the series began. He's now 17 and packing his room to leave for college. (The director, Lee Unkrich, catches us up on his life with a cleverly conceived home-video montage.) After some deliberation over whether to donate his old toys or keep them in the attic, Andy sentimentally opts for the latter—but his mother, thinking the unmarked bag of toys is trash, carries it out to the curb. It's up to Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks), the one toy Andy has set aside to take to college, to sneak outside and save his friends.

 

What follows is an intricately plotted chase that eventually lands the toys at a day care center called Sunnyside—a place where all is not as it seems. Woody, Jessie, Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and the rest are welcomed by the seemingly benign Lots-o'-Huggin Bear (Ned Beatty), whom another character will later refer to in a fearful whisper as "that evil bear who smells like strawberries." Lotso assures them that at Sunnyside, they'll once again find children to care for them. Instead, Andy's former toys are banged and splattered by a roomful of hyperactive toddlers and, when they try to escape, held prisoner by Lotso, his silently menacing sidekick Big Baby, and a clothes-mad Ken doll (Michael Keaton) whose morality isn't the only ambiguous thing about him.

 

The idea-generating table at Pixar must be one lively and raucous place, because if there's a toy-related visual gag conceivable by the human imagination, it's somewhere in this movie. Shot after shot bursts with whimsical weirdos popping out of boxes and scuttling atop shelves: There's a Fisher Price rolling telephone who communicates only by ringing up his interlocutor. A monster robot guy who toggles in between two expressions—happy and mean—by pounding his own head. A lederhosen-clad hedgehog (hilariously voiced by Timothy Dalton) who fancies himself a gifted thespian. And a brilliant long-form gag that raises the ontological question: In what feature of a Mr. Potato Head (voiced by Don Rickles) does the spud's spiritual essence reside? But somehow, the profusion of characters, jokes, and action sequences never feels disorienting or excessive. Through it all, the toys' motivation remains simple and crystal-clear: They must get back home to the boy who, grown up or not, still loves them. As for that last sequence after they do—hold up. I need a moment."

- Dana Stevens, Slate Magazine

 

User Opinion

 

""For someone who was about to go to college when this was released, I've got to say, I cried like a baby. It made me want to find all my old toys and just hug them, play with them, anything. It was incredibly touching. I loved it!" - @StarSaber

 

The Panda's Haiku

 

Andy's packing up

 

Leaving his toys behind him

 

Goodbye to Woody

 

 

Factoids

 

Placement on Prior Lists

 

2012 - 44, 2013 - 30, 2014 - 13, 2016 - 33, 2018 - 67

 

Director Count

 

Richard Linklater - 2, Mel Brooks - 1, Alfonso Cuaron - 1, David Fincher - 1, Michel Gondry - 1, Rian Johnson - 1, David Lean - 1, Akira Kurosawa - 1, Hayao Miyazaki - 1, Adrian Molina - 1, John McTiernan Bob Persichetti - 1, Peter Ramsey - 1, Rodney Rotham - 1, The Russo Brothers - 1,  Martin Scorsese - 1, Lee Unkrich - 2, Kar-Wai Wong - 1

 

Franchise Count

 

Before Trilogy - 1, Marvel Cinematic Universe - 1, Pixar - 2, Predator - 1, Scorsese -1, Spider-Man - 1, Star Wars - 1, Studio Ghibli - 1, Toy Story - 1

 

Decade Count

 

1950s - 1, 1970s - 1, 1980s - 3, 2000s - 4, 2010s - 7