2003's Best Movies: 20 Years Later

In keeping with previous polls, I've gone with the contenders in the top 2,000 films, but they now offer the entire starting spreadsheet. Here are the titles that carry through through the top 5,000 films ever.

2053	1789	Best of Youth, The	Giordana, Marco Tullio	2003	Italy	373
2101	1919	School of Rock	Linklater, Richard	2003	USA	108
2179	2443	S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine	Panh, Rithy	2003	Cambodia	101
2235	2720	Good Morning, Night	Bellocchio, Marco	2003	Italy	106
2264	1558	Love, Actually	Curtis, Richard	2003	UK	135
2329	1901	Twentynine Palms	Dumont, Bruno	2003	France	119
2338	3255	Station Agent, The	McCarthy, Tom	2003	USA	88
2347	1306	Capturing the Friedmans	Jarecki, Andrew	2003	USA	107
2401	2120	Good Bye, Lenin!	Becker, Wolfgang (2)	2003	Germany	121
2426	2328	Big Fish	Burton, Tim	2003	USA	125
2497	4022	Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World	Weir, Peter	2003	USA	138
2870	2072	Elf	Favreau, Jon	2003	USA	97
2886	2022	Fog of War, The	Morris, Errol	2003	USA	107
2950	2471	Monster	Jenkins, Patty	2003	USA	109
3045	---	Wasp	Arnold, Andrea	2003	UK	26
3177	3108	Tarnation	Caouette, Jonathan	2003	USA	88
3197	2988	Dreamers, The	Bertolucci, Bernardo	2003	UK	115
3333	4051	American Splendor	Pulcini, Robert & Shari Springer Berman	2003	USA	101
3454	3687	Maqbool	Bhardwaj, Vishal	2003	India	132
3599	3678	Talking Picture, A	Oliveira, Manoel de	2003	Portugal	96
3657	3109	Touching the Void	Macdonald, Kevin	2003	UK	106
3849	4854	Blonds, The	Carri, Albertina	2003	Argentina	89
3864	2176	Tale of Two Sisters, A	Kim Jee-woon	2003	South Korea	114
4005	3762	What Goes Up	Breer, Robert	2003	USA	5
4105	3450	Stuck on You	Farrelly, Bob/Peter Farrelly	2003	USA	118
4214	4412	Bright Future	Kurosawa, Kiyoshi	2003	Japan	92
4352	6411	Running on Karma	To, Johnnie & Wai Ka-Fai	2003	Hong Kong	93
4438	3618	Son frère	Chéreau, Patrice	2003	France	92
4524	3081	Barbarian Invasions, The	Arcand, Denys	2003	Canada	99
4667	3126	High Tension	Aja, Alexandre	2003	France	90
4725	7225	Histoire de Marie et Julien	Rivette, Jacques	2003	France	151
4792	3786	Textism	Hirabayashi, Isamu	2003	Japan	11
4826	7308	Time of the Wolf	Haneke, Michael	2003	France	113
4946	3150	Ong-Bak	Pinkaew, Prachya	2003	Thailand	105
4962	3167	X2	Singer, Bryan	2003	USA	133
4997	3175	Blind Shaft	Li Yang	2003	China	92

21 Grams is a true piece of shit

This was the year that I decided to just start going to my local cinema back in S Miguel every week and see whatever's playing.

It wasn't playing most of these, I'll tell you that much.

1. School of Rock
2. Lost in Translation
3. Elephant
4. L.A. Plays Itself
5. The Fog of War

My #1 is from the runners-up list, so I'll vote for Lost in Translation.

21 GRAMS - awful
MYSTIC RIVER - one of the worst Eastwoods I've seen
LOST IN TRANSLATION - still hate it

even with its pre-meme (lack of) reputation, surprised Master and Commander is outranked by the Station Agent - which is fine but completely forgettable 2006 afternoon IFC fare.

It's a tossup between Dogville and Los Angeles Plays Itself and I legit have to ponder this one out.

for a second my addled brain misread Monster Jenkins, Patty as Party Monster but alas we are to be denied such glories

memories of murder

21 GRAMS - awful
MYSTIC RIVER - one of the worst Eastwoods I've seen
LOST IN TRANSLATION - still hate it

All three of those are awful to be fair

Master and Commander not making the top 2000 is a surprise.

Saraband a surprisingly good curtain call for Bergman. Memories of Murder a tonal masterclass. Spring, Summer etc docked several points for the shitty behaviour of its director. Belleville, The Return, Goodbye Dragon Inn and Elephant all more than worthy. Blind Shaft was robbed. Went for Crimson Gold in the end to give one of the little guys a fighting chance. Only saw Lost in Translation once but it vexed the hell out of me btw.

Oldboy, with honorable mentions for Dogville and Kill Bill

All the votable options are trash except for Oldboy, and even that's just for the hallway scene and the octopus scene. If I could I'd vote for Stuck On You over all of them.

goodbye dragon inn, easy

The Five Obstructions is most vivid in my memory now. I guess I'd pick The Dreamers from the lower list.

I saw The Return at the time in a nearly empty theatre, liked it pretty well, but would have been surprised to learn that Zvyagintsev was going to be a big name in later years.

A friend of mine saw Twentynine Palms at TIFF and told me, "you're the only person to whom I would recommend this". But twenty years later, I still haven't seen it. I loved L'humanité and have found the others I've seen by Dumont range from weak to pretty good.

Guessing no one's seen the Monteiro, despite grand pronouncements about "all the votable options"? I also haven't, despite owning his complete DVD box.

A handful that I really liked at the time, but haven't watched in forever: Lost in Translation, Elephant, Kill Bill, Vol. 1, Saraband, Spring Summer...

Voting for LiT since it was my fave at the time.

The Monteiro film was on TIFF's Best of the Decade list, but it's one of the few on that list I haven't seen yet.

The Village Voice crix poll results from that year, btw:

01. Lost in Translation
02. Elephant
03. Demonlover
04. Capturing the Friedmans
05. The Son
06. The Fog of War
07. American Splendor
08. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
09. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
10. Unknown Pleasures

My top 8:

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang, Taiwan)
Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi, Iran)
Dogville (Lars Von Trier, Int’l)
Elephant (Gus Van Sant, USA)
The Company (Robert Altman, USA)
Father and Son (Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia)
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, USA)
Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin, Canada)

Guessing that's the only Voice poll where their 1-2 is my 1-2 (although it did take me two or three tries with Elephant).

I saw The Brown Bunny in an actual theater, I wish I could have that time back

agree with Clay, it's an easy vote for Goodbye, Dragon Inn.

also thought Andrey Zyagintsev’s The Return was pretty great, as were his later films Leviathan and Loveless

years after all of the hoopla died down I finally saw The Brown Bunny, I wasn’t expecting much but enjoyed it

As J. Hoberman said, Goodbye, Dragon Inn is a kind of simultaneous double feature.

I like that Chun Shih and Tien Miao appear in both Dragon Inn and Goodbye, Dragon Inn. It adds another meta layer to the film

Apart from Tsai these are the other good films I happened to have seen.

CAFÉ LUMIÈRE (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan) [#1104]
LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF (Thom Andersen, USA) [#1567]
MEMORIES OF MURDER (Bong Joon-ho, South Korea) [#542]
SPRING, SUMMER, AUTUMN, WINTER… AND SPRING (Kim Ki-duk, South Korea) [#881]
TIE XI QU: WEST OF THE TRACKS (Wang Bing, China) [#341]

i've not seen it myself but my friend highly rates the wang bing. otherwise, goodbye dragon inn for me

torn btw Elephant and Los Angeles Plays Itself

the dance scene in The Company in an outdoor amphitheater in Chicago's Grant Park during a thunderstorm was great, it made up for everything else in that film. I can't find a clip of it

haven't found a way to watch any Wang Bing film in any format in the US

The Company justified the OTT good reviews Gosford Park got

It's a tossup between Dogville and Los Angeles Plays Itself and I legit have to ponder this one out.

That would probably be my conundrum if Goodbye, Dragon Inn weren't here. But it is, so no conundrum.

I liked the portrayal of disaffected youth in Jia Zhangke's Unknown Pleasures. His films Platformand Still Life are still his most highly regarded, but I think Ash Is Purest White will rise in estimation over time

Elephant is memorable. Los Angeles Plays Itself is interesting, but like most documentary films and straight non-fiction books it lacks something for me

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Proud

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Somewhat troubled by Kill Bill 1 placing better than Oldboy

One doesn't involve live on-camera animal murder iirc

The Triplets of Belleville was robbed

Also, Mystic River was so bad that I would never consider voting for it and I sang in the chorus that faintly oohs along with the orchestral music in the soundtrack

Belleville Rendezvous/Triplets of Belleville is probably the best film for me on this list even though I voted for a little'un, which ended up garnering more votes anyway. Hate to tell 6 of you this, but the only reason I didn't walk out of the showing of Kill Bill I attended is because I was on the way to somewhere else and the cinema was warmer than the streets. Not enough substance for a straight-to-video hack-piece, let alone 4 hours of it (there was a sequel, right?). The second-worst film I ever paid to see (Only God Forgives was the worst).

I would argue that the elevation of style over substance is exactly the point of a movie like Kill Bill, which has a plot as thin as Avatar’s but way more fun fights

All the substance is in vol 2 tbh. Not that it's partic deep or anything but 2 is where all the pathos and motivation is.

(To be clear, this is a selling point for me)

maybe I should finish MEMORIES OF MURDER one of these days, I turned it off about 45 mins in because I just found the acting to be so wooden

you SHOULD

iirc I cast that lone vote for Triplets of Belleville.

Memories of Murder rules.