My 2001 film rankings (in 2001)

This is the seventh in a 2022 monthly posting of the 12 year-end rankings I completed prior to starting this blog, on the occasion of my 25th anniversary of ranking movies. I'm posting them as a form of permanent backup, plus to do a little analysis of how my impression of the movies has changed since then. I'm going in reverse order and will end with 1996 in December. 

I will forever think of 2001 as "the year I randomly decided not to make Memento my #1." I saw Memento back in March, before leaving New York for Los Angeles the following month -- it's actually usually listed as a 2000 movie due to film festival debuts. Then I didn't see Gosford Park until a week or two before my ranking deadline. Even though I didn't keep track of the dates I saw movies back then (though would start within just a few months), I remember it wasn't until January because Gosford Park was half of a double feature with, of all things, Kung Pow! Enter the Fist, which wasn't released until January 25th of 2002. That's right, the Oscar nominations were released later then too, meaning I usually had all of January to keep collecting titles from the previous year, according to my own arbitrary but clearly defined rules of when to close off my annual list. (Rules that recent pushes back of the nominations have forced me to abandon.) 

Speaking of the Oscars, recency bias has often been listed as a reason why one movie gets a best picture nod and another gets forgotten, and I'm wondering if a similar thing didn't happen here. I was, obviously, really impressed with Gosford Park when I saw it, but it doesn't hold a candle to the creativity, individuality, and long-term cinematic impact of Memento. We'll see in a few minutes just how much lower Gosford Park is now than Memento on my Flickchart. (Again speaking of the Oscars, I'm wondering if this wasn't sort of a career recognition award for Robert Altman, who made two movies that would have been contenders for my favorites of the year if I'd been doing my rankings in the early 1990s: The Player and Short Cuts.)

As mentioned two paragraphs ago, 2001 was a year of great transition for me, as I swapped coasts and did not have a very nice landing when I got to the second one. I sort of followed a girl out there, one I had met while in Los Angeles the previous New Year's Eve, and suffice it to say that things curdled pretty quickly between us once I got there -- and not by my choice. (Fortunately, I also had a ton of friends out there, so she was not the only reason I moved.) It was a pretty rough summer for me, and just when I started to come out of it, September 11th happened -- which made it seem all the more profound that I had lived in New York only six months earlier. (And worked in buildings close to the World Trade Center only a year before that.) Fortunately, by September I was also finally feeling like I'd adjusted to living in L.A., and had a mostly very nice dozen more years living there before coming here.

Here is how I ranked my 2001 movies at the start of 2002:

1. Gosford Park
2. Memento
3. Amelie
4. Waking Life
5. Vanilla Sky
6. The Anniversary Party
7. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
8. Rush Hour 2
9. Rock Star
10. Amores Perros
11. A Beautiful Mind
12. In the Bedroom
13. Shallow Hal
14. Ghost World 
15. Moulin Rouge
16. Ocean's Eleven
17. Together
18. Series 7: The Contenders
19. Startup.com
20. Monsters, Inc.
21. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
22. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
23. Ali
24. Black Hawk Down
25. The Man Who Wasn't There
26. Training Day
27. One Night at McCool's
28. High Heels and Low Lifes
29. Monster's Ball
30. Joy Ride
31. All Over the Guy
32. Spy Kids
33. Not Another Teen Movie
34. Heartbreakers
35. From Hell
36. The Royal Tenenbaums
37. American Pie 2
38. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
39. Scary Movie 2
40. The Princess Diaries
41. Pearl Harbor
42. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
43. Blow
44. Baby Boy
45. Bridget Jones's Diary
46. Made
47. Heist
48. The Caveman's Valentine
49. 15 Minutes
50. The Fast and the Furious
51. Mulholland Dr.
52. The Others
53. Shrek
54. Planet of the Apes
55. Evolution
56. Legally Blonde
57. Hannibal
58. Wet Hot American Summer
59. Life is a House
60. Say It Isn't So
61. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
62. The Pledge
63. Cats & Dogs
64. Kiss of the Dragon
65. The Mummy Returns
66. The Dish
67. The Invisible Circus
68. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
69. The Glass House
70. Jurassic Park III
71. O
72. Sexy Beast
73. The Musketeer

And here is how I rank those movies today on Flickchart. This is out of 5951 films I have ranked on Flickchart. Following the ranking is the percentage of the ranking out of 5951 and the number of slots they rose or fell compared to the other movies from that year on my Flickchart. A positive number indicates a comparative rise of that many slots, a negative number a fall.

1. Vanilla Sky (34, 99%) 4
2. Memento (138, 98%) 0
3. Waking Life (223, 96%) 1
4. Gosford Park (234, 96%) -3
5. Moulin Rouge (293, 95%) 10
6. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (309, 95%) 1
7. Together (399, 93%) 10
8. Amelie (412, 93%) -5
9. A Beautiful Mind (419, 93%) 2
10. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (648, 89%) 28
11. In the Bedroom (696, 88%) 1
12. Amores Perros (723, 88%) -2
13. Rush Hour 2 (761, 87%) -5
14. The Anniversary Party (767, 87%) -8
15. Monsters, Inc. (884, 85%) 5
16. The Royal Tenenbaums (906, 85%) 20
17. Shallow Hal (936, 84%) -4
18. Rock Star (965, 84%) -9
19. Ocean's Eleven (1127, 81%) -3
20. Training Day (1137, 81%) 6
21. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1189, 80%) 1
22. One Night at McCool's (1239, 79%) 5
23. Series 7: The Contenders (1342, 77%) -5
24. Mulholland Dr. (1349, 77%) 27
25. Ghost World (1377, 77%) -11
26. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1486, 75%) -5
27. The Others (1495, 75%) 25
28. Joy Ride (1729, 71%) 2
29. From Hell (1959, 67%) 6
30. Startup.com (1993, 67%) -11
31. The Man Who Wasn't There (2219, 63%) -6
32. Heartbreakers (2270, 62%) 2
33. Black Hawk Down (2565, 57%) -9
34. The Princess Diaries (2772, 53%) 6
35. High Heels and Low Lifes (2816, 53%) -7
36. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2835, 52%) 6
37. Not Another Teen Movie (3027, 49%) -4
38. Ali (3076, 48%) -15
39. Shrek (3167, 47%) 14
40. Spy Kids (3452, 42%) -8
41. Monster's Ball (3588, 40%) -12
42. The Pledge (3604, 39%) 20
43. The Fast and the Furious (3695, 38%) 7
44. American Pie 2 (3704, 38%) -7
45. Blow (3794, 36%) -2
46. All Over the Guy (3800, 36%) -15
47. Pearl Harbor (3813, 36%) -6
48. Bridget Jones's Diary (3838, 36%) -3
49. Life as a House (3858, 35%) 10
50. Baby Boy (3903, 34%) -6
51. Evolution (4060, 32%) 4
52. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (4132, 31%) 16
53. Legally Blonde (4153, 30%) 3
54. Planet of the Apes (4257, 28%) 0
55. The Caveman's Valentine (4394, 26%) -7
56. 15 Minutes (4406, 26%) -7
57. The Invisible Circus (4510, 24%) 10
58. Hannibal (4650, 22%) -1
59. Heist (5026, 16%) -12
60. Wet Hot American Summer (5099, 14%) -2
61. Kiss of the Dragon (5222, 12%)
62. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (5263, 12%) -1
63. The Dish (5348, 10%) 3
64. Cats & Dogs (5369, 10%) -1
65. Sexy Beast (5371, 10%) 7
66. Say It Isn't So (5392, 9%) -6
67. The Glass House (5425, 9%) 2
68. Jurassic Park III (5576, 6%) 2
69. Made (5624, 5%) -23
70. The Mummy Returns (5687, 4%) -5
71. O (5735, 4%) 0
72. The Musketeer (5834, 2%) 1
73. Scary Movie 2 (5867, 1%) -34

Five best movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): Battle Royale, Donnie Darko, In the Mood for Love, L.I.E., The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra
Five worst movies I've seen since closing the list (alphabetical): Domestic Disturbance, Freddy Got Fingered, Life Without Dick, See Spot Run, Tomcats
Biggest risers: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (+28), Mulholland Dr. (+27), The Others (+25)
Biggest fallers: Scary Movie 2 (-34), Ali (-15), All Over the Guy (-15)
Stayed the same (*new feature!): Planet of the Apes (54th), O (71st)
Average percentage on Flickchart: 51.81% (2 of 7 so far)

Although Vanilla Sky moved up four spots to #1, making this the second straight year where my #1 of the year is no longer my #1, it isn't actually my favorite movie from 2001 either. My real #1 is a movie I didn't even see in 2001, Donnie Darko, which was subsequently named my favorite of the decade and which currently sits at #23 on my Flickchart after having spent much of its life in my top 20. 

That's only a taste of the wild west we're seeing among the movies I had seen, as it becomes further clear that the longer removed I am from a movie, the less I remember how well I liked it -- a rather obvious statement, but one I wouldn't have expected to be borne out quite to this degree. 

We have to start with the biggest faller, Scary Movie 2, which dropped 34 spots -- hard to do within a list of only 73 movies. That's the most any movie has dropped since I started this project, and it's not the first time I've considered this phenomenon on this blog. Ten years ago, in order to celebrate 15 (rather than 25) years of ranking movies, I made a top ten list of the worst ranking mistakes I'd made over those 15 years -- and Scary Movie 2 was #1. You can read the full post here, but here's what I wrote about Scary Movie 2:

"Did I have a brain embolism when I was making out my 2001 rankings? Or have I just completely forgotten the things about this movie I might have once found funny? The reason this movie is my #1 ranking mistake is because I currently think of it as so loathsome, so puerile, and so inept, that I have it ranked #3289 on my Flickchart -- out of only 3329 films total. That means that according to my current understanding of Scary Movie 2, there are only 40 movies that I've ever seen that I hate more. Yet in the year 2001, I thought it was better than nearly half of the movies I saw -- 34 movies in that year alone. What's the real truth? And could I possibly be so intrigued by this odd disconnect that I would actually watch it again? Eh, probably not."

Well, I did watch it again -- two nights ago, actually, while mid-draft of this post. And yeah, it real bad. The 2001 version of me was the crazy one, not the current one. The only thing I can think of was that I found Anna Faris delightful, as I always do, and that I was sort of amused by the opening Exorcist spoof. But Scary Movie 2 does not deserve a single other word from me so I'm moving on.  

The other biggest fallers (Ali, All Over the Guy) are movies I must have just steadily thought less of over the years, but the biggest risers -- which are also of more than 25 spots -- were all movies I realized I got wrong at the time and consciously reconsidered with subsequent revisits. I really didn't care for The Fellowship of the Ring the first time I saw it, and have only really come to embrace it after loving The Two Towers and The Return of the King so much. When I saw Mulholland Dr. I had no idea it was destined to be considered a classic -- let's just say I didn't get it the first time, and no, I don't think leaving in the middle to have to take a shit (the only time I can ever remember having to do that) made a huge difference one way or the other. And The Others I consciously put under the microscope for a series called Second Chances that I did around ten years -- if you're really curious you can see that post here. Also worth mentioning is The Royal Tenenbaums (+20), which I only reappraised within the past two years -- and I liked it a huge amount better. I reckon it will still go higher when it wins the right duels. 

I wonder if because it was a year of transition for me, 2001 was also a year I was super mixed up when it came to movies?

In August -- a month I will be in the U.S. for most of the month -- I will consider the year 2000. 

A bad month for dinner parties

I've just watched the second of two movies this June in which people get invited to a dinner party that goes disastrously wrong.

It's not a particularly common theme for a movie, but it has cropped up twice in June.

The movie I just watched (Sunday being "just") is Karyn Kusama's The Invitation, which features a man invited to the home of his ex-wife and her new partner for a dinner party. He's bringing his new girlfriend, so the dynamics between exes are balanced, but there's a past trauma between them that promises to have something to do with why the dinner party is being held. Other mutual friends are there ... as well as two decidedly unusual strangers.

The Invitation is from 2016. The movie I watched back on June 7th is from 54 years before that. That's Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, in which two dozen Mexican aristocrats attend a dinner party in an opulent mansion. The evening gets off to an unusual start when all the servants find themselves compelled to leave, upending decorum completely even though they can't explain why they're doing it. Then the guests find themselves unable to leave -- in fact, unable even to step outside the bounds of one particular part of the mansion. It isn't until the next day, after they have all inexplicably violated decorum by sleeping on the floor, that they start to really address what is happening to them.

That's all I'll tell you about either movie. Their joys are bound up in the discovery of what happens along the way.

But it did get me thinking that I find this dynamic particularly compelling for a movie -- people show up for a dinner party, and things they could never have imagined start happening. So I've decided to list five other movies I like with similar things going on.

1. It's a Disaster (2012, Todd Berger) - The end of the world strikes while some friends are throwing a dinner party. As they are so caught up in their own squabbles and interpersonal dynamics, they don't even notice it's happening or give much credence to the obvious warning signs. The movie goes off the rails a bit in the third act, but before then it's a great satire of modern, self-absorbed white people.

2. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Luis Bunuel) - Bunuel did like his frustrated dinner parties and satires of the upper class, didn't he? In this one, which is less narratively straightforward than The Exterminating Angel and but more straightforward in the ways it's funny, the dinner party guests are repeatedly thwarted in their attempts to eat, across what seems to be several different dinner parties. Reality goes kind of in and out of focus in this one, so it's hard to say for sure.

3. Clue (1985, Jonathan Lynn) - You all know the board game, so you know that someone ends up dead. However, who it is depends on which ending you got. At the time it played theaters, different theaters actually got one of three different endings to the film -- which must have made it problematic for a critic to offer a definitive review. I watched this again a couple years ago, and it's a hoot. Great cast.

4. Rope (1946, Alfred Hitchcock) - I had forgotten until I did a little research that the anarchists at the center of this film, after killing someone just to see if they can, then hide his body in a trunk that is used as a buffet table for dinner party guests. I am definitely due for a rewatch of one of my top three Hitchock films, which I haven't seen in more than 20 years.

5. Gosford Park (2001, Robert Altman) - I didn't immediately think of this one as it's more of a whole weekend than a single dinner party, but it's similar to Clue in that a bunch of upper class folks come together in a big mansion and someone ends up dead. This was my favorite movie from 2001 and was essentially the template for Downton Abbey (Julian Fellowes was intimately involved in both), so if you haven't seen it you should.

That's all for now. Have to pick up a bottle of wine for this weird party I got invited to at the house of an ex-girlfriend ... I swear I heard she had gone crazy ...