The Best and Worst of the Millennium Sean O’Faileur January 2000 Feature Articles Issue 2 There was a Christmas party in Melbourne in mid-December, and a lot of film studies academics, writers and students were there. Somebody had the bright idea of circulating lists for nominations for the millennium’s “best” and “worst” films, directors, screen performers and film theory. Reading over these lists, it is pretty clear that some of the nominations at least are tongue-in-cheek. Initials and other identifying marks of the party guests have been eliminated – and it is possible that the lists have been tampered with in other ways as well. All in all, it is hard to say what these lists actually represent. Best Film of the Millennium Worst Film of the Millennium Best Director of the Millennium Worst Director of the Millennium Best Screen Performer of the Millennium Worst Screen Performer of the Millennium Best Film Theory of the Millennium Worst Film Theory of the Millennium BEST FILM OF THE MILLENNIUM Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore Alien 2 L’Armee Des Ombres Asphalt Jungle L’Avventura La Belle Noiseuse Black Narcissus Boogie Nights Conan, The Barbarian Contempt/Le Mepris Dead To The World Diner E.T. (and I don’t care what anyone says otherwise) Fires Were Started The General The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Gun Crazy (40s) Heat Husbands Hypocrites Illustrated Auschwitz In A Lonely Place India Song Jeanne Dielman Jules Et Jim The Land (Robert Flaherty) Man With A Movie Camera Mary Poppins Metropolis The Mirror Night of the Hunter Ocassional Work Of A Female Slave (Kluge) Out of Sight Pandora’s Box Point Blank Rebecca The Right Stuff Sally Marshall Is [Not] An Alien Saturday Night Fever Shop Around The Corner Showgirls Spinal Tap Stairway To Heaven Starship Troopers Stella Dallas (any version) Sunless Sunrise Thin Red Line Tokyo Story Two Lane Blacktop Undeground The Wizard of Oz World War Two Zero De Conduite WORST FILM OF THE MILLENNIUM (Each “+” indicate one more vote) Acid House Bad Boy Bubby Bigger Than Tina The Bodyguard Body Of Evidence Boogie Nights Born On The Fourth Of July Cape Fear (Scorsese) Citizen Kane + Dead To The World The Haunting (remake) Isabelle Eberhardt Iycror And The Lunatics Kundun The Last Test (English) Leaving Las Vegas Lost Highway Lost Horizon (remake) Love Serenade Saving Private Ryan Schindler’s List Shaded Places Showgirls Spawn Starship Troopers Tomorrow Never Dies True Lies Twister Underground + Welcome To Woop Woop BEST DIRECTOR OF THE MILLENNIUM (Each “+” indicates one more vote) Michelangelo Antonioni Gillian Armstrong Jack Arnold Tex Avery + Joel Coen Bruce Connor George Cukor Brian De Palma Marguerite Duras David Fincher Howard Hawks Hitchcock imitators John Hughes Stanley Kubrick Sergio Leone David Lynch Michael Mann Jean-Pierre Melville Russ Meyer Andy Milligan John Milius Kenji Mizoguchi F.W. Murnau – for City Girl Mikio Naruse Yasujiro Ozu + Sean Penn Michael Powell Jean Renoir Douglas Sirk Alan Smithee Agnes Varda Josef von Sternberg Jean Vigo Wong Kar-Wai Ed Wood Jr. WORST DIRECTOR OF THE MILLENNIUM (Each “+” indicates one more vote) Woody Allen Paul Anderson (Event Horizon, Soldier) Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) Nick Broomfield James Cameron Noel Coward Paul Cox ++ Norman Dawn The person who did Twister ( – Jan de Bont – don’t you know anything about Bad Directors?) Mike Figgis Ross Gibson Peter Greenaway George Lucas Chris Marker Russ Meyer Tracey Moffatt Alan Parker Ken Russell + Joel Schumacher Martin Scorsese Tony Scott Kevin Smith + Quentin Tarantino Frank Thring + (dirty bastard) Paul Verhoeven Whoever directed The Celebration – avoid it! BEST SCREEN PERFORMER OF THE MILLENNIUM (Each “+” indicates one more vote) Animal (TV) Drew Barrymore Clara Bow Charles Boyer Louise Brooks Steve Buscemi The cat from The Long Goodbye Marilyn Chambers Annabel Chong Peter Coyote Bette Davis Alain Delon +++ Sandy Dennis Debbie Diamond Clint Eastwood Emilio Estevez (Repo Man) John Fernside Ridge Forrester Lillian Gish Cary Grant (as PK puts it, the prince from dream city) Gustav Grungden Charlton Heston (pre NRA) Sam Jaffe Buster Keaton + Harvey Keitel’s penis “Beat” Takeshi Kitano Alexandra Kluge (for Occasional Work Of A Female Slave) Burt Lancaster Marfa Lapinka Marlena (when she was possessed by the Devil in Days of Our Lives) Dean Martin Toshiro Mifune Warren Oates Michel Piccoli Zana Que Jean Reno Jasmin St Clair Susan Sarandon Arnold Schwarzenegger Sam Shepard Michel Simon in Boudu Homer Simpson + Sally Spectre (Bold + Beautiful) Barbara Stanwyck (but for one film only ) (No! I don’t agree!) James Stewart Sharon Stone’s beaver Nigel Terry (Excalibur) Gene Tierney (Leave Her To Heaven) Tribbles (from Star Trek) John Turturro Conrad Veidt Christopher Walken Lau Ching Wan Peter Weller Orson Welles Peta Wilson (TV Nikita) James Woods Chow Yun-Fat Kitty Yung The guy who plays the head of the resistance in L’Armee Des Ombres WORST SCREEN PERFORMER OF THE MILLENNIUM (Each “+” indicates one more vote) Woody Allen Patrick Bergen (except his todger) Nick Broomfield Sandra Bullock + McCauley Calkin Jim Carrey Kevin Coster Tom Cruise Michael Douglas Michael Douglas’s buttocks Marianne Faithful Sally Fields John Flaus Richard Gere Elliot Gould Steven Guttenberg Darryl Hannah Charlton Heston (post NRA) Alan Jones Nicole Kidman Spike Lee Jennifer Jason Leigh John Malkovich Kylie Minogue Demi Moore Roger Moore Gwenth Paltrow Bill Paxton Priscilla Presley Keanu Reeves Winona Ryder William Shatner Sylvester Stallone Donald Sutherland Keifer Sutherland (proving hereditary theory) Quentin Tarantino Dick Van Dyke as an auteur Mark Wahlberg Orson Welles Robin Williams + (bring back Mork!) BEST FILM THEORY OF THE MILLENNIUM “One from the Heart” Serge Daney Gilles Deleuze Derrida – I know it isn’t film theory but it should be! “Lulu and the meter man” Thomas Elsaesser Jean Epstein Manny Farber (article on Preston Sturges) Formalism changed my life “Nobody knows anything” including William Goldman Linda Hutcheow: Irony’s Edge Aldous Huxley Pauline Kael‘s anti-auteurism – even though she doesn’t live down to it Friedrich Kittler Jean-Jacques Lecercle Emmanuel Levinas Miniaturization Mulvey: “Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema” Jean-Luc Nancy Jean Louis Schefer Hardcore: Linda Williams “Is there such a thing?” WORST FILM THEORY OF THE MILLENNIUM Auteur stuff Bordwell, the bore Noel Burch Noel Carroll (Philosophy of Horror) I’m prepared to admit that I don’t know enough film theory to comment but some early feminist stuff fills me with pity Freud – Jokes and the Sub(UN)conscious Marxism (“Du…!”) Christian Metz The Imaginary Signifier “Visual Pleasure …” / Laura Mulvey Vera Oika on Slasher movies That silly “Suture” article by someone male and French – Jean-Pierre Oudart Narrative theory Psychoanalysis – but only applied to cinematic spectatorship Kaja Silverman: Male Subjectivity at the Margins Cinematic realism
