The Silence of the Polls

As the handful of votes straggled in for the Picked Flicks Poll for #91-100, I inititally suspected nefarious intervention, tossing out all votes that didn't support The Passion of the Christ as a write-in candidate. But then it turned out, no, the vote format t'aint working with so many movies in the mix that not everyone had seen. So I'm going to drop this little mechanism until the countdown is good and done, at which point y'all can tell me about your favorites from the whole list, and what you woulda liked to see up there that wasn't.

Of course, the saddest reason to stop culling votes is that one particularly industrious reader—seriously, not me!—went to all this unsolicited trouble:



AK, you're a hero among men, not to mention among former students! But I'm not going to short-change any of the responses that did flow in, mostly orbiting around two expected targets, but not at first:

Vote 1 is for Cemetery Man, because, in the reader's words, I have watched it more than five times, and parts of it still mystify me. And because the romance between Gnaghi and Valentina's head is so sweet. And because Rupert Everett's performance sums up everything there is to say about 1990s ennui. (And then there's Rupert in that flowing white shirt...)

Vote 2 is for The Breakfast Club, because it shows all of the teen angst and frustration that most of us (I'd gather about 99.9% of us) felt at some point (or most of the time) during our high school years. The use of stereotypes is fabulous, and as the layers of these stereotypes peel away throughout the movie, we figure out that the 5 of them are pretty much the same.

Vote 3, loopily, is for I ♥ Huckabees, because 'Huckabees' could be the key to the entire existence of movies #99, #100, the only other ones I've seen and considered voting. Everything is connected. #92 and #94, I really want to see --the cinema is so infinite. It most definitely is.

Vote 4 is also for I ♥ Huckabees, this time because I heart it too—particularly because of the music. Jon Brion’s score is as playful, irreverent and haunting as his scores in 'Eternal Sunshine' and 'Punch Drunk Love.' It has a comically overly styled feel to it, but it is every bit as complicated, beautiful and absurd as the story. Plus, my sister Leah played on the movie soundtrack. That helps win it a place on my list.

So we almost had a winner, but then Vote 5 came in for The Breakfast Club, because it spoke to and defined an entire generation... For better or for worse.