Erin Brockovich (2000)

IMDb plot summary: A flamboyant law firm secretary works tirelessly to gain justice for a small town wrecked by a utility company's pollution.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Starring Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, and David Brisbin.

Erin Brockovich is based on a true story about an administrative assistant for a legal firm who discovers that all the residents of a particular neighborhood might be suffering from decades-long chemical contamination... and their utilities company knew about it and lied to them. This is a film I absolutely should have seen long before now, and after watching it I think it does deserve the attention it got, particularly in Julia Roberts' leading performance. The character is seriously flawed -- impulsive, defensive, and always unnecessarily escalating conflict -- but that is also exactly what makes her a good advocate for the people seeking compensation for what was done to them. The pacing of the mystery is well-done. It's impressive that Soderbergh was able to set up so much tension around something as mundane as getting the right amount of signatures. The scenes with Aaron Eckhart as the next-door neighbor she starts dating are helpful for fleshing out the character as a whole, but I did find them to be the least interesting part of the movie by far. Overall, this was a good watch that hits basically all the right emotional beats, and Roberts is fantastic. Glad I finally watched it!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Erin Brockovich > The Call

Erin Brockovich > Elf

Erin Brockovich < The People Under the Stairs

Erin Brockovich < Spencer

Erin Brockovich < Kismet

Erin Brockovich < The African Queen

Erin Brockovich > Finian's Rainbow

Erin Brockovich > Sherlock Jr.

Erin Brockovich > Hannah and Her Sisters

Erin Brockovich > Children of Men

Erin Brockovich > The Paper

Erin Brockovich > Mixed Nuts

Final spot: #940 out of 4007, or 77%.

Oddity (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A psychic medium attempts to uncover the truth behind her sister's murder at the site of the crime.

Directed by Damian McCarthy. Starring Carolyn Bracken, Johnny French, and Steve Wall.

Oddity is a horror movie about a woman who is murdered alone in her house when her husband is at work. They catch the culprit, but a year later the murdered woman's psychic sister discovers the murder wasn't what it seems, and she becomes determined to figure it out. This film feels like a weirdly difficult one to quantify, because it just seems like such a *small* film. The stakes seem weirdly small, the locations claustrophobic, the acting performances so quiet they could be mistaken for a one-room drama. That being said, I think it is put together fairly well. There are a few beautifully creepy moments with the large wooden doll at the center of the marketing, and I enjoy how the mystery of the woman's death unravels piece by piece. Perhaps some of the disjointedness comes from the film not giving us the inside view of any of our protagonists, leaving us as the audience very much on the outside looking in. The individual pieces definitely are more than the sum of its part, at least in my book, although the "homegrown" feel of it is going to be part of the draw to many, I suspect.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Oddity > Wide Awake

Oddity < Elf

Oddity < Family Business

Oddity > The Gold Rush

Oddity < Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

Oddity < The Majestic

Oddity > Rabbit Hole

Oddity < Three Men and a Baby

Oddity < Peter Pan (1960)

Oddity < Splice

Oddity < The Exorcist

Oddity > Knight and Day

Final spot: #1718 out of 4003, or 57%.

Companion (2025)

IMDb plot summary: A weekend getaway with friends at a remote cabin turns into chaos after it's revealed that one of the guests is not what they seem.

Directed by Drew Hancock. Starring Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, and Lukas Gage.

Companion follows a young woman who goes to spend the weekend with her boyfriend's friends at a remote cabin, but everything starts going wrong. The trailers for this movie were extremely cagey about some of the plot points you discover pretty early on in the film, so I think I'm going to keep my synopsis cagey too. But I had a really good time with this. There are some really enjoyable twists and turns that I didn't see coming, and the pacing of the movie is smart and kept me engaged the whole time. I was a little disappointed by Sophie Thatcher's performance in this film, although I have liked her in other things, but the supporting cast of Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, and Harvey Guillen really bring the whole experience home in a very satisfying way. It also is smart about knowing when to make the audience laugh versus jump, and it deflates the tension exactly the right way every time. A really solid thriller/comedy, if not groundbreaking.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Companion > Wide Awake

Companion > Key Largo

Companion < Cam

Companion < Spencer

Companion > Shiva Baby

Companion < CODA

Companion > Tell It to the Bees

Companion < Sanjuro

Companion > The Fantasticks

Companion < Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Companion > A Haunting in Venice

Companion < Roxanne

Final spot: #833 out of 4002, or 79%.

Love Me (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A postapocalyptic romance in which a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love after the end of human civilization.

Directed by Andrew Zuchero and Sam Zuchero. Stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun.

Love Me is a sci-fi romance set in the future, when humanity has collapsed, and two remaining robots -- one smart buoy in the ocean and one satellite in the atmosphere -- fall in love and explore what it might mean to be human. This movie was everything I wanted it to be, and more. The creativity of the way this romance was portrayed and how these characters began to discover each other and themselves was so engaging and funny and sweet, and I was there for it the whole way. Steven Yeun and Kristen Stewart are so engaging, even when they're just voices, and their romance is strange and totally charming. This does that thing that great sci-fi does in which it demonstrates marvelous insight into humanity and human relationships by highlighting characters who are NOT human, and it's a ton of fun along the way, as well as being creative and thoughtful. Looking up reviews for this movie, I'm a little startled that not everybody loved it as much as I did, but I'd definitely recommend it. A surprising and wonderful watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Love Me > The Girl on a Motorcycle

Love Me > Dark Passage

Love Me > The People Under the Stairs

Love Me > Parasite

Love Me < The Lives of Others

Love Me < Dial M for Murder

Love Me > Beasts of No Nation

Love Me < Scaramouche

Love Me < Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Love Me > All About Eve

Love Me < Seven Samurai

Love Me < Double Indemnity

Final spot: #214 out of 4001, or 95%.

Kinds of Kindness (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A man seeks to break free from his predetermined path, a cop questions his wife's demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning, and a woman searches for an extraordinary individual prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide.

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and Willem Dafoe.

Kinds of Kindness is an anthology film my Yorgos Lanthimos, in which Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, and Willem Defoe, among others, play different characters in each of the three stories. I made a social media post after watching this noting that between this and Poor Things, I need to pay more attention to how much I like Yorgos Lanthimos as a director. This was like a series of wonderfully bizarre Black Mirror episodes with an absolutely stellar cast. Jesse Plemons is almost always criminally underutilized as an actor, and he shines here, alongside performances from his also-excellent co-stars. There are obviously a lot of instances of thematic symbolism and potentially bigger meanings here, but I'll be honest, I cared about very few of those -- I was just enjoying the tremendously wild ride. Each one of these stories sticks the landing for me too, closing out with some intense emotional image or scene that puts the perfect button on the strange little story it's telling. This is absolutely not a movie for everyone, but I was thoroughly delighted by it and am so glad I watched it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Kinds of Kindness > The Girl on a Motorcycle

Kinds of Kindness > Dark Passage

Kinds of Kindness < The People Under the Stairs

Kinds of Kindness > Onward

Kinds of Kindness > The Jungle Book (1967)

Kinds of Kindness > Romy and Michele's High School Reunion

Kinds of Kindness > 56 Up

Kinds of Kindness < Women Talking

Kinds of Kindness > M. Butterfly

Kinds of Kindness > Detroit

Kinds of Kindness < Glengarry Glen Ross

Kinds of Kindness > The Basketball Diaries

Final spot: #518 out of 4000, or 87%.

Hell or High Water (2016)

IMDb plot summary: Toby is a divorced father who's trying to make a better life. His brother is an ex-con with a short temper and a loose trigger finger. Together, they plan a series of heists against the bank that's about to foreclose on their family ranch.

Directed by David Mackenzie. Starring Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Jeff Bridges.

Hell or High Water follows two brothers robbing banks and the cop who is trying to catch them. The plot's about as simple as that, though the movie does delve into a lot of depth for all these characters. This is a movie where I appreciated individual scenes and moments but when I step back to look at it as a whole, it doesn't quite gel into place for me. On the positive side, Chris Pine is especially good as the bank robber with altruistic motives: to buy back his mother's mortgaged land and leave something to his mostly-estranged children. Jeff Bridges is interesting but unlikable as the cranky about-to-retire police officer chasing them down, who tries to bond with his Native American partner officer by making racist jokes about him. While the film is styled like a western, visually, the ending scenes land it more firmly in the crime genre, with a familiar "who can tell who's the good guy and who's the bad guy?" theme in its closing. It's honestly hard to come up with something to say about this movie that's cohesive. I'm glad I watched it, because there are some good performances, but overall it didn't fully resonate with me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Hell or High Water > VeggieTales: Madame Blueberry

Hell or High Water < Dark Passage

Hell or High Water < Rachel Getting Married

Hell or High Water > 8-Bit Christmas

Hell or High Water > The Big Chill

Hell or High Water > Charlie St. Cloud

Hell or High Water < The Pirates! Band of Misfits

Hell or High Water < The Green Mile

Hell or High Water < A Star Is Born (1954)

Hell or High Water < Starship Troopers

Hell or High Water < The Age of Adaline

Hell or High Water > National Treasure

Final spot: #1561 out of 3999, or 61%.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024)

IMDb plot summary: The British military recruits a small group of highly skilled soldiers to strike against German forces behind enemy lines during World War II.

Directed by Guy Ritchie. Starring Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, and Alex Pettyfer.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is a Guy Ritchie World War II action comedy telling the true story of a group of British rogues hired by Ian Fleming and Prime Minister Winston Churchill to sink the boat that provides necessary resources to all the German U boats. With those resources gone, British troops will be able to sail through the seas unscathed. This is an interesting story, one of the few examples for me where it being a true story actually does enhance the story, and I find it less twisty and more engaging than a lot of Ritchie’s action work sometimes is. As always, I wish the ensemble of mostly white men were easier to tell apart from each other, but there are some good fun heist-style sequences, and seeing how they respond to the various obstacles thrown in their way is a fun ride. Overall an enjoyable but forgettable ride that is going to be some people's absolute cup of tea.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare < The Girl on a Motorcycle

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare > The Third Man

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare > Hello, Dolly!

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare > Lost in America

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare > Rogue One

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare > Finding Vivian Maier

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare > The Anderson Tapes

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare < Skyfall

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare > Sherlock Holmes

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare < The Blues Brothers

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare > Triangle of Sadness

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare < Kin-Dza-Dza

Final spot: #2020 out of 3998, or 49%.