Everything Is Illuminated (2005)

IMDb plot summary: A young Jewish American man, with the help of an eccentric local, endeavors to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II in a Ukrainian village that was ultimately razed by the Nazis.

Directed by Liev Schreiber. Stars Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz, and Boris Lyoskin.

Everything Is Illuminated follows a young American, played by Elijah Wood, who travels to Ukraine in search of some of the characters he has heard about from his family history. He is guided along his journey by an ambitious but eccentric local and his even more eccentric grandfather. The film is exactly what it looks like it's going to be: quirky (maybe too quirky for its own good), and ultimately hopeful and warmhearted despite its frequently dark subject matter. Its stylized visuals, dry humor, and editing choices feel very much like a director emulating Wes Anderson, and it carries with it that same sense of whimsy. Anderson usually takes that whimsy right up to the point of being exhausting but stops, while this one definitely crosses the line a few times. Still, there are moments of genuine beauty and emotional resonance scattered throughout, especially when the film quiets down and lets its story breathe instead of just be weird. It's a sweet, strange little movie, and I think it would have been exactly my jam in my college years, but now it feels dated and uneven, with a few good moments scattered throughout.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Everything Is Illuminated (2005)

📊 Ranked #1973/4072 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 51

lost to Wonder Man (#2032 → #1283)

beat Stagecoach (#3050 → #3049)

beat Rich and Strange (#2540 → #2984)

beat Planet 51 (#2286 → #2535)

beat In Search of a Midnight Kiss (#2159 → #2172)

beat The Lion in Winter (#2096 → #2161)

beat Liberal Arts (#2063 → #2059)

beat The Suburbans (#2047 → #2046)

beat The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (#2039 → #2092)

lost to The King and I (#2035 → #1971)

beat Meet John Doe (#2037 → #2033)

beat America's Sweethearts (#2036 → #2031)

The Time of Your Life (1976)

IMDb plot summary: William Saroyan's Pulitzer Prize-winning play revolves around the denizens of a San Francisco bar in 1939.

Directed by Kirk Browning. Stars Benjamin Hendrickson, Richard Ooms, and Nicolas Surovy.

The Time of Your Life is a TV-filmed version of based on William Saroyan’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play, which unfolds entirely in a San Francisco bar, where a rotating cast of eccentric characters drift in and out, sharing jokes, heartbreaks, and philosophical musings. The script strings together dozens of little plot threads -- some touching, some strange, some funny. It's very episodic, more like an anthology of vaguely connected scenes than a complete story. It’s also unmistakably theatrical, for better or worse. The dialogue is witty and sharp as is familiar from cleverly crafted stage scripts, but the staging often feels static on screen. I find a lot of charm in the familiarity of the staginess, but there are times where I also feel the distance when that staginess is translated to film. It mostly makes me think how much more engaging this would be on a stage.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Time of Your Life (1976)

📊 Ranked #1310/4071 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 70

beat Wristcutters: A Love Story (#2032 → #2034)

lost to My Name is Joe (#1014 → #1013)

beat The Green Knight (#1521 → #1546)

lost to Passing (#1267 → #1257)

beat The Black Phone (#1394 → #1523)

lost to Inland Empire (#1330 → #1326)

lost to Decision to Leave (#1362 → #1361)

lost to Aliens (#1378 → #1375)

beat Bridge of Spies (#1386 → #1620)

lost to I, Tonya (#1382 → #1362)

lost to The Great Mouse Detective (#1384 → #1382)

lost to Pain and Glory (#1385 → #1305)

The Kid Detective (2020)

IMDb plot summary: A once-celebrated kid detective, now 32, continues to solve the same trivial mysteries between hangovers and bouts of self-pity; until a naive client brings him his first 'adult' case to find out who brutally murdered her boyfriend.

Directed by Evan Morgan. Stars Kaitlyn Chalmers-Rizzato, Adam Brody, and Kaleb Horn.

The Kid Detective is a hypothetical gritty, grown-up sequel to Encyclopedia Brown: what if the boy genius detective grows up, finds the one case he can't solve, and life falls apart. It's a concept that could have been painfully gimmicky, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they pretty much nail the execution. Adam Brody is perfectly cast as the main character, playing just the right mix of weary depression and lingering boyish idealism to make the tone work. The tone is key here, by the way, and it walks a tricky line between dark comedy and genuine tragedy, shifting from absurd humor to moments of real emotional weight without losing its way. By the time the final mystery is wrapped up, was both funnier and sadder than I thought it might be. The Kid Detective turns what could have been a one-joke premise into something both enjoyable and oddly touching. What an interesting surprise.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Kid Detective (2020)

📊 Ranked #820/4070 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 81

beat Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (#2032 → #2033)

beat Pig (#1015 → #1022)

lost to Her (#508 → #521)

beat Winter Light (#761 → #1104)

lost to School of Rock (#634 → #635)

lost to Autumn Sonata (#697 → #703)

lost to The Talented Mr. Ripley (#729 → #698)

beat Super (#745 → #753)

lost to Cats (#737 → #740)

beat Spotlight (#741 → #732)

beat Coherence (#739 → #738)

lost to Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (#738 → #760)

Juror #2 (2024)

IMDb plot summary: While serving as a juror in a high-profile murder trial, a family man finds himself struggling with a serious moral dilemma, one he could use to sway the jury verdict and potentially convict or free the wrong killer.

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Stars Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, and J.K. Simmons.

Juror #2 has a great premise: A juror (played by Nicholas Hoult) realizes partway through a criminal trial that he himself might be the person responsible. The film leans heavily on talky dialogue scenes, a la 12 Angry Men, which often don't work, and Hoult's tightly wound performance, which always does. He grounds the story, which is needed more often than I'd like -- the script can’t resist waxing a little too poetic about the nobility of the American legal system. It's a topic well worth exploring, but it doesn't explore so much as just seem like vague patriotic propaganda. Still, despite a few eye-rolling dialogue scenes, there are moments of brilliance throughout, and the moral questions it raises are undeniably gripping. Without giving anything away, the ending lands just right for me, leaving me with a final taste of the film as an uneven but intriguing courtroom drama that I'd recommend but wouldn't necessarily rewatch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Juror #2 (2024)

📊 Ranked #1158/4069 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 74

lost to Clueless (#2031 → #1751)

beat Late Night with the Devil (#3048 → #3047)

beat Under the Roofs of Paris (held at #2539)

beat The Worst Person in the World (#2285 → #2341)

beat The Keep (#2158 → #2159)

beat A Night to Remember (#2095 → #2092)

beat X (#2062 → #2134)

beat Brothers (#2046 → #2105)

beat The Suburbans (held at #2038)

lost to Moonrise Kingdom (#2034 → #913)

beat America's Sweethearts (#2036 → #2035)

beat Wind River (#2035 → #2396)

Sophie's Choice (1982)

IMDb plot summary: Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live with Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust.

Directed by Alan J. Pakula. Stars Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Peter MacNicol.

Sophie’s Choice is one of those cultural touchstones films I "should have" seen already... but I'm not convinced it quite deserves that title. The film follows a young writer who becomes entangled with Polish Holocaust survivor Sophie, played by Meryl Streep, and her highly volatile lover, played by Kevin Kline. The relationship between the latter two is both magnetic and toxic, filled with love, cruelty, and instability, and the writer becomes an audience insert observer of their dynamic. Streep is extraordinary here. Her acting choices for Sophie are both distinct and completely believable. Kline is also incredible, though, filling his scenes with a terrifying mania, making the pair fascinating but sometimes very difficult to watch. All that praise aside, though, I came away ultimately disappointed. Their relationship goes round and round in circles, peeling away layers and back story, until it culminates in the story of Sophie's titular "choice"... but that scene feels oddly disconnected from the rest of the story. It isn't the smoking gun revelation about Sophie that it's set up to be, it's just one more horrifically tragic piece of her past that then gets jumped past to tie up loose ends. Maybe the novel handles this better. I’m curious to read it and see if it's able to make that connection. As it stands, Sophie’s Choice is beautifully acted and very compelling for much of its runtime, but somehow both too long and not long enough to tie its pieces together.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Sophie's Choice (1982)

📊 Ranked #1613/4068 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 61

beat Cinderella (#2030 → #3078)

lost to Pig (#1013 → #1018)

lost to Muppet Treasure Island (#1520 → #1519)

beat Spy (#1776 → #2268)

beat Batman Forever (#1647 → #2262)

lost to Spider-Man 2 (#1584 → #1583)

lost to True Romance (#1615 → #1617)

beat Cake (#1631 → #1634)

beat Undercover Blues (#1623 → #1628)

lost to The Slipper and the Rose (held at #1619)

beat Logan (#1621 → #1624)

lost to The Trojan Women (#1620 → #1622)

I'm Still Here (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A woman married to a former politician during the military dictatorship in Brazil is forced to reinvent herself and chart a new course for her family after a violent and arbitrary act.

Directed by Walter Salles. Stars Fernanda Torres, Fernanda Montenegro, and Selton Mello.

I'm Still Here is a Brazilian film based on a true story about a family living through Brazil's military dictatorship of the 60s through the 80s. When the husband, a dissident politician husband, is arrested and disappears, we follow his wife holding her family together and seeking out the truth of what happened to her husband. The film unfolds slowly -- so slowly, in fact, that it took me almost the entire runtime to really get invested in the story. But patience pays off here: the final scene brings everything together beautifully and makes the rest of the story click into place for the first time. This is why I don't give up on movies halfway through if they're not working for me -- sometime you have these endings that flip it around entirely. It makes me want to rewatch it now that I know where it’s heading, because I feel like it would be an entirely different emotional experience for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 I'm Still Here (2024)

📊 Ranked #1617/4067 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 61

beat Wristcutters: A Love Story (#2030 → #2031)

lost to Date Night (#1013 → #871)

lost to The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (#1541 → #1525)

beat The Help (#1741 → #1760)

beat The Long Kiss Goodnight (#1648 → #1704)

lost to Metal Lords (#1585 → #1551)

beat Vanya on 42nd Street (#1616 → #2161)

lost to Pushing Tin (#1584 → #1582)

lost to Godzilla (#1607 → #1494)

lost to The Shining (#1612 → #1607)

beat De-Lovely (#1614 → #2043)

beat Marie Antoinette (#1613 → #1658)

Silkwood (1983)

IMDb plot summary: A worker at a plutonium processing plant is purposefully contaminated, psychologically tortured and possibly murdered to prevent her from exposing worker safety violations at the plant.

Directed by Mike Nichols. Stars Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher.

Silkwood tells the true story of Karen Silkwood, a worker at a plutonium processing plant who becomes a whistleblower when she starts to realize how many serious safety violations her company is allowing. This of course leads to pressure from the company for her to stop talking. Meryl Streep is so down to earth in this movie. I often don't like her playing "regular" people and find her more believable in more extreme characterizations, but she completely disappears into this role. Karen feels authentic, with a quiet strength that makes her feel realistically flawed but easy to root for. The story itself is infuriating -- in a "this should never have happened" way, not a "this is poorly written" way. You really feel the injustice of the big corporation crushing the sole individual speaking out. There is a good chunk of the film devoted to Karen's interpersonal drama with her boyfriend and her best friend roommate, and that's a lot less compelling, but it does offer some more context for her character, so I don't have too much of a complaint about it -- just that it's the least interesting part of the film. Overall, it’s a pretty good film: grounded, angry in all the right ways, and in many ways that's due entirely to Streep's strong performance.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Silkwood (1983)

📊 Ranked #1551/4066 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 63

beat Mame (#2029 → #2031)

lost to The Menu (#1013 → #1019)

lost to Superlopez (#1519 → #1367)

beat Evil (#1775 → #1783)

beat The Help (#1646 → #1779)

beat The Intouchables (#1583 → #1578)

lost to Malcolm X (#1551 → #1543)

beat Pushing Tin (#1567 → #1601)

lost to River's Edge (#1559 → #1550)

beat The Chorus (#1563 → #1723)

beat Blow Dry (#1561 → #1809)

beat mother! (held at #1560)