Thursday, July 10, 2025

The Greatest Showman (2017)

IMDb plot summary: Celebrates the birth of show business and tells of a visionary who rose from nothing to create a spectacle that became a worldwide sensation.
Directed by Michael Gracey. Stars Hugh Jackman, Michelle Williams, and Zac Efron.

The Greatest Showman is a musical retelling of the life of P.T. Barnum, most famous for his circus. Hugh Jackman plays Barnum, and we follow him from his earliest conceptions of the idea through his ups and downs as he carries it out. I was not looking forward to watching this movie because it did not feel like something that I would enjoy, and I was extremely correct. The music is done by current musical darlings Pasek and Paul whom I have almost never enjoyed (with the exception of their work in the film Spirited). So none of the music does it for me. But on top of that, the script is extremely strange. Barnum is curiously unexplored as a character. It is never clear what it is he actually wants or likes about the circus business. The clearest objective we get for him is simply "making money and being respected," but if that was his whole goal, show business is obviously the worst place to make that happen. The film is full of vague metaphor about working in the circus being a form of "breaking free" and "opening the cages," but we never once see any kind of actual reasoning or passionate love for the circus, or any of the people in it, until the very very end of the movie, when it pretends it's been there all along. This film could either have approached this from the point of view of Barnum loving people and therefore wanting to highlight them or Barnum loving show business and therefore getting a high from the performance aspect, but it does neither, and as such it rings incredibly hollow and unintentionally paints Barnum as the real-life monster he was while shoving him through story beats written for a much more likable character. I do wish I had been wrong about this one, but it is absolutely not for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Greatest Showman (2017)
lost to The Sparks Brothers (held at #1996)
lost to The Doorway to Hell (held at #2992)
lost to Stepsister from Planet Weird (#3492 → #3484)
beat The Collective (#3743 → #3744)
lost to No Reservations (#3617 → #3616)
lost to The Music Man (#3680 → #3665)
lost to To Kill a King (held at #3711)
lost to The Lodger (#3727 → #3714)
beat Kingpin (#3735 → #3737)
beat Super Troopers (#3731 → #3732)
beat Live a Little, Love a Little (#3729 → #3730)
lost to VeggieTales: Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler (held at #3728)
📊 Ranked #3727/3998 on my Flickchart
🎯 Flickscore™: 7.

Wednesday, July 9, 2025

The Pelican Brief (1993)

IMDb plot summary: A law student uncovers a conspiracy, putting herself and others in danger.
Directed by Alan J. Pakula. Stars Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, and Sam Shepard.

The Pelican Brief is a legal thriller based on a John Grisham novel in which a young law student, played here by Julia Roberts, unwittingly writers up a plausible theory to solve the assassination of two judges, a theory that implicates not only an enormous corporation but also the White House. Suddenly she finds herself being hunted down, seemingly to eliminate her and any of the suggestions that she put forth in her brief. This is a generally enjoyable but also pretty forgettable story. Following the different threads from moment to moment was fairly enjoyable, but the overall arching story is not one that I think I'm going to remember much past this particular viewing. I do think the film does a good job of playing up the tension and bringing us along in the moment, which is what a thriller should do. The moments of not feeling like she can trust anybody were genuinely unsettling without feeling over the top. It's a well-constructed story and if this is a genre that you are interested in, this is definitely one that's worth watching.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Pelican Brief (1993)
lost to Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (#1996 → #1993)
beat The Doorway to Hell (#2991 → #2992)
beat Blow Out (#2494 → #2506)
beat Dhamaal (#2244 → #2274)
lost to Mad God (#2120 → #2014)
beat Safety Not Guaranteed (#2182 → #2186)
beat Real Genius (#2151 → #2314)
beat Wreck-It Ralph (#2135 → #2161)
lost to Cropsey (#2127 → #2122)
lost to Beverly Hills Cop (#2131 → #1983)
beat Ford v Ferrari (#2133 → #2144)
beat Being the Ricardos (#2132 → #2136)
📊 Ranked #2020/3997 on my Flickchart
🎯 Flickscore™: 49

Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Daughters (2024)

IMDb plot summary: Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy/Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C. jail.
Directed by Angela Patton and Natalie Rae.

Daughters is a documentary about a program that facilitates dances for young girls with incarcerated fathers. The prison sets up a dance event on site, fathers go through a series of parenting classes to be eligible to participate, and then the fathers and daughters spend the evening together, some of them for the very first time. The documentary follows a few specific groups of father-daughter pairings, some of whom were very close before the father was incarcerated, and others who have barely ever met each other. We do also get a brief epilogue afterwards looking at how this program has impacted the fathers and daughters a few years later. This program has very impressive results in terms of reducing recidivism, and watching these families reunite or unite for the first time makes a very strong case for how vehemently anti-family our current prison system is and how much better we could (and should) be doing. The program set up to prepare these fathers for their evenings with their daughters are fascinating to watch, as these men work through what got them in their current situation and how they can break that cycle to be a good father to their children. It feels maybe a little scummy to talk about the emotional impact of these individual characters because they're not characters, they're real people, but watching this absolutely speaks to the desperate need for prison reform if we are going to see actual rehabilitation in our society. Watching people trying to fight for these men and their return to society brings me a little bit more hope.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Daughters (2024
beat Mrs. Miniver (#1996 → #2099)
lost to My Life as a Dog (#996 → #976)
lost to Watchmen (#1495 → #1267)
beat The Suburbans (held at #1743)
lost to Spider-Man 2 (#1619 → #1617)
beat The Virtuous Sin (#1681 → #1686)
lost to Strictly Ballroom (#1650 → #1647)
lost to Martian Child (#1665 → #1645)
lost to Lord of War (#1673 → #1662)
beat The Majestic (#1677 → #1680)
beat Intolerable Cruelty (#1675 → #1677)
beat A Notorious Affair (#1674 → #1675)
📊 Ranked #1687/3996 on my Flickchart
🎯 Flickscore™: 58

A Man Called Otto (2022)

IMDb plot summary: Otto is a grump who's given up on life following the loss of his wife and wants to end it all. When a young family moves in nearby, he meets his match in quick-witted Marisol, leading to a friendship that will turn his world around.
Directed by Marc Forster. Stars Tom Hanks, Mariana Treviño, and Rachel Keller.

A Man Called Otto is an American remake of a Swedish film, which was in turn based on a book. This version stars Tom Hanks as a lonely widower named Otto who has determined to end his own life but continuously gets distracted by the people around him who need his help. As he begrudgingly helps them, he finds himself forming community that gives him a reason to live again. I am extremely curious about the original version of this. There is a very overt sentimentality in this one that doesn't always work for me. And it hit my introversion in a weird way, especially in the first third of the film, where there is a large part of me that is deeply irritated at the people around Otto forcing themselves into his life, even though I know that ultimately it would be good for him to have more connections. I'm just not convinced that the way for that to happen is for people to forcefully push themselves into your home and demand that you unburden your soul to them. And because of this, for much of the movie I felt claustrophobic and irritated rather than heartwarmed. It pulls off the story enough toward the end that it demonstrates that the community was genuine, so I was able to find sit better with the ending. So overall it was fine, and Tom Hanks is an excellent actor, but it made me extremely curious to see the story told from the point of view of a culture that is not as relentlessly extroverted as the United States. I wonder if I would resonate with that more. 

How it entered my Flickchart:
A Man Called Otto (2022)
beat Mr. Nice Guy (#1995 → #1999)
lost to La La Land (#995 → #992)
beat Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (#1494 → #1499)
lost to The Shoes of the Fisherman (#1241 → #1239)
beat The Theory of Everything (#1369 → #1370)
beat Mary Poppins Returns (#1306 → #1312)
lost to Akira (#1274 → #1273)
lost to 21 Up (#1287 → #1286)
lost to The French Dispatch (#1299 → #1281)
lost to The Harvey Girls (#1302 → #1268)
beat Borrowed Wives (#1303 → #1313)
lost to Wolf (#1301 → #1302)
Ranked #1295/3995 on my Flickchart. Flickscore™: 68.

The Green Goddess (1930)

IMDb plot summary: An airplane carrying three Brits--Major Crespin, his wife Lucille, and Dr. Trahern--crash lands in the kingdom of Rukh, where the Rajah holds them prisoner.
Directed by Alfred E. Green. Stars George Arliss, Ralph Forbes, and H.B. Warner.

The Green Goddess is a 1930 adventure movie set in a fictional South Asian kingdom. We follow a group of white travelers who end up getting stuck there, while the woman is ordered to marry the ruler and become the empress of the country. This is just a weird racist mess of movie. It's centered all around how the evil foreigners are kidnapping white women with evil mysticism and we have to protect them, and there's just not a lot of value to be gotten out of that. Most of the film is either tedious conversations repeating the same things over and over again, or ominous looking rituals meant to be terrifying solely in their unfamiliarity. I'm sure there are other aspects of this film that are slightly more noteworthy, given that the film had some popularity and won some awards, but the story was so unlikable that it all kind of melded together into an ugly mess for me. 

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Green Goddess (1930)
lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (#1999 → #1994)
lost to Cry-Baby (#2984 → #2985)
beat End of Days (#3489 → #3701)
lost to Copying Beethoven (#3238 → #3215)
beat The Bone Collector (#3353 → #3415)
beat Petulia (#3300 → #3303)
lost to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (#3268 → #3247)
beat Danger: Diabolik (#3283 → #3286)
beat Africa Speaks! (#3275 → #3277)
lost to The Internship (#3271 → #3267)
lost to Annie Get Your Gun (#3273 → #3255)
beat When I Walk (#3274 → #3527)
📊 Ranked #3256/3994 on my Flickchart
🎯 Flickscore™: 19

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (2023)

IMDb plot summary: Bullied by his boss, worked around the clock, he's nothing more than a corporate drone. All it takes is a zombie outbreak for him to finally feel alive.
Directed by Yûsuke Ishida. Stars Eiji Akaso, Mai Shiraishi, and Shuntarô Yanagi.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead is a live action adaptation of a manga and anime of the same name. It follows a young people-pleasing man who gets caught in the middle of the zombie apocalypse. Instead of letting it lead him to despair, it invigorates him to create a list of things he wants to do with his life before he becomes a zombie. Along the way, he makes friends with other people on the run and they form a little family trying to live their best life in the zombie world. A lot of the joy of this comes from how cheerful and optimistic our protagonist is. He's a delight to watch as he engages with the world -- a very easy protagonist to root for. I also really like the production design of the zombies. There's a truly upsetting visceral bone-cracking piece of the sound design that is effective and terrifying. There's also a point in the latter half of the story in which the characters encounter a zombie shark who then inexplicably grows legs and chases them on land, and that is absolutely one of the most horrifying monsters I've seen on film. But all this darkness is in the middle of a light-hearted, humanistic, hopeful story. This is a lesser known horror film that is definitely worth checking out.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (2023)
beat Can't Hardly Wait (#1994 → #1997)
lost to Fear of a Black Hat (#995 → #988)
beat She's Having a Baby (#1493 → #1494)
beat Nick of Time (#1243 → #1255)
beat Le Samouraï (#1119 → #1234)
beat Call Me Madam (#1057 → #1058)
lost to A Haunting in Venice (#1026 → #823)
lost to The Shallows (#1041 → #1037)
beat The Jungle Book (#1049 → #1069)
beat Re-Animator (#1045 → #1048)
beat Jesus Christ Superstar (#1043 → #1046)
beat Blink Twice (#1042 → #1045)
📊 Ranked #1097/3993 on my Flickchart
🎯 Flickscore™: 72

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)

IMDb plot summary: When it becomes clear that his solo album is a failure, a former boy band member does everything in his power to maintain his celebrity status.
Directed by Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Stars Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a mockumentary made by the musical group The Lonely Island, featuring Andy Samberg as a self-centered pop icon who has lost his way from when he was part of a trio of musical performers. We follow his poor solo performance on the charts and his desperate attempts to bring his audience back to him. Given how much I enjoy the Lonely Island, it's surprising I haven't seen this already and completely unsurprising how much I liked it. The humor is zany and silly but  seldom punches down. Instead it plays satirically with some of the expectations on the music industry. The amount of cameos they got in this movie is great, and the way they use them is very smart and frequently led to me laughing out loud. There's a decent amount of heart behind the story as well, even in the midst of the goofiness of it all. I think that's what really ties this whole thing together for me -- it feels genuinely like a group of friends just making themselves laugh, and it's done in a way that makes the audience feel  invited in. Had a great time with this one. 

How it entered my Flickchart:
🎥 Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016)
beat Can't Hardly Wait (held at #1994)
beat Pariah (#995 → #998)
beat E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (#498 → #504)
lost to Mass (held at #248)
lost to Belle (held at #372)
lost to Shutter Island (#436 → #440)
lost to Bottoms (held at #467)
lost to Cam (#482 → #481)
lost to The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (#490 → #487)
beat 56 Up (#494 → #511)
lost to A Face in the Crowd (#492 → #489)
beat Short Term 12 (held at #493)
📊 Ranked #490/3992 on my Flickchart
🎯 Flickscore™: 87