Empire Records (1995)

IMDb plot summary: Twenty-four hours in the lives of the young employees at Empire Records when they all grow up and become young adults thanks to each other and the manager. They all face the store joining a chain store with strict rules.

Directed by Allan Moyle. Stars Anthony LaPaglia, Debi Mazar, and Maxwell Caulfield.

Empire Records is a day in the life of a record store owner and the many artsy teenagers working at the same store. While there are a bunch of different plot threads being followed, with each of the employees having their own little drama, the two larger plots being followed are 1) that the closing employee last night took the $9,000 that was meant to be deposited and gambled it away in Atlantic City, leaving the store owner panicked that it's going to mean the loss of the store, and 2) the store is hosting a giant meet and greet session for a popular star of yesteryear who is releasing his newest album. This is the most '90s film I have maybe ever seen. That's not a bad thing, I love this. The characters are dynamic, the dialogue is funny and sharp, definitely past the point of believability, but it's just so fun to hear them interact. While they have their relational problems, this group of employees also is weirdly heartwarming together. One scene where they host a fake funeral for the goth teen is a particularly perfect blend of comedy and sweetness. I'm not really sure how I missed out on this one all those years, but this one is a delightful gem and I definitely anticipate coming back to it at some point.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Empire Records (1995)

📊 Ranked #447/4042 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 89

beat John Wick (#2016 → #2018)

beat Widows' Peak (#1006 → #1008)

beat Revengers Tragedy (#502 → #500)

lost to Your Name. (#251 → #250)

lost to The Disaster Artist (held at #376)

lost to Hero (#439 → #437)

beat Bringing Out the Dead (#470 → #471)

beat Black Panther (#454 → #455)

lost to Women Talking (held at #446)

beat Carrie (#450 → #479)

beat The Maltese Falcon (held at #448)

beat The Kindergarten Teacher (#447 → #449)

The Pagemaster (1994)

IMDb plot summary: A cowardly boy, who buries himself in accident statistics, enters a library to escape a storm, only to be transformed into an animated illustration by the Pagemaster. He has to work through obstacles from classic books to return to real-life.

Directed by Pixote Hunt and Joe Johnston. Stars Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, and Kanin Howell.

The Pagemaster stars Macaulay Culkin as a young child who is afraid of everything, but when taking shelter in the library during the storm, he is abruptly drawn into the world of books (portrayed by a shift from live-action to animation) and must find his way out with the help of several genre looks. He encounters various literary characters such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Long John Silver as he makes his way back home. This is cute. This is for kids. I'm all for stories that take literary concepts and characters and stories and condense them down so that kids can have a solid understanding of them. The plot itself doesn't really matter as much as the fun of coming across the different characters and having to interact with them. The book characters that Culkin journeys with are extremely broadly written tropes but they function fine as children's storybook sidekicks. I might have been way more into this as a kid, as someone who loved reading all these classics and would have enjoyed seeing them on screen all condensed together in the same world, but it doesn't offer a lot of new and exciting things for me as an adult. That's okay. It's not for me. I watched it too late. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Pagemaster (1994)

📊 Ranked #3292/4041 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 18

lost to Short Circuit (#2016 → #2012)

lost to The Accidental Tourist (#3024 → #2977)

beat Mr. & Mrs. Smith (held at #3533)

lost to A Stranger Among Us (#3280 → #3275)

beat Move Over, Darling (#3406 → #3477)

beat Asterix and Cleopatra (#3343 → #3347)

lost to Good Night, and Good Luck. (#3311 → #3288)

beat Carousel (#3327 → #3330)

beat Billy the Kid (#3319 → #3324)

beat Pepito y la lámpara maravillosa (#3315 → #3318)

beat Susannah of the Mounties (#3313 → #3316)

beat Bright Lights (#3312 → #3313)

A Real Pain (2024)

IMDb plot summary: Mismatched cousins reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother, but their old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.

Directed by Jesse Eisenberg. Stars Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg, and Olha Bosova.

A Real Pain is directed by Jesse Eisenberg and stars Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as cousins who go on a heritage tour to Poland, where their grandmother lived before escaping as a Jewish refugee. The two cousins are very different in personality and in how they absorb the  exploration of their family's history, with Eisenberg being solemn and restrained and Culkin being effusive and prone to emotional outbursts. This felt like the kind of movie that I haven't seen in a long time, although I'm sure I have and just can't bring anything to mind. It's such a simple setup for these characters to explore their identities and their relationship to pain and suffering. The dialogue is beautifully crafted, and the two lead actors in particular do a marvelous job bringing their characters to life. Watching them interact, or even watching them watch each other interact with others, is  so engrossing, and while I'm still processing the big overall ideas of the movie or what the ending means about the characters, I really loved getting to be a fly on the wall as these two characters work through their relationship. It's the kind of movie I compare in the most complimentary way to a really great piece of theater. Even with the big set pieces of touristy Poland, the stakes and the characters are small and intimate, and it pays off emotionally.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 A Real Pain (2024)

📊 Ranked #563/4040 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 86

beat I and You (#2015 → #2019)

beat Child's Play (#1006 → #1095)

lost to VeggieTales: King George and the Ducky (#502 → #484)

beat 5 Centimeters per Second (#754 → #757)

beat GoodFellas (#627 → #632)

lost to Happy Death Day (held at #564)

beat L.A. Without a Map (#595 → #599)

beat Paddington 2 (#579 → #581)

lost to The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (#571 → #554)

beat Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (held at #575)

beat Anatomy of a Murder (held at #573)

beat The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (#572 → #653)

Cool As Ice (1991)

IMDb plot summary: A rapper gets stuck in a small town and falls for a local girl whose family is in witness protection.

Directed by David Kellogg. Stars Vanilla Ice, Kristin Minter, and Naomi Campbell.

Cool As Ice was a film vehicle for rapper Vanilla Ice and is often named as one of the worst films of the '90s. Vanilla Ice plays a cool biker kid who falls in love with a straight A high school graduate, and then has to not only bridge the gap between their two worlds but also save her family from being kidnapped. Yeah, this is a pretty stupid film. It rests entirely on trying to make Vanilla Ice seem cool, and from the ratings that got it seems like that was not an easy task even back in 1991, but now he just seems incredibly laughably silly. He gets several opportunities to perform, and none of them are interesting or particularly useful in setting the tone to the story. The kidnapping subplot is truly bizarre and seems to belong in an entirely different film, as if they wrote a whole story about worlds colliding in romance and then realized that it was only a 30 minute film, so they tossed in some musical numbers and added some gangsters. As I was watching this, I kept pausing to complain to my family about how ridiculous this all sounded. Fortunately it moves pretty quickly so the silliness of it is over fast, but this is not a good movie.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Cool as Ice (1991)

📊 Ranked #3755/4039 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 7

lost to Coraline (#2015 → #2007)

lost to Chungking Express (#3023 → #3021)

lost to The Last Temptation of Christ (#3531 → #3407)

beat Live a Little, Love a Little (#3783 → #3786)

lost to There's Something About Mary (#3657 → #3580)

lost to Candleshoe (#3720 → #3656)

lost to Pride & Prejudice (#3751 → #3747)

beat Thr3e (#3767 → #3776)

beat Black Sheep (#3759 → #3765)

beat The Lone Ranger (#3755 → #3760)

lost to Martyrs (#3753 → #3750)

beat Black and White (#3754 → #3757)

Time After Time (1979)

IMDb plot summary: H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to the 20th Century when the serial murderer uses the future writer's time machine to escape his time period.

Directed by Nicholas Meyer. Stars Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, and David Warner.

Time After Time is a 1979 film starring Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells, who has built an actual time machine and then has to use it to chase Jack the Ripper to the 1970s. It's a very simple premise but one that works incredibly well, and it's just a ton of fun to watch. It's a good combination of a story that is playful but does actually have high stakes. One thing that helps is that it's not just about the action of chasing down Jack the Ripper, but it's grounded in a heartfelt romance between Wells and a bank teller played by Mary Steenburgen. I especially like that, unlike many fish out of water stories, Wells is very intelligent when it comes to figuring out future tech. It's clear that he's already daydreamed about what the future might bring and has some of the scientific knowledge to be able to predict some of this semi-accurately, so he figures out patterns and how to survive in this new world very quickly, which is a refreshing take on this kind of story. The final third has some weird acting choices from Steenburgen in particular, which is a bit off-putting because she has been so good up until that point, but fortunately at that time the action is more the front and center rather than the romance, so whatever she's doing  is not destroying anything that's been set up. Overall, a really fun ride that I knew nothing about going into it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Time After Time (1979)

📊 Ranked #828/4038 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 80

beat The Wedding Singer (#2014 → #2019)

beat The Voices (#1005 → #1010)

lost to 22 Jump Street (#502 → #501)

lost to Tell It to the Bees (#754 → #735)

beat Pather Panchali (#879 → #883)

lost to Support Your Local Sheriff! (#816 → #814)

beat Hawking (#847 → #1176)

beat The Offence (#831 → #832)

lost to Kismet (#823 → #826)

lost to Companion (#827 → #824)

beat Brazil (#829 → #1059)

beat 9 (#828 → #830)

The Wild Robot (2024)

IMDb plot summary: After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island's animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.

Directed by Chris Sanders. Stars Lupita Nyong'o, Pedro Pascal, and Kit Connor.

The Wild Robot is an animated film starting Lupita Nyong'o as a robot that mistakenly lands on Earth and looks around for a task to fulfill. She accidentally destroys a family of birds and decides that her task is going to be to nurture and care for the one baby bird that survives. The film then follows her relationship with the bird, as the rest of the creatures in the forest that do not trust her, and eventually, she must grapple with her destiny to return to home. The pacing of  this movie is a little strange. It feels like it took two separate stories and mashed them into one, so our act one ending feels like a decisive final ending, and the second half felt like an afterthought. I believe this is based on a series of books, so maybe that is literally what happened, that it took two separate books and combined them to make this version. It's definitely a sentimental film but it does a pretty good job of making it work overall. For example, there's a scene where, during a particularly bad winter, the robot shelters as many forest animals as she can in her little house with a fire. They decide to, temporarily at least, accept her help, accept her as one of them, and stop trying to kill each other. The scene shouuld be too cheesy to work, but somehow it feels plausible here. A couple of other positives that I want to mention include Pedro pascal, who should absolutely be doing voice work as on a regular basis. I didn't realize it was him until halfway through the movie, but he makes the fox an incredibly compelling character. There are also some really gorgeous large animation shots of the landscapes as the robot makes her way through. I think all the pieces individually work, and I think like 80% of it works together as a whole. It's a little uneven throughout, but I think it sticks the landing well enough. Definitely a sweet movie and one worth watching. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Wild Robot (2024)

📊 Ranked #838/4037 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 79

beat The Year of Living Dangerously (#2014 → #2308)

beat The Other Boleyn Girl (#1005 → #999)

lost to Rise of the Planet of the Apes (#502 → #489)

lost to Come from Away (#754 → #750)

lost to Whale Rider (#879 → #867)

beat The Hateful Eight (#942 → #935)

beat Volver (#910 → #997)

beat Hustlers (#894 → #893)

beat Being There (#886 → #1136)

lost to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (#882 → #836)

beat Pather Panchali (#884 → #879)

beat The Sting (#883 → #902)

Sully (2016)

IMDb plot summary: When pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger lands his damaged plane on the Hudson River in order to save the flight's passengers and crew, some consider him a hero while others think he was reckless.

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Stars Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, and Laura Linney.

Sully is a film based on a true story, starring Tom Hanks as a pilot who ends up landing a large passenger plane in the Hudson River after both of its engines are taken out during takeoff. Miraculously everybody survives, but the story follows the investigation afterward, where Hanks must prove that his decision to land the plane in the river rather than try to make it back to LaGuardia or to a neighboring airport was the best decision in the moment. For having such a narrow focus of story, over only a few days and focusing on one specific incident, there's a lot of suspense here, as well as some psychological exploration. While it's fairly certain from the get-go that Sully did do his due diligence as a pilot, we still get to see him grapple with self-doubt and lingering trauma from the event, which would of course be part of anybody's experience in this case. The story is surprisingly restrained, not really leaning into melodramatics. In fact, the final climactic moment of the movie revolves entirely around watching a series of simulated flight landings, with no added on drama to it. But watching  airplane simulations has never been as tense as it was in this film. Tom Hanks often manages to play restraint or reservedness with some deep subtext underneath, and he does that very well here. Not a film I would have expected it myself to get invested in, but this is pretty solid.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Sully (2016)

📊 Ranked #1185/4036 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 71

beat The Sea Gull (#2016 → #2020)

lost to What's Eating Gilbert Grape (#1006 → #1011)

beat Nothing in Common (#1510 → #1584)

beat The Exterminating Angel (#1256 → #1400)

beat Henry V (#1135 → #1195)

lost to The Philadelphia Story (#1035 → #161)

lost to Barbie (#1103 → #1078)

lost to Room (#1097 → #231)

lost to Cradle Will Rock (#1106 → #239)

lost to The Bad Seed (#1131 → #1106)

lost to It (#1134 → #1131)

lost to The Secret of NIMH (#1130 → #1124)

Friendship (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A suburban dad falls hard for his charismatic new neighbor.

Directed by Andrew DeYoung. Stars Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, and Kate Mara.

Friendship is a movie starring Tim Robinson as an awkward suburban man who befriends his new neighbor, played by Paul Rudd. When he makes things awkward at a group hangout and the friendship dies, his attempts to get it back make everything worse. I'm not a huge fan of Tim Robinson's TV show I Think You Should Leave. It just has seldom clicked with me, and this one doesn't click with me either. Frankly, this movie is entirely about how my social anxiety is right: any tiny misstep you make is going to inevitably spiral and destroy your life and the lives of everyone around you. It is a terrifyingly claustrophobic film for me to watch and very nearly gave me a panic attack. There is one truly hilarious joke in which Robinson attempts psychedelics to try to regain some clarity in his life and is promised a life-changing experience, only for his trip to end up being an extremely mundane recreation of him ordering food at Subway. That got the only genuine laugh for me from this film. Mostly I was just uncomfortable and horrified. I am not the right person for this film. I don't need to see every worst fear come true in front of me with no escape. My brain can do that on its own just fine. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Friendship (2025)

📊 Ranked #3323/4035 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 18

lost to Max Dugan Returns (#2013 → #2006)

lost to Tiny Furniture (#3020 → #2802)

beat Mr. & Mrs. Smith (#3527 → #3498)

lost to The Goonies (#3275 → #3235)

beat Domestic Disturbance (#3401 → #3412)

beat Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (#3338 → #3341)

lost to Beaches (#3306 → #3260)

beat Annie Get Your Gun (#3321 → #3294)

beat That Darn Cat! (#3313 → #3465)

lost to A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (#3309 → #3259)

beat Fast Food Nation (#3311 → #3326)

beat American Underdog (#3310 → #3305)

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)

IMDb plot summary: A cafe owner discovers that the TV in his cafe suddenly shows images from the future, but only two minutes into the future.

Directed by Junta Yamaguchi. Stars Kazunari Tosa, Riko Fujitani, and Gôta Ishida.

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is a Japanese film about a man and his friends who discover that the TV in his bedroom is on a 2-minute time delay from the TV downstairs in the cafe he runs, giving him the ability to see 2 minutes into the future at a time. As he shares this knowledge with friends and they figure out how to use this ability, things get complicated. The simplicity of both premise and execution of this one is a ton of fun. It reminds me a little bit of something like Primer, although of course primer is nearly incomprehensible and this film is much more accessible. but it's a great high-concept low-budget story that just has fun playing around with the puzzle and figuring out all the different ways that this could go wrong, how they can use this to their advantage, and what to do when it seems to be going awry. It's a quick film, only about an hour and 15 minutes, and that is the exact right amount of time to play with this concept to the fullest and still have a satisfying story at the end. This is a great ride, and I definitely recommend it. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)

📊 Ranked #401/4034 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 90

beat Mickey's Christmas Carol (#2013 → #2016)

beat The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (#1004 → #1008)

beat Clerks (#501 → #503)

lost to Mass (held at #250)

lost to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (held at #375)

beat The Boys Next Door (#438 → #450)

beat The Gods Must Be Crazy (#406 → #408)

beat Savannah Smiles (#390 → #392)

lost to Belle (#382 → #380)

lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (#386 → #385)

lost to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (held at #388)

beat Boyz n the Hood (#389 → #403)

Lone Star (1996)

IMDb plot summary: When the skeleton of his murdered predecessor is found, Sheriff Sam Deeds unearths many other long-buried secrets in his Texas border town.

Directed by John Sayles. Stars Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, and Stephen Mendillo.

Lone Star is an ensemble film centering mostly on Chris Cooper as the sheriff of a town in Texas. His father was also the sheriff and has become something of a town legend, but Cooper suspects that maybe there is a darker side to his father's legacy. We also follow subplots looking at the tension between white and Latino residents of the town, as well as a narrative about a group of African-American soldiers in a military base that's being dispersed. This truly is an ensemble film, and each piece of the ensemble is engaging in and of itself, though I don't know that I fully process the purpose of intertwining them specifically. This one is going to take a little bit more thinking about. It is a little depressing to be watching a film from 30 years ago where people are still angry about teaching the full picture of our country's history, such as when Americans took over places that they should not have. Those conversations have only intensified since '96, and it makes this film feels still deeply relevant and contemporary. There are some intriguing editing choices as well. The film jumps from story to story in almost an abrupt way, but it really helps keep the focus tightly on whatever we are looking at at the moment, and it's not until later that we start seeing how things work together. This is a film to sit with for me, and one that I think I will continue to appreciate the longer I sit with it, but I feel like any thoughts I'm giving now are very fresh and raw and might not be fully representative of what the film is.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Lone Star (1996)

📊 Ranked #1305/4033 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 68

beat Mickey's Christmas Carol (#2007 → #2013)

lost to The Voices (#1001 → #1000)

beat The Wolf of Wall Street (#1507 → #1508)

beat World War Z (#1254 → #1253)

beat August Rush (#1129 → #1144)

lost to Witchfinder General (#1086 → #1037)

lost to 28 Days Later (#1098 → #307)

beat True Grit (#1114 → #1323)

beat Goosebumps (#1106 → #1326)

beat Akira (#1102 → #1313)

lost to The Death of Stalin (#1100 → #1099)

beat South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (held at #1101)

The Monkey (2025)

IMDb plot summary: When twin brothers Bill and Hal find their father's old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths start. The siblings decide to throw the toy away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years.

Directed by Osgood Perkins. Stars Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, and Christian Convery.

The Monkey is a horror movie about two twin brothers who  find a wind-up toy monkey that belonged to their absent father. They discover that winding up the monkey causes someone to die in a horrifying freak accident, anything from being trampled while camping to accidentally setting your head on fire. They dispose of the monkey, only to find out years later that it's come back to wreak havoc again. By far the most engaging part of this movie is the ridiculous over the top deaths. People are exploding left and right and covering the people around them in blood and body parts, at least once it surprised me into laughing out loud. The dialogue in the film, though, is an uncomfortable attempt at comedy that never lands for me, so anytime when we aren't seeing ludicrous gory death scenes is dull at best and eye-rolling and cringy at worst. There is one more exception: the scene in which our lead character interacts with his ex's new boyfriend who wants to adopt his son. This character is played by Elijah Wood as a hilarious fatherhood guru, and there's some good lines in that sequence that gave me glimpses into what the movie was trying to do and how well it could have worked. The script overall needed some more passes to bring out the humor in the moments when no one is dying. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Monkey (2025)

📊 Ranked #2349/4032 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 42

beat Anna (#2011 → #2129)

lost to The Lady Vanishes (#1005 → #1008)

lost to About Elly (#1515 → #1516)

lost to Wet Hot American Summer (#1775 → #1767)

lost to The Aristocats (#1909 → #1890)

beat Flightplan (#1949 → #2542)

lost to The Girl on a Motorcycle (#1914 → #1871)

lost to Native Son (#1931 → #1461)

lost to Rosemary's Baby (#1941 → #1930)

lost to Evita (#1944 → #1443)

beat Yellow Submarine (#1946 → #2587)

lost to Bound (#1945 → #1934)

Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert (2018)

IMDb plot summary: A live musical recounting the final days of Jesus Christ and those around him.

Directed by David Leveaux and Alex Rudzinski. Stars Sara Bareilles, Alice Cooper, and Ben Daniels.

Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert is, well, a live in concert version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical. This one stars John Legend as Jesus, Brandon Victor Dixon as judas, and Sara Bareilles as Mary Magdalene. It's a rock musical retelling of the final days of Jesus life, focusing heavily on the perspective of Judas and the religious leaders who are plotting to take Jesus down. Jesus Christ Superstar is maybe my least favorite of Webber's big hits. It has a few really incredible musical motifs and then a lot of nothing around it. That can probably be said of many of his shows, but this is an especially uncompelling story for me, which is maybe a little weird given that I am a very Christian religious person... But there's just not a lot of about this version of the story that resonates with me. Jesus just seems perpetually whiny, so while I love the song "Gethsemane" in isolation, it's pretty annoying in context. Judas, however, also doesn't come across as a compelling character, and Mary Magdalene just does nothing at all. In this particular performance, I like Dixon's and Bareilles' performances. Bareilles manages to bring at least some sincerity to her characters perpetual passiveness, and Dixon is a heck of a vocalist. John Legend is not an actor and does not sell his character at all. Jesus Christ Superstar will forever work better for me as a short highlights album then as a full-fledged production, and this particular production doesn't do anything to change my mind on that. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert (2018)

📊 Ranked #1799/4031 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 56

lost to Monsters (#1969 → #1919)

beat Gigi (#3019 → #3021)

beat Fantastic Voyage (#2523 → #2530)

beat JFK (#2268 → #2261)

beat Grand Illusion (#2155 → #2178)

beat Critters (#2035 → #2062)

lost to Ratatouille (#2011 → #1798)

beat The Christmas Toy (#2063 → #2539)

beat Burning (#2058 → #2146)

beat A Hard Day's Night (#2073 → #2175)

lost to How Do You Know (#1991 → #1820)

beat My Week with Marilyn (#2015 → #2034)

Three Faces East (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A beautiful British intelligence agent attempts to reveal the identity and motives of a powerful German spy during World War 1.

Directed by Roy Del Ruth. Stars Constance Bennett, Erich von Stroheim, and Anthony Bushell.

Three Faces East is about a female German spy who is tasked with staying with an upper class British family posing as the woman who nursed their son in the army before he died. Her mission is to read and transmit information about military maneuvers that the head of the household receives. While we certainly had some spy films in this 1930 project, we haven't had many female spies, so that made this already kind of a fresh take. They also shy away from making her an obvious femme fatale, hinting that there's going to be some kind of change of heart for her near the end. As suspicion rises in the house, there are some good tense scenes in which she is nearly caught, and those are paced and staged really well to heighten the suspense. The final third of the movie doesn't quite live up to the promise of the first 2/3, but it still holds together okay. A decent watch. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Three Faces East (1930)

📊 Ranked #2542/4030 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 37

lost to Gypsy (#2011 → #1917)

beat The Deep (#3014 → #3015)

beat Pi (held at #2509)

beat Le Week-End (#2258 → #2254)

lost to The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (#2137 → #1992)

beat Absolute Power (#2199 → #2220)

beat Sneakerella (#2168 → #2174)

lost to The Dawn Patrol (#2152 → #2122)

beat Laura (#2159 → #2291)

beat Waterloo (#2156 → #2309)

lost to Top Hat (#2153 → #2134)

beat Grand Illusion (#2154 → #2138)

The Office Wife (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Larry asks Kate to write about "Office Wives" - executive stenographers whose work creates wife-like bonds with bosses. He's unaware that such stories can reflect reality.

Directed by Lloyd Bacon and Michael Curtiz. Stars Dorothy Mackaill, Lewis Stone, and Natalie Moorhead.

The Office Wife is a romantic comedy about a young woman who gets a job as a secretary and ultimately falls in love with her  married boss. There are some scattered mentions throughout of what the title means, namely that the work secretary does so much in taking care of the working man that there is basically no need for wives anymore. It never really builds on that theme, though, so much as just tosses it out there and then we watch a pretty normal romance happen. This is a very short film, under an hour, so there's not much time to build much of a greater concept or even really a sense of character, although it is very fun to see a very young Joan Blondell play the part of the female lead sister, a much less inhibited character who keeps nudging her sister to pursue the illicit affair. Some of these shorter films from 1930 successfully fit an entire arc into that shortened time frame, but this one feels like it's lacking, although none of the scenes that are here unpleasant or objectionable, just kind of bland.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Office Wife (1930)

📊 Ranked #3122/4029 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 23

lost to Gypsy (#2010 → #2011)

lost to Chungking Express (#3067 → #3019)

beat Anastasia (#3522 → #3524)

beat The Jazz Singer (#3251 → #3264)

beat The Shaggy Dog (#3165 → #3172)

beat Shane (#3057 → #3061)

lost to You Only Live Once (#3090 → #3046)

lost to Where Eagles Dare (#3028 → #3010)

beat Avengers: Endgame (#3045 → #3059)

beat The Iceman (#3043 → #3086)

beat Cracks (#3064 → #3217)

lost to Stormy Weather (#3066 → #3052)

Let Us Be Gay (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A housewife divorces her self-centered husband. Years later, she attends a party where her ex is pursuing another woman. Unbeknownst to him, she is the same ex-wife he'd neglected, now transformed into a fashionable socialite.

Directed by Robert Z. Leonard. Stars Norma Shearer, Rod La Rocque, and Marie Dressler.

Let Us Be Gay is a 1930 romantic comedy starring Norma Shearer as a woman whose husband cheats on her, so she leaves him and decides to reinvent her life. Some time later, she is invited to stay with a rich older woman whose niece is in a relationship she doesn't approve of, so she asks Shearer to lure the man away, only for it to turn out that the man is Shearer's ex. This is the second film from this year in which the same actress plays a woman who starts living it up what she realizes that her husband has been doing the same, but this one has a lot less meaningful anything to say about it. My reaction to this can't be shared without spoiling the ending, so let me say that it sets it up as if Shearer is going to reject her ex's attempts to win her back and is going to maintain her own independence that he she has fought so hard for, only for her in the last 30 seconds to break down and say, no, she's so sad and lonely and she wants to get back together with her husband. He's made no attempts to change his behavior or attitude, he just thinks she's hotter now and wants to get back with her because of that. The other film with this plot, The Divorcee, was a little bit more thoughtful in how it approached this, but this one was just deeply disappointing. The mistaken identity plot throughout was also not particularly compelling. Definitely a middling film that then was dragged much further down due to its unsatisfactory ending. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Let Us Be Gay (1930)

📊 Ranked #3003/4028 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 26

lost to Swing Time (#2010 → #2013)

beat The Rookie (#3015 → #3027)

lost to The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (#2514 → #2220)

lost to Max Dugan Returns (#2764 → #2661)

lost to Grace of Monaco (#2889 → #2806)

beat The White Ribbon (#2952 → #2973)

beat Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#2920 → #2956)

lost to Chinatown (#2904 → #2877)

beat A Mighty Wind (#2912 → #3005)

lost to On the Waterfront (#2908 → #2919)

lost to Kiki's Delivery Service (#2910 → #2887)

lost to The Divorcee (#2911 → #2847)

Ingagi (1930)

IMDb plot summary: An expedition enters an area of the Congo jungle to investigate reports of a gorilla-worshipping tribe. After many dangerous adventures, they come upon the tribe they sought, only to watch as a virgin is sacrificed to a huge gorilla, who takes her away. The expedition follows the gorilla in an attempt to save the woman.

Directed by William Campbell. Stars Sir Hubert Winstead, Charles Gemora, and Arthur Clayton.

Ingagi is a supposed African exploration documentary from 1930 that begins and ends with the promise of seeing a native tribe sacrifice one of their young women to the gorillas. Everything in between is pretty straightforward animal footage, some of which is pretty entertaining, but I did learn later that most of it was just stolen from someone else, and then they filmed fake stuff around it and tried to pass it off as an actual documentary, including scenes with gorillas that are obviously men in gorilla costumes, and the purported discovery of a new animal that is just a turtle with fake wings and scales attached to it. There's zero redeeming quality to any of this. Even if you want to watch cool animal footage, this isn't worth it because it's not only a 1930 movie, but it's a 1930 movie using 1915 footage  without permission, so the quality isn't great. Fortunately, 100 years later, there are much better animal films to watch that don't lately lie about native Africans to play on exploitative white fears.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Ingagi (1930)

📊 Ranked #4007/4027 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 1

lost to Tank (#2009 → #2005)

lost to End of Days (#3014 → #3008)

lost to The Out-of-Towners (#3520 → #3518)

lost to Lockdown (held at #3772)

lost to Just Like Heaven (held at #3897)

lost to The Family Stone (held at #3960)

lost to The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (held at #3991)

beat RocketMan (#4010 → #4011)

lost to Alvin and the Chipmunks (held at #4002)

lost to Manos: The Hands of Fate (#4006 → #4005)

beat Zombie Nightmare (#4008 → #4009)

lost to Flubber (#4007 → #4008)

The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists and determined assassins.

Directed by Wes Anderson. Stars Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera.

The Phoenician Scheme is Wes Anderson's newest movie, starring Benicio del Toro as a scheming businessman who decides to appoint his nun daughter heir to his fortune, played by Mia Threapleton. His fortune however is in crisis, so he takes his daughter around with him to attempt to stabilize his wealth. After being disappointed with Android City, I began to wonder if maybe I was just Wes Anderson'ed out and wouldn't enjoy his stuff anymore. I had a good time with this one though. There's a little bit more variety to the characters than the sad stoicism that populates most Anderson movies, and I think the more linear, less episodic nature of the plot works in its favor. For the first time since Moonrise Kingdom, I felt some affection towards some of these characters and was invested in what would happen to them. Anderson's distinct and colorful visuals are certainly on display here, as is his talent for connecting a wide range of interesting guest stars playing tiny parts. My personal favorite was Richard Ayoade as a militant revolutionary. This one still doesn't quite rise above the level of "generally enjoyable" to be something that I'm really struck by, and I still can't tell you if I'm going to remember this any longer than I did Asteroid City or French Dispatch, or whatever he did before that that I've already forgotten... but I had a better time with this than I expected. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

📊 Ranked #2030/4026 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 50

lost to Badlands (#2000 → #1980)

beat Footloose (#3014 → #3019)

beat War of the Buttons (#2515 → #3038)

beat JFK (#2262 → #2263)

beat The Man Who Came to Dinner (#2138 → #2621)

beat Bonnie and Clyde (#2076 → #2098)

lost to 7 Plus Seven (#2043 → #1626)

beat The Chalk Garden (#2032 → #2062)

beat I Am Legend (#2050 → #2056)

lost to Malignant (#2046 → #2043)

beat Bridesmaids (#2039 → #2053)

beat Mrs Brown (#2048 → #2059)

Walk Cheerfully (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A small-time hood wants to go straight for a good girl but finds that starting over isn't as simple as it sounds.

Directed by Yasujirô Ozu. Starring Minoru Takada, Hiroko Kawasaki, and Satoko Date.

Walk Cheerfully is the second of two silent films I watched recently by Yasujiro Ozu, and, weirdly, they both end with the main character making the same exact noble sacrifice of turning himself in to the police rather than running from them so that he can hopefully continue a normal life once he's released and his slate is wiped clean. In fact, watching the two back to back makes it almost impossible to talk about this one without comparing it to the other, which I did like more. This one focuses much more on  the backstory of the young man and his love story with the woman. We see him working for a long time to try to escape his life of crime so that he can be worthy of her, only to find himself caught up in another illegal scheme at the end. Because of that, even though the two films are very similar in actual plot details, the feeling of them is different. Here, his turning himself in does feel like a cleansing of not only his immediate crime, but his entire past. This also feels much more like a straightforward crime story, which is less my genre, but Ozu does still manage to make it feel intimate and personal by building the relationships between the group and contrasting them with the main character's relationship with his girlfriend. While I loved That Night's Wife, I only like this one. It brings to mind a little bit the experience of watching Serpico and Prince of the City by Sidney Lumet back to back, almost like watching a director realize he hadn't completed the film he wanted and try again. Of these two, I think Walk Cheerfully is the lesser, but it's still a decent film. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Walk Cheerfully (1930)

📊 Ranked #1941/4025 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 52

beat Meet John Doe (#2009 → #2018)

lost to Muriel's Wedding (#1003 → #1004)

lost to Joker (#1506 → #1491)

lost to The Letter (#1757 → #1347)

lost to Eyes Wide Shut (#1883 → #1828)

beat The Sea Gull (#1946 → #1944)

beat Cast Away (#1914 → #1945)

beat Away We Go (#1898 → #1963)

lost to Imitation of Life (#1890 → #1806)

lost to Aladdin (#1894 → #1885)

lost to The Mummy (#1896 → #1818)

beat The Prestige (#1897 → #1924)