Train Dreams (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Based on Denis Johnson's beloved novella, Train Dreams is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th Century.

Directed by Clint Bentley. Stars Joel Edgerton, Clifton Collins Jr., and Felicity Jones.

Train Dreams is a slow western drama starring Joel Edgerton as a lumberjack working on the railroad at the turn of the century, as industrial revolution is starting to kick in and things are starting to become mechanized. We follow him over the course of his life and how his world changes and how he copes with life and loss. It's a very slow meditative film. I understand why got nominated for the awards it did and why so many people loved it, although it is not my typical style of film. I'm such a city girl that I really struggle to connect with films about loners off living in the woods by themselves, but Edgerton does a lot to bring some depth to this character beyond just making him vaguely unreadable and stoic. He brings humor and kindness and care, especially in the way that he talks to the William H. Macy's character. It's a very thoughtful movie, one that definitely you're just supposed to sit in and live in that world for a while. I don't think that it's one that I am connecting to in such a way that I want to go back and re-watch it anytime soon but I appreciate it for what it is and for what it is about.

🎥 Train Dreams (2025)

📊 Ranked #809/4216 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 81

beat The Benson Murder Case (#2159 → #2160)

beat Baby Driver (#1133 → #1134)

lost to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (held at #616)

beat Monsieur Lazhar (#873 → #874)

lost to Le Trou (held at #745)

beat Brooklyn (#809 → #810)

lost to Damn Yankees (held at #777)

lost to Jeopardy (held at #793)

lost to A Different Man (held at #801)

lost to Bride of Frankenstein (held at #805)

lost to The Mask of Zorro (held at #807)

Hot Rod (2007)

IMDb plot summary: Self-proclaimed stuntman Rod Kimble is preparing for the jump of his life - to clear fifteen buses to raise money for his abusive stepfather Frank's life-saving heart operation.

Directed by Akiva Schaffer. Stars Andy Samberg, Isla Fisher, and Ian McShane.

Hot Rod stars Andy Samberg as a man-child wannabe stunt man who decides he's going to do a massive stunt, one-upping Evil Knievel's bus jumping record, so that he can raise money to provide his stepfather with an organ transplant ... specifically so that his stepfather can recover and Andy Samberg can beat him up to earn his respect. I really enjoy the ludicrousness of the stakes at play here. It's a good window into what the rest of the film is like. I love Lonely Island and other things they've done, such as Popstar. This one has fewer moments that are perfect, but it has all these little tiny throwaway lines that may be improvised, may just have pitch-perfect delivery. They hit me the same way that Napoleon Dynamite did -- where lines are not necessarily comedic but are said so dryly that they become funny. For example, in one scene, they're filling up a little kiddie pool in the backyard, and Bill Hader casually says, "Man, you know what? Pools are really perfect for holding water." It's such a dumb sentence, and it made me laugh super hard because it's delivered so sincerely. So it's full of little things like that and little moments that really work. Overall a really fun movie. A lot of people I knew really got into this in college, and I can see why. It's made of the same stuff as a Napoleon Dynamite or an Anchorman that so easily become a beloved film with no end to quotable moments.

🎥 Hot Rod (2007)

📊 Ranked #1005/4215 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 76

beat An Innocent Man (#2159 → #2160)

beat Match Point (#1133 → #1134)

lost to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (held at #616)

lost to Monsieur Lazhar (held at #873)

lost to The African Queen (held at #1002)

beat The Voices (#1067 → #1068)

beat Man on the Moon (#1034 → #1035)

beat Fargo (#1018 → #1019)

beat Apollo 13 (#1010 → #1011)

beat The Paper (#1006 → #1007)

lost to Wicked: For Good (held at #1004)

The Descent (2005)

IMDb plot summary: A caving expedition goes horribly wrong when six explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.

Directed by Neil Marshall. Stars Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, and Alex Reid.

The Descent is a horror film about a group of women friends meeting for the first time in a while to go spelunking in an Appalachian cave. When they get there, they become trapped. There's nobody coming to rescue them, and there are also creatures down there in the dark with them. I watched this one on Amazon Prime, and it was extremely helpful to have the Amazon X-ray the Prime X-ray function available so that when I couldn't figure out which of the seven identical women was on screen, it told me who it was. Otherwise I would never have kept any of these women straight. This movie is claustrophobic and brings that vibe out strongly throughout. The characters are a little bit slower than I'd like in gathering or inferring information about the creatures... although of course, they're panicking, so they're not going to be as focused on discovery as I wanted them to be. I didn't like the ending at all. I found to be a needlessly stupid jump scare style ending that wasn't helpful at all in terms of the story or the scares. I liked the film up until that moment, and that brought it way down in my estimation. That aside, though, if you want a creepy claustrophobic people-in-the-dark movie, this is a pretty good one.

🎥 The Descent (2005)

📊 Ranked #1382/4214 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 67

beat An Innocent Man (#2158 → #2159)

lost to Baby Driver (held at #1132)

beat The Tragedy of Macbeth (#1642 → #1643)

beat DragonHeart (#1388 → #1389)

lost to Airheads (held at #1260)

lost to A League of Their Own (held at #1324)

lost to She's Gotta Have It (held at #1355)

lost to L'Atalante (held at #1371)

lost to Watchmen (held at #1379)

beat Overboard (#1384 → #1385)

lost to Just Imagine (held at #1381)

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)

IMDb plot summary: When Raj meets Simran in Europe, it isn't love at first sight but when Simran moves to India for an arranged marriage, love makes its presence felt.

Directed by Aditya Chopra. Stars Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, and Amrish Puri.

Dilwale Dulaniya Le Jayenge, or DDLJ as it is known, is a 1995 Bollywood film that stars Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan as a young couple that meet and fall in love. She, however, is engaged to a rich man back in her hometown, so he vows that he's going to come and win over her family so they will agree to their marriage instead. I was first introduced to this movie in the film A Nice Indian Boy, where it's held up as the pinnacle of idealized romance for our main character, and I totally get it. It is beautifully put together. The characters are so delightful, the dance and musical numbers are some of the best that I've seen... it is impeccably created. I love these characters and how sweet they are together and how kind they are to the people around them while they're trying to make this work.  If you like either rom coms or musicals, it's a really great one if you haven't seen it. It's one that I think I'm going to come back to again and again.

🎥 Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)

📊 Ranked #552/4213 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 87

beat The Butter Battle Book (#2158 → #2159)

beat Match Point (#1132 → #1133)

beat Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (#616 → #617)

lost to Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (held at #311)

lost to The Parent Trap (held at #479)

lost to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (held at #551)

beat Ex Machina (#582 → #583)

beat Bend It Like Beckham (#566 → #567)

beat The Basketball Diaries (#558 → #559)

beat Grease (#554 → #555)

beat A Man for All Seasons (#552 → #553)

Local Hero (1983)

IMDb plot summary: An American oil company has plans for a new refinery and sends someone to Scotland to buy up an entire village, but things don't go as expected.

Directed by Bill Forsyth. Stars Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, and Fulton Mackay.

Local Hero stars Peter Riegert as a man who is sent by his oil company employer to a small town in Scotland, where he is offering to purchase all the land from them and is sent there to negotiate a price. The people are excited and ready to sell, but they want to negotiate a higher price, and so they keep him around for a while. While he's there, he ends up falling in love with the village and the people there and questioning whether he wants to facilitate this sale after all. This is a very quiet, slow film. Because of that, it took me a while to register the kind of story that I was seeing. It didn't hit the traditional hallmarks or beats I expected, which is a good thing on one hand because it was outside of the box, but on the other hand it meant that it took me a long time to get settled into the story and to figure out whether I was meant to look at our protagonist as a hero or a villain. It took me a long time to get emotionally invested in the story. If I went back and re-watched it, knowing what kind of vibe it was going for, it might be a much easier sell and a much quicker investment in the characters. There are so many different characters being shown to us that I can't process all of their plot lines on a first watch, so I do feel like one viewing doesn't give me the full picture of it. But after one viewing I wasn't sold on it the way I hoped I would be.

🎥 Local Hero (1983)

📊 Ranked #2307/4212 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 45

lost to Phantom of the Opera (held at #2140)

beat The Forger (#3184 → #3185)

beat Easy Virtue (#2661 → #2662)

beat Neighbors (#2401 → #2402)

lost to Waves (held at #2268)

beat The Last Temptation of Christ (#2335 → #2336)

lost to Holiday Affair (held at #2302)

beat The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (#2318 → #2319)

beat A Complete Unknown (#2310 → #2311)

lost to Malignant (held at #2306)

beat Just Like Heaven (#2308 → #2309)

Rodney King (2017)

IMDb plot summary: Roger Guenveur Smith performs his one man show focusing on the life and times of Rodney King.

Directed by Spike Lee. Stars Roger Guenveur Smith.

Rodney King is a filmed spoken word performance piece, directed by Spike Lee. This one-man show stars Roger Guenveur Smith as he dissects the life, death, and legacy of Rodney King. I was so young when King's beating and the aftermath happened, that my primary reference point for it was pop culture references years later. This is definitely, as I said, a spoken word performance rather than a play. There is deliberate poetry with the choice of words and cadence. Smith is an electric performer, embodying all these different characters in really engaging ways, and putting together a really compelling and occasionally gut-punching exploration of this story. Not necessarily something I'd revisit, but it was well done. And, truly, I love that Spike Lee does weird things like this and Passing Strange. Heck yes, find these marvelous performance pieces from the Black community and get them preserved so that these are available for people later. I just really appreciate that that is something that he has decided to do with his career.

🎥 Rodney King (2017)

📊 Ranked #1945/4211 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 54

beat In the Mood for Love (#2140 → #2141)

lost to Re-Animator (held at #1101)

lost to 7 Plus Seven (held at #1618)

lost to A Warm Corner (held at #1884)

beat The Fixer (#2011 → #2012)

beat The Little Things (#1947 → #1948)

lost to Daria in 'Is It Fall Yet?' (held at #1915)

lost to Fanboys (held at #1931)

lost to One Way Pendulum (held at #1939)

lost to Batman (held at #1943)

beat Toy Story 4 (#1945 → #1946)

I Lost My Body (2019)

IMDb plot summary: A story of Naoufel, a young man who is in love with Gabrielle. In another part of town, a severed hand escapes from a dissection lab, determined to find its body again.

Directed by Jérémy Clapin. Stars Hakim Faris, Victoire Du Bois, and Patrick d'Assumçao.

I Lost My Body is a French animated film with elements of the surreal. Its story is divided into two halves. One is a fairly realistic story about this young delivery man who ends up developing feelings for one of his customers. Alongside this, we have a plot where a severed hand escapes from a lab and makes its way across the country. I couldn't see how these two fit together until the very end, and even then I'm not entirely sure. I do think that the final connection of these two stories was very emotionally impactful, but not in a way that I could articulate what it means, it just made me feel things. I really like our central character -- his journey is worth watching even when he's making terrible decisions. The segments with the hand are funny and weird and creatively told, and I never minded when we interrupted the clearer story for a severed hand scene, because I enjoyed watching them. There are some really good moments for this but it doesn't cohere as nicely as I want it to. I also might just need to think about it a little bit longer and see if it rises in my estimation.

🎥 I Lost My Body (2019)

📊 Ranked #1890/4210 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 55

beat Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (#2141 → #2142)

lost to Blink Twice (held at #1102)

lost to The Phoenician Scheme (held at #1619)

lost to White Heat (held at #1885)

beat Alice (#2012 → #2013)

beat The Ghost and the Darkness (#1948 → #1949)

beat The Trouble with Harry (#1916 → #1917)

beat Secret in Their Eyes (#1900 → #1901)

beat Rush (#1892 → #1893)

lost to Trading Places (held at #1888)

beat 8-Bit Christmas (#1890 → #1891)

42 (2013)

IMDb plot summary: In 1947, Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era when he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and faces considerable racism in the process.

Directed by Brian Helgeland. Stars Chadwick Boseman, T.R. Knight, and Harrison Ford.

42 is a biopic based on the life of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player brought onto a Major League Baseball team. It stars Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and a wide supporting cast, including Harrison Ford as the progressive team owner who makes the decision to actually bring him onto the team and tries to pave the way, while knowing it's going to be a really difficult time for Robinson. What makes this film stand out and makes it worth watching is Boseman as Robinson. He does a great job of showing the humanity of this character. He makes him truly feel like just a regular human instead of some larger-than-life character, and we get to see how difficult it is for him to hold back and not retaliate against racist behaviors, because he knows anything he does is going to be used as an excuse to never bring another Black player in again. I think the film does an especially good job of showing how little power Robinson had to respond to the racism around him because anything he did would be framed as an overreaction, and I really like how the film does put the onus on the white people around him to put themselves on the line to defend him, since they have more power and less to lose. Obviously that can tread a "white savior" line, but I think it does a pretty good job of calling the privileged to task. None of the baseball parts of this film are interesting to me, but Boseman is interesting, and framing his character as being willing to lean on others who have more power in this situation to use that power on his behalf is an angle I didn't expect.

🎥 42 (2013)

📊 Ranked #2406/4209 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 43

lost to Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (held at #2141)

beat Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (#3180 → #3181)

beat The Muppets Take Manhattan (#2660 → #2661)

lost to Camp Rock (held at #2400)

beat Men Without Law (#2530 → #2531)

beat One, Two, Three (#2466 → #2467)

beat Finding Vivian Maier (#2431 → #2432)

beat Jesus Christ Superstar (#2415 → #2416)

beat King Kong Escapes (#2407 → #2408)

lost to Revolutionary Road (held at #2403)

lost to Kinky Boots: The Musical (held at #2405)

She's Gotta Have It (1986)

IMDb plot summary: Story of a woman and her three lovers.

Directed by Spike Lee. Stars Tracy Camilla Johns, Tommy Redmond Hicks, and John Canada Terrell.

She's Gotta Have It is Spike Lee's first feature film. I watched it as part of a challenge that included a black and white movie, so I went for a newer option. It follows the story of Nola, a young woman living in the city, and her three lovers who she's all dating at once. They all meet very different emotional and physical needs in her life. The story focuses a lot on how all three of them want her to give up the other two and be with just them, while she's just not terribly interested in tying herself down like that. I haven't seen as much Spike Lee as I would like to, but watching this definitely makes me want to prioritize that, because there's an energy to this that is compelling even if I'm not always sold on the narrative on the page. The actress playing Nola especially is incredibly compelling. Even when she's making decisions that are hurting people or that demonstrate she doesn't know what she wants, she's just fun to watch on screen, as are the three men who play her boyfriends. (One of them is played by Spike Lee himself.) I really enjoyed how immediately distinct these three men are, so each interaction we see them have with Nola and each other are unique based on those dynamics. I'm not sure that I'm invested in any of the like big questions being asked by this film so much as I just really enjoy watching the characters interact. Definitely one that makes me want to watch more of Lee's work. This is a heck of a debut.

🎥 She's Gotta Have It (1986)

📊 Ranked #1353/4208 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 68

beat The Girl on a Motorcycle (#2135 → #2136)

lost to The Menu (held at #1092)

beat Hamlet (#1611 → #1612)

lost to Serial Mom (held at #1352)

beat The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (#1481 → #1482)

beat The Song of Lunch (#1417 → #1418)

beat The Descendants (#1385 → #1386)

beat The Artist (#1368 → #1369)

beat The Unholy Three (#1360 → #1361)

beat Corrina, Corrina (#1356 → #1357)

beat Memories of Murder (#1354 → #1355)

Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

IMDb plot summary: An unceasingly kind Italian peasant and his family are blatantly exploited by a tobacco baroness.

Directed by Alice Rohrwacher. Stars Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, and Alba Rohrwacher.

Happy as Lazzaro is an Italian film about a wealthy landowner and the serfs that work her land. Specifically, we focus on one young man, Lazzaro, who has some sort of potentially intellectual disability and is not always fully cognizant of how to react to things, but he ends up befriending the son of the wealthy landowner. Then the whole family's lives are turned completely upside down and Lazzaro has to adjust to the new life and what this means about the relationship that he had built with the landowner's son. Watching this right after Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter was interesting because they're not dissimilar in terms of tone and vibe, especially that combination of heartwarming and devastating. This one also has a s sense of dread that nothing is going to go right for this character. It's the kind of film that I think I might have liked more ten years ago in terms of my movie taste and now it feels a little bit overtold in terms of theme. Overall, I enjoyed the setting of it and the way that it put the story together, but it didn't gel the way it might have for me at a different time in my life.

🎥 Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

📊 Ranked #2264/4207 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 46

lost to True Romance (held at #2134)

beat Without a Clue (#3175 → #3176)

beat Heat (#2653 → #2654)

beat Charulata (#2392 → #2393)

lost to Rebecca (held at #2263)

beat Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (#2327 → #2328)

beat Absolute Power (#2295 → #2296)

beat The Secret Life of Pets (#2279 → #2280)

beat The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (#2271 → #2272)

beat The Party (#2267 → #2268)

beat Hamlet (#2265 → #2266)

You’re Next (2011)

IMDb plot summary: When the Davison family comes under attack during their wedding anniversary getaway, the gang of mysterious killers soon learns that one of the victims harbors a secret talent for fighting back.

Directed by Adam Wingard. Stars Sharni Vinson, Joe Swanberg, and AJ Bowen.

You're Next is a horror film about a couple who are spending some time in a remote cabin with the man's family, only for things to go suddenly horribly wrong when a mysterious intruder starts to kill off the family members. One by one they disappear, and it becomes clear that the one person who might be able to stop everything is the man's girlfriend, who knows the family the least. I had high hopes for this one, and I probably should have tamped that down a little bit, because I think that let me down by the end. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun little horror movie. It's got some fun, horror-y deaths, many of which are super gross (and at least one that I will be thinking about for a long time). I also appreciate the way the story sets up its heroes and villains, both in terms of the external threat of a murderer coming after them, but also in terms of the internal dynamics throughout where everybody kind of hates each other. It's a good ride. I'm not sure it stands way above in terms of horror, which I was expected for some reason, but it's a fun little slasher film that does what it's trying to do pretty well.

🎥 You're Next (2011)

📊 Ranked #1990/4206 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 53

beat The Girl on a Motorcycle (#2134 → #2135)

lost to Till Death (held at #1091)

lost to Backbeat (held at #1610)

lost to Children of Paradise (held at #1877)

beat The Guard (#2005 → #2006)

lost to Batman (held at #1941)

lost to The Group (held at #1973)

lost to Two Weeks Notice (held at #1989)

beat Meek's Cutoff (#1997 → #1998)

beat Journey to Greenland (#1993 → #1994)

beat Sweet Dreams (#1991 → #1992)

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014)

IMDb plot summary: A jaded Japanese woman discovers a hidden copy of Fargo (1996) on VHS, believing it to be a treasure map indicating the location of a large case of money.

Directed by David Zellner. Stars Rinko Kikuchi, Nobuyuki Katsube, and Kanako Higashi.

Kumiko the Treasure Hunter is a film about a lonely Japanese woman who becomes convinced that the movie Fargo is, in fact, real life, and she sets out to travel to North Dakota to try to find the stolen money in the story. She has no money, no friends, and very little grasp of English, but is determined to make her way across the country to find the treasure she's looking for. This movie made me extremely tense as I was watching it because I just knew that this could not end in a positive way. And while the gritty reality of the story absolutely does indicate that it doesn't end positively for her -- and I don't think that's a spoiler, because as I said, you know pretty early on that this can't possibly go well -- but it does move into some magic realism that allows it to at least put a more hopeful spin on this grim story. The actress playing Kumiko is almost too good at being determinedly vulnerable, and that often makes it difficult to watch. Seeing her interact with the different people attempting to help her make her way to Fargo is a mix of heartwarming and devastating. I appreciate that the film doesn't try to lean too hard on one of those feelings, but really lets both of them exist at the same time. An interesting movie, but a sad and difficult one to watch.

🎥 Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014)

📊 Ranked #1538/4205 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 63

beat The Girl on a Motorcycle (#2133 → #2134)

lost to Till Death (held at #1091)

beat Backbeat (#1609 → #1610)

lost to The Country Girl (held at #1350)

lost to True Grit (held at #1479)

beat Interiors (#1545 → #1546)

lost to North by Northwest (held at #1513)

lost to Oscar (held at #1529)

lost to His Girl Friday (held at #1537)

beat The Piano (#1541 → #1542)

beat She's Having a Baby (#1539 → #1540)

Waves (2019)

IMDb plot summary: Traces the journey of a suburban family - led by a well-intentioned but domineering father - as they navigate love, forgiveness, and coming together in the aftermath of a loss.

Directed by Trey Edward Shults. Stars Taylor Russell, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Alexa Demie.

Waves is a 2019 drama about a family. The first half of the story follows the teenage son and the stress that he is under as he deals with losing his prospects of a career in wrestling, and then learning that his girlfriend is pregnant and planning to keep the baby, which is going to make his life even worse. The second half of the film follows primarily the daughter in the family, as she grapples with the choices that her older brother made and how it affects her life and her family's life. This is a very slow, character-heavy drama that was enjoyable moment to moment, but left almost no impact on me in the long run. I had to go read through the Wikipedia summary to remember what happened in this movie, and a lot of what I read, I genuinely don't remember. On one hand, it's good that I don't remember anything that I disliked about it, but on the other hand, it's probably not a good sign that I don't remember a single thing about it. This is a solid cast, and they bring good quality acting work to their roles. I very much see how this could be a movie that would be very affecting to someone, but it just didn't have that effect on me, unfortunately.

🎥 Waves (2019)

📊 Ranked #2262/4204 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 46

lost to The Girl on a Motorcycle (held at #2133)

beat The Deadly Affair (#3173 → #3174)

beat Jimmy the Kid (#2651 → #2652)

beat Bad Education (#2390 → #2391)

lost to Rebecca (held at #2261)

beat Pride & Prejudice (#2325 → #2326)

beat Beauty and the Beast (#2293 → #2294)

beat The Big Pond (#2277 → #2278)

beat The Truth About Youth (#2269 → #2270)

beat Cowboys & Aliens (#2265 → #2266)

beat Happy Christmas (#2263 → #2264)

Frankenstein (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Stars Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, and Christoph Waltz.

Frankenstein is Guillermo del Toro's take on the classic story of a man who attempts to create life by putting together corpse body parts and animating it with lightning. Here, Oscar Isaac is Dr. Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi is the creature. In many ways this is a very faithful adaptation of the original book, with one large exception that seems to alter the story not at all, and one small exception that seems to alter the story greatly. On one hand, we have the addition of Christoph Waltz's character, who is the one who encourages Frankenstein to pursue his morbid interests and helps to fund them. It is also his daughter, played by Mia Goth, who captures Frankenstein's heart. And then on the other hand, we have one tiny addition to the ending which turns the whole story into a more positive conclusion. I'm not going to explain exactly what it is here for spoiler-y reasons, but it's the kind of thing that ten years ago I would have rolled my eyes at. Here, however, I had something of a dramatic response to it. Expecting the dark, pitiless ending and getting something surprisingly warmer felt like a reminder that I don't always know how stories will end, in fiction or in life, and that we can change them if we want. An unexpected moment of empowerment from a film that most likely meant nothing of the kind, but it hit me in a very emotional way. On top of that, the movie also does, of course, look gorgeous, with the dark gothic feel that I want from both the story as a whole and Del Toro's style. If the ending hadn't moved me so much, this would just sit in the middle of my chart, but it was one of those films that I saw at just the right time and it pushed it much further up.

🎥 Frankenstein (2025)

📊 Ranked #897/4204 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 79

beat Laal Singh Chaddha (#2089 → #2090)

beat Finian's Rainbow (#1033 → #1034)

lost to Revengers Tragedy (held at #515)

lost to Muppets Most Wanted (held at #774)

beat Spellbound (#903 → #904)

lost to The Joy Luck Club (held at #838)

lost to Four Lions (held at #870)

lost to Out of Sight (held at #886)

lost to City Girl (held at #894)

beat Twister (#898 → #899)

lost to The History of Future Folk (held at #896)

Mother of Flies (2025)

IMDb plot summary: When a young woman faces a deadly diagnosis, she seeks dark magic from a witch in the woods - but every cure has costs.

Directed by John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser. Stars Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, and John Adams.

Mother of Flies is a folk horror film about a young woman who travels with her father to a reclusive natural healer in the hope of treating her terminal cancer. This is a moody eerie piece that really leans into the folk horror feminism vibe, but all the pieces feel a little amateur, especially the acting and writing. There are lots of stilted readings of awkwardly expository dialogue. The big twist is largely confusing and doesn't quite connect with the rest of the story. I appreciate that there is some satisfying resolution in the final moments of the movie but it's overall very messy and doesn't live up to the very cool atmosphere it sets up. I had hoped for more.

🎥 Mother of Flies (2025)

📊 Ranked #2745/4203 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 35

lost to The Dawn Patrol (held at #2088)

beat A Man Called Peter (#3139 → #3140)

lost to X (held at #2614)

beat Choke (#2872 → #2873)

lost to The Wiz (held at #2742)

beat The Day of the Triffids (#2806 → #2807)

beat Born Reckless (#2774 → #2775)

beat Spellbound (#2758 → #2759)

beat Finding Dory (#2750 → #2751)

beat Flightplan (#2746 → #2747)

lost to Dr. Seuss on the Loose (held at #2744)

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

IMDb plot summary: While trying to manage her own life and career, a woman on the verge of a breakdown must cope with her daughter's illness, an absent husband, a missing person, and an unusual relationship with her therapist.

Directed by Mary Bronstein. Stars Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien, and Danielle Macdonald.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You stars Rose Byrne as a truly overwhelmed mother. Her husband's job keeps him away from her for weeks at a time, and she's left having to care for their medically fragile daughter, and she's at the end of her rope. This film is terrifying, claustrophobic, and basically exactly what I imagine motherhood is like. I have never felt so validated in my decision to be childfree. It does a great job of showing how exhaustion and panic can start exaggerating and blurring reality in a really scary way -- there was a large portion of the movie that I was fully convinced was a dream, only for it to be revealed as reality. I also appreciate the choice to not show the daughter's face until the end. It makes it easier for us to empathize with Byrne and feel the overwhelm. The ending seems a bit abrupt and doesn't fully work for me, but I appreciate what it's trying to do. An interesting movie, albeit one I never want to watch again, and a tour de force performance from Rose Byrne.

🎥 If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

📊 Ranked #1840/4202 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 56

beat Happythankyoumoreplease (#2101 → #2102)

lost to Heathers: The Musical (held at #1039)

lost to Ping Pong Playa (held at #1566)

lost to Swiss Army Man (held at #1837)

beat Malcolm & Marie (#1969 → #1970)

beat My Date with Drew (#1903 → #1904)

beat The Three Musketeers (#1870 → #1871)

beat Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert (#1854 → #1855)

beat Oddity (#1845 → #1846)

beat Splice (#1841 → #1842)

lost to Lord of War (held at #1839)

Dutch (1991)

IMDb plot summary: To get to know his girlfriend's son, a working-class good guy volunteers to pick him up from his prep school, only to learn that he isn't the nicest young man.

Directed by Peter Faiman. Stars Ed O'Neill, Ethan Embry, and JoBeth Williams.

Dutch stars Ed O'Neill as a man dating a divorced woman, and he offers to drive her spoiled son (played by Ethan Randall) home from boarding school for break, to let the two of them bond. Road trip hijinks ensue as the two constantly try to gain the upper hand over the other. This film is written by John Hughes, and when his films work, it's because he engenders empathy for his characters and helps us root for them, but that's nowhere to be found here. I suspect I'm meant to feel a stronger sense of karma as the spoiled kid gets what he "deserves," but he's just a hurting kid, not villainous enough for me to get a kick out of his comeuppance. There aren't a lot of laughs here and even less heart. This is one of the lower points in my Hughes filmography challenge. It's not a particularly long movie, but I felt like I was watching it for decades, because it was so unenjoyable.

🎥 Dutch (1991)

📊 Ranked #3596/4201 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 14

lost to How I Live Now (held at #2099)

lost to The Disappearance of Alice Creed (held at #3153)

beat Father Brown (#3679 → #3680)

lost to Pinocchio (held at #3415)

lost to Freaky Friday (held at #3549)

beat You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (#3614 → #3615)

lost to The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (held at #3581)

beat Premonition (#3597 → #3598)

lost to Robin Hood: Men in Tights (held at #3589)

lost to Weekend (held at #3593)

lost to The Formula (held at #3595)