Day Zero (2007)

IMDb plot summary: The military draft is back, and three best friends are drafted and given 30 days to report for duty. In that time, they're forced to confront everything they believe about courage, duty, love, friendship, and honor.

Directed by Bryan Gunnar Cole. Stars Elijah Wood, Chris Klein, and Jon Bernthal.

Day Zero is set in a mid-2000s version of America where average citizens are drafted into military service to go fight in the Middle East. We follow three men, played by Elijah Wood, Chris Klein and Jon Bernthal, who are all good friends who get drafted at the same time. We join the countdown in their lives down to that day, watching them process it and figure out all the things that they are worried about, whether they're going to try to get out of it, whether it's something they're proud of. This film got absolutely eviscerated by critics, but I didn't think it was that bad. It's a little edgelord-y at times, but the core concept of it isn't terrible, and some of the acting choices are interesting. The characters are written in good balance with each other, where each one of them is saying something unique and different about their place in the world, even as they all share the experience of being semi-privileged young white men who suddenly find themselves in a position of having to give up those privileges, and how they respond to that when their country is letting them down that way. It doesn't pull off the ending, and it doesn't manage to say as much as it thinks it's saying by the time the credits roll, but I stayed engaged on the ride. It's a 12% on Rotten Tomatoes, which feels absolutely incorrect, when this is clearly around a 50: adequate but not exciting.

🎥 Day Zero (2007)

📊 Ranked #2261/4218 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 46

lost to The Shining (held at #2156)

beat City Slickers (#3204 → #3205)

beat The Muppets Take Manhattan (#2670 → #2671)

beat 42 (#2415 → #2416)

beat Superman Returns (#2284 → #2285)

lost to It's Kind of a Funny Story (held at #2219)

lost to Kiki's Delivery Service (held at #2250)

beat The Green Goddess (#2268 → #2269)

lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (held at #2260)

beat To Kill a King (#2264 → #2265)

beat The Unsinkable Molly Brown (#2262 → #2263)

In This Corner of the World (2016)

IMDb plot summary: A spirited 18-year-old woman is married off to a man she barely knows as she combats the daily struggles of living in Hiroshima during World War II.

Directed by Sunao Katabuchi. Stars Non, Megumi Han, and Yoshimasa Hosoya.

In This Corner of the World is an animated movie about a young woman from Hiroshima in the 1940s who enters into an arranged marriage. We follow her from her childhood all the way through the aftermath of World War II, seeing the effects of the war on her and the life that she's trying to build with her new family. This one took a little while to grow on me, but ultimately it really landed. I became very connected emotionally to this character who is an average girl trying to be a good and kind person. I love the relationship that builds between her and her husband, where they really don't know each other well at first, but then then they slowly start to grow together, especially in the portion of the film where a past love comes back and tries to steal her away. The relationship that she builds with her niece who lives with them for awhile is also beautifully done. This was a very dark time in history, and while there is hope and positivity in this, it does have some heart-wrenching moments as it gets to the the end of their story. The obvious comparison here is Grave of the Fireflies, but here there's a more obvious throughline of hope and finding meaning even in dark difficult times. Beautifully put together and worth watching.

🎥 In This Corner of the World (2016)

📊 Ranked #600/4217 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 86

beat Wimbledon (#2159 → #2160)

beat Fresh (#1133 → #1134)

beat Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (#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)

lost to Portrait of a Lady on Fire (held at #582)

lost to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (held at #599)

beat Animal Crackers (#607 → #608)

beat The Courtship of Eddie's Father (#603 → #604)

beat The Reader (#601 → #602)