Meet John Doe (1941)

IMDb plot summary: A man needing money agrees to impersonate a nonexistent person who said he'd be committing suicide as a protest, and a political movement begins.
Directed by Frank Capra. Starring Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold, and Walter Brennan.

3 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Meet John Doe > Beach Party
Meet John Doe < All's Faire in Love
Meet John Doe > Interstellar
Meet John Doe < Misery
Meet John Doe < The Mummy (1932)
Meet John Doe > The Illusionist (2006)
Meet John Doe < Monsters Vs. Aliens
Meet John Doe < Starship Troopers
Meet John Doe > City Lights
Meet John Doe > The Other Side of Sunday
Meet John Doe > After the Wedding
Final spot: #936 out of 2636.

Barry (2016)

IMDb plot summary: A look into the early life of U.S. President Barack Obama.
Directed by Vikram Gandhi. Starring Devon Terrell, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jason Mitchell, and Ellar Coltrane.

1.5 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Barry < Beach Party

Barry > In Cold Blood

Barry < The King and I

Barry > When I Walk

Barry > MASH

Barry < Eddie the Eagle

Barry < Spaceballs

Barry < Albert Nobbs

Barry < Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Barry < I Remember Mama

Barry < Robin and the 7 Hoods

Barry < The Invention of Lying

Final spot: #1730 out of 2635.

To any faithful readers of my blog: If you're thinking, "There's no review!" you are correct. I'm going to cut back on actual review writing because life's gotten busy and I've been finding myself not watching movies because I don't want to bother writing it up afterward. I'd rather do more movie watching even if that means less movie writing. If I have something I have to say about a movie, I will, and I'll always make a brief post showing where the movie fell in my Flickchart, but you'll most likely see quite a few review-less posts from me in the coming months.

Witness (1985)

IMDb plot summary: A young Amish boy is sole witness to a murder; policeman John Book goes into hiding in Amish country to protect him until the trial.
Directed by Peter Weir. Starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Josef Sommer, and Lukas Haas.

Witness is kind of a weird movie, in the sense that I remember being thoroughly engaged while watching it and yet now, just a few days later, I struggle to remember individual things I enjoyed. I do find 1980s Harrison Ford to be quite charming, and he is here as well, carrying a role that doesn't have *all* that much depth to it once you get past the fish-out-of-water trope. I was much more interested in our leading lady, but sadly we get barely a glimpse at all into her life and thoughts. The movie is most interesting when it looks at the contrast (and conflict) between the Amish philosophy of peace and nonviolence in comparison to the more aggressive instincts in Ford's character. They never quite dig deep enough to make this as compelling as I wanted; I really wanted an apology from him for the damage he wreaks on their farm in the final moments of the film. There are glimpses of a really fascinating action movie here, but it doesn't gel as much as I wish it would.

3 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Witness > Beach Party

Witness < All's Faire in Love

Witness < Gone in 60 Seconds

Witness < Kind Hearts and Coronets

Witness > The Matador

Witness > Miracle on 34th Street (1943)

Witness < The Time Travelers' Wife

Witness > The Pursuit of Happyness

Witness > Laura

Witness > Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Witness > The Gold Rush

Witness < Five Graves to Cairo

Final spot: #1051 out of 2633.

C Me Dance (2009)

IMDb plot summary: A drama centered on a teenage girl who has trained her entire life to dance for the Pittsburgh Ballet.
Directed by Greg Robbins. Starring Christina DeMarco, Greg Robbins, Laura Romeo, and Hugh McLean.

Oh my goodness, this was terrible. Besides being extremely poorly written, awkwardly filmed and clunkily acted, it also has a major issue with its message, and that's what I'm mostly going to deal with in this review, because it's what sets it apart from other equally crappily-made religious movies.

About halfway through the film, it becomes clear that the main character has some sort of bizarre power that compels everyone she looks at and/or touches to become a Christian. She brings this to her pastor, who instantly starts setting up situations where she can look at large groups of people, first in his church, then at a battle of the bands, and finally on TV. At no point does anyone question or become concerned by the fact that she seems to be be able to override their free will -- in an especially skeazy scene, we get a montage of her using her Jesus touch to finagle those TV spots for free.

This does not work as a comforting or inspirational evangelism narrative. These scenes of masses coming forward to the altar crying out to God take on a horrifying light when you remember they have no choice in this -- she looked at them and miraculously changed their minds. It's not a willing surrender to God, it's mass mind control. A better movie version of this would be a horror movie about this young girl's unexplained power to make everybody think and believe the way she wants them to.

Oh, yeah, and it's pretty incompetently made too.

0.5 stars.


This movie isn't on Flickchart yet. I have submitted it so I can eventually rank it.

Coherence (2013)

IMDb plot summary: Strange things begin to happen when a group of friends gather for a dinner party on an evening when a comet is passing overhead.
Directed by James Ward Byrkit. Starring Emily Baldoni, Maury Sterling, Nicholas Brendon, and Lorene Scafaria.

I'm going to try to talk about this without being spoilery, because I suspect this would be the most fun going into it pretty blind like I did. This is a really enjoyably weird little movie. Like many thrillers set in one location, it occasionally gets a little cheesy in its explanations and a little tedious in its character interactions, but the premise is so engaging that I found it easy to overlook that and just go along for the ride. The best part, by far, though, was the ending. The last 10-15 minutes were so fascinating. This is the kind of hidden gem I get so excited about encountering in these movie challenges, because I almost certainly wouldn't have known to pick this up on my own.

4 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Coherence > Beach Party
Coherence > All's Faire in Love
Coherence < Breakfast at Tiffany's
Coherence < Godspell
Coherence > Waitress
Coherence < Hidden Figures
Coherence > The Awful Truth
Coherence < Fences
Coherence < Super 8
Coherence < Walking and Talking
Coherence < Sneakers
Coherence < Big Man Japan

Final spot: #554 out of 2632.

The Fly (1958)

IMDb plot summary: A scientist has a horrific accident when he tries to use his newly invented teleportation device.
Directed by Kurt Neumann. Starring David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price, and Herbert Marshall.

This was nothing like I expected. For one thing, did you know Vincent Price isn't the Fly? I didn't. This is a dramatic tragedy more than a horror movie, going very slowly, building its characters and its tension bit by bit. I was expecting a lot more creepy imagery of man/bug hybrids, though I have a feeling the Cronenberg remake would deliver on that front. My overwhelming reaction to this was not horror or disgust (in the good way I expected) but such sadness. Both the scene where he writes his farewell love letter to his wife and the scene where they finally find the fly made me want to cry at this awful, tragic experiment gone wrong. It makes me think, in an odd way, of the Blair Witch Project, a similarly slow movie that obviously depends more on scares than this does, but both of them just made me profoundly sad at how badly awry these characters' lives had gone, and how easily all that awfullness could have been erased if they had just changed one thing about the way they did things in the past. I liked this a lot, and I feel like it's one that will really hold up to later rewatches.

4.5 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Fly > Beach Party
The Fly > Kolya
The Fly > Benny & Joon
The Fly < Zombieland
The Fly < Blue Jasmine
The Fly > Trust
The Fly < Welcome to Dongmakgol
The Fly < Babe
The Fly > Sabrina (1954)
The Fly < Mighty Aphrodite

Final spot: #281 out of 2630.

Frank (2014)

IMDb plot summary: Jon, a young wanna-be musician, discovers he's bitten off more than he can chew when he joins an eccentric pop band led by the mysterious and enigmatic Frank.
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson. Starring Domnhall Gleeson, Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Scoot McNairy.

There are some films that I watch, and I particularly find this true of films about mental illness, that don't necessarily work for me if I try to analyze them on an intellectual level, nor does it overwhelming me with emotion, but I am left with some sort of emotional piece of it just... sitting inside me. Melancholia hit me this way and has ended up being one of my favorites because the emotional piece that resonated just kept getting stronger the longer I sat with it, and now it permeates the entire thing for me. I don't know yet if Frank will do quite the same thing -- I need to let it sit a bit longer before I can really solidify it -- but at this moment I can say that the final performance of the band just keeps sitting in the pit of my stomach and bringing the sounds and the images of that moment back to me.

The movie definitely takes a twist when it comes to its tone, playing itself first as a funny, maybe too-quirky band comedy, and then suddenly taking a depressingly dark turn (at least for me) in the last 30 minutes or so. I think it still works, I think I still like it a lot, but it's hard to really figure out why or how. At least for now.

3.5 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Frank > The Family Man
Frank > Kolya
Frank < All's Faire in Love
Frank > Don Jon
Frank < Misery
Frank < The Mummy (1932)
Frank > Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Frank > The Kid (2000)
Frank < Freaky Friday (2003)
Frank > Days of Wine and Roses
Frank > The Master
Frank > Thor

Final spot: #914 out of 2629. Freaky Friday is too low.