The Fallen Idol (1948)

IMDb plot summary: A butler working in a foreign embassy in London falls under suspicion when his wife accidentally falls to her death, the only witness being an impressionable young boy.
Directed by Carol Reed. Starring Ralph Richardson, Michèle Morgan, Sonia Dresdel, and Bobby Henrey.

(Spoilers ahead.)

My biggest complaint with noir is how often it all feels the same. The same characters, beats, twists, and stakes over and over again. This one goes for a more unique spin -- it tells it all through the story of a child. Since noir so frequently looks at cynicism and loss of innocence and idealism, it seems only right to see it through the eyes of a child. Even when things work out in the end as far as the narrative goes, the child's worldview has been shaken, and that lingers through the "happy ending" plot events. It's an interesting effect, and one that pushes this up into the top half of my chart.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Fallen Idol > Gattaca
The Fallen Idol > We're No Angels
The Fallen Idol < Boyhood
The Fallen Idol < Grave of the Fireflies
The Fallen Idol < My Name Is Bruce
The Fallen Idol > Brooklyn
The Fallen Idol < The Ten Commandments (1956)
The Fallen Idol < The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Fallen Idol > Hoodwinked!
The Fallen Idol < Gone Girl
The Fallen Idol > Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book
Final spot: #673 out of 2907.

Dead Ringers (1988)

IMDb plot summary: Twin gynecologists take full advantage of the fact that nobody can tell them apart, until their relationship begins to deteriorate over a woman.
Directed by David Cronenberg. Starring Jeremy Irons, Geneviève Bujold, Heidi von Palleske, and Barbara Gordon.

(Mild spoilers ahead.)

Well, this was unsettling. That shouldn't have been a surprise to me at all -- after all, it is Cronenberg -- but I particularly like how disturbing this is with very little of the gross-out body horror Cronenberg is known for. Its uncomfortableness is almost entirely psychological. These characters' downward spiral is so fascinating to watch from scene to scene. Jeremy Irons was very smart about how he played the two characters. There is nothing at all to set them apart from each other in their features, and the dialogue is not helpful when the brothers swap places so often, so it all comes down to the acting to figure out who is who from scene to scene, and Irons does this very effectively. The final 10 minutes of the movie or so are deeply, deeply sad. Easily my favorite Cronenberg I've seen thus far.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Dead Ringers > Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey
Dead Ringers > Date Night
Dead Ringers < Breaking Away
Dead Ringers < Grave of the Fireflies
Dead Ringers < My Name Is Bruce
Dead Ringers > Brooklyn
Dead Ringers > The Ten Commandments (1956)
Dead Ringers < Detroit
Dead Ringers > Gremlins
Dead Ringers < Galaxy Quest

Final spot: #651 out of 2906.

Drunken Master (1978)

IMDb plot summary: Wong Fei-Hung is a mischievous, yet righteous young man, but after a series of incidents, his frustrated father has him disciplined by Beggar So, a Master of drunken martial arts.
Directed by Woo-Ping Yuen. Starring Jackie Chan, Siu Tin Yuen, Jung-Lee Hwang, and Dean Shek.

I think I've narrowed in on one of the things that make martial arts movies so unappealing to me. When every scene has to be a setup for the inevitable fight at the end of it, you get a lot of characters who are just constantly aggressive with each other, sometimes for no reason. It's hard to find a likeable character to root for. Jackie Chan is definitely more charismatic than a lot of other martial arts movie leads (and his fight work looks amazing), but even he can't convince me there's any kind of hero in this movie. That being said, I enjoyed the lighter comedic aspects of this, and some of the fight scenes were fun, though they definitely all blur together for me. I liked it more than I anticipated.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Drunken Master < Three Amigos
Drunken Master > It Had to Be You
Drunken Master > Buddy Buddy
Drunken Master > The Robe
Drunken Master < The Bishop's Wife
Drunken Master < Treasures of the Snow
Drunken Master > Whisper of the Heart
Drunken Master > Kagemusha
Drunken Master < Black Snake Moan
Drunken Master > Shrek Retold
Drunken Master < The Sword in the Stone
Final spot: #1596 out of 2905.

A Simple Plan (1998)

IMDb plot summary: When three blue collar acquaintances come across millions of dollars in lost cash they make a plan to keep their find from the authorities but find complications and mistrust weaving its way into their plan.
Directed by Sam Raimi. Starring Bill Paxton, Bridget Fonda, Billy Bob Thornton, and Brent Briscoe.

I did not expect at all to like this as much as I did. I definitely didn't expect Billy Bob Thornton to be my favorite part of it, as I seldom like him much. But wow. This movie builds the tension really nicely, and its characters are fascinating to me, and I found it very moving by the end. It was what I always want Coen brothers crime movies to be.

How it entered my Flickchart:
A Simple Plan > Three Amigos
A Simple Plan > The Producers (2005)
A Simple Plan > Boyhood
A Simple Plan < In the Bedroom
A Simple Plan < Hacksaw Ridge
A Simple Plan > Sabrina (1954)
A Simple Plan < I.Q.
A Simple Plan > Dave and the Giant Pickle
A Simple Plan < The Iron Giant
A Simple Plan < Beginners
A Simple Plan > Trust

Final spot: #303 out of 2904.

Epic (2013)

IMDb plot summary: A teenager finds herself transported to a deep forest setting where a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is taking place. She bands together with a rag-tag group of characters in order to save their world -- and ours.
Directed by Chris Wedge. Starring Amanda Seyfried, Josh Hutcherson, Colin Farrell, and Christoph Waltz.

This is an incredibly difficult movie to figure out how to review because it feels like such a nonentity. While on one hand I dig the simplicity (but uniqueness) of the mythology surrounding these competing tribes of life and rot. It's a cool concept. But it plays out in a very run-of-the-mill way, down to the tiresome comic relief characters (I love Aziz Ansari and Chris O'Dowd, but it's so hard to do so in this movie). There are weird emotional threads that never get followed through on - MK dealing with her mother's death, Nod not finding a kinship within his people, and so on. It's as if there was a fuller draft that brought all these emotional plotlines to some sort of conclusion, but then it got cut for time, because the setups are all still there. It's all right as a movie, one or two good moments, but nothing that really stands out.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Epic < Three Amigos
Epic < The Trouble With Angels
Epic > The Talk of the Town
Epic > Miss Congeniality
Epic > Scarface (1983)
Epic < The Passion of Joan of Arc
Epic > Passion
Epic > On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
Epic > There's Something About Mary
Epic < A Scanner Darkly
Final spot: #2229 out of 2903.

Predator (1987)

IMDb plot summary: A team of commandos on a mission in a Central American jungle find themselves hunted by an extraterrestrial warrior.
Directed by John McTiernan. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, Elpidia Carrillo, and Bill Duke.

Predator is one of those movies that's been on my list of movies I should have seen for AGES. I also always link it with Alien in my mind (one of my very favorite movies) because of the later Alien/Predator crossover film (which I also have not seen). But aside from being about someone fighting off an alien creature in an isolated location, the two don't have a lot in common. Alien is a tenser, more suspenseful build, and in general a more engaging horror flick. Predator feels too much like a regular war movie until the last 15 minutes or so. I do like the Predator's design, especially in the final moments once it takes its helmet off. But overall it felt like all the time it spent on buildup were a distraction rather than a build toward anything, and it didn't pay off enough.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Predator < Three Amigos!
Predator < The Trouble With Angels
Predator > The Talk of the Town
Predator > Miss Congeniality
Predator > Scarface (1983)
Predator > The Passion of Joan of Arc
Predator < Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical
Predator > The Out of Towners (1970)
Predator > Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Predator < Red Cliff
Final spot: #2205 out of 2902.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

IMDb plot summary: A mysterious stranger with a harmonica joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad.
Directed by Sergio Leone. Starring Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, and Charles Bronson.

This is such a difficult movie for me to discuss, let alone rank and assign any sort of qualitative assessment to it. Because the fact is, this movie is good. It's beautifully shot and scored, and Henry Fonda as a villain is fascinating, but it's also almost a three-hour-long western, and between the long length and it being a genre I hate, I got incredibly bored with it. It's a very slow-moving three hours, too, it's lots of lingering shots taking their time. So even more than usual, the ranking here reflects my own personal feelings on it and not whether I think it's a good movie or not.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Once Upon a Time in the West < Away From Her
Once Upon a Time in the West > How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Once Upon a Time in the West > Crash
Once Upon a Time in the West > Monsters University
Once Upon a Time in the West > Hancock
Once Upon a Time in the West < The Paperboy
Once Upon a Time in the West > The Avengers
Once Upon a Time in the West > August: Osage County
Once Upon a Time in the West < The Asphalt Jungle
Once Upon a Time in the West < The Dresser
Once Upon a Time in the West < The Conversation
Once Upon a Time in the West < Gypsy (1962)

Final spot: #1507 out of 2901.