Yellow Submarine (1968)

IMDb plot summary: The Beatles agree to accompany Captain Fred (Lance Percival) in his Yellow Submarine and go to Pepperland to free it from the music hating Blue Meanies.
Directed by George Dunning. Starring The Beatles, Paul Angelis, John Clive, and Dick Emery.

After watching Head earlier this year and *hating* it, I was a little nervous about another surreal absurdist musical featuring a 1960s band. But overall, this is kind of engaging. The calm, dry personalities of the Beatles characters help to tone down what could be an exhausting over-the-top hour and a half, and some of the visuals paired with the music were really captivating. ("Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" was my favorite.) It's not something I ever feel a need to watch again, but it's got charm and I can see why people like it.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Yellow Submarine < Blow Out
Yellow Submarine > Deja Vu
Yellow Submarine > Midnight Cowboy
Yellow Submarine > The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Yellow Submarine > The Whole Nine Yards
Yellow Submarine < John Dies at the End
Yellow Submarine > Office Space
Yellow Submarine > How to Rob a Bank
Yellow Submarine > The Day After Tomorrow
Yellow Submarine > The Blues Brothers
Yellow Submarine < Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (what an interesting match-up...)
Final spot: #1566 out of 3032.

The Stand (1994)

IMDb plot summary: After a deadly plague kills most of the world's population, the remaining survivors split into two groups - one led by a benevolent elder and the other by a maleficent being - to face each other in a final battle between good and evil.
Directed by Mick Garris. Starring Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald, Jamey Sheridan, and Laura San Giacomo.

So, I have this longstanding problem with Stephen King's work. Or, well, film adaptations of it, since I don't think I've actually read anything by him. But the issues I have with his films are plot-based, and from reading book synopses on Wikipedia I think I'd have the same problem with them, and regardless King wrote this teleplay, so it's definitely his writing I dislike here.

The thing is, he comes up with these decently creepy premises and then throws *everything* at them without bothering to connect them. In The Shining, the hotel is full of ghosts AND Jack Torrance also just happens to be a little crazy to begin with AND his son just happens to have ESP. And it's never clear whether one is influencing the other at all, so it just looks like multiple separate stories he's trying to smush together.

The Stand is (I think mostly?) just two stories: A mysterious flu kills off most of the population, and the survivors have to fight Satan. The first half of the miniseries is about the flu and survival, the second half is about going off to fight Satan in the desert. But there's also all this weird throwaway stuff about visions from God, Satan trying to make a baby with a human woman, a healing ghost, several characters with disabilities that I don't know WHAT he's doing with them, a bunch of drama about choosing town council members, and more. All of these issues flare up with great significance like they're going to play major roles in how things go, and then they seem to be either resolved or forgotten within minutes. What does King think this story is *about*? Nothing stays, nothing holds, nothing matters.

Speaking of nothing mattering -- that final scene. The good guys are captured by Satan who decides to tear them apart at a public execution, but then one of our (very uncomfortable) disability characters shows up with an atomic bomb, and then some sort of ghost comes out of two of Satan's dead minions and sets off the bomb. And back in the town, everybody lauds the dead heroes' sacrifice and talks about how they went out there to "stand, and that's what they did." But, like... What? Aside from I guess gathering everyone in one place for the execution, nothing they did made any difference at all. (And if it's an atomic bomb, they don't need to be *that* close together for it to do the trick.) They didn't make the ghosts happen (right?), they didn't make the bomb appear, they did ab.so.lute.ly.no.thing and are treated like they saved the world.

The first hour or so is good. Watching the world get slowly taken down by the flu and seeing the survivors trying to figure out what to do next is fascinating. But when it suddenly turns into a supernatural God's-people-vs-a-literal-demon battle, it loses me entirely and tosses out a thousand threads it can never resolve well.

I don't get it, y'all. I don't get King, and I don't get this adaptation, and it was a very long four-and-a-half hours once it started going off the rails.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Stand < Blow Out
The Stand > A Farewell to Fools
The Stand > Ulysses
The Stand < Cellular
The Stand < The Robe
The Stand > Thoughtcrimes
The Stand < Company (1997)
The Stand < Ghost
The Stand < The Love Bug
The Stand < Reality Bites
The Stand < Sunshine
The Stand > The Iceman
Final spot: #1844 out of 3029.

The Birthday Party (1968)

IMDb plot summary: The down-at-heel lodger in a seaside boarding house is menaced by two mysterious strangers, who eventually take him away.
Directed by William Friedkin. Starring Robert Shaw, Patrick Magee, Sydney Tafler, and Dandy Nichols.

I had no experience with or understanding of the play at all prior to this, but it sounds like something I wouldn't get into at all. It does that thing I dislike about David Lynch films, in that it teases you with some sort of logical narrative by being pretty coherent moment-to-moment but just feels like it's leaving out a piece, and if you knew what that one piece of lost information was, you'd understand the whole plot. I found myself zoning out during the film, and whatever emotional response I was supposed to take away from it, I didn't. Not my type of play or movie.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Birthday Party < Blow Out

The Birthday Party < A Farewell to Fools

The Birthday Party < Gigi

The Birthday Party < The Book Thief

The Birthday Party > The Incredible Journey

The Birthday Party > Around the World in 80 Days (2004)

The Birthday Party < The Lake House

The Birthday Party > Atlantic Rim

The Birthday Party > Island in the Sun

The Birthday Party > One for the Money

The Birthday Party > Men in Black II

Final spot: #2863 out of 3027.

Inspector Clouseau (1968)

IMDb plot summary: A string of robberies has occurred in Britain and it's up to Inspector Clouseau to catch the criminal.
Directed by Bud Yorkin. Starring Alan Arkin, Frank Finlay, Delia Boccardo, and Barry Foster.

Given my mediocre response to most Pink Panther movies, I expected to have a mediocre response to this as well, but it was... well, still mediocre, but a step above. I wasn't irritated by it at any point, partly because the silly comedy doesn't have a giant spotlight on it as much as just subtly weaving its way into the plot. That isn't always an improvement, but it is here. It's not a stellar movie by any means, but it's a decently entertaining one.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Inspector Clouseau > Run Fatboy Run
Inspector Clouseau < An American Werewolf in London
Inspector Clouseau < Brothers
Inspector Clouseau > Pitch Perfect 2
Inspector Clouseau < Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles
Inspector Clouseau < The Prestige
Inspector Clouseau > Le Week-End
Inspector Clouseau < Jesus Christ Superstar (2000)
Inspector Clouseau > Mudbound
Inspector Clouseau < The Revenant
Inspector Clouseau > Arctic
Final spot: #1291 out of 3026.

Red (2018)

IMDb plot summary: Under the watchful gaze of his young assistant, the artist Mark Rothko takes on his greatest challenge yet: to create a definitive work of art for an extraordinary setting.
Directed by Michael Grandage. Starring Alfred Enoch and Alfred Molina.

This is now my third encounter this play, after studying it in a class and seeing a production of it after I left college (starring my acting prof, which was a sort of surreal experience). I have yet to really find my way into this story, and it is not particularly helped here by Alfred Enoch's performance, which remains perpetually in the same range of vocal inflections and makes it near impossible to break through into actual character. Molina is great as Rothko, of course, as he is great in anything, and I'm almost willing to sit through an hour and a half of him just ranting -- but not quite. I'm still not convinced this play is doing as much as I think it's doing, largely because I think it relies too heavily on characters talking *about*, a cold, distanced analysis of the meaning of art that rarely breaks through into the lives we see play out on stage. It's all right, but it just doesn't get to me.

This movie is not yet on Flickchart.

Patsy & Loretta (2019)

IMDb plot summary: An original movie about the friendship between country-music stars Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn.
Directed by Callie Khouri. Starring Megan Hilty, Jessie Mueller, Kyle Schmid, and Janine Turner.

Well, this did exactly what a musician's biopic is probably supposed to -- it made me want to go seek out these artists' music. I really have no knowledge of or connection to Patsy Cline or Loretta Lynn, so I have no clue how accurate this is to their lives, but I did find myself fairly engaged in their stories. This is largely due to musical theater veterans Megan Hilty and Jessie Mueller being very compelling performers. The script seems to go back over and over again to the same predictable beats, but their performances make it (mostly) work.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Patsy & Loretta > Blow Out
Patsy & Loretta < An American Werewolf in London
Patsy & Loretta < Brothers
Patsy & Loretta > North by Northwest
Patsy & Loretta > Hamlet (2009)
Patsy & Loretta > Lifeforce
Patsy & Loretta < Alice (1990)
Patsy & Loretta < 12 Angry Men (1997)
Patsy & Loretta < EDtv
Patsy & Loretta < John Wick
Patsy & Loretta > Disturbia
Final spot: #1179 out of 3025.

Swiss Army Man (2016)

IMDb plot summary: A hopeless man stranded on a deserted island befriends a dead body and together they go on a surreal journey to get home.
Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Starring Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe.

How do you even really review a movie like this? It is strange and gross and creepy but it also has some really lovely moments tapping into pieces of humanity from a very strange side-angle. It reminds me of something like Lars and the Real Girl and The Beaver, except with maybe more magic realism and a lot more gross body function jokes. The latter is the piece that keeps me from really loving it. I see how the idea that humanity is kind of gross as a whole is part of the movie's point, but it also makes me want to not watch the movie again any time soon. I guess I haven't watched Paul Dano in anything in a little bit, because I'd forgotten how truly great he is as an actor. The soundtrack should also get a mention. It's beautifully ingrained into the fabric of the film, and the one true laugh the movie got from me was a background song where the lyrics were a very literal description of what was happening on screen.

I have no idea where this is going to land.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Swiss Army Man > Blow Out
Swiss Army Man < The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
Swiss Army Man > State and Main
Swiss Army Man < All's Faire in Love
Swiss Army Man < Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
Swiss Army Man > My Date With Drew
Swiss Army Man < Before Sunset
Swiss Army Man > The Horse's Mouth
Swiss Army Man > Hamlet (1990)
Swiss Army Man > Let the Right One In
Swiss Army Man > Roma
Final spot: #1064 out of 3024.