The Big Trail (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Breck Coleman leads hundreds of settlers in covered wagons from the Mississippi River to their destiny out West.

Directed by Raoul Walsh. Starring John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, and El Brendel.

The Big Trail turns out to be John Wayne's very first starring role. I didn't realize that when I started watching it. He plays a scout for a group of wagon trains heading across the country to Oregon. There are varying plots going around in the different wagons, but the main two are the young woman that Wayne's character falls in love with but who won't give him the time of day, and the three men leading the wagon train who turn out to be murderers and scoundrels. While westerns are very much not my genre, I really enjoyed seeing both a very young John Wayne and a very straightforward story with some really interesting visual effects and cinematography work. The scenes where the wagons are being lowered down the cliffs or where they have to ford the river really bring the harrowing nature of the trek they're all making. The personal drama doesn't do as much for me, but there are some great filmmaking techniques here and it's probably worth watching if you like the genre to begin with.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Big Trail < Monsters

The Big Trail > War of the Buttons (1994)

The Big Trail > Sullivan's Travels

The Big Trail < A Star Is Born (2018)

The Big Trail < Deep Red

The Big Trail > The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Big Trail < Legends of the Fall

The Big Trail > Naked Lunch

The Big Trail > Fun Size

The Big Trail < Hello, Dolly!

The Big Trail > No Country for Old Men

Final spot: #2127 out of 3529, or 40%.

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? (2021)

IMDb plot summary: Presents an in-depth, intimate character portrait exploring the life and career and mysterious circumstances surrounding the tragic death of 90's actress and rising star, Brittany Murphy.

Directed by Cynthia Hill.

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? is a documentary looking at the mysterious and unexpected and sudden death of actress Brittany Murphy back in 2009. Questions surrounded her death, as it seemed to come out of nowhere. It was attributed to anemia and pneumonia, but things just got weirder from there. For example, her husband died shortly after -- of the exact same thing. The documentary looks all different kinds of fan theories, including poisoning and mold and deliberate medical neglect, but, just like the real world, it's unable to fully draw a conclusion. What it does do is make me interested in going back and watching the filmography of Brittany Murphy. I've seen very little of her work, but the documentary really paints her as somebody who had a lot to give and was taken from us too early. Since this wasn't ever going to be able to solve the mystery the way a true-crime documentary wants to, it's nice that they at least gave me an interest in the subject that I didn't have before. So kudos to them on that.

How it entered my Flickchart:

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? < Hustle & Flow

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? > War of the Buttons (1994)

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? > Sullivan's Travels

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? > A Star Is Born (2018)

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? < The Mistress of Spices

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? > Top Gun

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? < The Lion in Winter (2003)

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? > A Foreign Affair

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? < Swing Time

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? > Lost in America

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? > Trumbo

What Happened, Brittany Murphy? > You'll Never Get Rich

Final spot: #1909 out of 3528, or 46%.

Morocco (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A cabaret singer and a Legionnaire fall in love, but their relationship is complicated by the results of his womanizing and due to the appearance of a rich man who wants her for himself.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg. Starring Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, and Adolphe Menjou.

Morocco tells the story of a romance between a soldier and a nightclub singer in World War I Morocco. He's a womanizer, and she might just be the woman that gets him to settle down. Gary Cooper and Marlene Dietrich play the main two, and while Dietrich is really relatable in this, Cooper is not. He plays a wildly unpleasant, quick-to-fight soldier who thinks that it's his job to fix everything, and I'm not really excited to see Dietrich chasing after him as if he's anything worth chasing. On top of that, the story and how it builds is really not very interesting. I'm writing this review a couple days after watching it and I had to go look up on Wikipedia to find out how it ended because it had so little impact on me that I genuinely did not remember. It may be worth the watch if you're a big fan of Dietrich -- she does have some good song-and-dance numbers -- but otherwise it's probably one that you can skip.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Morocco < Hustle & Flow

Morocco < War of the Buttons

Morocco > In Cold Blood

Morocco > Alfie (2004)

Morocco > A Most Wanted Man

Morocco < The Cocoanuts

Morocco < Magic in the Moonlight

Morocco > Copying Beethoven

Morocco < My Dinner with Andre

Morocco < Spirits of the Dead

Morocco < Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Morocco > Get Smart

Final spot: #2741 out of 3527, or 22%.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A German youth eagerly enters World War I, but his enthusiasm wanes as he gets a firsthand view of the horror.

Directed by Lewis Milestone. Starring Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, and John Wray.

All Quiet on the Western Front is based on the book of the same name, about a German Soldier fighting on the front lines of World War I. We follow him from his early recruitment all the way up until he revisits his home and finds that it's not at all the way he remembers it. The film follows the soldier and his classmates, who were all recruited at the same time by their school teacher. While big war battle sequences are not my thing, I was very moved by the sections in which the soldier goes home and tries to enjoy his leave. He has to deal with people making broad statements about what the people at the front should or shouldn't be doing, as well as revisiting his old classroom and hearing the school teacher say the same bits of rhetoric without any nuance or understanding behind them. A very powerful early anti-war movie that holds up really well now.

How it entered my Flickchart:

All Quiet on the Western Front > Hustle & Flow

All Quiet on the Western Front < Long Day's Journey Into Night

All Quiet on the Western Front > Talk Radio

All Quiet on the Western Front < Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

All Quiet on the Western Front < Nine to Five

All Quiet on the Western Front > Backbeat

All Quiet on the Western Front < Say Anything...

All Quiet on the Western Front < Panic Room

All Quiet on the Western Front > Can You Ever Forgive Me?

All Quiet on the Western Front > The Detective

All Quiet on the Western Front < Laurence Anyways

Final spot: #1256 out of 3526, or 64%.

Just Imagine (1930)

IMDb plot summary: New York, 1980: airplanes have replaced cars, numbers have replaced names, pills have replaced food, government-arranged marriages have replaced love, and test tube babies have replaced ... well, you get the idea. Scientists revive a man struck by lightning in 1930.

Directed by David Butler. Starring El Brendel, Maureen O'Sullivan, and John Garrick.

Just Imagine is a 1930 sci-fi comedy set in the distant future of 1980. In this future, we all have numbers instead of names, the government chooses who you marry, and your food is delivered to you in pill form. A dead man from the 1930s is brought back to life in 1980, and he and his friends walk around seeing how different life is now. This was the first movie I watched to kick-off my 1930 project where I'm trying to watch 100 movies from that year and it was a really fun one to start with. It is, of course, fun to look back at 1980 as the far future and the guesses that they made about it, but it's also just a genuine enjoyable movie... especially when they unexpectedly end up on Mars and have to fight Martians. Our 1930 everyman is a lot of fun. It's overall a silly, unique little movie.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Just Imagine > The Harder They Fall

Just Imagine < Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962)

Just Imagine > Timecop

Just Imagine < Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

Just Imagine > The Circus

Just Imagine > Moonwalker

Just Imagine > Evita

Just Imagine > Cake

Just Imagine > The Descendants

Just Imagine > I Heart Huckabees

Just Imagine < Watchmen

Final spot: #1104 out of 3525, or 69%.

tick...tick...BOOM! (2021)

IMDb plot summary: On the cusp of his 30th birthday, a promising young theater composer navigates love, friendship and the pressures of life as an artist in New York City.

Directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Starring Andrew Garfield, Alexandra Shipp, and Robin de Jesus.

Tick Tick Boom is the film version of Jonathan Larson's first successful musical. Larson would, of course, go on to write Rent, though he passed away suddenly of an aneurysm shortly before his biggest success open. Tick Tick Boom is a largely autobiographical work about Larson struggling to find his voice, starring Andrew Garfield as our center character. This film is directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and it is first and foremost an unapologetic love letter to musical theater. So much so that I can't even truly process what it would be like to watch this NOT as a theater fan. The show itself already was full of references to the showtunes that made Larson who he was (particularly in "Sunday" and "Why"), and the movie keeps leaning right on into that with seemingly infinite number of Broadway favorites in cameo appearances. Garfield is great as the lead, easily holding his own during the musical numbers, but Alexandra Shipp, Robin de Jesus, and Vanessa Hudgens make for a great supporting cast. It captures so many things I love about musical theater through some fantastic performances. The theater kid warm fuzzies wrapped me up tight on this one.

How it entered my Flickchart:

tick, tick...BOOM! > Monsters

tick, tick...BOOM! > My Name Is Joe

tick, tick...BOOM! > Crimes and Misdemeanors

tick, tick...BOOM! < Moxie

tick, tick...BOOM! > Nosferatu

tick, tick...BOOM! > United 93

tick, tick...BOOM! > Sabrina (1954)

tick, tick...BOOM! > Dead Ringers

tick, tick...BOOM! < Amahl and the Night Visitors

tick, tick...BOOM! < Equus

tick, tick...BOOM! > Schindler's List

tick, tick...BOOM! > Deathtrap

Final spot: #228 out of 3495, or 93%.

The Mirror (1975)

IMDb plot summary: A dying man in his forties remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments and things that tell of the recent history of all the Russian nation.

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Starring Margarita Terekhova, Filipp Yankovskiy, and Ignat Daniltsev.

The Mirror is a dreamlike nonlinear memory film featuring pieces of a young man's life as a boy and as an adult, living through a war, raising a child, and more. It's directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, of Stalker and Solaris fame, and just to be honest, I could not stand either of those movies. Tarkovsky's directing moves at a snail's pace, and his dialogue is nearly always philosophical ponderings more than anything directly related to the characters, which makes it even harder for me to connect to. His style is certainly distinct and I understand that people like him, but I feel too often that I'd get the exact same effect from reading a philosophy book while occasionally glancing at a photo of the countryside. I keep hoping that one of these days I'll find the Tarkovsky film that clicks for me the way he does for others, but this one, with its "memory play" feeling and its jumping all over the timeline, is not that film. It is shorter than most of his others, which made it an easier watch for me, so it might be a good entry point into Tarkovsky for newbies. And if you like this one, he's definitely got more that are in similar veins!

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Mirror < The Harder They Fall

The Mirror < Dinner at Eight

The Mirror > Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith

The Mirror < The Zen of Bennett

The Mirror < Men of Honor

The Mirror < The Internship

The Mirror > They All Laughed

The Mirror > Joseph: King of Dreams

The Mirror < Out of the Past

The Mirror > The Forgotten

The Mirror > Michael Clayton

Final spot: #3027 out of 3513, or 14%.