The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

IMDb plot summary: A Scottish lord becomes convinced by a trio of witches that he will become the next King of Scotland, and his ambitious wife supports him in his plans of seizing power.

Directed by Joel Coen. Starring Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, and Alex Hassell.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is Joel Coen's take on Shakespeare's "Scottish play," starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the scheming couple who murder a king to fulfill a mysterious prophecy and take his place, only to be slowly driven mad by it. Macbeth is one of my favorite Shakespeare tragedies, which made it all the more frustrating that this one feels so... stilted. Washington in particular is a disappointment. He's a great actor, but here his extremely understated line deliveries make it nearly impossible to follow the poetry of what he's saying, either factually or on an emotional level, and McDormand often seems to match that energy level. On the plus side, though, the film does look truly stunning. There were at least five or six moments that made me go, "Wow, that looks incredible." I love how each location seems to just blend into the next, as if we're all wandering through the fog and occasionally stumbling on an important place. And there are some good performances in here, particularly Corey Hawkins as Macduff, who brings a level of sympathy to the role I've rarely seen, and Kathryn Hunter as the Witches, who is utterly otherworldly. So it's a mixed bag when it comes to the big players, but there's a lot to like scattered throughout.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Tragedy of Macbeth > The Keep

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Munich

The Tragedy of Macbeth > Hereditary

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Just Imagine

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Nine to Five

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Backbeat

The Tragedy of Macbeth > Cafe Society

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Gone in 60 Seconds

The Tragedy of Macbeth < The Impossible

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Nobody's Fool

The Tragedy of Macbeth > Koyaanisqatsi

The Tragedy of Macbeth > Dan in Real Life

Final spot: #1304 out of 3561, or 63%.

Ladies of Leisure (1930)

IMDb plot summary: An upper-crust artist hires a 'party girl' as a model; romance follows.

Directed by Frank Capra. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Ralph Graves, and Lowell Sherman.

Ladies of Leisure is the 1930 movie that made Barbara Stanwyck a star after a series of flops. She plays an escort who becomes a model for a painter, and the two fall in love despite her unsavory background. The film certainly paints its story in broad strokes and doesn't ever quite sell the narrative that the two ever like each other until, bam, they're in love and you don't know why. But there are some really interesting moments here, particularly in seeing an early Stanwyck performance where the persona she crafted so beautifully in her later films was not yet there. She's flightier here than I've ever seen her, and while it's a little startling, it mostly works, and when she brings home the emotional stakes at the end as she has to decide whether or not to leave the man she loves, it DEFINITELY works. It's also interesting as an early Frank Capra film, as he uses some intriguing fade-ins and fade-outs that I'm not fully convinced make sense, but they are definitely an artistic editing *choice*, which has usually been less noticeable in other films of 1930, so it was fun to see it here.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Ladies of Leisure < The Keep

Ladies of Leisure > BASEketball

Ladies of Leisure > Sullivan's Travels

Ladies of Leisure < Venom

Ladies of Leisure > Onibaba

Ladies of Leisure > Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World

Ladies of Leisure < Remember the Night

Ladies of Leisure > Marathon

Ladies of Leisure < Moonstruck

Ladies of Leisure < Camelot

Ladies of Leisure < Fish Tank

Ladies of Leisure < Funny Girl

Final spot: #2038 out of 3553, or 43%.

Flee (2021)

IMDb plot summary: FLEE tells the extraordinary true story of a man, Amin, on the verge of marriage which compels him to reveal his hidden past for the first time.

Directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. Starring Daniel Karimyar, Fardin Mijdzadeh, and Milad Eskandari.

Flee is a Danish animated docudrama about Amin, a man who fled Afghanistan as a child refugee. The film features primarily voiceover of adult Amin over animation of him as a young and a young man making his journey to a safer country. The use of animation is striking here. As Amin shares his past, including the family he was told to never admit was still alive, it feels like the film is preserving some sense of privacy by not showing only an animated facsimile of his face. Older or more difficult memories are drawn as rough sketches, again almost giving the illusion of politely looking away to make it more comfortable for someone to bare their soul to us. It carves out an easy path for empathy but never feels like it's exploiting someone's tragedy. The very occasional use of live footage to show referenced location is jarring but all we need to remind us that, yes, this is still a real person sharing their story with us. I haven't seen many movies like this, but I was fascinated and I'm glad to have seen it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Flee > Gas, Food, Lodging

Flee > Munich

Flee < Walking and Talking

Flee < The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Flee > Is It College Yet?

Flee < The Offence

Flee < Do the Right Thing

Flee > Easy A

Flee > Twister

Flee > Upside Down

Flee > The Hunger Games

Flee > The Great Gatsby (2013)

Final spot: #745 out of 3533, or 79%.

C'mon C'mon (2021)

IMDb plot summary: When his sister asks him to look after her son, a radio journalist embarks on a cross-country trip with his energetic nephew to show him life away from Los Angeles.

Directed by Mike Mills. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffmann, and Woody Norman.

C'mon C'mon stars Joaquin Phoenix as a radio/podcast journalist who ends up caring for his young nephew while Phoenix's sister tries to persuade her mentally ill husband to get help. The boy follows Phoenix around as he travels, interviewing children and teenagers about how they see the world, and the two form a bond. I'm a little startled this didn't get many Oscar nods, as it feels like the absolute height of solid Oscarbait. That isn't meant as an insult or to be dismissive -- it's mostly a compliment that means all the pieces of this work well together, and that I feel there's something to be gotten here, but it isn't for me. Maybe it's that I am already tired of the trope of "child teaches middle-aged white man about life" and it's hard for me to pull out what makes this one better than the rest, if in fact it is. I don't really have any qualms with it, I just don't think anything about it at all, and that makes it incredibly difficult to review. It's just kind of... there.

How it entered my Flickchart:

C'mon C'mon < Fahrenheit 451

C'mon C'mon > My Friend Irma

C'mon C'mon > Sullivan's Travels

C'mon C'mon > Get Shorty

C'mon C'mon > Senna

C'mon C'mon > After the Wedding

C'mon C'mon > Safety Not Guaranteed

C'mon C'mon > Le Week-End

C'mon C'mon > The Elephant Man

C'mon C'mon > A Chorus of Disapproval

C'mon C'mon > Arctic

C'mon C'mon < The Misfits

Final spot: #1789 out of 3573, or 50%.

Forty Guns (1957)

IMDb plot summary: Showdown in Arizona between the Bonnell brothers, U.S.Marshals, and Jessica Drummond, the iron-fist rancher who controls the territory.

Directed by Samuel Fuller. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, and Dean Jagger.

Forty Guns is about a group of reformed gunslinger brothers who come to a town to help restore order. Currently the town is at the mercy of Jessica Drummond's gang of outlaws. Drummond is played by Barbara Stanwyck (by apparently complete coincidence, this is the second time she played a character by that name) and she is easily the best part of the movie. I've been watching a bunch of Stanwyck films over the last month, and I'm beginning to realize my favorite performances of her may be her later ones. She just gives off a different level of subtle charisma at 50 than she did at 30, and I find it very compelling how she can do so much with so little. The rest of the story feels like every other western about lawmakers trying to put a town back into shape, just from the occasional angle of "but what if the outlaw is a WOMAN?" which leads to a predictable and somewhat disappointing ending. Definitely worth watching if you're a fan of Stanwyck's work or of westerns in general, but it isn't a shining star outside of either of those categories.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Forty Guns < Dark and Stormy Night

Forty Guns > Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Forty Guns > Sullivan's Travels

Forty Guns < Venom

Forty Guns < Deep Red

Forty Guns > Kicking and Screaming (1995)

Forty Guns < Legends of the Fall

Forty Guns > Naked Lunch

Forty Guns > Fun Size

Forty Guns > The Big Trail

Forty Guns > Streets of Fire

Forty Guns > Sreekaram

Final spot: #2148 out of 3570, or 40%.

Bottle Shock (2008)

IMDb plot summary: The story of the early days of California wine making featuring the now infamous, blind Paris wine tasting of 1976 that has come to be known as "Judgment of Paris".

Directed by Randall Miller. Starring Chris Pine, Alan Rickman, and Bill Pullman.

Bottle Shock tells the true story of a wine competition in France that invited California wines, which were seen as obviously inferior, to compete alongside French wines in a blind tasting. Alan Rickman plays the man coordinating the whole thing, who is pleased to find some wine of value in the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma, and we see him interacting with one vintner family in particular who are struggling to make ends meet. This is a sweet little underdog story that often relies too heavily on cheesy sentimentality for me to recommend it to everyone, but the charm of the cast and the goodheartedness of the story are exactly what some people are looking for, and it delivers that. And even though if offers few surprises, if you let yourself lean into rooting for people, it's pretty enjoyable to watch, particularly as we see Chris Pine's character step up and pursue something he cares about. A decent but not-stellar watch that I would pretty much immediately forget if I didn't live in wine country myself and have a personal connection to the story.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Bottle Shock < The Harder They Fall

Bottle Shock > Monkey Business (1952)

Bottle Shock < The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Bottle Shock > Saludos Amigos

Bottle Shock > Happy Christmas

Bottle Shock > Nashville

Bottle Shock > National Velvet

Bottle Shock > Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Bottle Shock > The Whole Nine Yards

Bottle Shock < Dark City

Bottle Shock > They Made Me a Fugitive

Final spot: #2213 out of 3534, or 37%.

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

IMDb plot summary: A New York inventor needs cash to develop his big idea, so his adoring wife decides to raise it by divorcing him and marrying an eccentric Florida millionaire with a capricious high-society sister.

Directed by Preston Sturges. Starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, and Mary Astor.

The Palm Beach Story is a screwball comedy by Preston Sturges about a woman who decides everyone would be better off if she and her husband divorced and she found a wealthy man to marry (and maybe even help financially support her then-ex). She doesn't want to leave her husband, but their financial woes have been putting a strain on their relationship. So off she goes, and off he goes after her to try to convince her not to. This lands more solidly for me than a lot of Sturges' work. The stakes still seem relatively light, even within the world of the comedy itself, and it meanders more than I like, but I did smile a lot at the sort of quirky resignation Claudette Colbert brings to the character of the wife. I still can't pinpoint exactly what it is that keeps Sturges' films at a distance for me, but there's less of that here than there usually is, and as a result I had a pretty good time and would recommend it to anyone who's a fan of the genre.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Palm Beach Story > The Misfits

The Palm Beach Story > The Game

The Palm Beach Story < The Goodbye Girl (1977)

The Palm Beach Story < Booksmart

The Palm Beach Story < The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

The Palm Beach Story < Before Sunset

The Palm Beach Story < The Pirates of Penzance

The Palm Beach Story < The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The Palm Beach Story < My Name Is Joe

The Palm Beach Story < Long Day's Journey Into Night

The Palm Beach Story > Munich

The Palm Beach Story < Till Death

Final spot: #892 out of 3578, or 75%.