The Doorway to Hell (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Despite his efforts to go straight, a young gangster keeps falling back into crime.

Directed by Archie Mayo. Starring Lew Ayres, James Cagney, and Dorothy Mathews.

The Doorway to Hell is a 1930 gangster movie about a man getting ready to give up a life of crime and settle down with his romantic partner. Little does he know, however, that she is cheating on him with one of the other men in his gang, and his plans to get away from that lifestyle may not work out and may instead endanger himself, his new wife, and his younger brother. This is an early James Cagney movie -- he plays the cheating friend involved with the lead's wife -- and it's interesting to see him as a side character instead of a lead, especially since the lead himself isn't very interesting in this story. In preparation for writing up this review a few days after seeing the movie, I revisited the Wikipedia page to refresh myself on the plot details and realized, to my surprise, I remembered very little of it. It all kind of blurs together for me into other gangster pictures of the same era. It certainly is one of the earlier examples, and I'm sure aficionados of the genre would notice where later movies took their lead from films like this, but it wasn't particularly interesting for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Doorway to Hell < The Keep

The Doorway to Hell > Big Fat Liar

The Doorway to Hell < Sullivan's Travels

The Doorway to Hell < Labor Day

The Doorway to Hell > The Devil's Brigade

The Doorway to Hell < So I Married an Axe Murderer

The Doorway to Hell > Our Paradise

The Doorway to Hell > The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

The Doorway to Hell < Tombstone

The Doorway to Hell < The Amazing Spider-Man

The Doorway to Hell < Stand and Deliver

The Doorway to Hell < After the Thin Man

Final spot: #2520 out of 3565, or 29%.

Mass (2021)

IMDb plot summary: Aftermath of a violent tragedy that affects the lives of two couples in different ways.

Directed by Fran Kranz. Starring Jason Isaacs, Martha Plimpton, Ann Dowd, and Reed Birney.

Mass is a one-room story about two couples meeting to talk about their children, one of which was the victim of a school shooting six years ago, while the other was the shooter. The film stays on these couples throughout their whole meeting. To pull off this kind of stagey story, all in one room in real time, you have to have a really tight script, incredible actors, and cinematography that keeps the focus on them, and that's all absolutely the case here. We've got Jason Isaacs and Martha Plimpton as the victim's parents and Reed Birney and Ann Dowd as the perpetrator's parents, and each one of them is such an interesting character. It feels like a play in the absolute best way, the kind of play that keeps you riveted to the edge of your seat because the dramatic tension in the story and the characters has hooked you in, and when the time is up you barely even realize you've just spent two hours watching the same scene. The script flows naturally from one moment to the next but still manages to hit all the essential beats and give each character a chance to really shine in the narrative. It's kind of an incredible accomplishment.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Mass > Fahrenheit 451

Mass > The Black Cat

Mass > Castle in the Sky

Mass < Bullets Over Broadway

Mass > Savannah Smiles

Mass > Requiem for a Dream

Mass > Unforgiven

Mass < A Charlie Brown Christmas

Mass < Seven Psychopaths

Mass > Sabrina (1954)

Mass < The Bridge on the River Kwai

Final spot: #247 out of 3580, or 93%.

Tiny Furniture (2010)

IMDb plot summary: About a recent college grad who returns home while she tries to figure out what to do with her life.

Directed by Lena Dunham. Starring Lena Dunham, Laurie Simmons, and Grace Dunham.

Tiny Furniture is a film written by, directed by, and starring Lena Dunham as a recent college graduate who has moved back in with her mother and sister, unsure what she wants to do with her life moving forward. I haven't seen a lot of Dunham's work so I can't compare this with much, but it certainly has a distinct vibe to it, a sort of mishmash between mumblecore and overly erudite dialogue you might find in something by Aaron Sorkin. Our central character is hard to care about, as she casually manipulates everyone around her to no apparent end. Not that there can't be great movies made about selfish people, but there has to be *something* to hook us into the core of the story, and this doesn't have that. Because of that and the lack of character development, I remember some individual scenes from this movie but no narrative arc -- I can't even remember in which order scenes happen because they have so little impact on each other. I don't know that the movie is bad, per se, but it's definitely made with a specific style in mind and that style isn't for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Tiny Furniture < The Misfits

Tiny Furniture > My Friend Irma

Tiny Furniture < Sullivan's Travels

Tiny Furniture > Labor Day

Tiny Furniture > Footloose (2011)

Tiny Furniture < The Hurt Locker

Tiny Furniture > Kid 90

Tiny Furniture < Captain Fantastic

Tiny Furniture < Silk Stockings

Tiny Furniture < The Rescuers Down Under

Tiny Furniture < Gypsy (1962)

Tiny Furniture < Rigoletto

Final spot: #2318 out of 3575, or 35%.

The Song of Lunch (2010)

IMDb plot summary: A London publisher recounts a lunchtime reunion with a former lover, in poetic monologue.

Directed by Niall MacCormick. Starring Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, and Andi Soric.

The Song of Lunch is an hour-long television adaptation of a poem of the same name by Christopher Reid. It tells the story of a man (played by Alan Rickman) meeting an old flame for lunch (played by Emma Thompson). The majority of the spoken dialogue is actually voiceover of the man's internal monologue -- taken, I suspect, directly from the poem, given the nature of the way the words flow. And it FEELS like a poem, the way it's written out. It's wholly different from anything else I've seen recently, and that alone made it worth a watch for me. Rickman crushes it here. Both he and Thompson are experts in the art of showing seething resentment hidden behind a wall of polite British restraint, and that serves them well as the lunch goes rather badly. Sometimes it's difficult to listen to the thoughts in Rickman's character's head -- he's a pretty loathsome, self-centered individual -- but watching him unravel is a fascinating journey. It definitely makes me want to read the poem itself someday, and I'm glad to have seen this short piece.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Song of Lunch > The Misfits

The Song of Lunch < The Black Cat

The Song of Lunch > The River Wild

The Song of Lunch < Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey

The Song of Lunch > Mickey Blue Eyes

The Song of Lunch > The Death of Stalin

The Song of Lunch < Wolf

The Song of Lunch > How to Train Your Dragon

The Song of Lunch > Orgazmo

The Song of Lunch > In Search of a Midnight Kiss

The Song of Lunch > There Will Be Blood

The Song of Lunch > Carefree

Final spot: #1147 out of 3579, or 68%.

The Devil's Holiday (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A savvy city girl is hired to sugar an earnest farm boy into a business deal, but loses her heart.

Directed by Edmund Goulding. Starring Nancy Carroll, Phillips Holmes, and James Kirkwood.

The Devil's Holiday reminded me very much of another movie from 1930, F. W. Murnau's City Girl. Both feature a naive young farmer who comes to the big city for business and returns home with a wife his family is skeptical of -- only in this case, the family is right to be skeptical, since she's only there for his money. There's a simplicity to this movie that is very appealing, and our young female lead is pretty good, especially in the sequences where she's starting to have a change of heart. She is snippy and irritable, and while at first it seems like it's because she's an unpleasant person, it starts to become clear that she's not really happy with herself for the decision she's made, and it comes out as anger. It never quite reaches the heights of City Girl when it comes to charm, but it's a quiet, sweet little movie that was just fine to watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Devil's Holiday < Dark and Stormy Night

The Devil's Holiday > Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

The Devil's Holiday > Sullivan's Travels

The Devil's Holiday > Get Shorty

The Devil's Holiday > Senna

The Devil's Holiday > After the Wedding

The Devil's Holiday > Safety Not Guaranteed

The Devil's Holiday > Le Week-End

The Devil's Holiday < Malcolm X

The Devil's Holiday < The Elephant Man

The Devil's Holiday < Something to Sing About

The Devil's Holiday > A Cure for Wellness

Final spot: #1797 out of 3569, or 50%.

Gloria (1999)

IMDb plot summary: After serving three years in prison covering for her gangster boyfriend, Kevin, Gloria returns to New York City for the money she was promised. Inside Kevin's base of operations, she finds 7 year old Nicky, whose family has been killed.

Directed by Sidney Lumet. Starring Sharon Stone, Jean-Luek Figueroa, and Jeremy Northam.

Gloria is a Sidney Lumet movie starring Sharon Stone as the titular Gloria, a mobster's girlfriend who just got out of prison. She goes back to her boyfriend, only to find herself in the middle of a complicated situation involving a young boy. The boy's father had evidence of widespread corruption, and before he was murdered, he passed this evidence onto his son, and now the mobsters are threatening the boy's life, until Gloria steps in to try to get him to safety. This is a later film by Lumet and definitely one of his lower-tiered ones. It doesn't deliver very well on either an emotional or an action/thriller level, though Stone does have a few truly funny line deliveries that would be funnier in a different movie. It just all kind of plays out in an uninteresting way, and to be honest, it's hard even to scrounge up enough to say about it. It feels like a lazy effort that anyone could have directed, which is disappointing, given how great Lumet could be.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Gloria < The Misfits

Gloria < The Balloonatic

Gloria > Move Over, Darling

Gloria < Pete's Dragon

Gloria > Jane Eyre (1997)

Gloria > Rancho Notorious

Gloria < Bullitt

Gloria > Shampoo

Gloria > The Formula

Gloria < Gone With the Wind

Gloria < Eddie the Eagle

Gloria < Week End

Final spot: #2940 out of 3576, or 18%.

Something the Lord Made (2004)

IMDb plot summary: A dramatization of the relationship between heart surgery pioneers Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas.

Directed by Joseph Sargent. Starring Alan Rickman, Mos Def, and Kyra Sedgwick.

Something the Lord Made is a TV biopic about the first cardiac surgery ever performed. Alan Rickman plays scientist Alfred Blalock who heads up the research, and Mos Def plays his assistant Vivien Thomas, who turns out to be just as talented, if not more than Blalock, but is consistently overlooked because he is African-American. Cardiac surgery is one of those things that obviously I knew in my head had to have been innovated at some point in the recent past, but I didn't really know anything about how it went down, so it was interesting to see the obstacles in the way of making it happen and how it really was presumed to be eternally beyond the bounds of medicine. I did find it extremely distracting, although, yes, historically accurate, how heavy the focus was on animal experimentation. It was pretty upsetting to watch them deliberately diminishing a dog's oxygen supply so they could then figure out how to fix it. While that was absolutely part of the history, it definitely undercuts the film's attempted "hurray for science" attitude throughout. That makes it tough to recommend, although the story itself is an interesting one, told in decent biopic format with good performances.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Something the Lord Made < Frank

Something the Lord Made > Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Something the Lord Made > Sullivan's Travels

Something the Lord Made > Get Shorty

Something the Lord Made > Senna

Something the Lord Made > After the Wedding

Something the Lord Made > Safety Not Guaranteed

Something the Lord Made > Le Week-End

Something the Lord Made < True Romance

Something the Lord Made > Zelig

Something the Lord Made < The Elephant Man

Final spot: #1795 out of 3571, or 50%.