Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A father's wish magically brings a wooden boy to life in Italy, giving him a chance to care for the child.

Directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson. Starring Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, and Gregory Mann.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is a stop-motion version of the famous Italian story. The narrative is a familiar one: a lonely woodcarver's marionette comes to life and gets into all kinds of trouble while learning moral truths about lying and greed and so on. I've never been a fan of the story in any adaptation -- I find it a combination of preachy and horrific in a way that is deeply off-putting to me. Del Toro's aesthetic is just the right combination of fantastical and unsettling to make this story work, for the most part. I didn't know this one was a musical, and the musical numbers are great, neither a traditional musical theater sound nor the pop Broadway sound that's permeated most of our modern musicals. These completely fit the style of the film and are just unexpected enough to keep them interesting throughout. Without giving too much away, I also really like how this one ends. It's not the typical magical happy ending that gets attached to the narrative, and it feels like a much more fitting resolution to this kind of story. This is probably about the best version of Pinocchio you can make, in my opinion, and it's well worth a watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > King Kong Escapes

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio < Anna Karenina

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > The Romantics

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio < The Mummy (1932)

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio < Spellbound (2002)

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Panic Room

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > The Intouchables

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > The Circus

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Born Yesterday

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Invictus

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Man on Wire

Final spot: #1292 out of 3758, or 66%.

The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993)

IMDb plot summary: In Missouri, during the 1840s, young Huck Finn fearful of his drunkard father and yearning for adventure, leaves his foster family and joins with runaway slave Jim in a voyage down the Mississippi River toward slavery free states.

Directed by Stephen Sommers. Starring Elijah Wood, Courtney B. Vance, and Robbie Coltrane.

The Adventures of Huck Finn is a 1993 Disney take on the classic story by Mark Twain, starring Elijah Wood as the titular character and Courtney B. Vance as his companion, runaway slave Jim. We follow Huck as he runs away from his abusive father and gets tangled up in a series of adventures, including examining his own morals on whether he should help Jim escape or turn him in. I feel like I must have read this book at some point in my life, but as I watched this movie, I remembered absolutely none of these events, despite most of them being in fact in the book (at least according to Wikipedia). It's a lot jauntier than I thought it might be, leaning heavier into Disneyfied broad comedy at times, and sometimes into a Disneyfied broad version of race that occasionally is very jarring. Elijah Wood brings to the role almost a winking-at-the-camera vibe which fits well when his mischievous character is going on silly adventures (though again, doesn't work so well when we are about to watch a man be killed for escaping slavery). It's a strange mix of a movie that definitely made me want to go back and read (or reread?) the book to see if that tonal shift is present there as well.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Adventures of Huck Finn < Kinky Boots the Musical

The Adventures of Huck Finn > La Dolce Vita

The Adventures of Huck Finn > Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Adventures of Huck Finn > Belfast

The Adventures of Huck Finn > Internal Affairs

The Adventures of Huck Finn < Escape from New York

The Adventures of Huck Finn > Pitch Perfect 2

The Adventures of Huck Finn > A Walk on the Moon

The Adventures of Huck Finn < The Beach

The Adventures of Huck Finn < High School Musical 3: Senior Year

The Adventures of Huck Finn < Fatherhood

The Adventures of Huck Finn < My Girl

Final spot: #1951 out of 3756, or 48%.

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)

IMDb plot summary: Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.

Directed by Martin McDonagh. Starring Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Kerry Condon.

The Banshees of Inisherin is set in a small fictional Irish town, focusing on two men who have been best friends for ages, until one, played by Brendan Gleeson, abruptly decides he doesn't like the other anymore and draws strict boundaries. We follow the rejected one, played by Colin Farrell, as he tries to negotiate and persuade and occasionally intimidate his former friend into restoring the relationship. Martin McDonagh has such a talent for blending comedy and tragedy in his work, and while many of his previous films have leaned more one way or the other, this one absolutely lands right in the middle for me, both laugh-out-loud funny at times and gut-punchingly sad. And more than any of his other work, this one leans heavily into the lyricism of the Irish dialect in this village -- so many line readings that wouldn't have worked at all in any other context. I wasn't fully sold on the film's ending, but that's pretty consistently true of McDonagh's work for me, and the ride was thoughtful and enjoyable enough that I don't mind if it falters a little bit in the final moments.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Banshees of Inisherin > King Kong Escapes

The Banshees of Inisherin > Anna Karenina

The Banshees of Inisherin > The White Tiger

The Banshees of Inisherin < Deathtrap

The Banshees of Inisherin > Shaolin Soccer

The Banshees of Inisherin < Saving Mr. Banks

The Banshees of Inisherin < Broadway Danny Rose

The Banshees of Inisherin > Nosferatu

The Banshees of Inisherin < 50/50

The Banshees of Inisherin < Fail-Safe (1964)

The Banshees of Inisherin < And Now for Something Completely Different

The Banshees of Inisherin < The Young Girls of Rochefort

Final spot: #336 out of 3755, or 91%. That seems high, but TCDNL.

Journey to Greenland (2016)

IMDb plot summary: Thomas and Thomas are going through a rough patch: they are both thirty-something actors living in Paris. They randomly decide to leave the city and fly away to Kullorsuaq, one of the most remote villages of Greenland, where Thomas' father Nathan lives. Among the Inuit community, they will discover the charms of the local customs and their friendship will be challenged.

Directed by Sébastien Betbeder. Starring Thomas Blanchard, Thomas Scimeca, and François Chattot.

Journey to Greenland follows a French actor who visits his father in Greenland and brings a buddy along. The two explore the area, learn more about the culture, and make some decisions about their lives. I sought out this movie because I had apparently never seen a film produced in Greenland, and this was the easiest one for me to find to check that off my list. I'll need to look for more at some point because while this is a decent enough little movie, I'd rather see a story about the people of Greenland with an insider lens more than this outside one. This movie has some lovely Arctic scenery and does a great job of setting the atmosphere of these young men's journey, and there's one surprisingly tense scene where we spend a full three minutes watching them desperately try to keep their dial-up Internet connection strong enough to submit the information they need to stay in business as working actors, but the character development as a whole is pretty underwhelming, and it's disappointing that we don't really get to spend much time with any of the individual residents of this town. The film casts a wide net and capture a few interesting moments, but I hoped for more from it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Journey to Greenland > King Kong Escapes

Journey to Greenland < Anna Karenina

Journey to Greenland < Die Hard

Journey to Greenland < You Can Count on Me

Journey to Greenland < Summer of Soul

Journey to Greenland < Hans Christian Andersen

Journey to Greenland > Horton Hears a Who

Journey to Greenland < Resurrect Dead: The Toynbee Tiles

Journey to Greenland < A Silent Voice

Journey to Greenland < For Pete's Sake

Journey to Greenland > The Bat Whispers

Journey to Greenland < Dodsworth

Final spot: #1845 out of 3754, or 51%.

The Bat Whispers (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A master criminal terrorizes the occupants of an isolated country mansion.

Directed by Roland West. Starring Chester Morris, Una Merkel, and William Bakewell.

The Bat Whispers focuses in on a house that finds itself at the center of a series of crimes, including a bank robber and a mysterious thief known only as "the Bat." The inhabitants of the house try to solve the mysteries as they arise. This is based on a play, and this is exactly the kind of play I could see a high school latching onto to perform -- lots of distinct characters, lots of fun twists and turns, some fun almost farcical moments of confusion. But in the end, it really didn't land that well. What I liked most about it was the lead character, the middle-aged rich woman who owns the house, and while you expect her to mostly be snobby and prudish, she ends up being one of the more competent detectives among the group. There are also some fun eerie shots of The Bat as he stalks various people in the story, and I found I wanted far more of that than I did the stories of our ensemble cast solving crimes. It's a decent movie but doesn't fully deliver on the parts that are most interesting.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Bat Whispers > The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)

The Bat Whispers < Anna Karenina

The Bat Whispers < Die Hard

The Bat Whispers < You Can Count on Me

The Bat Whispers < Summer of Soul

The Bat Whispers < Hans Christian Andersen

The Bat Whispers > The Invention of Lying

The Bat Whispers < Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

The Bat Whispers < A Silent Voice

The Bat Whispers < For Pete's Sake

The Bat Whispers > Kodachrome

The Bat Whispers < Dodsworth

Final spot: #1845 out of 3753, or 51%.

Tár (2022)

IMDb plot summary: Set in the international world of Western classical music, the film centers on Lydia Tár, widely considered one of the greatest living composer-conductors and the very first female director of a major German orchestra.

Directed by Todd Field. Starring Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, and Nina Hoss.

Tár stars Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tár, an acclaimed orchestral conductor. We follow her as she completes one of her greatest goals, to record the last of a series of Mahler pieces that will complete a set, and we see the dismissive and manipulative ways in which she uses the people around her as means to an end. Cate Blanchett is fantastic here, really capturing the cold pretentiousness and self-involvement of her character, and while she's an unpleasant person, she's the kind you can't stop watching, which makes this 2.5 hour movie fly by. I'm not sure I got as much meaning out of this as a lot of the folks praising it, but it was definitely an interesting and thoughtful watch. I will say the final sequence was nearly incomprehensible to me as someone completely unfamiliar with what it was referencing, so I had to go look up what exactly was happening (my mind was going straight to some bizarre sci-fi answer!) but it made sense and resonated once I knew what was going on. Blanchett is the reason to see this one, and it's definitely worth it for her work.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Tár > The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)

Tár < Safe

Tár > The Romantics

Tár < The Mummy (1932)

Tár < 35 Up

Tár > Panic Room

Tár < The Exterminating Angel

Tár > Say Anything...

Tár > An Education

Tár < Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1982)

Tár < To Kill a Mockingbird

Tár > Oh Darling Yeh Hai India

Final spot: #1324 out of 3752, or 65%.

For Pete's Sake (1974)

IMDb plot summary: A housewife tries to finance her cab-driving husband's education.

Directed by Peter Yates. Starring Barbra Streisand, Michael Sarrazin, and Estelle Parsons.

For Pete's Sake stars Barbra Streisand as a housewife who manages to scrounge up some money for an investment deal her husband has learned about, but when the deal stops looking so certain, she has to find a way to pay the money back. That sounds like the premise of a crime film, but this one is played entirely for comedy, with Streisand's characters going to greater and greater lengths to try to get the money quickly. It's easy to see the inspirational line between this and What's Up, Doc? from just a year earlier, another zany screwball comedy starring Streisand as a well-intentioned woman sowing chaos wherever she goes. This one isn't quite as smooth. There are a handful of funny one-liners and situations, but overall the situations are hard to laugh at with the sort of broad comedy this is aiming for, especially in a very uncomfortable section of plot where Streisand attempts sex work to raise the money and her deep discomfort is played for laughs but mostly comes across as horrifying. Add to this the fact that her husband is a deeply unlikable character and it's hard to empathize with her desire to make everything work out for him, and the stakes are in the wrong place for this to really work. As I said, some good moments, but it falls flat.

How it entered my Flickchart:

For Pete's Sake > The Ghost and the Darkness

For Pete's Sake < Safe

For Pete's Sake < The Romantics

For Pete's Sake < You Can Count on Me

For Pete's Sake < Summer of Soul

For Pete's Sake < Hans Christian Andersen

For Pete's Sake > Following

For Pete's Sake < Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles

For Pete's Sake < A Silent Voice

For Pete's Sake > Dodsworth

For Pete's Sake < The Girl on a Motorcycle

For Pete's Sake < VeggieTales: Madame Blueberry

Final spot: #1842 out of 3751, or 51%.