Woman in Gold (2015)

IMDb plot summary: Maria Altmann, an octogenarian Jewish refugee, takes on the Austrian government to recover artwork she believes rightfully belongs to her family.

Directed by Simon Curtis. Starring Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, and Daniel Brühl.

Woman in Gold stars Helen Mirren as an Austrian refugee fighting to reclaim family heirlooms stolen by Nazis decades earlier and Ryan Reynolds as the young lawyer who decides to represent her. This is based on a real-life case, and the actual facts are much more interesting than the standard biopic treatment this gets. The script and all the story beats are pretty well telegraphed from early on. I did however find a lot to latch on to in the acting. Helen Mirren is, of course, always excellent, and here she does an excellent job balancing the raging emotion and the calm decisive action of the character. And I'm reminded that I really enjoy Ryan Reynolds as a dramatic actor. He brings an earnest charisma to his role here as a young lawyer who is out of his depth but really wants to do the right thing. So we do have two good performances in a pretty mediocre movie. Possibly worth watching, but possibly also worth just reading about the story yourself and skipping the movie adaptation.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Woman in Gold < The Blues Brothers

Woman in Gold > Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Woman in Gold > Outbreak

Woman in Gold < The King and I

Woman in Gold > Little Norse Prince

Woman in Gold > Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

Woman in Gold > Skylark

Woman in Gold > Wind River

Woman in Gold > Hercules

Woman in Gold > Blue’s Big Musical Movie

Woman in Gold > Avengers: Infinity War

Final spot: #2166 out of 3847, or 44%.

Theater Camp (2023)

IMDb plot summary: The eccentric staff of a rundown theater camp in upstate New York must band together with the beloved founder's bro-y son to keep the camp afloat.

Directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman. Starring Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, and Noah Galvin.

Theatre Camp is a mockumentary about a summer theater program for children. The beloved founder of the camp has had some unexpected health difficulties and her son is attempting to run the summer program in her absence, despite having no idea what he is doing. We follow a series of different subplots trying to make all the summer shows come together. As someone who works in educational theater and has had quite a few of her own summer theater camp experiences, this absolutely works for me. The jokes nearly all land, and yet the theater kid in me is still drawn into the sentimentality of theater being the thing that changes people. I laughed out loud several times during this, but it also absolutely reminded me why I love this art form so much and how magical it can be working on that with a group of young enthusiastic actors. But also it's just a funny and entertaining movie. I think it would also be entertaining even for folks who are not involved in the theater world at all. The characters are still entertaining, the arcs are still enjoyably silly, and even a lot of the theater in-jokes are structured in such a way that the gist of the joke would get across to even the folks unfamiliar with it. Definitely a delightful watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Theater Camp > The Blues Brothers

Theater Camp > The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Theater Camp < Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Theater Camp < Spencer

Theater Camp > Shiva Baby

Theater Camp > Au Revoir Les Enfants

Theater Camp > The Incredibles

Theater Camp > Atonement

Theater Camp > The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

Theater Camp > Raya and the Last Dragon

Theater Camp > Onward

Final spot: #720 out of 3838, or 81%.

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A joyous, emotional, heartbreaking celebration of the life and music of Whitney Houston, one of the greatest female R&B pop vocalists of all time, tracking her journey from obscurity to musical super stardom.

Directed by Kasi Lemmons. Starring Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, and Ashton Sanders.

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is a musical biopic of Whitney Houston's musical career. It follows her from her early breakthrough, to her relationship with Bobby Brown, to her substance abuse issues, to her untimely death. The music numbers all use Houston's original vocals with actress Naomi Ackie lip syncing along to them. Like so many biopics, this tries so hard to fit every aspect of Houston's life in that it fails a little bit as a narrative because it can't quite cohere them into something with a thematic throughline. And of course that's because life itself doesn't have a thematic throughline, but it still makes me wish I'd watched a documentary about Houston's life rather than this somewhat lifeless interpretation of her work. In fact, it did the one thing that a good documentary about Houston's life should absolutely do, which was make me want to go and actually listen to Houston's music. There's a not a lot to be gained from dramatizing it the way it is here. It's a harmless biopic primarily but it's also an uninteresting one.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody < The Blues Brothers

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody > Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody < Outbreak

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody > Follow Thru

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody > Teacher of the Year

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody < Adventures in Babysitting

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody > Red Notice

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody < V/H/S

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody > The Man Who Came to Dinner

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody < The Kid Who Would be King

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody < Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody < Coraline

Final spot: #2479 out of 3836, or 35%.

Certain Women (2016)

IMDb plot summary: The lives of three women intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail.

Directed by Kelly Reichardt. Starring Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Laura Dern.

Certain Women is a movie following a group of three women who all have loose connections and showing us them going through their lives, encountering career battles and love life battles. On the surface this seems like something that I would really be into, but the slice of life format that this leans into means that none of the stories have an arc that I find satisfying or interesting. I get that they're all intended to be unresolved, but it made it hard for me to connect with the film. I also don't entirely get why these three particular women were grouped together to tell their stories. I can't quite find the right thematic throughline to make sense of the three of them together. This is the kind of movie that some folks will absolutely fall in love with, but it left me a little cold in the end.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Certain Women < The Blues Brothers

Certain Women > National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Certain Women > Outbreak

Certain Women > Avengers: Infinity War

Certain Women > Smokin' Aces

Certain Women < True Romance

Certain Women < Christine

Certain Women < Dogtooth

Certain Women > The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini

Certain Women > Broken Embraces

Certain Women < The Wailing

Final spot: #2024 out of 3831, or 47%.

Paradise Island (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Ellen Bradford comes to the South Sea Island of Tonga to marry her fiancé and finds out that he is a drunk. She also finds out that she is the only white woman on the island and, as such, has three men taking a deep interest in her. 

Directed by Bert Glennon. Starring Kenneth Harlan, Marceline Day, and Tom Santschi.

Paradise Island is a film from 1930 about a woman who travels to meet her fiance in an island of Tonga, only to find that he's not a good person and now she's got more than one alternative suitor interested in her. To be honest, I rephrased that description from IMDb, because this was an extremely dull movie that I forgot about almost instantly after watching. The romance aspect is totally uncompelling, as none of the suitors are likable in the least, and it absolutely traffics in the sort of racist stereotypes that were all too common in any 1930s film set in a quote-unquote "exotic" location. While I've seen quite a few gems on my trek through the year 1930, the year also has its fair share of duds, and this is one of those. Not worth checking out.

How it entered my Flickchart: 

Paradise Island < The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Paradise Island < Beauty and the Bestie

Paradise Island < Joseph: King of Dreams

Paradise Island < Hidalgo

Paradise Island > Rush Hour

Paradise Island > Friends With Money

Paradise Island > The Notebook

Paradise Island < A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Paradise Island < Chicken Little

Paradise Island < The Evil Dead (1981)

Paradise Island < Broken Flowers

Paradise Island > Coogan's Bluff

Final spot: #3620 out of 3830, or 5%.

Over the Garden Wall (2014)

IMDb plot summary: Two brothers find themselves lost in a mysterious land and try to find their way home.

Directed by Katie Krentz and Patrick McHale. Starring Elijah Wood, Collin Dean, and Melanie Lynskey.

Over the Garden Wall is a TV miniseries of short animated episodes following two lost boys trying to find their way back home and encountering a series of strange characters and situations along the way. It's been a stable of my husband's autumn rewatches for years, and so while I've seen pieces of it just from being in the same room, this was the first time I actually sat down and paid attention to it, and I'm so glad I did. It's such a delightful mix of charming and creepy, and Greg is one of the most immediately likable characters I've ever seen in animation. Each episode feels very thematically connected to the rest, without ever feeling like it's too repetitive. And, of course, the songs are a ton of fun, especially now that I get to hear them in their proper context. I finally get the hype around this one and am glad I finally made space to watch it for real.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Over the Garden Wall > The Blues Brothers

Over the Garden Wall > Dark Passage

Over the Garden Wall > The White Tiger

Over the Garden Wall < The Great Dictator

Over the Garden Wall > The Gods Must Be Crazy

Over the Garden Wall > Bicycle Thieves

Over the Garden Wall < 10 Cloverfield Lane

Over the Garden Wall < My Neighbor Totoro

Over the Garden Wall < The Apartment

Over the Garden Wall > Rashomon

Over the Garden Wall > Chaplin

Final spot: #290 out of 3829, or 92%.

Follow Thru (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Club champion Lora Moore loses a golf match to a woman from another golf club. Then Jerry Downs, a handsome golf pro, and his goofy friend Jack Martin show up. Lora takes him on as her golf teacher to work on her putt. She falls for him, but so do several other women. Meanwhile, Lora's friend Angie Howard chases after Jack. A lot of silliness ensues.

Directed by Lloyd Corrigan and Laurence Schwab. Starring Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Nancy Carroll, and Zelma O'Neal.

Follow Thru is a 1930 romantic comedy about a talented female golfer pretending she doesn't know anything about it so the famous golfer she's in love with will teach her. It's an early color musical and is a surprising look at female athletes in the 30s. While the individual pieces of this don't necessarily stand out as anything special, the concept of the story is a lot more interesting than most of the 1930 romances I've been watching. My biggest beef with this movie, though, is the almost unwatchably irritating subplot where Jack Haley is unable to talk to women. I found it, as the kiddos say or have said, so "cringe" that I did actually wince a few times when the character reappeared on screen. So overall, while I wanted to appreciate what this film was bringing, there weren't enough positives and at least one enormous negative that pulled it down.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Follow Thru < The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Follow Thru > Beauty and the Bestie

Follow Thru < No Highway in the Sky

Follow Thru < Master Harold and the Boys (2010)

Follow Thru > The Forger

Follow Thru > Code 46

Follow Thru > Hide and Seek

Follow Thru > Scrooge: A Christmas Carol

Follow Thru > The Unsinkable Molly Brown

Follow Thru > The Limey

Follow Thru > Paradise

Follow Thru > Murder!

Final spot: #2632 out of 3828, or 31%.