Weird Science (1985)

IMDb plot summary: Two high-school nerds use a computer program to literally create the perfect woman, who promptly turns their lives upside-down.

Directed by John Hughes. Starring Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, and Kelly LeBrock.

Weird Science is a John Hughes comedy about two nerdy high school outcasts who, with a combination of pretend science and unexplained magic, create a hot adult woman on their computer who is there to obey their every whim... or also maybe to teach them self-confidence by making them host a party. I knew going into this that this likely wouldn't age well, and OH BOY was I right. This is all about boys thinking they get to earn a girlfriend by, I guess, being confident enough and threatening biker gangs. Nothing about actually being a good boyfriend. There is exactly one joke in here that worked for me, and it was where they accidentally created a giant missile in the house because they hooked up their connections wrong when trying to make a new woman. It was so refreshing to have something to laugh at that it almost tricked me into thinking I liked the movie, but it went right back downhill again. There just aren't any likable characters in this or any good jokes. I love a lot of Hughes, but this one is just garbage nonsense.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Weird Science < Sarah, Plain and Tall

Weird Science < Cars

Weird Science < Annie (1982)

Weird Science > Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Weird Science < The Story of the Weeping Camel

Weird Science > Get Carter

Weird Science > Metal Tornado

Weird Science > Maurice

Weird Science < When Zachary Beaver Came to Town

Weird Science > Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

Weird Science < 8 1/2

Weird Science > Shock Treatment

Final spot: #3547 out of 3902, or 9%.

20th Century Women (2016)

IMDb plot summary: The story of a teenage boy, his mother, and two other women who help raise him among the love and freedom of Southern California of 1979.

Directed by Mike Mills. Starring Annette Benning, Elle Fanning, and Greta Gerwig.

20th Century Women stars Annette Benning as a single mom to a teenage boy played by Lucas Jade Zumann. She worries he isn't getting enough positive influences in his life and ropes in her feminist punk rocker tenant, played by Greta Gerwig, and the boy's female best friend, played by Elle Fanning, to help him figure out his life. This is the kind of slow indie drama that can be done really sloppily, but in this one everything just works, largely because Bening grounds the rest of the cast with her deeply relatable character. The script is also excellent, managing to set up all the typical coming-of-age milestones and life lessons without making it ever seem schmaltzy. I'm usually not a fan of Gerwig at all, but here her attitude of bored distance mostly works, especially in combination with the other women in the film. I also really liked the narrative device of having the characters occasionally speak about their lives from the future -- it widened the film's perspective in a way I found very moving. This is one of those movies that just *works*, and I'm glad I got to see it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

20th Century Women > The Invention of Lying

20th Century Women > The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

20th Century Women < The White Tiger

20th Century Women < Onward

20th Century Women < Shiva Baby

20th Century Women < The African Queen

20th Century Women < Mister Roberts

20th Century Women > What Maisie Knew

20th Century Women < Steven Universe: The Movie

20th Century Women < The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall

20th Century Women > The Boy and the Heron

20th Century Women < Robin Hood (1973)

Final spot: #957 out of 3901, or 75%.

BlackBerry (2023)

IMDb plot summary: The story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic demise of the world's first smartphone.

Directed by Matt Johnson. Starring Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, and Matt Johnson.

BlackBerry is a biopic documenting the rise and fall of BlackBerry in the smartphone market. Jay Baruchel plays the tech genius coming up with all the nerdy solutions, while Glenn Howerton plays the ruthless businessman who knows how to get their product to the market. There aren't a lot of biopics in this genre that I find terribly compelling -- The Social Network is the only one I can think of, and that's because Fincher is a very engaging storyteller. This one is okay. It has some good, if broadly drawn, performances, and for me it's more interesting to see the fall of a company than its rise. But at its heart it still has all the expected beats of this kind of story -- the conflict between creating a good product and making money, the people who get left behind as the company gets big, the pitch meeting that changes everything. If this is a story arc you find particularly compelling, you could definitely do worse than this, but it isn't breaking new ground for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

BlackBerry < Sarah, Plain and Tall

BlackBerry > Cars

BlackBerry < Wild Zero

BlackBerry > Sweet Kitty Bellairs

BlackBerry > American Hustle

BlackBerry > Konrad

BlackBerry < Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

BlackBerry < The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

BlackBerry > The Conformist

BlackBerry < Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

BlackBerry < The Ice Storm

BlackBerry < Sideways

Final spot: #2490 out of 3900, or 36%.

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A fashion model celebrity couple join an eventful cruise for the super-rich.

Directed by Ruben Östlund. Starring Thobias Thorwid, Harris Dickinson, and Charlbi Dean.

Triangle of Sadness tells the story of a rich influencer couple who go on a cruise together that ends in disaster. We follow them and their conversations with other wealthy people, as well as the yacht staff working to keep them happy. This was a difficult film for me to follow, not in the sense of the plot, but in the sense of what narrative threads I was intended to be following and what I was supposed to be getting out of it. I typically love stories highlighting the contrast between the classes, but this one just seemed too scattered for me to follow where the director and writer wanted to take me. There were several individual pieces I did enjoy, and I found myself pondering the ambiguous ending long after the credits rolled, but the more I sit with the rest of the movie, the less it seems to cohere.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Triangle of Sadness < Sarah, Plain and Tall

Triangle of Sadness > Avengers: Endgame

Triangle of Sadness > The Secret of Nikola Tesla

Triangle of Sadness > Dark City

Triangle of Sadness > After the Wedding

Triangle of Sadness > Sneakerella

Triangle of Sadness > Vampyr

Triangle of Sadness > Charulata

Triangle of Sadness < The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Triangle of Sadness > Sherlock Holmes

Triangle of Sadness < The Blues Brothers

Triangle of Sadness > The Gray Man

Final spot: #1960 out of 3899, or 50%.

Mean Girls (2024)

IMDb plot summary: Cady Heron is a hit with the Plastics, an A-list girl clique at her new school. But everything changes when she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George.

Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. Starring Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, and Auli'i Cravalho.

Mean Girls is the 2024 musical movie adaptation of the now 20-year-old comedy originally starring Lindsay Lohan. The story follows Cady, a high schooler who grew up being homeschooled in rural Africa, and struggles to find her footing when thrust into modern teen high school life. Let me start by saying I went into this with no nostalgic affinity for either the original or the Broadway adaptation, although both are fine, so I was going into this pretty fresh. The script is decent, there are definitely some good songs, but the movie really lives and dies on the musical performances, and Angourie Rice as Cady is a serious disappointment. She underplays both her acting and her singing so much that it loses all energy and makes her a very uninteresting character. Fortunately, the supporting cast rocks it -- Renee Rapp, Auliʻi Cravalho, and Avantika Vandanapu all completely slay all their songs and bring so much fun and joy to the story that it saves it from our mediocre lead. I'm still not a huge fan of the story or the jokes, but I'd definitely rewatch a few of those musical numbers again, which is what I was hoping to get out of this.

How entered my Flickchart:

Mean Girls > Sarah, Plain and Tall

Mean Girls < Dark Passage

Mean Girls > The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Mean Girls < Waking Ned Devine

Mean Girls > Air

Mean Girls < A Little Night Music

Mean Girls < Ikiru

Mean Girls > The Sound of Music

Mean Girls > The Boys of Paul Street

Mean Girls < 49 Up

Mean Girls > A Star Is Born (1937)

Final spot: #1313 out of 3898, or 66%.

Bottoms (2023)

IMDb plot summary: Two unpopular queer high-school students start a fight club to have sex before graduation.

Directed by Emma Seligman. Starring Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, and Ruby Cruz.

Bottoms is a teen sex comedy about two high school senior girls who (somewhat accidentally) start a fight club in the hopes of getting girlfriends and/or losing their virginity before they graduate. This is hardly ever my preferred genre, but I find that I'm coming around on it in light of the increase in female-led teen sex comedies -- this, Booksmart, Plan B, all really funny and entertaining. Our two leads in this one are especially great -- Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott have pitch-perfect deliveries of virtually every line. I also really enjoy the wacky non-realistic tint to the comedy here. I didn't see that coming until about 15 minutes into the movie when I suddenly realized that was the tone it was settling into and I LOVED it. I had a great time with this basically all the way through and am excited to rewatch it again in the near future so I can find even more individual line deliveries that make me laugh.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Bottoms > The Invention of Lying

Bottoms > Dark Passage

Bottoms < Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Bottoms > Theater Camp

Bottoms > The Jungle Book (1967)

Bottoms > Pink Floyd The Wall

Bottoms > Moonrise Kingdom

Bottoms < Men

Bottoms > Argo

Bottoms > Glengarry Glen Ross

Bottoms > Grease

Bottoms > A Man for All Seasons

Final spot: #502 out of 3894, or 87%.

Saltburn (2023)

IMDb plot summary: A student at Oxford University finds himself drawn into the world of a charming and aristocratic classmate, who invites him to his eccentric family's sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten.

Directed by Emerald Fennell. Starring Berry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, and Rosamund Pike.

Saltburn is a dark satire starring Barry Keoghan as a college graduate with a rough past who goes to stay with his college friend's elaborate mansion for the summer, only for relationships to get very twisted very quickly. I'm not going to give any more detail than that, as seeing how the plot unwinds is half the fun. This taps into the same kind of weird over-the-top delight as watching a trashy reality show, except of course this gets to go further and be more ridiculous due to being fictional. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it's kind of mesmerizing. The long closing dance number especially is one of the most memorable ending sequences I've seen in a while. The movie is a little overlong, however -- it ramps up a whole bunch near the end and feels like it's taken forever to get there. If a good 20 minutes or so had been shaved from the first hour, I'd have enjoyed this a whole lot more. Still a wild ride that I had a pretty good time.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Saltburn > The Invention of Lying

Saltburn < Key Largo

Saltburn < The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Saltburn > Imitation of Life

Saltburn > How to Marry a Millionaire

Saltburn > I Saw the Devil

Saltburn < Disney's Newsies the Broadway Musical

Saltburn > Stalag 17

Saltburn > Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India

Saltburn > Creation

Saltburn < A Scanner Darkly

Final spot: #1495 out of 3895, or 62%.