The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)

IMDb plot summary: Samantha Caine lives in a small town with her daughter. Eight years ago she emerged, two months pregnant, from a nearby river with no memory of her past or who she is. However, she's getting closer to finding out about her past.

Directed by Renny Harlin. Starring Geena Davis, Samuel L. Jackson, and Yvonne Zima.

The Long Kiss Goodnight stars Geena Davis as a woman who lost her memory several years ago and has re-invented her life since then. However, strange events start convincing her she might have a darker past than she at first thought, and she sets out to try to figure it out. This is a fluffy, fun female-led action thriller, and Geena Davis is a great lead for it, playing both the suburban mom and the ruthless assassin very well. Samuel L. Jackson works as a comedic foil, the everyman thrown into this situation without warning. The emotional arc of the film doesn't work particularly well, but it's mostly just trying to be a fun bombastic time, and it delivers on that for the most part. Not one I'm going to remember for long, but I had a good enough time watching it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Long Kiss Goodnight > Kodachrome

The Long Kiss Goodnight < Safe

The Long Kiss Goodnight < Kajaki

The Long Kiss Goodnight > Ender’s Game

The Long Kiss Goodnight > 12 Years a Slave

The Long Kiss Goodnight < Hereditary

The Long Kiss Goodnight < Cool Hand Luke

The Long Kiss Goodnight < Death to Smoochy

The Long Kiss Goodnight < Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

The Long Kiss Goodnight < Suddenly, Last Summer

The Long Kiss Goodnight > Ben-Hur (1959)

The Long Kiss Goodnight > Chaos Theory

Final spot: #1591 out of 3925, or 59%.

Late Spring (1949)

IMDb plot summary: Several people try to talk 27-year-old Noriko into marrying, but all she wants is to keep on caring for her widowed father.

Directed by Yasujirô Ozu. Starring Chishû Ryû, Setsuko Hara, and Yumeji Tsukioka.

Late Spring is a Japanese movie from the 40s by Yasujiro Ozu about a woman in her 20s who lives alone with her father taking care of him despite the pressure that's placed on her to marry. She is happy with the life that she has but keeps being pressured by everyone around her to do the adult responsible thing and get married, continue on with her life, and leave her father. Tokyo Story is the only other Ozu that I've watched and while it was interesting, it didn't capture my attention. Late Spring absolutely did. I felt myself so connected to this character who was working so hard to not disappoint the people around her but truly did not want to do what they wanted. There's something really heartbreaking about her just not being able to get what she wants. The movie is slow and quiet, and that adds to the sadness of the whole thing. Just like with Tokyo Story, I found a contrast between the cheery smiles these characters would put on and the discontent and the sadness that lay beneath that, and even though this sadness was a fairly mild form, it still felt very real and it felt very difficult and very sad and I really, really loved it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Late Spring > Sarah, Plain and Tall

Late Spring > Safe

Late Spring > The White Tiger

Late Spring > Dead Ringers

Late Spring < Tootsie

Late Spring < Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Late Spring < Seven Samurai

Late Spring < Moxie

Late Spring > Submarine

Late Spring < Bullets Over Broadway

Late Spring < Amahl and the Night Visitors

Late Spring < Everything Everywhere All at Once

Final spot: #237, or 94%.

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

IMDb plot summary: When Keith goes out with Amanda, the girl of his dreams, Amanda's ex-boyfriend plans to get back at Keith. Meanwhile, Keith's best friend, tomboy Watts, realizes she has feelings for Keith.

Directed by Howard Deutch. Starring Eric Soltz, Mary Stuart Masterson, and Lea Thompson.

Some Kind of Wonderful is a John Hughes-written teenage rom-com about a boy who falls in love with a girl in his school who is not super rich herself but has found popularity in the rich crowd. He and his female best friend work together to try to get her to give him a chance. There is a lot to like about this movie. The journey watching through John Hughes' writing work has been very up and down, with as many misses as hits, but this one brings out the best things I like about his work. It has very rewarding relationships and relationship dynamics -- and an ending that I didn't know if I was going to get, but was absolutely what I was rooting for the whole way through. There are enough fun little moments throughout that add light and levity to what could be a purely melodramatic story. Overall, it's a really enjoyable story that is heartwarming and sweet and fun and works a lot better than I thought it might.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Some Kind of Wonderful > The Invention of Lying

Some Kind of Wonderful < Safe

Some Kind of Wonderful > The Impossible

Some Kind of Wonderful > Time Bandits

Some Kind of Wonderful < Cats

Some Kind of Wonderful > Pain and Glory

Some Kind of Wonderful > Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Some Kind of Wonderful > The Bad Seed

Some Kind of Wonderful > 1917

Some Kind of Wonderful > Nina Wu

Some Kind of Wonderful < Gentleman's Agreement

Final spot: #1106, or 72%.

All of Us Strangers (2023)

IMDb plot summary: A screenwriter drawn back to his childhood home enters into a fledgling relationship with his downstairs neighbor while discovering a mysterious new way to heal from losing his parents 30 years ago.

Directed by Andrew Haigh. Starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, and Claire Foy.

All of Us Strangers is a movie starring Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal as two gay men who live in the same mostly empty building and end up beginning a relationship. Along the way we also see Scott visiting his parents, who he hasn't spent much time with and don't know much about the person that he is today. The story and the relationships unfold slowly, so I'm not going to go a whole lot more into detail than that, because I think a lot of it is good to watch unfold by yourself. I will say that this movie left me absolutely devastated. It's a beautiful movie but it's heart-wrenching in ways that I didn't anticipate. There were some moments of grief and loss that I saw coming and others that I did not. Ultimately, at the end, it left me wanting to cry, but in the best possible, horribly cathartic way of just emptying my soul out. Definitely a heavy watch, a tricky watch, but a really beautiful movie. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

All of Us Strangers > The Invention of Lying

All of Us Strangers > Safe

All of Us Strangers > The Legend of 1900

All of Us Strangers > Fatal Attraction

All of Us Strangers < Tootsie

All of Us Strangers < Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

All of Us Strangers < Seven Samurai

All of Us Strangers > Kes

All of Us Strangers > Last Crusade.

All of Us Strangers > Nightmare Before Christmas

All of Us Strangers < The Others

All of Us Strangers > Beasts of No Nation

Final spot: #220, or 94%.

Rosetta (1999)

IMDb plot summary: Young and impulsive Rosetta lives with her alcoholic mother and, moved by despair, she will do anything to maintain a job.

Directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne. Starring Émilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, and Anne Yernaux.

Rosetta is a French film about a teenage girl who lives with her alcoholic mother and is trying to support them both. This is one of those stories that is just relentlessly depressing from beginning to end with zero no happiness in it, and that got very exhausting for me. I also got very overwhelmed with the cinematography choice to film the characters so close up that it was hard to tell what was actually happening. I perpetually felt like I was just standing inches away from them and couldn't process where their bodies were in the full space. This is the kind of movie that some people are going to absolutely love -- in fact, I watched this because it was a favorite of one of my movie fan friends -- but I just found it really dreary and depressing and didn't find a lot of redeeming value to it. It's not a bad movie per se, but it's one that I find hard to judge because I truly don't know what I'm supposed to get out of this.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Rosetta < The Invention of Lying

Rosetta > Avengers: Endgame

Rosetta < Wild Zero

Rosetta > Sweet Kitty Bellair

Rosetta > American Hustle

Rosetta < Internet Famous

Rosetta < Dead Man Walking

Rosetta < The Ascent

Rosetta > National Velvet

Rosetta > Marry Me

Rosetta > Mud

Rosetta < The Lost Daughter

Final spot: #2558, or 35%.

Chain of Fools (2000)

IMDb plot summary: Salma Hayek plays an avid detective assigned to the heist of a batch of precious coins that end up in the hands of a suicidal barber.

Directed by Bix Skahill. Starring Steve Zahn, Salma Hayek, and Jeff Goldblum.

Chain of Fools is a big, goofy comedy of errors starring Steve Zahn as a barber who accidentally kills someone who turns out to be responsible for a big dramatic bank heist, and Zahn thinks he knows where he can get the loot. Cue a long, over-the-top series of misunderstandings and botched crime moves as he tries to get the stolen items and run away with them. This has a lot of moving pieces in it and is a very quick-moving story with jokes coming very fast. Some of them work really well, but a lot of them fall pretty flat. Most of the main storyline with Steve Zahn himself -- and just about everything with his sidekick David Cross -- falls really flat. The part that I liked the most was Elijah Wood's subplot, where he plays a teenage hitman looking to make friends despite also trying to keep up his hitman persona. He is definitely the best part of the movie. So definitely a messy film, but had a few redeemable moments.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Chain of Fools < Sarah, Plain and Tall

Chain of Fools > Avengers: Endgame

Chain of Fools < The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Chain of Fools > Sweet Kitty Bellair

Chain of Fools > American Hustle

Chain of Fools > Internet Famous

Chain of Fools > Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Chain of Fools > The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Chain of Fools < No Highway in the Sky

Chain of Fools > Mongol

Chain of Fools > Eyewitness

Final spot: #2458, or 37%.

Kin-dza-dza! (1986)

IMDb plot summary: Two Russians push the wrong button on a strange device and end up on the telepathic planet Pluke with its strange societal norms.

Directed by Georgiy Daneliya. Starring Stanislav Lyubshin, Evgeniy Leonov, and Yuriy Yakovlev.

Kin-dza-dza! is a very silly Soviet Union comedy about two people who accidentally get transported to a foreign planet in a faraway galaxy and find themselves trapped and trying to find their way back home. They team up with some people who try to fill them in on the customs of the new area that they're living in. It's all very wacky and silly and confusing and surreal, and I never found it quite as funny as I wanted to given the absurdity of the initial premise. It always felt a little bit dreary, continuously watching them trudge across this desert and encounter new nonsensical characters with seemingly very little overarching story. It reminded me a bit of Alice in Wonderland in terms of structure. and that's just not a style of storytelling that I typically find compelling. However, it was certainly creative, and I enjoyed everything conceptually. In theory, everything was really interesting. I just found myself getting bored of the actual story several times partway through.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Kin-dza-dza! < Sarah, Plain and Tall

Kin-dza-dza! > Avengers: Endgame

Kin-dza-dza! > Wild Zero

Kin-dza-dza! > Batman Forever

Kin-dza-dza! > Ghost in the Invisible Bikini

Kin-dza-dza! > The Misfits

Kin-dza-dza! > Vampyr

Kin-dza-dza! > The Fear of ThirteenKin-dza-dza! 

Kin-dza-dza! < The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Kin-dza-dza! > The Gray Man

Kin-dza-dza! < The Blues Brothers

Kin-dza-dza! > Triangle of Sadness

Final spot: #1969, or 50%.