This Is Me... Now (2024)

IMDb plot summary: This narrative-driven odyssey that coincides with the release of her same-named album tells the story of Jennifer Lopez's journey to love through her own eyes.

Directed by Dave Meyers. Starring Jennifer Lopez, Fat Joe, and Jane Fonda.

This Is Me... Now is Jennifer Lopez's visual interpretation of her newest album, and is essentially a series of music videos smushed together with a clumsy plot. We follow our lead character, played by Lopez, as she tries to find love, shares her weird music video dreams with her therapist, and goes to treatment for love addiction. The music videos are fun, with some good visuals and some catchy songs, but trying to pretend there's a cinematic throughline here is absolute nonsense. It doesn't hold together at all and would be much more enjoyable without this clumsy plot trying to say... *something* about J. Lo's life (it's so poorly put together that it's hard to even really know what she's trying to communicate). It all just comes off as pretentious, throwing a bunch of vague tropes at the screen and assuming they'll take on a greater meaning. I could definitely rewatch some of the individual numbers, but there's no reason for them to be put together like this. It makes each one of them less interesting.

How it entered my Flickchart:

This Is Me... Now < Pete's Dragon (1977)

This Is Me... Now < K-19: The Widowmaker

This Is Me... Now > Michael Clayton

This Is Me... Now > X-Men: The Last Stand

This Is Me... Now < Deceived

This Is Me... Now < Batman Begins

This Is Me... Now > The Color of Pomegranates

This Is Me... Now > The Life of David Gale

This Is Me... Now < 42nd Street

This Is Me... Now > Highlander

This Is Me... Now > The Westing Game

Final spot: #3158 out of 3951, or 20%.

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

IMDb plot summary: A young Australian reporter tries to navigate the political turmoil of Indonesia during the rule of President Sukarno with the help of a diminutive photographer.

Directed by Peter Weir. Starring Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver, and Linda Hunt.

The Year of Living Dangerously is set in the weeks before the overthrow of Indonesia's President Sukarno in the mid-60s. Mel Gibson plays an Australian journalist new to Jakarta, Linda Hunt a (male) photo-journalist who has been there for some time, and Sigourney Weaver the British embassy worker they both fall in love with. The romance is easily the least interesting part of this movie, so it's too bad that it takes up the most space. I'm much more interested in Hunt's character, who is immersing himself in the lives of the downtrodden in Jakarta and becoming increasingly frustrated with how their government has abandoned them. (The choice to cast Hunt as a man is fascinating, and she does throw her all into this part and make Billy a well-fleshed-out character, although of course the fact that her character is half-Chinese is a messy bit of yellowface.) It made me want to learn a lot more about that time in Indonesian politics, which I admittedly know almost nothing about, and I always found myself irritated when it tried to recenter me back on Gibson and Weaver's bland love affair. The two sides of the story don't help reinforce each other, they just fight against each other, and the side that "wins" in terms of dominant theme is the least compelling side.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Year of Living Dangerously < Pete's Dragon

The Year of Living Dangerously > K-19: The Widowmaker

The Year of Living Dangerously < Anchors Aweigh

The Year of Living Dangerously > Father of the Bride (1950)

The Year of Living Dangerously > National Velvet

The Year of Living Dangerously < Sideways

The Year of Living Dangerously > Ralph Breaks the Internet

The Year of Living Dangerously < The Resurrection of Gavin Stone

The Year of Living Dangerously > Sullivan's Travels

The Year of Living Dangerously > Splash

The Year of Living Dangerously > Bee Movie

Final spot: #2552 out of 3958, or 36%.

Secret in Their Eyes (2015)

IMDb plot summary: A tight-knit team of rising investigators, along with their supervisor, is suddenly torn apart when they discover that one of their own teenage daughters has been brutally murdered.

Directed by Billy Ray. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Nicole Kidman, and Julia Roberts.

Secret in Their Eyes is a mystery thriller told in two timelines. A government agent's daughter is brutally murdered, and we follow both the original time in which the murder occurred and was not solved, as well as a time jump 13 years later when one of the former agents thinks he's tracked the guy down again. In a lot of ways, this is a pretty typical crime story, but it sets itself apart a bit with some excellent acting performances. Julia Roberts in particular is excellent here as the mother of the murdered woman. She portrays the physical and spiritual toll her daughter's death takes on her, both in the immediate aftermath of the crime and over a decade later when she has been living with it for awhile. The ending is the best part, both satisfying and unsettling in a way that makes it feel more grounded in the humanity of the characters -- there's nothing that's going to undo the pain these characters have gone through, and hoping for that kind of happy ending will always disappoint.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Secret in Their Eyes > Pete's Dragon (1977)

Secret in Their Eyes < Anna Karenina

Secret in Their Eyes < The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Secret in Their Eyes < Winnie the Pooh (2011)

Secret in Their Eyes > Black Snake Moan

Secret in Their Eyes > Scrooge (1970

Secret in Their Eyes > Serenity

Secret in Their Eyes > Is It Fall Yet?

Secret in Their Eyes > Sleepers

Secret in Their Eyes > Irma La Douce

Secret in Their Eyes > The Sword in the Stone

Secret in Their Eyes > Treasure Planet

Final spot: #1729 out of 3950, or 56%. That definitely feels too low, so something's wonky there in my chart.

Bright Lights (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A successful Broadway star ready to retire from her wild career announces her engagement. But her tumultuous past isn't done with her yet.

Directed by Michael Curtiz. Starring Dorothy Mackaill, Frank Fay, and Noah Beery.

Bright Lights is a showbiz romantic drama involving murder and several different romantic plotlines. It's a short film with several lengthy musical numbers, which unfortunately means there's not nearly enough time for all the plot they're trying to add in vain. It's an oddly paced film, with huge amounts of plot squeezed into tiny two-minute bursts, which then gets interrupted by a 10-minute musical number (too often a racist song about African life). I'm not one to complain about a film having lots of musical numbers, but they feel jarring against the dense plot and dozens of characters being crammed into the rest of the film. I'm not sure if I'm getting tired of my 1930 project or if I've seen most of the ones I'd like from the year, but this is another dull entry in the list.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Bright Lights < Pete's Dragon (1977)

Bright Lights < Thirteen Conversations About One Thing

Bright Lights > Michael Clayton

Bright Lights > X-Men: The Last Stand

Bright Lights < The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Bright Lights < Bad Moms

Bright Lights < Steve Jobs

Bright Lights < The Chocolate War

Bright Lights > 30:Minutes or Less

Bright Lights > Charlie Wilson's War

Bright Lights > Green Book

Bright Lights < The Toy That Saved Christmas

Final spot: #3195 out of 3949, or 19%.

Try Seventeen (2002)

IMDb plot summary: The story of a young man who enters college only to discover that he can learn more about life and love from his neighbors in the apartment building where he lives.

Directed by Jeffrey Porter. Starring Elijah Wood, Franka Potente, and Mandy Moore.

Try Seventeen stars Elijah Wood as a 17-year-old starting college and then immediately dropping out, moving into an apartment with two women who are into him, and trying to work through his complicated relationship with his mother and the father he never met. And it's a weird mess of a movie. Wood's character arc is nearly incomprehensible. We can't tell what he wants or what he's trying to do, he's just kind of floating through the movie as things happen around him that apparently contribute to his character growth, but none of it is done well. Especially early on, it can't quite decide if it wants to be a dark quirky comedy or an earnest coming-of-age story, and jumping back and forth doesn't help at all with understanding what we're supposed to be rooting for. I'm especially disappointed with how underdeveloped the subplot is between our lead and his mother, which feels like there's unmined depth there, and the movie just... gives up on it in favor of much less compelling stories. A bland and sloppy film that never reaches its potential.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Try Seventeen < Pete's Dragon (1977)

Try Seventeen > K-19: The Widowmaker

Try Seventeen < Anchors Aweigh

Try Seventeen < The Lost Weekend

Try Seventeen < Sliding Doors

Try Seventeen < Fracture

Try Seventeen > The Da Vinci Code

Try Seventeen < The Three Faces of Eve

Try Seventeen < The 5th Wave

Try Seventeen < Falling in Love

Try Seventeen < Side Effects

Try Seventeen > Walking Across Egypt

Final spot: #2935 out of 3956, or 26%.

The Bounty (1984)

IMDb plot summary: Fed up with their Captain's harsh discipline, a sailing ship's crew decides to take action.

Starring Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins, and Laurence Olivier.

The Bounty is the 1980s adaptation of the Mutiny on the Bounty, starring Anthony Hopkins as the captain insistent on taking the more direct but more dangerous route to their destination, and Mel Gibson as the officer who overthrows him with the help of the crew. I watched the Trevor Howard/Marlon Brando version of this story just last year, and that one sets up Howard as fairly unlikable early on, while this one holds onto a bit more uncertainty about who is in the right. Some of that is due to the film's gimmick of being a flashback, told by Hopkins to the naval council determining whether the mutiny happened due to his incompetence, so the earliest beats of the story in particular are filtered through his eyes. (There's definitely a possibility that the entire story is *meant* to be unreliably filtered through his character's viewpoint, although the sequences following the mutineers after the split don't quite fit in with that thought.) Anyway, the actual quality of the film... It's well paced and decently acted, and I had a good time watching it, but I can't imagine it will make a lasting impact on me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Bounty > Le voyage au Groenland

The Bounty < Woman in the Dunes

The Bounty < The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain

The Bounty < Secret in Their Eyes

The Bounty > Cast Away

The Bounty < Scrooge

The Bounty < Sweet Dreams

The Bounty > The Fixer

The Bounty > My Favorite Year

The Bounty > Meek's Cutoff

The Bounty > Lenny

The Bounty > The Flamingo Kid

Final spot: #1825 out of 3957, or 54%.

Dhamaal (2007)

IMDb plot summary: Four lazy slacker conmen buddies who are jobless, homeless and broke learn about the secret of a hidden treasure from a dying thief and later embark on a race against time to find the mobster's buried treasure and claim it while being pursued by a determined police inspector who is hellbent to get the treasure all by himself.

Directed by Indra Kumar. Starring Sanjay Dutt, Riteish Deshmukh, and Arshad Warsi.

Dhamaal is a Bollywood remake of the Hollywood classic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, in which a zany cast of characters all race to find hidden treasure revealed to them by a dying man. The chaos of this story is well served by the broad style of comedy often found in Bollywood films -- I didn't remember the Mad World plot and didn't recognize it as a remake until nearly the end of the movie, that's how well the story fit in this world. It is a big, bold, silly movie, and while many of the jokes don't land for me, there are enough that I had an okay time with it. It does a good job of hopping around quickly enough with each group that it keeps the energy going, and any time I got bored with one plotline, it was okay because it was only a small portion of the story. Mostly it makes me want to revisit the American version, though, and as such I don't know that it serves much purpose as a remake. So... okay, but just okay.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Dhamaal < Pete's Dragon (1977)

Dhamaal > K-19: The Widowmaker

Dhamaal > Anchors Aweigh

Dhamaal > The Good Dinosaur

Dhamaal < Wreck-It Ralph

Dhamaal < Dunkirk

Dhamaal < Vanya on 42nd Street

Dhamaal < The Devil Wears Prada

Dhamaal > You'll Never Get Rich

Dhamaal > Nobody

Dhamaal > Must Love Dogs

Dhamaal < The Lion in Winter (2003)

Final spot: #2209 out of 3952, or 44%.