Jesus Christ Superstar Live In Concert (2018)

IMDb plot summary: A live musical recounting the final days of Jesus Christ and those around him.

Directed by David Leveaux and Alex Rudzinski. Stars Sara Bareilles, Alice Cooper, and Ben Daniels.

Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert is, well, a live in concert version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Tim Rice musical. This one stars John Legend as Jesus, Brandon Victor Dixon as judas, and Sara Bareilles as Mary Magdalene. It's a rock musical retelling of the final days of Jesus life, focusing heavily on the perspective of Judas and the religious leaders who are plotting to take Jesus down. Jesus Christ Superstar is maybe my least favorite of Webber's big hits. It has a few really incredible musical motifs and then a lot of nothing around it. That can probably be said of many of his shows, but this is an especially uncompelling story for me, which is maybe a little weird given that I am a very Christian religious person... But there's just not a lot of about this version of the story that resonates with me. Jesus just seems perpetually whiny, so while I love the song "Gethsemane" in isolation, it's pretty annoying in context. Judas, however, also doesn't come across as a compelling character, and Mary Magdalene just does nothing at all. In this particular performance, I like Dixon's and Bareilles' performances. Bareilles manages to bring at least some sincerity to her characters perpetual passiveness, and Dixon is a heck of a vocalist. John Legend is not an actor and does not sell his character at all. Jesus Christ Superstar will forever work better for me as a short highlights album then as a full-fledged production, and this particular production doesn't do anything to change my mind on that. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert (2018)

📊 Ranked #1799/4031 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 56

lost to Monsters (#1969 → #1919)

beat Gigi (#3019 → #3021)

beat Fantastic Voyage (#2523 → #2530)

beat JFK (#2268 → #2261)

beat Grand Illusion (#2155 → #2178)

beat Critters (#2035 → #2062)

lost to Ratatouille (#2011 → #1798)

beat The Christmas Toy (#2063 → #2539)

beat Burning (#2058 → #2146)

beat A Hard Day's Night (#2073 → #2175)

lost to How Do You Know (#1991 → #1820)

beat My Week with Marilyn (#2015 → #2034)

Three Faces East (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A beautiful British intelligence agent attempts to reveal the identity and motives of a powerful German spy during World War 1.

Directed by Roy Del Ruth. Stars Constance Bennett, Erich von Stroheim, and Anthony Bushell.

Three Faces East is about a female German spy who is tasked with staying with an upper class British family posing as the woman who nursed their son in the army before he died. Her mission is to read and transmit information about military maneuvers that the head of the household receives. While we certainly had some spy films in this 1930 project, we haven't had many female spies, so that made this already kind of a fresh take. They also shy away from making her an obvious femme fatale, hinting that there's going to be some kind of change of heart for her near the end. As suspicion rises in the house, there are some good tense scenes in which she is nearly caught, and those are paced and staged really well to heighten the suspense. The final third of the movie doesn't quite live up to the promise of the first 2/3, but it still holds together okay. A decent watch. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Three Faces East (1930)

📊 Ranked #2542/4030 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 37

lost to Gypsy (#2011 → #1917)

beat The Deep (#3014 → #3015)

beat Pi (held at #2509)

beat Le Week-End (#2258 → #2254)

lost to The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (#2137 → #1992)

beat Absolute Power (#2199 → #2220)

beat Sneakerella (#2168 → #2174)

lost to The Dawn Patrol (#2152 → #2122)

beat Laura (#2159 → #2291)

beat Waterloo (#2156 → #2309)

lost to Top Hat (#2153 → #2134)

beat Grand Illusion (#2154 → #2138)

The Office Wife (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Larry asks Kate to write about "Office Wives" - executive stenographers whose work creates wife-like bonds with bosses. He's unaware that such stories can reflect reality.

Directed by Lloyd Bacon and Michael Curtiz. Stars Dorothy Mackaill, Lewis Stone, and Natalie Moorhead.

The Office Wife is a romantic comedy about a young woman who gets a job as a secretary and ultimately falls in love with her  married boss. There are some scattered mentions throughout of what the title means, namely that the work secretary does so much in taking care of the working man that there is basically no need for wives anymore. It never really builds on that theme, though, so much as just tosses it out there and then we watch a pretty normal romance happen. This is a very short film, under an hour, so there's not much time to build much of a greater concept or even really a sense of character, although it is very fun to see a very young Joan Blondell play the part of the female lead sister, a much less inhibited character who keeps nudging her sister to pursue the illicit affair. Some of these shorter films from 1930 successfully fit an entire arc into that shortened time frame, but this one feels like it's lacking, although none of the scenes that are here unpleasant or objectionable, just kind of bland.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Office Wife (1930)

📊 Ranked #3122/4029 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 23

lost to Gypsy (#2010 → #2011)

lost to Chungking Express (#3067 → #3019)

beat Anastasia (#3522 → #3524)

beat The Jazz Singer (#3251 → #3264)

beat The Shaggy Dog (#3165 → #3172)

beat Shane (#3057 → #3061)

lost to You Only Live Once (#3090 → #3046)

lost to Where Eagles Dare (#3028 → #3010)

beat Avengers: Endgame (#3045 → #3059)

beat The Iceman (#3043 → #3086)

beat Cracks (#3064 → #3217)

lost to Stormy Weather (#3066 → #3052)

Let Us Be Gay (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A housewife divorces her self-centered husband. Years later, she attends a party where her ex is pursuing another woman. Unbeknownst to him, she is the same ex-wife he'd neglected, now transformed into a fashionable socialite.

Directed by Robert Z. Leonard. Stars Norma Shearer, Rod La Rocque, and Marie Dressler.

Let Us Be Gay is a 1930 romantic comedy starring Norma Shearer as a woman whose husband cheats on her, so she leaves him and decides to reinvent her life. Some time later, she is invited to stay with a rich older woman whose niece is in a relationship she doesn't approve of, so she asks Shearer to lure the man away, only for it to turn out that the man is Shearer's ex. This is the second film from this year in which the same actress plays a woman who starts living it up what she realizes that her husband has been doing the same, but this one has a lot less meaningful anything to say about it. My reaction to this can't be shared without spoiling the ending, so let me say that it sets it up as if Shearer is going to reject her ex's attempts to win her back and is going to maintain her own independence that he she has fought so hard for, only for her in the last 30 seconds to break down and say, no, she's so sad and lonely and she wants to get back together with her husband. He's made no attempts to change his behavior or attitude, he just thinks she's hotter now and wants to get back with her because of that. The other film with this plot, The Divorcee, was a little bit more thoughtful in how it approached this, but this one was just deeply disappointing. The mistaken identity plot throughout was also not particularly compelling. Definitely a middling film that then was dragged much further down due to its unsatisfactory ending. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Let Us Be Gay (1930)

📊 Ranked #3003/4028 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 26

lost to Swing Time (#2010 → #2013)

beat The Rookie (#3015 → #3027)

lost to The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (#2514 → #2220)

lost to Max Dugan Returns (#2764 → #2661)

lost to Grace of Monaco (#2889 → #2806)

beat The White Ribbon (#2952 → #2973)

beat Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#2920 → #2956)

lost to Chinatown (#2904 → #2877)

beat A Mighty Wind (#2912 → #3005)

lost to On the Waterfront (#2908 → #2919)

lost to Kiki's Delivery Service (#2910 → #2887)

lost to The Divorcee (#2911 → #2847)

Ingagi (1930)

IMDb plot summary: An expedition enters an area of the Congo jungle to investigate reports of a gorilla-worshipping tribe. After many dangerous adventures, they come upon the tribe they sought, only to watch as a virgin is sacrificed to a huge gorilla, who takes her away. The expedition follows the gorilla in an attempt to save the woman.

Directed by William Campbell. Stars Sir Hubert Winstead, Charles Gemora, and Arthur Clayton.

Ingagi is a supposed African exploration documentary from 1930 that begins and ends with the promise of seeing a native tribe sacrifice one of their young women to the gorillas. Everything in between is pretty straightforward animal footage, some of which is pretty entertaining, but I did learn later that most of it was just stolen from someone else, and then they filmed fake stuff around it and tried to pass it off as an actual documentary, including scenes with gorillas that are obviously men in gorilla costumes, and the purported discovery of a new animal that is just a turtle with fake wings and scales attached to it. There's zero redeeming quality to any of this. Even if you want to watch cool animal footage, this isn't worth it because it's not only a 1930 movie, but it's a 1930 movie using 1915 footage  without permission, so the quality isn't great. Fortunately, 100 years later, there are much better animal films to watch that don't lately lie about native Africans to play on exploitative white fears.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Ingagi (1930)

📊 Ranked #4007/4027 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 1

lost to Tank (#2009 → #2005)

lost to End of Days (#3014 → #3008)

lost to The Out-of-Towners (#3520 → #3518)

lost to Lockdown (held at #3772)

lost to Just Like Heaven (held at #3897)

lost to The Family Stone (held at #3960)

lost to The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (held at #3991)

beat RocketMan (#4010 → #4011)

lost to Alvin and the Chipmunks (held at #4002)

lost to Manos: The Hands of Fate (#4006 → #4005)

beat Zombie Nightmare (#4008 → #4009)

lost to Flubber (#4007 → #4008)

The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists and determined assassins.

Directed by Wes Anderson. Stars Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera.

The Phoenician Scheme is Wes Anderson's newest movie, starring Benicio del Toro as a scheming businessman who decides to appoint his nun daughter heir to his fortune, played by Mia Threapleton. His fortune however is in crisis, so he takes his daughter around with him to attempt to stabilize his wealth. After being disappointed with Android City, I began to wonder if maybe I was just Wes Anderson'ed out and wouldn't enjoy his stuff anymore. I had a good time with this one though. There's a little bit more variety to the characters than the sad stoicism that populates most Anderson movies, and I think the more linear, less episodic nature of the plot works in its favor. For the first time since Moonrise Kingdom, I felt some affection towards some of these characters and was invested in what would happen to them. Anderson's distinct and colorful visuals are certainly on display here, as is his talent for connecting a wide range of interesting guest stars playing tiny parts. My personal favorite was Richard Ayoade as a militant revolutionary. This one still doesn't quite rise above the level of "generally enjoyable" to be something that I'm really struck by, and I still can't tell you if I'm going to remember this any longer than I did Asteroid City or French Dispatch, or whatever he did before that that I've already forgotten... but I had a better time with this than I expected. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

📊 Ranked #2030/4026 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 50

lost to Badlands (#2000 → #1980)

beat Footloose (#3014 → #3019)

beat War of the Buttons (#2515 → #3038)

beat JFK (#2262 → #2263)

beat The Man Who Came to Dinner (#2138 → #2621)

beat Bonnie and Clyde (#2076 → #2098)

lost to 7 Plus Seven (#2043 → #1626)

beat The Chalk Garden (#2032 → #2062)

beat I Am Legend (#2050 → #2056)

lost to Malignant (#2046 → #2043)

beat Bridesmaids (#2039 → #2053)

beat Mrs Brown (#2048 → #2059)

Walk Cheerfully (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A small-time hood wants to go straight for a good girl but finds that starting over isn't as simple as it sounds.

Directed by Yasujirô Ozu. Starring Minoru Takada, Hiroko Kawasaki, and Satoko Date.

Walk Cheerfully is the second of two silent films I watched recently by Yasujiro Ozu, and, weirdly, they both end with the main character making the same exact noble sacrifice of turning himself in to the police rather than running from them so that he can hopefully continue a normal life once he's released and his slate is wiped clean. In fact, watching the two back to back makes it almost impossible to talk about this one without comparing it to the other, which I did like more. This one focuses much more on  the backstory of the young man and his love story with the woman. We see him working for a long time to try to escape his life of crime so that he can be worthy of her, only to find himself caught up in another illegal scheme at the end. Because of that, even though the two films are very similar in actual plot details, the feeling of them is different. Here, his turning himself in does feel like a cleansing of not only his immediate crime, but his entire past. This also feels much more like a straightforward crime story, which is less my genre, but Ozu does still manage to make it feel intimate and personal by building the relationships between the group and contrasting them with the main character's relationship with his girlfriend. While I loved That Night's Wife, I only like this one. It brings to mind a little bit the experience of watching Serpico and Prince of the City by Sidney Lumet back to back, almost like watching a director realize he hadn't completed the film he wanted and try again. Of these two, I think Walk Cheerfully is the lesser, but it's still a decent film. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Walk Cheerfully (1930)

📊 Ranked #1941/4025 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 52

beat Meet John Doe (#2009 → #2018)

lost to Muriel's Wedding (#1003 → #1004)

lost to Joker (#1506 → #1491)

lost to The Letter (#1757 → #1347)

lost to Eyes Wide Shut (#1883 → #1828)

beat The Sea Gull (#1946 → #1944)

beat Cast Away (#1914 → #1945)

beat Away We Go (#1898 → #1963)

lost to Imitation of Life (#1890 → #1806)

lost to Aladdin (#1894 → #1885)

lost to The Mummy (#1896 → #1818)

beat The Prestige (#1897 → #1924)