Time After Time (1979)

IMDb plot summary: H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to the 20th Century when the serial murderer uses the future writer's time machine to escape his time period.

Directed by Nicholas Meyer. Stars Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, and David Warner.

Time After Time is a 1979 film starring Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells, who has built an actual time machine and then has to use it to chase Jack the Ripper to the 1970s. It's a very simple premise but one that works incredibly well, and it's just a ton of fun to watch. It's a good combination of a story that is playful but does actually have high stakes. One thing that helps is that it's not just about the action of chasing down Jack the Ripper, but it's grounded in a heartfelt romance between Wells and a bank teller played by Mary Steenburgen. I especially like that, unlike many fish out of water stories, Wells is very intelligent when it comes to figuring out future tech. It's clear that he's already daydreamed about what the future might bring and has some of the scientific knowledge to be able to predict some of this semi-accurately, so he figures out patterns and how to survive in this new world very quickly, which is a refreshing take on this kind of story. The final third has some weird acting choices from Steenburgen in particular, which is a bit off-putting because she has been so good up until that point, but fortunately at that time the action is more the front and center rather than the romance, so whatever she's doing  is not destroying anything that's been set up. Overall, a really fun ride that I knew nothing about going into it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Time After Time (1979)

📊 Ranked #828/4038 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 80

beat The Wedding Singer (#2014 → #2019)

beat The Voices (#1005 → #1010)

lost to 22 Jump Street (#502 → #501)

lost to Tell It to the Bees (#754 → #735)

beat Pather Panchali (#879 → #883)

lost to Support Your Local Sheriff! (#816 → #814)

beat Hawking (#847 → #1176)

beat The Offence (#831 → #832)

lost to Kismet (#823 → #826)

lost to Companion (#827 → #824)

beat Brazil (#829 → #1059)

beat 9 (#828 → #830)

The Wild Robot (2024)

IMDb plot summary: After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island's animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.

Directed by Chris Sanders. Stars Lupita Nyong'o, Pedro Pascal, and Kit Connor.

The Wild Robot is an animated film starting Lupita Nyong'o as a robot that mistakenly lands on Earth and looks around for a task to fulfill. She accidentally destroys a family of birds and decides that her task is going to be to nurture and care for the one baby bird that survives. The film then follows her relationship with the bird, as the rest of the creatures in the forest that do not trust her, and eventually, she must grapple with her destiny to return to home. The pacing of  this movie is a little strange. It feels like it took two separate stories and mashed them into one, so our act one ending feels like a decisive final ending, and the second half felt like an afterthought. I believe this is based on a series of books, so maybe that is literally what happened, that it took two separate books and combined them to make this version. It's definitely a sentimental film but it does a pretty good job of making it work overall. For example, there's a scene where, during a particularly bad winter, the robot shelters as many forest animals as she can in her little house with a fire. They decide to, temporarily at least, accept her help, accept her as one of them, and stop trying to kill each other. The scene shouuld be too cheesy to work, but somehow it feels plausible here. A couple of other positives that I want to mention include Pedro pascal, who should absolutely be doing voice work as on a regular basis. I didn't realize it was him until halfway through the movie, but he makes the fox an incredibly compelling character. There are also some really gorgeous large animation shots of the landscapes as the robot makes her way through. I think all the pieces individually work, and I think like 80% of it works together as a whole. It's a little uneven throughout, but I think it sticks the landing well enough. Definitely a sweet movie and one worth watching. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Wild Robot (2024)

📊 Ranked #838/4037 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 79

beat The Year of Living Dangerously (#2014 → #2308)

beat The Other Boleyn Girl (#1005 → #999)

lost to Rise of the Planet of the Apes (#502 → #489)

lost to Come from Away (#754 → #750)

lost to Whale Rider (#879 → #867)

beat The Hateful Eight (#942 → #935)

beat Volver (#910 → #997)

beat Hustlers (#894 → #893)

beat Being There (#886 → #1136)

lost to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (#882 → #836)

beat Pather Panchali (#884 → #879)

beat The Sting (#883 → #902)

Sully (2016)

IMDb plot summary: When pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger lands his damaged plane on the Hudson River in order to save the flight's passengers and crew, some consider him a hero while others think he was reckless.

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Stars Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, and Laura Linney.

Sully is a film based on a true story, starring Tom Hanks as a pilot who ends up landing a large passenger plane in the Hudson River after both of its engines are taken out during takeoff. Miraculously everybody survives, but the story follows the investigation afterward, where Hanks must prove that his decision to land the plane in the river rather than try to make it back to LaGuardia or to a neighboring airport was the best decision in the moment. For having such a narrow focus of story, over only a few days and focusing on one specific incident, there's a lot of suspense here, as well as some psychological exploration. While it's fairly certain from the get-go that Sully did do his due diligence as a pilot, we still get to see him grapple with self-doubt and lingering trauma from the event, which would of course be part of anybody's experience in this case. The story is surprisingly restrained, not really leaning into melodramatics. In fact, the final climactic moment of the movie revolves entirely around watching a series of simulated flight landings, with no added on drama to it. But watching  airplane simulations has never been as tense as it was in this film. Tom Hanks often manages to play restraint or reservedness with some deep subtext underneath, and he does that very well here. Not a film I would have expected it myself to get invested in, but this is pretty solid.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Sully (2016)

📊 Ranked #1185/4036 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 71

beat The Sea Gull (#2016 → #2020)

lost to What's Eating Gilbert Grape (#1006 → #1011)

beat Nothing in Common (#1510 → #1584)

beat The Exterminating Angel (#1256 → #1400)

beat Henry V (#1135 → #1195)

lost to The Philadelphia Story (#1035 → #161)

lost to Barbie (#1103 → #1078)

lost to Room (#1097 → #231)

lost to Cradle Will Rock (#1106 → #239)

lost to The Bad Seed (#1131 → #1106)

lost to It (#1134 → #1131)

lost to The Secret of NIMH (#1130 → #1124)

Friendship (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A suburban dad falls hard for his charismatic new neighbor.

Directed by Andrew DeYoung. Stars Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, and Kate Mara.

Friendship is a movie starring Tim Robinson as an awkward suburban man who befriends his new neighbor, played by Paul Rudd. When he makes things awkward at a group hangout and the friendship dies, his attempts to get it back make everything worse. I'm not a huge fan of Tim Robinson's TV show I Think You Should Leave. It just has seldom clicked with me, and this one doesn't click with me either. Frankly, this movie is entirely about how my social anxiety is right: any tiny misstep you make is going to inevitably spiral and destroy your life and the lives of everyone around you. It is a terrifyingly claustrophobic film for me to watch and very nearly gave me a panic attack. There is one truly hilarious joke in which Robinson attempts psychedelics to try to regain some clarity in his life and is promised a life-changing experience, only for his trip to end up being an extremely mundane recreation of him ordering food at Subway. That got the only genuine laugh for me from this film. Mostly I was just uncomfortable and horrified. I am not the right person for this film. I don't need to see every worst fear come true in front of me with no escape. My brain can do that on its own just fine. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Friendship (2025)

📊 Ranked #3323/4035 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 18

lost to Max Dugan Returns (#2013 → #2006)

lost to Tiny Furniture (#3020 → #2802)

beat Mr. & Mrs. Smith (#3527 → #3498)

lost to The Goonies (#3275 → #3235)

beat Domestic Disturbance (#3401 → #3412)

beat Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (#3338 → #3341)

lost to Beaches (#3306 → #3260)

beat Annie Get Your Gun (#3321 → #3294)

beat That Darn Cat! (#3313 → #3465)

lost to A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (#3309 → #3259)

beat Fast Food Nation (#3311 → #3326)

beat American Underdog (#3310 → #3305)

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)

IMDb plot summary: A cafe owner discovers that the TV in his cafe suddenly shows images from the future, but only two minutes into the future.

Directed by Junta Yamaguchi. Stars Kazunari Tosa, Riko Fujitani, and Gôta Ishida.

Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes is a Japanese film about a man and his friends who discover that the TV in his bedroom is on a 2-minute time delay from the TV downstairs in the cafe he runs, giving him the ability to see 2 minutes into the future at a time. As he shares this knowledge with friends and they figure out how to use this ability, things get complicated. The simplicity of both premise and execution of this one is a ton of fun. It reminds me a little bit of something like Primer, although of course primer is nearly incomprehensible and this film is much more accessible. but it's a great high-concept low-budget story that just has fun playing around with the puzzle and figuring out all the different ways that this could go wrong, how they can use this to their advantage, and what to do when it seems to be going awry. It's a quick film, only about an hour and 15 minutes, and that is the exact right amount of time to play with this concept to the fullest and still have a satisfying story at the end. This is a great ride, and I definitely recommend it. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)

📊 Ranked #401/4034 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 90

beat Mickey's Christmas Carol (#2013 → #2016)

beat The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (#1004 → #1008)

beat Clerks (#501 → #503)

lost to Mass (held at #250)

lost to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (held at #375)

beat The Boys Next Door (#438 → #450)

beat The Gods Must Be Crazy (#406 → #408)

beat Savannah Smiles (#390 → #392)

lost to Belle (#382 → #380)

lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (#386 → #385)

lost to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (held at #388)

beat Boyz n the Hood (#389 → #403)

Lone Star (1996)

IMDb plot summary: When the skeleton of his murdered predecessor is found, Sheriff Sam Deeds unearths many other long-buried secrets in his Texas border town.

Directed by John Sayles. Stars Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, and Stephen Mendillo.

Lone Star is an ensemble film centering mostly on Chris Cooper as the sheriff of a town in Texas. His father was also the sheriff and has become something of a town legend, but Cooper suspects that maybe there is a darker side to his father's legacy. We also follow subplots looking at the tension between white and Latino residents of the town, as well as a narrative about a group of African-American soldiers in a military base that's being dispersed. This truly is an ensemble film, and each piece of the ensemble is engaging in and of itself, though I don't know that I fully process the purpose of intertwining them specifically. This one is going to take a little bit more thinking about. It is a little depressing to be watching a film from 30 years ago where people are still angry about teaching the full picture of our country's history, such as when Americans took over places that they should not have. Those conversations have only intensified since '96, and it makes this film feels still deeply relevant and contemporary. There are some intriguing editing choices as well. The film jumps from story to story in almost an abrupt way, but it really helps keep the focus tightly on whatever we are looking at at the moment, and it's not until later that we start seeing how things work together. This is a film to sit with for me, and one that I think I will continue to appreciate the longer I sit with it, but I feel like any thoughts I'm giving now are very fresh and raw and might not be fully representative of what the film is.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Lone Star (1996)

📊 Ranked #1305/4033 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 68

beat Mickey's Christmas Carol (#2007 → #2013)

lost to The Voices (#1001 → #1000)

beat The Wolf of Wall Street (#1507 → #1508)

beat World War Z (#1254 → #1253)

beat August Rush (#1129 → #1144)

lost to Witchfinder General (#1086 → #1037)

lost to 28 Days Later (#1098 → #307)

beat True Grit (#1114 → #1323)

beat Goosebumps (#1106 → #1326)

beat Akira (#1102 → #1313)

lost to The Death of Stalin (#1100 → #1099)

beat South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (held at #1101)

The Monkey (2025)

IMDb plot summary: When twin brothers Bill and Hal find their father's old monkey toy in the attic, a series of gruesome deaths start. The siblings decide to throw the toy away and move on with their lives, growing apart over the years.

Directed by Osgood Perkins. Stars Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, and Christian Convery.

The Monkey is a horror movie about two twin brothers who  find a wind-up toy monkey that belonged to their absent father. They discover that winding up the monkey causes someone to die in a horrifying freak accident, anything from being trampled while camping to accidentally setting your head on fire. They dispose of the monkey, only to find out years later that it's come back to wreak havoc again. By far the most engaging part of this movie is the ridiculous over the top deaths. People are exploding left and right and covering the people around them in blood and body parts, at least once it surprised me into laughing out loud. The dialogue in the film, though, is an uncomfortable attempt at comedy that never lands for me, so anytime when we aren't seeing ludicrous gory death scenes is dull at best and eye-rolling and cringy at worst. There is one more exception: the scene in which our lead character interacts with his ex's new boyfriend who wants to adopt his son. This character is played by Elijah Wood as a hilarious fatherhood guru, and there's some good lines in that sequence that gave me glimpses into what the movie was trying to do and how well it could have worked. The script overall needed some more passes to bring out the humor in the moments when no one is dying. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Monkey (2025)

📊 Ranked #2349/4032 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 42

beat Anna (#2011 → #2129)

lost to The Lady Vanishes (#1005 → #1008)

lost to About Elly (#1515 → #1516)

lost to Wet Hot American Summer (#1775 → #1767)

lost to The Aristocats (#1909 → #1890)

beat Flightplan (#1949 → #2542)

lost to The Girl on a Motorcycle (#1914 → #1871)

lost to Native Son (#1931 → #1461)

lost to Rosemary's Baby (#1941 → #1930)

lost to Evita (#1944 → #1443)

beat Yellow Submarine (#1946 → #2587)

lost to Bound (#1945 → #1934)