Nickel Boys (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A powerful friendship develops between two young Black men as they navigate the harrowing trials of reform school together.

Directed by RaMell Ross. Stars Ethan Cole Sharp, Sam Malone, and Najah Bradley.

Nickel Boys follows two Black teenagers who are sent to a reform school for boys, where they bond with each other as they weather the negative treatment from the adults and figure out what their futures might look like. This feels like one of those movies that flew in, wowed everybody, and then suddenly disappeared and nobody’s talked about it for a year. The filming gimmick is that it’s told entirely from first-person point of view cinematography, switching between the two main characters as they take center stage. It definitely is an attempt to put us in the characters’ shoes, but it also calls attention to the gimmick in a way I don’t love. The story is interesting and I want to follow along with it, but oddly the camera gimmickry distanced me from it, which I’m sure is exactly the opposite of the intention. As a result, though, this one left me emotionally cold even when I appreciated pieces of the artistry.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Nickel Boys (2024)

📊 Ranked #2096/4056 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 48

lost to The Last Metro (#2024 → #1327)

beat Robots (#3038 → #3276)

beat Pacific Rim (#2530 → #2527)

beat 42nd Street (#2277 → #3089)

lost to The Beach (#2151 → #2095)

beat The Adventures of Huck Finn (#2214 → #2215)

beat BASEketball (#2182 → #3008)

beat The Room (#2166 → #2180)

beat A Hard Day's Night (#2158 → #2166)

beat Holiday Affair (#2154 → #2299)

beat Frank (#2152 → #2159)

Black Beauty (1994)

IMDb plot summary: The fates of horses, and the people who own and command them, are revealed as Black Beauty narrates the circle of his life.

Directed by Caroline Thompson. Stars Alan Cumming, Sean Bean, and David Thewlis.

Black Beauty is a film adaptation of the children’s book about a horse’s life as he goes through a variety of living situations and owners that are sometimes cruel, sometimes kind. Alan Cumming voices Black Beauty’s thoughts as a narrator. It’s been years since I read this book, but this film brought back a lot of warm fuzzy memories and was charmingly told. The language, particularly Black Beauty’s narration, is clearly targeted toward younger viewers, and I don’t mind it – it gives the story a wholesome sheen that ties the tone together and helps to offset the more disturbing pieces of the plot. I also appreciated the pacing, which is active enough to keep younger viewers engaged but slow enough to allow the quieter moments to land. This all sounds much more impressive than it perhaps is – it is definitely still a children’s film, just a pretty well-done one. I was more drawn into the story than I expected, and if I was a horse-obsessed child, I suspect this would be exactly what I wanted.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Black Beauty (1994)

📊 Ranked #1789/4055 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 56

beat In Search of a Midnight Kiss (#2024 → #2037)

lost to SubUrbia (held at #1010)

beat Oddity (#1517 → #1643)

lost to The Hunt for Red October (#1262 → #1220)

beat Hook, Line and Sinker (#1388 → #1537)

lost to Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (#1325 → #1187)

beat The Miseducation of Cameron Post (#1356 → #1390)

lost to The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (#1340 → #1338)

lost to The Zone of Interest (#1348 → #1341)

lost to Solaris (#1352 → #1347)

beat Triangle of Sadness (#1354 → #1971)

beat Dangerous Liaisons (#1353 → #1360)

Total Eclipse (1995)

IMDb plot summary: Young, wild poet Arthur Rimbaud and his mentor Paul Verlaine engage in a fierce, forbidden romance while feeling the effects of a hellish artistic lifestyle.

Directed by Agnieszka Holland. Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, David Thewlis, and Romane Bohringer.

Total Eclipse tells the story of the turbulent love affair between French poets Arthur Rimbaud (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and Paul Verlaine (played by David Thewlis). Verlaine takes Rimbaud under his wing as a younger poet, and the two begin a wildly volatile relationship. There’s just so much generally unpleasant about this story, these characters, and the film as a whole. Thewlis often has an uncanny ability to ooze sleaziness, and here that is turned up to 11, as he runs into a love affair with a minor and treats his wife despicably. DiCaprio doesn’t fare much better, with the almost hilariously obnoxious self-righteousness of the young, and I never once want him to get what he wants. While obviously they aren’t supposed to be a paragon of romance, the movie definitely hints that there’s something beautiful or at least worthwhile about their relationship, and I just don’t see it. It’s just two hours of miserable people making each other miserable, and I don’t know what I’m meant to get from it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Total Eclipse (1995)

📊 Ranked #2804/4054 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 31

lost to Letters from Iwo Jima (#2017 → #2018)

beat Funny Face (#3037 → #3105)

lost to Internet Famous (#2530 → #2534)

lost to First Blood (#2782 → #2680)

beat The Conjuring (#2908 → #3020)

lost to Argylle (#2845 → #2851)

lost to Holiday (#2876 → #2526)

beat American Hustle (#2892 → #2926)

lost to Sorry, Wrong Number (#2884 → #2585)

lost to Avalon (#2888 → #2497)

lost to Finding Forrester (#2890 → #2453)

lost to The Butter Battle Book (#2891 → #2887)

Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

IMDb plot summary: Jamie regrets her breakup with her girlfriend, while Marian needs to relax. In search of a fresh start, they embark on an unexpected road trip to Tallahassee. Things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals.

Directed by Ethan Coen. Stars Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Beanie Feldstein.

Drive-Away Dolls tells the story of two women who sign up to deliver a car across the country, only to find out that they are carrying forbidden cargo, and someone is after them to get it back. This is a weird delightful film that is a solo film by Ethan Coen, and if all Coen Brothers movies were like this, I’d be a much bigger fan of their work. Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan are both so charismatic – Margaret Qualley is quickly becoming one of my favorite new actresses. There’s a playful zaniness to this that comes out both in the silliness of the actual forbidden cargo and in the strong contrast between Viswanathan’s anxious, private nature and Qualley’s absolutely unrestrained hedonism. It is a wild, over-the-top ride that I had a great time with.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Drive-Away Dolls (2024)

📊 Ranked #993/4053 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 77

beat The Phoenician Scheme (#2023 → #2027)

lost to His Girl Friday (#1010 → #1006)

beat She's Having a Baby (#1517 → #1518)

beat The Long Day Closes (#1262 → #1273)

beat Morning Glory (#1136 → #1139)

beat Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead (held at #1073)

beat Life as a House (held at #1041)

beat Draft Day (#1025 → #1110)

lost to Gremlins (#1017 → #991)

beat Wizards (#1021 → #1023)

beat City Lights (#1019 → #1021)

beat Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken (#1018 → #1019)

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

IMDb plot summary: The legendary Greek hero leads a team of intrepid adventurers in a perilous quest for the legendary Golden Fleece.

Directed by Don Chaffey. Stars Todd Armstrong, Nancy Kovack, and Gary Raymond.

Jason and the Argonauts is an epic fantasy adventure telling the legend of Jason assembling a crew to go find the Golden Fleece, which will allow him to unseat the unlawful ruler of his country. The story here is pretty simple, but the creativity of the filmmaking is what makes me recommend this movie. The film uses stop-motion animation, in collaboration with Ray Harryhausen, to portray the various creatures the adventurers must defeat to achieve their goals. While these obviously aren’t photorealistic the way that we’ve come to expect of our adventure movies in the 2020s, it truly brings out the fantasy nature of the story. It’s delightful to see these statues and animated creatures interacting with our real-life performers, and, for me anyway, it means it’s never boring – it even keeps the exposition short so we can get to the next battle quickly. This was a surprisingly fun watch!

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

📊 Ranked #1146/4052 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 73

beat The Commitments (#2022 → #2227)

lost to Re-Animator (#1010 → #1011)

beat The Muppet Christmas Carol (#1516 → #1617)

lost to Hoodwinked! (#1262 → #1145)

beat The Harder They Fall (#1388 → #1786)

beat Corrina, Corrina (#1325 → #1372)

beat Shadow of the Vampire (#1293 → #1294)

beat Maine Pyar Kiya (#1277 → #1276)

beat Punch-Drunk Love (#1269 → #1334)

beat Logan's Run (#1265 → #1296)

beat The Palm Beach Story (#1263 → #1266)

How to Survive a Plague (2012)

IMDb plot summary: The story of two coalitions -- ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) -- whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition.

Directed by David France.

How to Survive a Plague is a documentary looking at the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, focusing particularly on the activists who banded together to demand better research. It’s difficult to rank documentaries, much less such dark ones about deep injustices in our country’s past. The film does a great job of cutting together footage from that actual time period alongside talking heads of people who survived the epidemic long enough to be able to find a sustainable treatment. One thing that stood out in particular was the general attitude that so many of these people had: that they personally almost certainly would not survive, but they wanted to do their best for their future community. The film also captures how difficult it is to get a whole community to narrow their focuses enough to actually accomplish something – in-fighting and diverse interests make it all too easy for the group to fracture and lose their communal power. It’s a thoughtful and interesting look at a very dark time in our nation’s history, and the final moments where we finally got to see a glimpse of hope are powerful. Worth watching, for sure.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 How to Survive a Plague (2012)

📊 Ranked #1515/4051 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 64

beat Spider Baby (#2022 → #2029)

lost to Widows' Peak (#1010 → #1012)

lost to Jurassic Park (#1516 → #299)

beat Five Graves to Cairo (#1769 → #1835)

beat Hustle (#1642 → #1645)

beat Evita (#1579 → #1575)

beat The Princess and the Frog (#1547 → #1572)

lost to Hollywood Homicide (#1531 → #1485)

lost to Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (#1539 → #1532)

beat Godzilla (#1543 → #1574)

lost to Kajaki (#1541 → #1512)

beat Spider-Man 2 (#1542 → #1583)

Body of Lies (2009)

IMDb plot summary: A CIA agent on the ground in Jordan hunts down a powerful terrorist leader while being caught between the unclear intentions of his American supervisors and Jordan Intelligence.

Directed by Ridley Scott. Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, and Mark Strong.

Body of Lies is a military action thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a CIA agent in Jordan trying to root out a terrorist in hiding, and Russell Crowe as his boss giving him orders from back home in the US. I’ll be honest, though, this is one of those films where I had to use Wikipedia to remind me of the plot because it stuck so little in my head. I remember disguises and people constantly being double-crossed and some unpleasant torture scenes, but not any aspect of how the plot came together. The one piece I do remember was Crowe as the head honcho back in the States, who is frequently seen having brutal conversations over the phone with DiCaprio as he is, for example, shuttling his kids to school or helping with homework. Seeing him making “the tough decisions” while being living cozily in his suburban life, fully shielded from any of the psychological stress of those in the field, is harrowing. However, that’s the only piece of this film that really stands out. Most of it feels exactly like most military action thrillers of this part of the decade, and I’ve already seen enough of those to be bored of them. Some good, a lot of bland.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Body of Lies (2008)

📊 Ranked #2532/4050 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 37

lost to Spider Baby (#2021 → #2011)

beat The Number 23 (#3034 → #3037)

lost to Genius (#2527 → #2523)

lost to Come to the Stable (#2779 → #2612)

lost to Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (#2905 → #2533)

beat Hiroshima Mon Amour (#2968 → #2972)

beat The Double Life of Véronique (#2936 → #2939)

beat Incredibles 2 (#2920 → #2924)

lost to The Night of the Hunter (#2912 → #2891)

lost to Carol (#2916 → #2459)

beat The War (#2918 → #2922)

beat Sixteen Candles (#2917 → #2931)