The Elephant Man (1980)

IMDb plot summary: A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man who is mistreated while scraping a living as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous facade, there is revealed a person of intelligence and sensitivity.
Directed by David Lynch. Starring Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancruft, and John Gielgud.

Well, it's certainly the most coherent narrative I've seen David Lynch do. I'm not sure it functions well as a full movie, though. It's most powerful and interesting when seen as a series of moments that don't necessarily progress the story as much as provide snapshots. None of the characters aside from Merrick himself are particularly noteworthy -- Anthony Hopkins apparently found his doctor character a dull one to play, and for good reason. The calm reserve that made Hopkins so good in, for example, Remains of the Day feels just passive here.

The individual moments that are the most interesting rely heavily on Hurt's performance, which is excellent. He is captivating to watch on screen.

I'm not entirely sure how i feel about this yet. I do think it's good, but it's not as impressive overall as I'd hoped it would be.

3 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Elephant Man > Last Action Hero
The Elephant Man < Argo
The Elephant Man < Crazy Heart
The Elephant Man > Black Snake Moan
The Elephant Man > Three Colors: Blue
The Elephant Man > 12 Years a Slave
The Elephant Man > Peggy Sue Got Married
The Elephant Man > Phantom of the Paradise
The Elephant Man < Kiss the Girls
The Elephant Man < Captain America: The First Avenger
The Elephant Man < Knight and Day
The Elephant Man < Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Final spot: #882 out of 2330.

The Baby-Sitters Club (1995)

IMDb plot summary: Seven junior-high-school girls organize a daycare camp for children while at the same time experiencing classic adolescent growing pains.
Directed by Melanie Mayron. Starring Schuyler Fisk, Bre Blair, Rachael Leigh Cook, Larisa Oleynik, and Tricia Joe.

Admittedly, I watched this entirely out of nostalgia. I read all the books our library had in the series when I was in middle school, and even though I haven't picked up the books in years, I was surprised by how many of the characters and storylines I still remembered. What I had forgotten (or hadn't realized would work) was how likable and relatable these characters are. This is really a very diverse cast of characters, with lots of personalities so that every girl who read these would have something to relate to. That carries over here.

This is clearly a kids' movie -- everything is wrapped up very neatly and there are some very cheesy resolutions -- but the characters at the heart of it are still so likable that it made me go, "Oh, yeah, that's why I read the whole series." There's some excellent casting here, too, especially given that most of the characters are 13 or younger and children actors are tricky. Schuyler Fisk as Kristy particularly stands out.

It's fluffy and light and clearly meant for pre-teen girls... but it wasn't at all an unpleasant visit to my past.

2.5 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Baby-Sitters Club < Last Action Hero
The Baby-Sitters Club > Short Circuit
The Baby-Sitters Club > No Country for Old Men
The Baby-Sitters Club > Ice Station Zebra
The Baby-Sitters Club < The Big Lebowski
The Baby-Sitters Club > Disturbia
The Baby-Sitters Club < Mystic River
The Baby-Sitters Club < Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
The Baby-Sitters Club > Life of Pi
The Baby-Sitters Club > Adventures in Babysitting
The Baby-Sitters Club > L.A. Confidential
Final spot: #1265 out of 2329. I really like that it ALMOST ended up right next to Adventures in Babysitting. I guess I like all baby-sitting movies about the same.

Whiplash (2014)

IMDb plot summary: A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student's potential.
Directed by Damien Chazelle. Starring Miles Teller, J.K. Simmons, Paul Reiser, and Melissa Benoist.

At first, after walking out of the AMC Best Picture Marathon, I thought Birdman was my favorite of the group. But as a few days have gone by since I got around to reviewing them all, Birdman stayed about where it was in my estimation while Whiplash just kept rising and rising. I keep remembering the electrifying final scene, how the stakes and the story and the editing all built to this climax where a college kid's drum solo could be the most riveting thing I'd seen on the screen all night.

J.K. Simmons is incredible in this. He brings an unbelievable energy to this story, and Miles Teller's quiet nice guy performance is a great foil. The acting chemistry between the two is just perfect. Every other character fades into the background -- I have to actually think hard to remember anyone else in the movie because these two dominate the screen in very different ways.

This was one of those movies that made me cheer every time it won something on the Oscars. It's a simple story that is told just about perfectly. I wouldn't be surprised if it rose to be one of my all-time favorites. I find myself wanting to watch it again only a few days after having seen it, which is incredibly rare for me. But it's just that good.

4.5 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Whiplash > Last Action Hero
Whiplash > Argo
Whiplash < The Lego Movie
Whiplash > Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Whiplash > Stranger Than Fiction
Whiplash > Magnolia
Whiplash > Smashed
Whiplash > The Holiday
Whiplash < Breaking the Waves
Whiplash < Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Whiplash < Heathers
Whiplash > Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Final spot: #299 out of 2328.

The Imitation Game (2014)

IMDb plot summary: During World War II, mathematician Alan Turing tries to crack the enigma code with help from fellow mathematicians.
Directed by Morten Tyldum. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and Rory Kinnear.

(Spoilers about the movie's end.)

Benedict Cumberbatch is truly excellent in this movie, portraying Turing in such a way that we truly root for him. We cheer when he gets his project off the ground, and our heart hurts for him in the final despair-filled scenes at the end of his life.

Unfortunately, he's the only really good thing about this movie. I can't quite fathom how this won Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars, because I thought the screenplay was really awful. It took what was an interesting story and wrote it at the level of a made-for-TV movie, with far too many instances of "Oh, remember that thing I said earlier in the movie? Well, here, I'll say it again, but this time it'll be POIGNANT! Oh, but don't worry, that's not the last time. You'll hear it again later, but even POIGNANTER!" It really is to Benedict's credit that he can speak and react to these lines as well as he does.

I typically dislike Keira Knightley as an actress, and while she's not *bad* here, she doesn't really add anything to the movie either. Yet she also managed to get an Oscar nod for this movie.

Clearly I'm missing most of the appeal, but I'm truly baffled that people thought this movie was award-worthy in general. Benedict's work, sure, but he was just making the most of the sloppy mess he was handed.

2 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Imitation Game < Last Action Hero
The Imitation Game > Braveheart
The Imitation Game > Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins
The Imitation Game < Ice Station Zebra
The Imitation Game < Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging
The Imitation Game > Marathon Man
The Imitation Game < Live-In Maid
The Imitation Game < Another Thin Man
The Imitation Game > Fun Size
The Imitation Game < Dear Frankie
The Imitation Game < The Lady from Shanghai
Final spot: #1413 out of 2327.

American Sniper (2014)

IMDb plot summary: Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle's pinpoint accuracy saves countless lives on the battlefield and turns him into a legend. Back home to his wife and kids after four tours of duty, however, Chris finds that it is the war he can't leave behind.
Directed by Clint Eastwood. Starring Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Kyle Gallner, and Jake McDorman.

(Spoilers ahead, as the ending was what drastically changed my opinion of this movie.)

Let me say right away, I haven't read the book and know next to nothing about Kyle himself. So I can't judge it in comparison, I can only judge it as a movie in and of itself.

As a movie... it comes SO CLOSE to being great. Clint Eastwood has does two fascinating and thoughtful movies about violence (Unforgiven and Mystic River), so I was hoping for something equally thoughtful here, even though the role of a soldier is different from someone out for vigilante justice.

There are hints all throughout that Eastwood is building toward something like that. There are fascinating scenes where Kyle encounters soldiers who have doubts or concerns about the rightness and justness of what they are doing. Kyle doesn't even bother to really listen to those thoughts, instead just doubling down on his own personal philosophy and, in one instance, even saying that a fallen soldier's doubt was what killed him. The movie paints a picture of him as someone who could not afford to even entertain the thought that what he was doing was anything less than the heroic ideal, or everything would fall apart. And yet, Kyle's life is not ideal. He deals with PTSD symptoms every time he comes home, though he insists nothing's wrong. It seems clear that Kyle's dogmatism and sincere belief in the rightness of his work is doing nothing to keep him from being haunted by what he saw and did there.

But the movie fails to follow through on these fascinating leads. In the final fifteen minutes of the movie, a doctor even asks Kyle if perhaps he did or saw things in combat that he regrets. (Hinting that perhaps some of his problems are exacerbated by not allowing himself to process that at all.) Kyle insists that's not it... and this time, the movie abruptly takes him at face value. The remaining 15 minutes are spent reminding us what a hero he was, centering on his work with disabled veterans and never again mentioning this internal conflict (or conspicuous lack of one) that was hinted at all throughout the movie.

I understand the desire to present Kyle as a hero, but in the rush to do so, Eastwood cheats us of the dramatic climax he's been building toward. If he had no intention of following through on that story, either positively or negatively, why bother including any of those scenes? All the most interesting moments in the movie, the ones that tried to dig below the surface of the character, were rendered moot by this sudden aboutface. It all hinted at a completely different (and much more complex) story than the one we got.

Maybe Kyle himself didn't ever wrestle through that issue -- I don't know, I haven't read his book -- and the writers couldn't add a moment like that while still being true to his story. Maybe they felt ending with a negative "this never got resolved for him" ending would have underplayed his hero status. Either way, it's a frustratingly unsatisfying movie that spends the first 9/10 of the movie urging its audience to think critically about war and the last 1/10th demanding we pretend along with the film version of Kyle that those who believe in the rightness of war will never have to deal with the negative consequences of it.

2 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
American Sniper < House of Flying Daggers
American Sniper > Braveheart
American Sniper > Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins
American Sniper > Ice Station Zebra
American Sniper < Casino
American Sniper < Happy-Go-Lucky
American Sniper < The Perks of Being a Wallflower
American Sniper < The Ten Commandments
American Sniper > The Double Life of Veronique
American Sniper < The Fall
Final spot: 1303 out of 2326.

Selma (2014)

IMDb plot summary: A chronicle of Martin Luther King's campaign to secure equal voting rights via an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965.
Directed by Ava DuVernay. Starring David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson, and André Holland.

I was hoping for this to be... more. It's such a great and powerful story and could make for such a great and powerful movie. The artistic depiction, however, is a little lacking. So much of this movie is dry discussion of tactics shot in uninteresting ways. I found myself sitting impatiently through these sections until we got to the big scenes. The only two scenes, in fact, that I felt really followed through on the emotional impact were the tragic church explosion in the opening segment and the second attempt at the march (with the prayer on the bridge). Everything else is presented in a surprisingly dry, documentary-like fashion. It's an important story, but it loses a lot in the telling.

3 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Selma > Last Action Hero
Selma < Argo
Selma < Crazy Heart
Selma > Black Snake Moan
Selma > The Hangover
Selma < Ramona and Beezus
Selma > Splash
Selma < The Last Unicorn
Selma > Bee Movie
Selma > Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Selma > Choke
Final spot: #918 out of 2325.

Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

IMDb plot summary: A washed-up actor, who once played an iconic superhero, battles his ego and attempts to recover his family, his career and himself in the days leading up to the opening of his Broadway play.
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Starring Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, and Zach Galifianakis.


(Mild spoilers for this and Black Swan.)

When I saw this, the people around me did NOT like this picture. The woman behind me audibly booed at the screen for about a minute after it ended and spent the next several movie breaks talking about how much she hated it. According to her, it wasn't even that it was pretentious or self-indulgent (which are understandable criticisms) -- it was just that she didn't like the fantasy/reality blend.

Well, *I* liked it a lot. It reminded me of Black Swan, a previous Best Picture nominee that also featured performers going a little mad and slowly turning into the characters they played in scenes that didn't explicitly say whether it was all real or not. Birdman's cinematography is especially fascinating and delightful, in long unbroken shots that showcase the frantic chaos of the theater and, later, the beautiful freedom of letting go. (The flight scene is one of the most gorgeous moments I've seen on screen in a long time.)

I'm not going to dissect the story or dialogue or themes much right now, as I feel like I'll need another viewing before I can really pull together coherent thoughts on it. But I will say this was a fantastic cinematic experience, and I'm delighted that it won Best Picture.

4 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Birdman > Last Action Hero
Birdman > Argo
Birdman < The Lego Movie
Birdman > Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Birdman < The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
Birdman < Sense and Sensibility
Birdman > Edge of Tomorrow
Birdman > Grave of the Fireflies
Birdman > Easy A
Birdman > Take Shelter
Birdman > Rise of the Guardians

Final spot: #399 out of 2324.