Ping Pong Playa (2007)

IMDb plot summary: A kid dreams of playing professional basketball in order to escape his dead-end job, living in the suburbs, his bossy older brother and running his Mom's ping pong classes.
Directed by Jessica Yu. Starring Jimmy Tsai, Andrew Vo, Khary Payton, and Jim Lau.

In many ways, this follows a pretty typical sports movie trajectory. There's the underdog, the unusually high stakes for the big game, the mean jerks on the opposing team. But it feels a bit fresher and newer because of the unusual choice of sport (ping-pong) and because of our main character, who thinks of himself as a much more important athlete than we do as an audience. He consistently straddles the line between entertaining and annoying but ultimately lands on the former for me. The movie overall is fun and sweet and has enough going for it that I had a good time watching it, even if it didn't stand out a whole lot.

3 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Ping Pong Playa > Molly's Game
Ping Pong Playa < Show Me Love
Ping Pong Playa < Bridge of Spies
Ping Pong Playa < War Horse
Ping Pong Playa > Company (2011)
Ping Pong Playa > The Mistress of Spices
Ping Pong Playa > Don Jon
Ping Pong Playa > Charlie St. Cloud
Ping Pong Playa > Bill Cunningham New York
Ping Pong Playa > Safety Not Guaranteed
Ping Pong Playa < The Tourist
Final spot: #1269 out of 2893.

Love Story (1970)

IMDb plot summary: A boy and a girl from different backgrounds fall in love regardless of their upbringing - and then tragedy strikes.
Directed by Arthur Hiller. Starring Ali MacGraw, Ryan O'Neal, John Marley, and Ray Milland.

This is... adequate, but with the title and the big dramatic ending music, it sets it up as if it's a movie that makes some sort of enormous meaningful statement about the nature of love. It doesn't. It's just your run-of-the-mill romantic tearjerker. The characters have decent chemistry but it's extraordinarily difficult to get a sense of who they are outside of their relationship. And the classic line from the film is dumb (as O'Neal himself proclaims in his later film What's Up, Doc?).

How it entered my Flickchart:
Love Story < Molly's Game
Love Story > The Queen
Love Story < Tag
Love Story > Firewall
Love Story < Larry-Boy! & the Fib from Outer Space
Love Story > Ocean's Twelve
Love Story < Star Wars Uncut
Love Story < Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
Love Story < Fifth of July
Love Story > Neverwas
Love Story > McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Love Story < The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Final spot: #1938 out of 2892.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

IMDb plot summary: Decades after her original visit, the magical nanny returns to help the Banks siblings and Michael's children through a difficult time in their lives.
Directed by Rob Marshall. Starring Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, and Emily Mortimer.

(Spoilers ahead.)

For all the stars' insistence that this is a sequel, not a remake... it's a sequel that is obviously attempting to be a remake. It's almost ridiculous how exactly they copied things over from the original, especially in regards to musical numbers. A group of Cockney street workers sing and dance an elaborate number using their work elements as props? Check. Cheery ending song in the park about flying? Check. Gentle lullaby? Check. A visit to one of Mary Poppins' relatives where they end up hanging out on the ceiling? Check. Animated penguins? Check. And the musical numbers in this movie ARE a lot of fun. But it's missing the coherent narrative that made the original one so great. The message of the original was clearly about how Mr. Banks needed to stop prioritizing work and status over his children, but the message here is... don't worry if you're about to lose all your possessions? Because that's a silly message. And the original movie solved its problems through a change of heart, but the problems here have to be solved through... a fast-paced action sequence that involve all the lamplighters in the area climbing to the top of Big Ben. That's such a departure from the tone of the original that it feels like whoever penned this just watched the songs in the '64 version and then fast-forwarded through all the boring talky bits. It all adds up to a great musical but a far inferior movie as a whole.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Mary Poppins Returns > Peter Pan (1960)
Mary Poppins Returns < Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Mary Poppins Returns > Bridge of Spies
Mary Poppins Returns > Idiocracy
Mary Poppins Returns > The Scarlet and the Black
Mary Poppins Returns > Le bonheur
Mary Poppins Returns > M
Mary Poppins Returns < Murder on the Orient Express (2017)
Mary Poppins Returns < What the Deaf Man Heard
Mary Poppins Returns < Under the Skin
Mary Poppins Returns > Topsy-Turvy

Final spot: #743 out of 2891. That seems generous but I'll let it stand. Those musicals numbers were beautifully executed.

The Favourite (2018)

IMDb plot summary: In early 18th century England, a frail Queen Anne occupies the throne and her close friend, Lady Sarah, governs the country in her stead. When a new servant, Abigail, arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Starring Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone, and Nicholas Hoult.

Oh, this is so fascinating. I've seen two other Yorgos Lanthimos films (I really liked Killing of a Sacred Deer and didn't care for Dogtooth) and while on the surface this is a very straightforward narrative, his dark sense of humor and willingness to really delve into the more upsetting parts of humanity give this a very unique twist. All three main actresses are superb in their roles, but Olivia Colman is the strongest of them all -- her performance is stunning and unsettling and heartbreaking.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Favourite > Peter Pan (1960)
The Favourite > Zodiac
The Favourite < Breaking Away
The Favourite < Kwaidan
The Favourite < The Invisible Man
The Favourite > The Body Snatcher
The Favourite > Reservoir Dogs
The Favourite < Galaxy Quest
The Favourite < Center Stage
The Favourite > The Ten Commandments (1956)
The Favourite > Contact
The Favourite > Shakespeare Behind Bars

Final spot: #648 out of 2890.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

IMDb plot summary: Miles Morales becomes the Spider-Man of his reality and crosses paths with his counterparts from other dimensions to stop a threat to all reality.
Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman. Starring Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, and Mahershala Ali.

This is so, so much fun. The Peter Parker origin story has now had three different iterations in the past 20 years, so it's beautifully refreshing to have a Spider-Man movie that takes a different route - and as fond as I am of the original 2002 Spider-Man movie, I think Miles Morales is a much more interesting and dynamic character than any film version of Parker ever was. This movie is funny and smart and moving and basically everything I like my superhero movies to be. So much fun.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse > How Do You Know
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse > Show Me Love
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse > Boyhood
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse < Bullets Over Broadway
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse < The Matrix
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse > Eyes Without a Face
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse < Inglourious Basterds
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse < The Grey
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse > Sita Sings the Blues
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse < Reefer Madness (2005)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse < Welcome to Dongmakgol

Final spot: #309 out of 2889.

The Long Day Closes (1992)

IMDb plot summary: A young British boy comes of age among his loving family and the austere Catholic Church as he realizes his love of cinema and his homosexuality.
Directed by Terence Davies. Starring Marjorie Yates, Leigh McCormack, Anthony Watson, and Nicholas Lamont.

I feel like calling this a film isn't quite right, it's more like a series of paintings with music. I can absolutely see why someone would love this -- pieces of this are strikingly beautiful -- but with the scattered nature of it I found myself spending most of my time trying to draw connections between the bits of narrative. I was somehow never able to fully immerse myself into the movie, despite it being the exact kind of movie I SHOULD be able to do that with. As a result, it didn't hit me emotionally the way that I hoped it might. I admire it, but do not love it.

How it entered my Flickchart:
The Long Day Closes > How Do You Know
The Long Day Closes < L'atalante
The Long Day Closes > Cabaret
The Long Day Closes > The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes
The Long Day Closes < Say Anything...
The Long Day Closes > The Thin Man
The Long Day Closes > Flight of the Navigator
The Long Day Closes < Au Revoir Les Enfants
The Long Day Closes > Pushing Tin
The Long Day Closes < Panic Room

Final spot: #828 out of 2888. So many 8s and 2s.

Dust (1985)

IMDb plot summary: A South African spinster murders her father after he rapes the wife of the black foreman for his plantation.
Directed by Marion Hänsel. Starring Jane Birkin, Trevor Howard, John Matshikiza, and Nadine Uwampa.

Oh, this is so fascinating. And so sad. The story of a woman who has so long lived under someone else's control that even when she gets freedom, she slowly becomes everything she hates about the father who controlled her. It's an extremely slow movie, but once I got into the rhythms of the character, I found myself spellbound.

4 stars.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Dust > Wonder Boys
Dust > Waitress
Dust < Into the Woods (2014)
Dust < Bruce Almighty
Dust > Hairspray Live!
Dust < Rocky
Dust < Deadpool
Dust > Brave
Dust > Robot and Frank
Dust < The African Queen

Final spot: #614 out of 2887.