Sing Street (2016)

This is from the same writer/director as Once (which I love) and Begin Again (which is fine), and this is easily more on the "love" side. The songs in this are genuinely great, and I deeply appreciated that we didn't just hear snippets of them but got full music videos -- the final prom scene features three full-length songs back to back, and it was fantastic. While our female lead treads very close to "damaged cool girl" tropes, the character interactions on the whole are funny and charming, even down to less central characters like the school bully and the main teen's older brother. The movie's visuals are very much contrasting the realism of everyday life with the otherworldliness of music videos, and some of those sequences work especially well in painting music as an escape from a life that feels like it's going nowhere. It ends on an ambiguous but hopeful note. I'm so glad I finally got the nudge to watch this one.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Sing Street > Hustle & Flow

Sing Street > Jack Goes Boating

Sing Street > Crimes and Misdemeanors

Sing Street < Moxie

Sing Street < The Young Girls of Rochefort

Sing Street > Rurouni Kenshin

Sing Street < Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

Sing Street > Pirate Radio

Sing Street > Horrible Bosses

Sing Street > Lion

Sing Street > Beginners

Sing Street < Om Shanti Om

Final spot: #353 out of 3468 movies, or 90%.

The Morning After (1986)

This has fewer layers than Sidney Lumet's works often do and feels more like a standard forgettable thriller that could have been written and released by anyone. More than that, Fonda's actions are often confusing to the point of alienation rather than encouraging us to identify with her -- I frequently couldn't follow WHY she was doing what she was doing -- and while her character's addiction and Bridges' racism are touched on as possible moments of deeper character exploration, both those elements are abruptly discarded or glossed over in the film's final act. There are one or two good moments scattered through the film's runtime, and this is overall a great story concept, but I'd bet there are already better versions of it out there than this strange muddle.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Morning After < Sunday in the Park with George

The Morning After > The Fox and the Hound

The Morning After > The Whole Nine Yards

The Morning After > The Love Witch

The Morning After > Senna

The Morning After < Letters from Iwo Jima

The Morning After > Unbroken

The Morning After < Grand Illusion

The Morning After < 12 Monkeys

The Morning After < Once Upon a Time ...in Hollywood

The Morning After > The Lighthouse

The Morning After > Near Dark

Final spot: #1813 out of 3470, or 48%.

Lenny (1974)

I'm not much of a connoisseur of stand-up, and though I'd heard the name Lenny Bruce, couldn't have told you anything about him before this movie. While it's interesting as a portrait of a troubled artist, the one thing the film never successfully does for me is convince me that Lenny Bruce was actually funny. I'm sure that's partly because Bruce's style of humor isn't mine, but the movie also makes his rise to fame very abrupt, never really showing WHY people connected with him, and it continuously portrays him more as a shock value kind of performer who feels more like today's political pundits than anything else. That being said, it's an interestingly-made movie. It's shot in stark black-and-white closeups, making the story seem personal and intimate, and in the scenes in which he performs, it's like you're in the audience. And it certainly is a *loving* tribute to Bruce, which is kind of touching even if I don't share that affection.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Lenny > Monsters

Lenny < Jack Goes Boating

Lenny < About Elly

Lenny < Real Life

Lenny > Beverly Hills Cop

Lenny > Gunpowder Milkshake

Lenny > The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Lenny < Star Trek: Generations

Lenny < Bridge of Spies

Lenny < Holiday Inn

Lenny < I Love You, Man

Lenny < Two Weeks Notice

Final spot: #1541 out of 3461, or 55%.

Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage (2021)

I was only 13 when Woodstock 99 happened and knew almost nothing about it, so I found this documentary fascinating. Some of the issues the festival had were clearly in the hands of those who prepared it -- poorly trained security and not enough water, for example. But others require the participants of this documentary to theorize. Why did so many people stay when they were having a terrible time? Why did the crowd turn violent? Was it the fault of aggressive musical acts like Limp Bizkit and Rage Against the Machine? Was it the fault of the festival creators for not having set clearer expectations of attendees? There are no easy answers, but everyone has a guess, and watching the footage and hearing the commentary on it side-by-side is so interesting. Such a fascinating look at a strange turning point in our culture.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Woodstock 99 > Hustle & Flow

Woodstock 99 < Jack Goes Boating

Woodstock 99 > Talk Radio

Woodstock 99 < Ice Age

Woodstock 99 < Nine to Five

Woodstock 99 > Backbeat

Woodstock 99 > Say Anything...

Woodstock 99 > The Intouchables

Woodstock 99 > Flushed Away

Woodstock 99 > The General

Woodstock 99 > A Shot in the Dark

Woodstock 99 < The Circus

Final spot: #1195 out of 3471, or 66%.

Candyman (2021)

This film does a really great job of painting a generally horrifying atmosphere steeped in a dark, ugly history. The use of shadow puppetry to tell the Candyman legends is a very cool artistic choice that helps to separate the myth from the reality of the story in an eerie way. That being said, the story falls apart for me a little at the end. It blurs the lines between legend and reality in a way that made the metaphor difficult for me to track. I suspect this is me missing something though, as this all seems intentional, and I would love to hear someone else's take on the ending.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Candyman < Sunday in the Park with George

Candyman > Gladiator

Candyman > V/H/S

Candyman > The 'Burbs

Candyman > The Lady from Shanghai

Candyman > After the Wedding

Candyman > The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

Candyman < True Romance

Candyman < Star Trek: Nemesis

Candyman < The Major and the Minor

Candyman > Elle

Candyman < Absolute Power

Final spot: #1750 out of 3451, or 49%.

Jane Eyre (1996)

These are two decently charismatic actors bringing this story to life, and watching their romance bloom is pretty satisfying at first. And, of course, if you're a sucker for the aesthetic of 1800s Bronte/Austen romances, though I am not, this is probably exactly what you're looking for. However, I don't recall the original book having such wild pacing, though maybe I'm misremembering. It goes at an expected pace up to the big reveal of Mr. Rochester's past and then SPEEDS through the last third of the story in about 15 minutes. It's extremely jarring and makes the final scene feel not only deeply unearned but almost absurd. It's too bad that a film willing to take its time on the romance in the first half of its story skims over the final section so haphazardly.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Jane Eyre < Hustle & Flow

Jane Eyre < The Shaggy Dog (1959)

Jane Eyre > Sharknado

Jane Eyre > I, Robot

Jane Eyre > From Here to Eternity

Jane Eyre > Django Unchained

Jane Eyre > Waiting...

Jane Eyre > Find Me Guilty

Jane Eyre > Play It Again, Sam

Jane Eyre > The Polar Express

Jane Eyre < The Hoober-Bloob Highway

Final spot: #2595 out of 3455, or 25%.

Together Together (2021)

IMDb plot summary: When a young loner becomes the gestational surrogate for a single man in his 40s, the two strangers come to realize this unexpected relationship will challenge their perceptions of connection, boundaries and the particulars of love.

Directed by Nikole Beckwith. Starring Patti Harrison, Ed Helms, Rosalind Chao, and Timm Sharp.

Ed Helms and Patti Harrison make a great pair of unexpected companions, and since this film is essentially a two-hander, they carry the whole thing effortlessly. These are two incredible performances in one of the most relatable scripts I've ever heard, and it brings out a tremendous amount of charm to both these characters, as wildly different as they are. Well-scripted rom coms have that skill of making their characters so charismatic that you just want to sit in a room and watch them interact and wish them well and smile, and even though this film definitively lacks the "rom" part of a rom com, that's very much the vibe I get from this. It's heartwarming and fuzzy but never in a way that feels disingenuous -- it feels like we're just watching two people become friends, and it strikes just the right note throughout. Well worth a watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Together Together > Hustle & Flow

Together Together > Jack Goes Boating

Together Together < Soapdish

Together Together > Muppets Most Wanted

Together Together > Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Together Together > American Splendor

Together Together < Glengarry Glen Ross

Together Together < Christmas in Connecticut

Together Together < The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Together Together > Marty

Together Together > Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Together Together > Thor: Ragnarok

Final spot: #481 out of 3464, or 86%.