One Way Pendulum (1965)

IMDb plot summary: The very eccentric Groomkirby family, in between inventing odd devices, decide to reenact a murder and trial in their living room.

Directed by Peter Yates. Starring Eric Sykes, George Cole, and Julia Foster.

One Way Pendulum is an extremely silly look at an eccentric family living in Britain. There's not a narrative so much as just a series of events: one family member is teaching weight machines how to sing, another reconstructs an entire courtroom in their living room. It reminds me a bit of You Can't Take It With You, except a whole lot goofier. While I did find myself wishing for a more cohesive narrative arc, there were definitely enough moments in this that made me laugh out loud. There's especially some fun witty wordplay in the courtroom scenes, and they kept me entertained enough that I didn't feel the lack of narrative cohesion. I wish the first half of the movie was equally *busy* in its goofiness -- it felt mostly like setup that doesn't get resolved, but if it had been as full of gags as the latter half I think I'd have enjoyed the whole thing quite a bit. It's definitely something unique, and while it doesn't all hold together, there was enough fun about it that I'm certainly glad I saw it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

One Way Pendulum > Camp

One Way Pendulum < Safe

One Way Pendulum < A Scanner Darkly

One Way Pendulum < The Ladykillers (1955)

One Way Pendulum > Swingers

One Way Pendulum > Meek's Cutoff

One Way Pendulum > Away We Go

One Way Pendulum > Oblivion

One Way Pendulum > Happy-Go-Lucky

One Way Pendulum < Fly Away Home

One Way Pendulum < Muppet Treasure Island

One Way Pendulum < Skater Girl

Final spot: #1625 out of 3699, or 56%.

A Fairy Tale After All (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A stubborn teenage girl finds herself confronted by whimsical characters when she is transported into a world of fantasy and fairy tales while attending a school marionette show.

Directed by Erik Peter Carlson. Starring Emily Shenaut, Brian Hull, and Gabriel Burrafato.

A Fairy Tale After All is about a high school girl who discovers a fantasy land where she is actually a princess trying to save her father from an evil witch. And it's one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. It so clearly wants to be Labyrinth, but it's incomprehensible and cheap-looking, the high school lead is clearly at least in her 30s, none of the jokes land, and the songs are bland ballad after bland ballad (with an occasional insufferable character song to break things up). On top of that, there are all these weird moments where I think the director is trying to get artsy with some black-and-white cinematography, but juxtaposed with these awful meta-jokes it just feels obliviously pretentious. The problem here is with the script first and foremost -- you can get away with low-budget filmmaking if you have a solid script, which just isn't the case here. It thinks it's being funny and poignant and creative when it's extremely... not, and the actors are so over-the-top and cheesy they don't do it any further favors. Just a mess of a movie from beginning to end.

How it entered my Flickchart:

A Fairy Tale After All < Hairspray (1988)

A Fairy Tale After All < The Little Princess (1939)

A Fairy Tale After All < Blood Heat

A Fairy Tale After All < Snow White and the Huntsman

A Fairy Tale After All > Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

A Fairy Tale After All < Harriet the Spy: Blog Wars

A Fairy Tale After All < The Prince & Me

A Fairy Tale After All > One for the Money

A Fairy Tale After All > The Littlest Rebel

A Fairy Tale After All < Devil

A Fairy Tale After All < The Brother From Another Planet

A Fairy Tale After All < VeggieTales: Lord of the Beans

Final spot: #3559 out of 3696, or 4%.

Au Bonheur des Dames (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Denise, an orphaned girl, moves to Paris where she hopes to find work at her uncle's store. But the glamorous department store 'Aux Bonheur des Dames' across the street crunches all the little businesses around. She finds a position there.

Directed by Julien Duvivier. Starring Dita Parlo, Ginette Maddie, and Andree Brabant.

Au Bonheur des Dames follows a ladies' department store that is growing and putting smaller stores out of business. I think. I'll be honest, I feel awful reviewing this movie because despite one or two visually and cinematically interesting moments, I found this story SO boring that I could barely pay attention to it. There were so many women who all looked and were styled exactly the same that I found it difficult to track any one character, and characters appeared and disappeared without me being able to lock in how they connected to this story. That being said, there were a couple of really interesting cinematic choices. In one scene, an operatic aria plays over a silent scene, at one moment matching up perfectly so that the female lead lip-syncs one of the lines to the other person in the scene. In a later scene, there are some wonderfully chaotic edits conveying a character losing their grasp on reality, and it suddenly drew my attention in a way the rest of the movie hadn't. But those moments are few and far between in a tedious narrative I just couldn't get into.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Au bonheur des dames < Camp

Au bonheur des dames < The Man with One Red Shoe

Au bonheur des dames > Table 19

Au bonheur des dames > 101 Dalmatians (1996)

Au bonheur des dames > The Duel

Au bonheur des dames < The Professional

Au bonheur des dames > The Goonies

Au bonheur des dames > The Cheap Detective

Au bonheur des dames < The Name of the Rose

Final spot: #2845 out of 3697, or 23%.

Born Reckless (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Hoping to use the publicity to get re-elected, a judge sentences a notorious gangster to fight in the war.

Directed by John Ford. Starring Edmund Lowe, Catherine Dale Owen, and William Harrigan.

Born Reckless is a 1930 John Ford movie about a member of the mob who decides to go straight after getting caught, but his old friends and connections keep catching up with him. This is a slightly more interesting look at this kind of story than I expected, partly because he's still so very friendly with his old gangster pals, giving the impression that nobody has a problem with him having left... until suddenly someone does. It feels at first like a more optimistic version of this story, as if he CAN have it all, both his old friends and his new life. It does take a bit of an abrupt turn downward in the second half which feels a little disorienting and disconnected, but that mostly works thematically. This is the earliest movie I've seen from Ford, and the way he structures his film, both visually and narratively, definitely is an indicator of where he landed later -- simple but powerful narratives about people trying to live their lives. I'm not going to remember the details of this film but I hope I remember the interesting twist it put on an old trope.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Born Reckless < Hairspray (1988)

Born Reckless > The Man with One Red Shoe

Born Reckless > The Hangover

Born Reckless < Casino

Born Reckless > The Wiz

Born Reckless > About Ray

Born Reckless < The Party

Born Reckless > First Blood

Born Reckless < Deep Red

Born Reckless < Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

Born Reckless > Once Upon a Time in America

Born Reckless > Wedding Crashers

Final spot: #2234 out of 3695, or 40%.

Scent of a Woman (1992)

IMDb plot summary: A prep school student needing money agrees to "babysit" a blind man, but the job is not at all what he anticipated.

Directed by Martin Brest. Starring Al Pacino, Chris O'Donnell, and James Rebohnr.

Scent of a Woman stars Al Pacino as a gruff retired military man who has lost his eyesight, and Chris O'Donnell as the young prep school student hired to keep an eye out for him while Pacino's family is on vacation. But as soon as the family leaves, Pacino is off on an adventure to New York City, where he intends to enjoy all his favorite things in life, before taking his own. This movie jumped back and forth for me between being really effective and being really cheesy. O'Donnell makes a likable protagonist, and Pacino is certainly giving it his all, but he's most compelling here when he's at his quietest, and that's not very often. I get that his character's obnoxious loud bluster is in fact an essential part of the character, but I find it very unpleasant to watch. The last third works best for me, if feeling a little unearned. I get why people loved this, but I could never latch on to the character or its portrayal enough to be fully sold on it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Scent of a Woman > Jesus Christ Superstar (2000)

Scent of a Woman < Dark Passage

Scent of a Woman > Incendies

Scent of a Woman < Show Me Love

Scent of a Woman < Spellbound (2002)

Scent of a Woman > Panic Room

Scent of a Woman > The Intouchables

Scent of a Woman < The Circus

Scent of a Woman < Good Time

Scent of a Woman < Possession

Scent of a Woman > The Cloverfield Paradox

Scent of a Woman > The Meg

Final spot: #1294 out of 3692, or 65%.

Paradise (1991)

IMDb plot summary: Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson (at the time married to each other) play Lily and Ben Reed, a young couple torn apart by a family tragedy. It would take a miracle to rekindle their love and a miracle arrives in the form of a summer guest - Willard Young played by Elijah Wood.

Directed by Mary Agnes Donoghue. Starring Melanie Griffith, Don Johnson, and Elijah Wood.

Paradise stars Elijah Wood as a young boy sent to live with his mother's best friend while, unbeknownst to him, she tries to deal with her husband leaving them. We follow the boy as he connects with his hosts and neighbors and learns some important life lessons. In my journey to watch through all Elijah Wood's movies, this is not the first one where he's been a lead, but it's the first one where I felt like he was given something good to work with, and he's pretty solid here. Those big melancholy eyes serve him well when playing mournful children processing trauma. The rest of the movie is... all right. It doesn't quite land in the end the way that I hoped it would, and while I appreciate that it doesn't wrap up too neatly, it feels like something is missing. A lot of the in-between scenes are separately good but don't feel like they build to much. There are plenty of good individual moments, though, and none of the movie is particularly bad, just ultimately unmemorable.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Paradise < Jesus Christ Superstar (2000)

Paradise < The Little Princess (1939)

Paradise < Satantango

Paradise > Crumb

Paradise < Birdman of Alcatraz

Paradise < The Trouble With Angels

Paradise < Burlesque

Paradise > Burning Annie

Paradise > Brainscan

Paradise > Beach Party

Paradise > Immortal Beloved

Paradise < Master Harold and the Boys

Final spot: #2511 out of 3691, or 32%.

Summer Holiday (1963)

IMDb plot summary: A fabulous 1960s musical: Four London Bus mechanics strike up a deal with London Transport. They do up a double-decker London Bus, drive it around Europe as a hotel, and if they make it they will own and manage a whole fleet. While on the road in France they pick up three ladies whose car breaks down and offer to take them to their next singing job in Athens.

Directed by Peter Yates. Starring Cliff Richard, Lauri Peters, and Melvyn Hayes.

Summer Holiday is a 1960s road trip musical romantic comedy about a group of four young mechanics who decide to take a London double-decker bus on vacation across Europe, picking up various hitchhikers along the way who change their course. This is absolutely the perfect example of a light breezy 60s musical, with lots of entertaining song and dance numbers and a plot that never tries to get in the way of them. Some of these numbers are better than others, of course, and there's an extended pantomime sequence that doesn't work for me at all, but the majority of it works really well. I love the zaniness of jumping from one new hitchhiker to the next, as well as the sudden appearance of a plot to sabotage their journey, and our bus drivers have such a cheery attitude to every mishap that befalls them that it maintains that bright sunny feel over the whole movie. The visuals are nice, too -- some beautifully vivid costume and set design that helps bolster even the least inspiring tunes. It's not the best musical of this era, but it might be one of the MOST "musicals of this era," and it was exactly what I wanted to watch on the day I watched it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Summer Holiday > Jesus Christ Superstar (2000)

Summer Holiday > Dark Passage

Summer Holiday < Castle in the Sky

Summer Holiday < Jeopardy (1953)

Summer Holiday > Sansho the Bailiff

Summer Holiday < Au Revoir les Enfants

Summer Holiday > Tell It to the Bees

Summer Holiday < The Red Shoes

Summer Holiday < Last Night in Soho

Summer Holiday < Titanic

Summer Holiday < Turning Red

Summer Holiday < Out of Sight

Final spot: #777 out of 3688, or 79%.