The Mark of Zorro (1940)

IMDb plot summary: A young Spanish aristocrat must masquerade as a fop in order to maintain his secret identity of Zorro as he restores justice to early California.

Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Starring Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, and Basil Rathbone.

The Mark of Zorro stars Tyrone Power as the foppish son of the former mayor of a Californian town by day, the folk hero Zorro fighting corrupt officials by night. This version of the story really relies on the contrast between the two alter egos, and there is a delightful thrill in watching him play his sensitive nobleman act knowing that he is smarter, stronger, and more ruthless than he's letting on at any point. Power is very charismatic here and is a lot of fun to watch. I do wish there was a stronger emphasis on either the political aspect of it or the adventure scenes -- so much of this story is just watching Power flit about from group to group, and while that's enjoyable, it feels incomplete. It was a fun contrast to The Mask of Zorro, which I watched for the first time earlier this month, and comparing two different approaches to the character almost 60 years apart is kind of fascinating. This one was less exciting, both narratively and visually, but I enjoyed seeing a more debonair approach to the character.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Mark of Zorro > Hairspray (1988)

The Mark of Zorro < Kuroneko

The Mark of Zorro > A Scanner Darkly

The Mark of Zorro > Whisky Galore!

The Mark of Zorro > 1917

The Mark of Zorro < Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

The Mark of Zorro < The Ten Commandments (1956)

The Mark of Zorro > Hoodwinked!

The Mark of Zorro < Call Me Madam

The Mark of Zorro < Borat

The Mark of Zorro > Gone Girl

The Mark of Zorro < A Clockwork Orange

Final spot: #1029 out of 3719, or 72%.

Love, Life and Goldfish (2021)

IMDb plot summary: Makoto Kashiba is an elite bank clerk and works for a big bank at its Tokyo HQ. Due to a minor mistake, he is demoted to a small branch office in a country town. He is devastated by his situation. There, he meets beautiful Yoshino Ikoma, who runs a goldfish scooping store. Makoto falls in love with her at first sight.

Directed by Yukinori Makabe. Starring Nicole Ishida, Hayato Kakizawa, and Naoki Kawano.

Love, Life and Goldfish is a Japanese musical film about a young man settling in a new town after a work demotion and perhaps finding love in the process. I really wanted to love this film but something about it sat just outside my periphery. I am often drawn to stories about nerdy outcasts trying to figure out love, especially if there are musical numbers to highlight their journey, but I just had such a tough time tracking this character's motivations and interests. The music does most of the emotional heavy liting here, with these big sentimental ballads that tug at the heartstrings (but that I'm sure would be much improved by seeing their thematic connection to the actual narrative at hand -- something that doesn't always happen). The "goldfish" of the title refers to the fact that the main potential love interest works in a store where people can compete to scoop goldfish out of a larger pool into a smaller one, and the goldfish metaphor is definitely visually arresting but, again, doesn't always land narratively. There may very well be some cultural differences keeping me at a distance here, so this is one I want to go back and retry, because when it works, it REALLY works. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

Love, Life and Goldfish > Jesus Christ Superstar (2000)

Love, Life and Goldfish < Kuroneko

Love, Life and Goldfish > Incendies

Love, Life and Goldfish < Ghost World

Love, Life and Goldfish < Man on Wire

Love, Life and Goldfish < Panic Room

Love, Life and Goldfish < Family Business

Love, Life and Goldfish < Nobody's Fool

Love, Life and Goldfish > Cafe Society

Love, Life and Goldfish < The Family Man

Love, Life and Goldfish < The Count of Monte Cristo

Love, Life and Goldfish > Juno and the Paycock

Final spot: #1386 out of 3720, or 63%.

The Expendables (2010)

IMDb plot summary: A CIA operative hires a team of mercenaries to eliminate a Latin dictator and a renegade CIA agent.

Directed by Sylvester Stallone. Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, and Jet Li.

The Expendables is a big silly action movie following a team of mercenaries trying to overthrow a Latin American dictator. It features a variety of action stars in both prominent and small roles, including Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Jet Li, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and more. So hear me out -- the movie that I ended up comparing this to in my mind the most was Tick, Tick, Boom. When I finished that movie, I thought to myself, "That was one of the most amazing love letters to musical theater I've ever seen, and I have no idea if people who don't love musicals will get anything out of it." This movie feels 100% like a love letter to the big action blockbusters of the 80s and 90s, and as such it almost completely passed me by. I didn't recognize about half the action stars who showed up, the action sequences don't have interesting fight choreography or unique set pieces so much as just a lot of explosions, and there's not really even any half-hearted character development. But every so often I'd get a glimpse of the film paying tribute to its past favorites. So with this, I'm in this weird space of appreciating what it's doing while having absolutely no interest in watching it myself. It'll rank low on my Flickchart personally but that's mostly just because it's not *for* me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Expendables < Jesus Christ Superstar (2000)

The Expendables < The Man with One Red Shoe

The Expendables > Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

The Expendables > 101 Dalmatians (1996)

The Expendables < Mother (2009)

The Expendables > Party Girl

The Expendables > Danger: Diabolik

The Expendables < Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

The Expendables < On the Town

The Expendables < Bad Moms

The Expendables < The Italian Job (2003)

The Expendables < Sleeper

Final spot: #2934 out of 3718, or 21%.

Forever Young (1992)

IMDb plot summary: During a cryogenics test, a pilot frozen in 1939 awakes in 1992 but time is running out, as his body starts to age rapidly.

Directed by Steve Miner. Starring Mel Gibson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Elijah Wood.

Forever Young stars Mel Gibson as a test pilot in the 1930s who agrees to be part of his friend's top-secret cryogenics research. He expects to be woken up in one year, but something goes wrong and he wakes up in 1992 after young Elijah Wood stumbles upon his abandoned cryotube. I often really connect to sci fi or fantasy fish-out-of-water stories, body swap stories or accidental time travel, all that kind of thing, but this one never quite sticks the landing, always wanting to go in for the cheap sentimentality rather than genuine humanity. Gibson just kind of wanders around here as a general confused nice guy and doesn't get much depth of character. Wood is much better -- at this point in his career he'd picked up some technique and outshines Gibson in most scenes. Jamie Lee Curtis as Wood's mother works very hard to bring something interesting to her thankless role as "nurturing woman who helps everyone else out" but there's only so much you can do with material this thin. It's a fun concept but this is a pretty flat, schmaltzy interpretation of it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Forever Young < Hairspray (1988)

Forever Young > The Man with One Red Shoe

Forever Young < Kuroneko

Forever Young < Incendies

Forever Young < Lucky Number Slevin

Forever Young < Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Forever Young < Gothika

Forever Young < Arthur Christmas

Forever Young < Camp Rock

Forever Young < The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)

Forever Young > Fun with Dick and Jane (1977)

Forever Young > Vampyr

Final spot: #1853 out of 3717, or 50%.

The Pirate Movie (1982)

IMDb plot summary: The crew of a large ship sail the high seas encountering other pirates from other ships. The boy from the ship ends up having to save his girlfriend who is kidnapped by a bunch of other pirates.

Directed by Ken Annakin. Starring Kristy McNichol, Christopher Atkins, and Ted Hamilton.

The Pirate Movie is a very loose adaptation of the Pirates of Penzance operetta, incorporating some of the original songs and the general outline of the plot and interspersing it with original 80s rock tunes. When I went to look this movie up, I learned that people HATED it when it came out. It's got something like a 9% on Rotten Tomatoes and got a bunch of Razzie nominations. It's definitely cheesy and silly, but I had a good enough time with it! I was pleased that at least some pieces of the original Penzance tunes showed up, and although none of the rock replacements were much good aside from the final number, they worked just fine if I thought of them as generic background soundtrack tunes. The jokes and one-liners come fast here, and like with any film with large quantities of jokes, some land and some don't, but the ones that don't aren't belabored, just quietly scooted past. I was particularly impressed with a long farcical sword-fighting scene that could easily have gotten boring but instead kept finding new ways to play with the concept. Will I watch it again? Well, maybe not, not when the filmed version of the original starring Kevin Kline is right there, but I'm glad I got to see this weird little movie.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Pirate Movie > Jesus Christ Superstar (2000)

The Pirate Movie < Anna Karenina

The Pirate Movie > The Romantics

The Pirate Movie < Show Me Love

The Pirate Movie > Man on Wire

The Pirate Movie > Mr. Deeds Goes to Town

The Pirate Movie < Death by Hanging

The Pirate Movie < Evita

The Pirate Movie > Monsters vs. Aliens

The Pirate Movie > Carefree

The Pirate Movie < Wolf

Final spot: #1207 out of 3714, or 68%.

The Fundamentals of Caring (2016)

IMDb plot summary: A man suffering a family loss enrolls in a class about care-giving that changes his perspective on life.

Directed by Rob Burnett. Starring Craig Roberts, Paul Rudd, and Selena Gomez.

The Fundamentals of Caring stars Paul Rudd as a caregiver for a teenager with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, played by Craig Roberts. The story focuses on the relationship between the two as they navigate their own demons. I never quite know how to feel about these "once I got to know someone with a disability" stories. While I approve of more disabled characters in film, most of those movies end up feeling patronizing. I give this film credit for trying to sidestep the more problematic tropes (there's even a sequence where the teenager accuses Rudd of using him for inspiration) but it doesn't seem to bring much to the table in its place. It's like it spends more time trying to avoid the "wrong" thing than doing anything interesting. And at the end of the day it's still primarily Rudd's story even when it tries to be Roberts'. It's not an awful film -- this kind of story has been done much more thoughtlessly -- but it feels unimaginative and halfhearted and I know I'm going to forget it within a week of having seen it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Fundamentals of Caring < Jesus Christ Superstar (2000)

The Fundamentals of Caring > The Man with One Red Shoe

The Fundamentals of Caring < The Hangover

The Fundamentals of Caring < *batteries not included

The Fundamentals of Caring < My Big Fat Greek Wedding

The Fundamentals of Caring > Sex Tape

The Fundamentals of Caring < Baby Boom

The Fundamentals of Caring > The Da Vinci Code

The Fundamentals of Caring > My Darling Clementine

The Fundamentals of Caring > Reminiscence

The Fundamentals of Caring < About Last Night...

Final spot: #2703 out of 3716, or 27%.

Liliom (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Liliom, a merry-go-round barker at a Budapest amusement park, becomes enamored of Julie, a servant girl, and though under the influence of Madame Muskat, a sideshow entrepreneur, he marries the girl. 

Directed by Frank Borzage. Starring Charles Farrell, Rose Hobart, and Estelle Taylor.

Liliom is a 1930 movie that I recognized partway through as being based on the same story as the musical Carousel. A young naive woman marries a carnival barker who is abusive and irresponsible, and when he dies committing a crime he asks to come back to earth to see the daughter he never met. Carousel at least has some pretty tunes, but this plot is just straight up garbage, happily defending physical violence as some sort of misappropriated form of affection, and it's horrifying. You can't garner any sympathy for these characters at all. The most interesting part of this was the strange afterlife section in the final twenty minutes, which has some suddenly creative cinematic choices, from the visualization of the train to the afterlife to the introduction of the various characters and how they passed away. I'd much rather have seen a whole movie of that than the domestic abuse apologetics taking up most of the film.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Liliom < Jesus Christ Superstar (2000)

Liliom < The Man with One Red Shoe

Liliom < Table 19

Liliom > Agent Cody Banks

Liliom < Maurice

Liliom > Made of Honor

Liliom < Insomnia (2002)

Liliom > Get Carter

Liliom < Titane

Liliom < Flywheel

Liliom < The Ant Bully

Liliom < Stand Up and Cheer!

Final spot: #3410 out of 3715, or 8%.