The Night Before (2015)

IMDb plot summary: On Christmas Eve, three lifelong friends spend the night in New York City looking for the Holy Grail of Christmas parties.

Directed by Jonathan Levine. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anthony Mackie.

The Night Before follows three friends who have had the same tradition every Christmas since college: going for a night of epic partying. Now as they've grown into adults with responsibilities, two of them are ready to put away the tradition, and so the three make this last Christmas Eve their best ever as a farewell. Raunchy drug party movies are usually not even close to being my genre, and I'm pretty mediocre on them at best, but a lot of the humor in this surprised me and made me laugh out loud. There were also plenty of jokes that didn't work for me, but I expected the ratio to be a lot more negative. It's also got a refreshingly supportive vibe for the genre, with everyone being pretty devoted to everyone having a good time. The strongest example is Rogen's character's wife, who could easily be framed as the nagging pregnancy wife irritated that her husband is going off partying without her on Christmas Eve (and then showing up extremely high at her family's Christmas Mass) but they neatly sidestep that trope and instead put them on the same team together helping him get through it, which is... refreshing. It's not my favorite movie by any means but I'm always pleased to find something in this vein that mostly works for me!

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Night Before > My Week With Marilyn

The Night Before < Anna Karenina

The Night Before < VeggieTales: Where's God When I'm S-Scared?

The Night Before > Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told

The Night Before > Y Tu Mamá Tambien

The Night Before > The Hidden Fortress

The Night Before > Talk Radio

The Night Before > The Mauritanian

The Night Before > Something to Sing About

The Night Before > The Romantics

The Night Before < Die Hard

Final spot: #1417 out of 3769, or 62%.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

IMDb plot summary: A medium and her husband stage a kidnapping in order for her to pretend to solve the crime and achieve fame.

Directed by Bryan Forbes. Starring Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough, and Margaret Lacey.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon follows a British woman who believes she can communicate with the dead and her doting husband, who appears skeptical of her abilities but supports her wholeheartedly. The two of them plan to kidnap a wealthy man's child so that the woman can pretend to solve the mystery with her powers to launch her into fame. I'd never heard of this movie before I came across it as part of a personal film challenge, and it was a wonderful surprise. It has a very Hitchockian feel to it, in that it takes advantage of the quietly building tension naturally built into this situation and the characters in it. It unfolds slowly until it all culminates is a finale that is both suspenseful and heartbreaking. The performances by Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough as the couple are also both really great, full of nuance amid what could have been more cartoonish characterization. I could have watched these two interacting for another hour, easily. This is definitely one I'll be recommending to others frequently!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > My Week With Marilyn

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > Anna Karenina

Seance on a Wet Afternoon < Secretary

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > The Farewell

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > The Fabelmans

Seance on a Wet Afternoon < Black Panther

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > The Royal Tenenbaums

Seance on a Wet Afternoon < Romy and Michele's High School Reunion

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > Smashed

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > I Heart Huckabees

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > A Letter to Three Wives

Final spot: #545 out of 3768, or 86%.

Captain Thunder (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Victor Varconi plays a charming Mexican bandit gets involved in several conflicting paradoxical relations, including an alliance with a crooked rival bandit and a beautiful daughter of the governor.

Directed by Alan Crosland. Starring Fay Wray, Victor Varconi, and Charles Judels.

Captain Thunder is a Mexican bandit who gets caught up in an arranged engagement between a young woman and a wealthy white man, though the woman is in love with someone else. I had to remind myself of that with the Wikipedia entry, because despite that sounding like an interesting concept, I was absolutely bored out of my mind watching this, and it was nearly impossible to care about what was going on. There is a fun storytelling device in the very final minutes of the story, but that's about the only memorable piece. This movie came out about a decade after the character of Zorro began, and virtually any film interpretation of that character is going to be more worth watching than this one. If anyone is a big fan of this movie, I'd love to hear your take on it -- it's definitely one of the most forgettable viewings of my 1930 project so far.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Captain Thunder < My Week With Marilyn

Captain Thunder < Kicking & Screaming (2005)

Captain Thunder < Repo! The Genetic Opera

Captain Thunder < Martyrs

Captain Thunder > Interview

Captain Thunder > I Am Sam

Captain Thunder > Aquamarine

Captain Thunder > Clash by Night

Captain Thunder > No Greater Love

Captain Thunder > Agent Cody Banks

Captain Thunder > Snow White and the Huntsman

Captain Thunder > Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Final spot: #3533 out of 3767, or 6%.

The Bishop Murder Case (1930)

IMDb plot summary: When the body of a man nicknamed "Cock Robin" is found with an arrow in the heart on an archery range along with a chess bishop as a clue, Philo Vance investigates.

Directed by David Burton and Nick Grinde. Starring Basil Rathbone, Leila Hyams, and Roland Young.

The Bishop Murder Case stars Basil Rathbone as detective Philo Vance, who is in competition with the police to solve a serious of murders. Each one has a note left behind referencing a nursery rhyme, and Vance and the police are racing to solve the puzzles before the next murder takes place. The digital transfer I watched of this film was, unfortunately, pretty rough, and had a near-constant loud buzzing over all the dialogue. This made it really hard to get into the movie, and as the murder got more complicated and more characters were introduced, I ended up losing track and then losing interest. When the murderer and their grand plan is finally revealed, it was a character I could barely remember, let alone recall their possible motivations for the murder. I can't blame that all on the shoddy quality -- the film was definitely burdened with too many characters and not enough fleshing out of any of them -- but it certainly didn't help. A disappointing watch, despite a fun lead actor.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Bishop Murder Case < Dazed and Confused

The Bishop Murder Case > Kicking & Screaming (2005)

The Bishop Murder Case < Liz & Dick

The Bishop Murder Case < The Witches of Eastwick

The Bishop Murder Case < Red Cliff

The Bishop Murder Case < Kill List

The Bishop Murder Case > Ulysses

The Bishop Murder Case > I Am Number Four

The Bishop Murder Case > American Sniper

The Bishop Murder Case < VeggieTales: Are You My Neighbor?

The Bishop Murder Case < Last of the Red Hot Lovers

The Bishop Murder Case > Margaret

Final spot: #2772 out of 3766, or 26%.

Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Kitty Bellairs, a flirtatious young woman of 18th Century England, cuts a swath of broken hearts and romantic conquests as she visits a resort with her sister.

Directed by Alfred E. Green. Starring Claudia Dell, Ernest Torrence, and Walter Pidgeon.

Sweet Kitty Bellairs is a 1930 musical comedy about a young woman who is rather bold with her affections and has to choose between her suitors. There's also a subplot where she helps reconcile a friend with her emotionally distant husband. While this has a lot of fun pieces to it, it's all over the place in that kind of silly way you see in a lot of early movies that want a chance to show off all their stars' singing and dancing skills more than finding a coherent plot. Some of those moments work better than others, but overall the plot is so disjointed that none of them end up with any substance to them; it's just a series of vaguely enjoyable sequences. What I expect will happen is that individual moments from this are going to live in my memory, but I'll never remember that they all came from the same movie, let alone what movie that was.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > Dazed and Confused

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > Kicking & Screaming (2005)

Sweet Kitty Bellairs < Liz & Dick

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > The Witches of Eastwick

Sweet Kitty Bellairs < Holiday (1938)

Sweet Kitty Bellairs < Freaks

Sweet Kitty Bellairs < Willow

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > Beach Party

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > The Adjustment Bureau

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > The Divorcee

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > The Untouchables

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > Cellular

Final spot: #2559 out of 3765, or 32%.

Decision to Leave (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A detective investigating a man's death in the mountains meets the dead man's mysterious wife in the course of his dogged sleuthing.

Directed by Park Chan-wook. Starring Park Hae-il, Tang Wei, and Lee Jung-hyun.

Decision to Leave focuses on a detective who finds himself falling in love with the suspect of a murder he's investigating. I don't want to give away many more spoilers than that, but the two get more and more intertwined throughout the course of the story. This movie got a ton of attention last year, to the point where I was startled it didn't get a Best Foreign Film nomination at the Oscars, and it definitely was more interesting to me than many crime dramas are. The filmmaking itself is really lovely in this, shots and sound choices that reel you in and make you pay attention, and even when I wasn't fully drawn into the story I enjoyed just watching the scenes play out in and of themselves. The movie also brings it home in the final moments, at least for me. It ends in a way that I didn't anticipate but that I found... let's say striking. I definitely see why so many people connected to this movie, and while I didn't fall in love quite as much, it was something I'm glad I saw and I appreciate what it was doing.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Decision to Leave > My Week with Marilyn

Decision to Leave < Safe

Decision to Leave > VeggieTales: Where's God When I'm S-Scared?

Decision to Leave < Monte Carlo

Decision to Leave > Chain Reaction

Decision to Leave > The Theory of Everything

Decision to Leave > Native Son (2019)

Decision to Leave < Watchmen

Decision to Leave > The Descendants

Decision to Leave < Serial Mom

Decision to Leave > Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

Final spot: #1195 out of 3763, or 68%.

Monte Carlo (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A countess flees to Monte Carlo on the day of her wedding, where she is courted by a count posing as a hairdresser.

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Starring Jeanette MacDonald, Jack Buchanan, and Claud Allister.

Monte Carlo is a very early Ernst Lubitsch romance about a woman who runs away from her rich fiance and ends up falling in love with her hairdresser (who, unbeknownst to her, is another rich man). This is an early musical, and I found myself surprised by how much I loved the songs. My personal musical style definitely tends toward the modern, and I often zone out a bit during older musical movies, but the songs in this are delightful and fun and catchy in all the best ways. It definitely helps that a good-quality version of this film still exists, which is definitely not the case for a lot of 1930 movies, and it helps the songs sound their best. And the rest of the movie is also very good -- while the romance isn't one I'm necessarily personally invested in, the dialogue is funny and clever and the stars give it their all. This is definitely one I could see growing to become a favorite even if it was only "very good" rather than "great" on this watchthrough.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Monte Carlo > My Week With Marilyn

Monte Carlo < Safe

Monte Carlo > VeggieTales: Where's God When I'm S-Scared?

Monte Carlo < The Producers (2005)

Monte Carlo > Chain Reaction

Monte Carlo > The Theory of Everything

Monte Carlo > Native Son (2019)

Monte Carlo > Watchmen

Monte Carlo > The Artist

Monte Carlo > Whisky Galore!

Monte Carlo > The Mummy (1932)

Monte Carlo > Show Me Love

Final spot: #1176 out of 3762, or 69%.