Certain Women (2016)

IMDb plot summary: The lives of three women intersect in small-town America, where each is imperfectly blazing a trail.

Directed by Kelly Reichardt. Starring Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Laura Dern.

Certain Women is a movie following a group of three women who all have loose connections and showing us them going through their lives, encountering career battles and love life battles. On the surface this seems like something that I would really be into, but the slice of life format that this leans into means that none of the stories have an arc that I find satisfying or interesting. I get that they're all intended to be unresolved, but it made it hard for me to connect with the film. I also don't entirely get why these three particular women were grouped together to tell their stories. I can't quite find the right thematic throughline to make sense of the three of them together. This is the kind of movie that some folks will absolutely fall in love with, but it left me a little cold in the end.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Certain Women < The Blues Brothers

Certain Women > National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Certain Women > Outbreak

Certain Women > Avengers: Infinity War

Certain Women > Smokin' Aces

Certain Women < True Romance

Certain Women < Christine

Certain Women < Dogtooth

Certain Women > The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini

Certain Women > Broken Embraces

Certain Women < The Wailing

Final spot: #2024 out of 3831, or 47%.

Paradise Island (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Ellen Bradford comes to the South Sea Island of Tonga to marry her fiancé and finds out that he is a drunk. She also finds out that she is the only white woman on the island and, as such, has three men taking a deep interest in her. 

Directed by Bert Glennon. Starring Kenneth Harlan, Marceline Day, and Tom Santschi.

Paradise Island is a film from 1930 about a woman who travels to meet her fiance in an island of Tonga, only to find that he's not a good person and now she's got more than one alternative suitor interested in her. To be honest, I rephrased that description from IMDb, because this was an extremely dull movie that I forgot about almost instantly after watching. The romance aspect is totally uncompelling, as none of the suitors are likable in the least, and it absolutely traffics in the sort of racist stereotypes that were all too common in any 1930s film set in a quote-unquote "exotic" location. While I've seen quite a few gems on my trek through the year 1930, the year also has its fair share of duds, and this is one of those. Not worth checking out.

How it entered my Flickchart: 

Paradise Island < The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Paradise Island < Beauty and the Bestie

Paradise Island < Joseph: King of Dreams

Paradise Island < Hidalgo

Paradise Island > Rush Hour

Paradise Island > Friends With Money

Paradise Island > The Notebook

Paradise Island < A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Paradise Island < Chicken Little

Paradise Island < The Evil Dead (1981)

Paradise Island < Broken Flowers

Paradise Island > Coogan's Bluff

Final spot: #3620 out of 3830, or 5%.

Over the Garden Wall (2014)

IMDb plot summary: Two brothers find themselves lost in a mysterious land and try to find their way home.

Directed by Katie Krentz and Patrick McHale. Starring Elijah Wood, Collin Dean, and Melanie Lynskey.

Over the Garden Wall is a TV miniseries of short animated episodes following two lost boys trying to find their way back home and encountering a series of strange characters and situations along the way. It's been a stable of my husband's autumn rewatches for years, and so while I've seen pieces of it just from being in the same room, this was the first time I actually sat down and paid attention to it, and I'm so glad I did. It's such a delightful mix of charming and creepy, and Greg is one of the most immediately likable characters I've ever seen in animation. Each episode feels very thematically connected to the rest, without ever feeling like it's too repetitive. And, of course, the songs are a ton of fun, especially now that I get to hear them in their proper context. I finally get the hype around this one and am glad I finally made space to watch it for real.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Over the Garden Wall > The Blues Brothers

Over the Garden Wall > Dark Passage

Over the Garden Wall > The White Tiger

Over the Garden Wall < The Great Dictator

Over the Garden Wall > The Gods Must Be Crazy

Over the Garden Wall > Bicycle Thieves

Over the Garden Wall < 10 Cloverfield Lane

Over the Garden Wall < My Neighbor Totoro

Over the Garden Wall < The Apartment

Over the Garden Wall > Rashomon

Over the Garden Wall > Chaplin

Final spot: #290 out of 3829, or 92%.

Follow Thru (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Club champion Lora Moore loses a golf match to a woman from another golf club. Then Jerry Downs, a handsome golf pro, and his goofy friend Jack Martin show up. Lora takes him on as her golf teacher to work on her putt. She falls for him, but so do several other women. Meanwhile, Lora's friend Angie Howard chases after Jack. A lot of silliness ensues.

Directed by Lloyd Corrigan and Laurence Schwab. Starring Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Nancy Carroll, and Zelma O'Neal.

Follow Thru is a 1930 romantic comedy about a talented female golfer pretending she doesn't know anything about it so the famous golfer she's in love with will teach her. It's an early color musical and is a surprising look at female athletes in the 30s. While the individual pieces of this don't necessarily stand out as anything special, the concept of the story is a lot more interesting than most of the 1930 romances I've been watching. My biggest beef with this movie, though, is the almost unwatchably irritating subplot where Jack Haley is unable to talk to women. I found it, as the kiddos say or have said, so "cringe" that I did actually wince a few times when the character reappeared on screen. So overall, while I wanted to appreciate what this film was bringing, there weren't enough positives and at least one enormous negative that pulled it down.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Follow Thru < The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Follow Thru > Beauty and the Bestie

Follow Thru < No Highway in the Sky

Follow Thru < Master Harold and the Boys (2010)

Follow Thru > The Forger

Follow Thru > Code 46

Follow Thru > Hide and Seek

Follow Thru > Scrooge: A Christmas Carol

Follow Thru > The Unsinkable Molly Brown

Follow Thru > The Limey

Follow Thru > Paradise

Follow Thru > Murder!

Final spot: #2632 out of 3828, or 31%.

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)

IMDb plot summary: An acerbic critic wreaks havoc when a hip injury forces him to move in with a Midwestern family.

Directed by William Keighley. Starring Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, and Monty Woolley.

The Man Who Came to Dinner follows a famous but ill-tempered writer (played by Monty Woolley) who ends up injuring himself in a small rural town and needing to stay there through the holidays. We watch him making unreasonable demands of his hosts, inserting himself into their business, and disrupting their lives. This is clearly meant as a comedy, but Bette Davis as the author's longsuffering assistant is the only person we can really root for in this story, and she's one of the ones who goes through the most emotional turmoil at the hands of her boss, so I mostly found myself feeling bad for her and hating our titular man who came to dinner. I think there's supposed to be a begrudging "he's the worst but it's all going to work out" love-hate relationship with him, but I just hated him, and it made it hard to buy into any level of heartwarming the ending is meant to be. The dialogue is witty and there are some good one-liners in here, but other than that, it doesn't work for me as a story, much less a holiday story, and I'm not likely to rewatch it any time soon.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Man Who Came to Dinner < The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

The Man Who Came to Dinner > National Treasure: Book of Secrets

The Man Who Came to Dinner < No Highway in the Sky

The Man Who Came to Dinner > Murder!

The Man Who Came to Dinner > Rancho Notorious

The Man Who Came to Dinner < Bully

The Man Who Came to Dinner > Hal King

The Man Who Came to Dinner < Ready Player One

The Man Who Came to Dinner < Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

The Man Who Came to Dinner > No Sudden Move

The Man Who Came to Dinner > Night Falls on Manhattan

The Man Who Came to Dinner < Coraline

Final spot: #2475 out of 3827, or 35%.

Barbie (2023)

IMDb plot summary: Barbie suffers a crisis that leads her to question her world and her existence.
Directed by Greta Gerwig. Starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and America Ferrera.

I'd be surprised if anyone doesn't know the gist of the Barbie movie, but here goes: It's Greta Gerwig's take on adapting the classic children's doll to a film narrative. We follow Margot Robbie as "Classic Barbie" in Barbieland as she has a bit of an existential crisis and has to enter the real world to find her purpose again. Gerwig and I seldom see eye-to-eye in her films, and that mostly holds true here when it comes to her female leads. Ryan Gosling as Ken absolutely steals the show here, with a far more compelling character arc than Barbie or almost any of her female co-leads, and it's no shade on Robbie, who is a talented actress. Gerwig's experience of femininity is just so drastically different than my own that I don't connect to Barbie any more than I did Lady Bird or her version of Jo March. That being said, it is a very *fun* movie, with lots of jokes that perfectly land and some gorgeous atmospheric set design. It's worth watching just for the sets and costumes alone, and if your style of storytelling meshes with Gerwig, I'd imagine it'd be an even more enjoyable ride. But ultimately, I admire it from a little bit of an emotional distance.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Barbie > The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Barbie < Key Largo

Barbie > The Tragedy of Macbeth

Barbie > The Country Girl

Barbie > Auntie Mame

Barbie > Father of the Bride (1991)

Barbie > National Lampoon's Vacation

Barbie < The Menu

Barbie > The Palm Beach Story

Barbie < H.M.S. Defiant

Barbie < Leaving Las Vegas

Barbie > Feet First

Final spot: #976 out of 3826, or 74%.

The Faculty (1998)

IMDb plot summary: When Casey Connor, Herrington High School's newspaper photographer, witnesses the murder of a nurse and sees her alive again, he decides to investigate the bizarre happenings.

Directed by Robert Rodriguez. Starring Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, and Laura Harris.

The Faculty is a light horror thriller set inside a high school where aliens are taking over -- well, the faculty. A small group of students figure it out and try to find a way to defeat them before they take over the whole school and then the world. This is exactly the goofy gooey teen horror I wanted it to be, with lots of aesthetically fun (if not wholly realistic) effects showing the creatures taking over the teachers' bodies. The character development is light but just fun enough to make it easy to root for our heroes, and they lean in and out of their school stereotypes in some fun and surprising ways, which makes it extra fun when they're trying to figure out which of them may be an alien in disguise. Overall, an enjoyable fluffy watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Faculty > Solaris (1968)

The Faculty < Key Largo

The Faculty > The Count of Monte Cristo

The Faculty > Corrina, Corrina

The Faculty < Nerve

The Faculty < Marjorie Prime

The Faculty > After Yang

The Faculty > Cleo from 5 to 7

The Faculty > The Post

The Faculty > A Nightmare on Elm Street

The Faculty > A Christmas Carol (1951)

The Faculty > Pain and Glory

Final spot: #1132 out of 3812, or 70%.