Night Swim (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A family moves into a new home, unaware that a dark secret from the house's past will unleash a malevolent force in the backyard pool.

Directed by Bryce McGuire. Starring Wyatt Russell, Kerry Condon, and Amélie Hoeferle.

Night Swim follows a former baseball player and his family who buy a home with a pool so he can do water therapy for his MS. While the water seems to do wonders for his illness, the rest of the family starts seeing unsettling visions of a creature in the water, and they start unraveling the mystery. Look, as someone who can't swim and finds water inherently scary, I was all prepared to be unsettled by this, but it doesn't take any advantage of the premise at all. I didn't find a single actual scare in here, and I was the prime audience! On top of that, the rules of the evil make very little sense in an irritating way, the dialogue is full of terrible exposition, and the acting is pretty thin. A good campy low-budget horror is a lot of fun, but this isn't that, it's just disappointingly bland all the way through.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Night Swim < Selma

Night Swim < Frozen River

Night Swim > Mission to Mars

Night Swim > The World Is Not Enough

Night Swim < The Goonies

Night Swim > The Expendables

Night Swim < Domestic Disturbance

Night Swim < A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)

Night Swim < On the Town

Night Swim < Bad Moms

Night Swim > The Italian Job (2003)

Night Swim < Batman Begins

Final spot: #3078 out of 3866, or 20%.

The Virtuous Sin (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Marya is the wife of medical student Victor Sablin, who finds it impossible to deal with military life when he is inducted into the Russian army during World War I.

Directed by George Cukor and Louis J. Gasnier. Starring Walter Huston, Kay Francis, and Kenneth MacKenna.

The Virtuous Sin tells the story of a scientist couple who get married despite the woman thinking of him as only a friend. When he is drafted into the army and gets himself in trouble with his commanding officer, she decides to try and seduce the general in hopes of getting him a reprieve. This is absolutely a pre-Code film, as it gets away with insinuating far more saucy plot details than a film could a few years later. The Internet dubs this a comedy, but it's possible that much of the comedy is rooted in social mores I no longer have connections to, because it struck me as a lighthearted drama more than anything else -- friendly characters more than jokes. It's an engaging enough watch, and both our primary leads, Kay Francis and Walter Huston, bring charisma to their roles. 1930 really had a thing for showing women going against the societal grain, usually resulting in their own downfall, so it's nice to see something work out for a woman for once. An interesting little flick.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Virtuous Sin > Skyfall

The Virtuous Sin < Dark Passage

The Virtuous Sin > All That Jazz

The Virtuous Sin < Waking Ned Devine

The Virtuous Sin < Signs

The Virtuous Sin < The Miracle Worker

The Virtuous Sin > Can You Ever Forgive Me?

The Virtuous Sin < Targets

The Virtuous Sin < The Brood

The Virtuous Sin > The Detective

The Virtuous Sin > Garbo Talks

The Virtuous Sin > Laurence Anyways

Final spot: #1411 out of 3865, or 63%.

Lift (2024)

IMDb plot summary: Follows a master thief and his Interpol Agent ex-girlfriend who team up to steal $500 million in gold bullion being transported on an A380 passenger flight.

Directed by F. Gary Gray. Starring Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Sam Worthington.

Lift is about a team of art thieves, lead by Kevin Hart, who are asked by Interpol to steal a shipment of gold that would be used to pay for terrorist actions. It's your straightforward team heist movie, complete with fun gadgets, a large casts, and some big adventurous twists. The tone of the movie is right on -- light, playful, friendly. The problem is that we don't actually get enough time with our ensemble cast or glimpses into their personality or roles in the story, so we don't feel the same camaraderie that we get in other ensemble heist films like Ocean's Eleven or Sneakers. It makes it feel a little bit like a knock-off version of one of those better stories that took a shortcut through character development to make way for cool set pieces. Granted, the character development bar for this genre isn't extremely high, so it doesn't destory the film by any means, just settles it into a place of mediocrity. A perfectly okay movie with nothing special to recommend it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Lift < Captain Phillips

Lift > Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Lift < Stepmom

Lift > Cinderella (2015)

Lift > The Hot Rock

Lift > Bee Movie

Lift > Withnail & I

Lift > Nightmare Alley (2021)

Lift < Kicking and Screaming (1995)

Lift < Confessions of a Shopaholic

Lift < Fun and Fancy Free

Lift > Guarding Tess

Final spot: #2429 out of 3864, or 37%.

Flora and Son (2023)

IMDb plot summary: A single mom at war with her son is trying to find a hobby for him. One day, she rescues a guitar from a dumpster.

Directed by John Carney. Starring Eve Hewson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Orén Kinlan.

Flora and Son is the newest movie from John Carney, who always delivers charming music-centric films, most notably Once and Sing Street. This isn't quite as great as either of those, but it's still a lovely watch. Flora of the title is an irresponsible mother trying to keep her teenage son, Max, from getting himself in trouble with the law. Over the course of the movie they both discover they share a newfound love for making music. There's more suspension of disbelief required to buy into the emotional beats of this movie than Carney sometimes asks of his audience, but it works overall. The final scene is particularly charming, as other people who have played a role in Flora and her son's musical journey join them for the Big Musical Number, and it's impossible not to smile through it. Definitely worth watching, especially if stories about musicians and the arts are already an easy sell for you, but it didn't sweep me away the way I hoped it would.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Flora and Son > Skyfall

Flora and Son < Key Largo

Flora and Son > Don't Look Up

Flora and Son < Waking Ned Devine

Flora and Son < Signs

Flora and Son < The Miracle Worker

Flora and Son > The Long Day Closes

Flora and Son > Quartet

Flora and Son < Metal Lords

Flora and Son > Ping Pong Playa

Flora and Son > The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

Final spot: #1397 out of 3863, or 64%.

Knock at the Cabin (2023)

IMDb plot summary: While vacationing, a girl and her parents are taken hostage by armed strangers who demand that the family make a choice to avert the apocalypse.

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Starring Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, and Ben Aldridge.

Knock at the Cabin is a home invasion movie about a couple and their young daughter being held hostage by four strangers who claim that the world will end unless one of the family members is willingly sacrificed. This is Shyamalan's best script in a LONG time (possibly because he adapted it from an earlier draft rather than starting from scratch -- he should do that more often!) and it does an excellent job of bringing out the existential terror of the apocalypse. Dave Bautista gives an especially good dramatic performance, weighing his character down a mix of tragedy and compassion. I also understand people who were unhappy with the ending -- I understand it differs significantly from the book -- but the story as a whole is crafted well enough that the ending oddly didn't seem to matter as much to me. It feels like it's not about how it ends but the decisions that are made along the way. A movie that makes me remember why I liked Shyamalan back in the old days.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Knock at the Cabin > Skyfall

Knock at the Cabin > Dark Passage

Knock at the Cabin > The White Tiger

Knock at the Cabin < Fright Night (1985)

Knock at the Cabin > The Gods Must Be Crazy

Knock at the Cabin < Heathers

Knock at the Cabin < It Follows

Knock at the Cabin < Nosferatu

Knock at the Cabin > The Producers (2005)

Knock at the Cabin > Spirited

Knock at the Cabin < Life of Brian

Final spot: #350 out of 3862, or 91%.

Fast and Loose (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A wealthy family is thrown into turmoil when the daughter falls for the family chauffeur and the son begins to keep company with a chorus girl.

Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer. Starring Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard, and Frank Morgan.

Fast and Loose is a 1930 romantic drama about two rich siblings who each fall in love with lower-class partners and have to navigate that social scenario. It was fun to see a very young Carole Lombard in the role of the chorus girl who falls in love with the rich young man, as well as Frank Morgan as the rich father. Other than that, though, this a pretty thin story. It depends on two different love stories and, at least in the ending, frames them as equally important, but we hardly ever see Lombard's plot -- it's maybe 2 minutes total of them interacting. The love story that does get more attention is centered heavily on him taunting her for being a useless, foolish woman, which isn't terribly captivating either, even if it's meant playfully. The final scene puts a more interesting spin on the story, but it's too little, too late in a love story with very little to lean on.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Fast and Loose < Skyfall

Fast and Loose > The Fortune Cookie

Fast and Loose < Quigley Down Under

Fast and Loose > Paycheck

Fast and Loose < The Hot Rock

Fast and Loose > Hollywood Stargirl

Fast and Loose < Spinning Into Butter

Fast and Loose > Der Parfumeur

Fast and Loose < Pal Joey

Fast and Loose < Innocence Unprotected

Fast and Loose > The Deep

Fast and Loose < And Then There Were None

Final spot: #2576 out of 3861, or 33%.

Shame (2011)

IMDb plot summary: A sex addict's carefully cultivated private life falls apart after his sister arrives for an indefinite stay.

Directed by Steve McQueen. Starring Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, and James Badge Dale.

Shame stars Michael Fassbender as a man with sex addiction who finds himself struggling to make real-world emotional connections. Like so many of the best films dealing with issues of addiction, there's a deeply grimy and unpleasant sheen to this whole film, and our main character Brandon's sexual encounters aren't shown to us in a way that's at all erotic, just dismal and empty, particularly during the final third. The ending is deliberately ambiguous, and while I like that choice on paper, it didn't land quite as well as I wanted it to -- I think I needed a bit more wind-down aftermath than we got, for it to wholly grip me. That being said, though, this is a fascinating movie and one that I think is going to sit with me the more I think about it. Writing a review right after watching it almost feels a little unfair, like I haven't fully finished it, because this one needs time to digest. I may have to mentally revisit it in a month or so and see if it's settled into a more clear place in my mind.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Shame > Arthur Christmas

Shame < Key Largo

Shame < Don't Look Up

Shame > Is It Fall Yet?

Shame > Spider-Man 2

Shame > Kiss Me Kate

Shame > Battle Royale

Shame < Die Hard

Shame > Incendies

Shame > The Salesman

Shame < The Night Before

Final spot: #1466 out of 3860, or 62%.