Triangle of Sadness (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A fashion model celebrity couple join an eventful cruise for the super-rich.

Directed by Ruben Östlund. Starring Thobias Thorwid, Harris Dickinson, and Charlbi Dean.

Triangle of Sadness tells the story of a rich influencer couple who go on a cruise together that ends in disaster. We follow them and their conversations with other wealthy people, as well as the yacht staff working to keep them happy. This was a difficult film for me to follow, not in the sense of the plot, but in the sense of what narrative threads I was intended to be following and what I was supposed to be getting out of it. I typically love stories highlighting the contrast between the classes, but this one just seemed too scattered for me to follow where the director and writer wanted to take me. There were several individual pieces I did enjoy, and I found myself pondering the ambiguous ending long after the credits rolled, but the more I sit with the rest of the movie, the less it seems to cohere.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Triangle of Sadness < Sarah, Plain and Tall

Triangle of Sadness > Avengers: Endgame

Triangle of Sadness > The Secret of Nikola Tesla

Triangle of Sadness > Dark City

Triangle of Sadness > After the Wedding

Triangle of Sadness > Sneakerella

Triangle of Sadness > Vampyr

Triangle of Sadness > Charulata

Triangle of Sadness < The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Triangle of Sadness > Sherlock Holmes

Triangle of Sadness < The Blues Brothers

Triangle of Sadness > The Gray Man

Final spot: #1960 out of 3899, or 50%.

Mean Girls (2024)

IMDb plot summary: Cady Heron is a hit with the Plastics, an A-list girl clique at her new school. But everything changes when she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George.

Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. Starring Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, and Auli'i Cravalho.

Mean Girls is the 2024 musical movie adaptation of the now 20-year-old comedy originally starring Lindsay Lohan. The story follows Cady, a high schooler who grew up being homeschooled in rural Africa, and struggles to find her footing when thrust into modern teen high school life. Let me start by saying I went into this with no nostalgic affinity for either the original or the Broadway adaptation, although both are fine, so I was going into this pretty fresh. The script is decent, there are definitely some good songs, but the movie really lives and dies on the musical performances, and Angourie Rice as Cady is a serious disappointment. She underplays both her acting and her singing so much that it loses all energy and makes her a very uninteresting character. Fortunately, the supporting cast rocks it -- Renee Rapp, Auliʻi Cravalho, and Avantika Vandanapu all completely slay all their songs and bring so much fun and joy to the story that it saves it from our mediocre lead. I'm still not a huge fan of the story or the jokes, but I'd definitely rewatch a few of those musical numbers again, which is what I was hoping to get out of this.

How entered my Flickchart:

Mean Girls > Sarah, Plain and Tall

Mean Girls < Dark Passage

Mean Girls > The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Mean Girls < Waking Ned Devine

Mean Girls > Air

Mean Girls < A Little Night Music

Mean Girls < Ikiru

Mean Girls > The Sound of Music

Mean Girls > The Boys of Paul Street

Mean Girls < 49 Up

Mean Girls > A Star Is Born (1937)

Final spot: #1313 out of 3898, or 66%.

Bottoms (2023)

IMDb plot summary: Two unpopular queer high-school students start a fight club to have sex before graduation.

Directed by Emma Seligman. Starring Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, and Ruby Cruz.

Bottoms is a teen sex comedy about two high school senior girls who (somewhat accidentally) start a fight club in the hopes of getting girlfriends and/or losing their virginity before they graduate. This is hardly ever my preferred genre, but I find that I'm coming around on it in light of the increase in female-led teen sex comedies -- this, Booksmart, Plan B, all really funny and entertaining. Our two leads in this one are especially great -- Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott have pitch-perfect deliveries of virtually every line. I also really enjoy the wacky non-realistic tint to the comedy here. I didn't see that coming until about 15 minutes into the movie when I suddenly realized that was the tone it was settling into and I LOVED it. I had a great time with this basically all the way through and am excited to rewatch it again in the near future so I can find even more individual line deliveries that make me laugh.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Bottoms > The Invention of Lying

Bottoms > Dark Passage

Bottoms < Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Bottoms > Theater Camp

Bottoms > The Jungle Book (1967)

Bottoms > Pink Floyd The Wall

Bottoms > Moonrise Kingdom

Bottoms < Men

Bottoms > Argo

Bottoms > Glengarry Glen Ross

Bottoms > Grease

Bottoms > A Man for All Seasons

Final spot: #502 out of 3894, or 87%.

Saltburn (2023)

IMDb plot summary: A student at Oxford University finds himself drawn into the world of a charming and aristocratic classmate, who invites him to his eccentric family's sprawling estate for a summer never to be forgotten.

Directed by Emerald Fennell. Starring Berry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, and Rosamund Pike.

Saltburn is a dark satire starring Barry Keoghan as a college graduate with a rough past who goes to stay with his college friend's elaborate mansion for the summer, only for relationships to get very twisted very quickly. I'm not going to give any more detail than that, as seeing how the plot unwinds is half the fun. This taps into the same kind of weird over-the-top delight as watching a trashy reality show, except of course this gets to go further and be more ridiculous due to being fictional. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it's kind of mesmerizing. The long closing dance number especially is one of the most memorable ending sequences I've seen in a while. The movie is a little overlong, however -- it ramps up a whole bunch near the end and feels like it's taken forever to get there. If a good 20 minutes or so had been shaved from the first hour, I'd have enjoyed this a whole lot more. Still a wild ride that I had a pretty good time.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Saltburn > The Invention of Lying

Saltburn < Key Largo

Saltburn < The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Saltburn > Imitation of Life

Saltburn > How to Marry a Millionaire

Saltburn > I Saw the Devil

Saltburn < Disney's Newsies the Broadway Musical

Saltburn > Stalag 17

Saltburn > Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India

Saltburn > Creation

Saltburn < A Scanner Darkly

Final spot: #1495 out of 3895, or 62%.

May December (2023)

IMDb plot summary: Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.

Directed by Todd Haynes. Starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton.

May December stars Julianne Moore and Charles Melton as an age gap couple who started dating when he was a young teenager, and Natalie Portman as the actress playing Moore's character in a biopic years later. She gets permission to study her subject to add some nuance to the character, and while the couple agrees at first, it ends up causing some trouble they didn't expect. Todd Haynes is an interesting filmmaker in that he seldom makes his characters or their circumstances easy to sum up, which makes for an occasionally frustrating but always engaging watch. Our three leads here are absolutely stunning. Moore and Portman are recognizable faces who here completely dissolve into their characters (and then Portman dissolves into Moore's character, which is another level of wildness), and Melton is an actor I wasn't familiar with previously but is so captivating in this film. My medium ranking of it reflects mostly how I'm not convinced that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts yet, but knowing Haynes' work it's also possible it just needs time to sit with me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

May December > Sarah, Plain and Tall

May December < Key Largo

May December < The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

May December > Sleepers

May December > Wristcutters: A Love Story

May December > The Black Phone

May December > Disney's Newsies The Broadway Musical

May December > Love, Life and Goldfish

May December < Don't Look Up

May December > The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

May December > Nobody's Fool

Final spot: #1470 out of 3896, or 62%.

Black & White (1999)

IMDb plot summary: A group of white high school teens become involved with Harlem's black hip-hop crowd.

Directed by James Toback. Starring Ben Stiller, Allan Houston, and Claudia Schiffer.

Black & White follows a group of white teenagers obsessed with Black hip-hop culture, an athlete being offered the chance to fix a game, and a filmmaker documenting the whole thing. This is a weird mess of a movie, without a coherent throughline or interesting characters. They all seem kind of randomly thrown together without a purpose for any of it. Just when I think one character is being set up as the primary arc of the story, it zigzags and abandons them. Done well, that could make this an interesting ensemble piece, but none of these pieces work individually, much less as a whole. The acting in this isn't good, even from seasoned actors, the writing is pretentious and silly, the wobbly camera gets old real fast... It just doesn't work at all, and I found very to like about it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Black & White < The Invention of Lying

Black & White < Avengers: Endgame

Black & White < Annie (1982)

Black & White < The Cowboys

Black & White > God's Not Dead

Black & White > The Wedding Date

Black & White > Paradise Island

Black & White > Agent Cody Banks

Black & White < Baby Take a Bow

Black & White > Captain Thunder

Black & White < Pride & Prejudice (2005)

Black & White < Martyrs

Final spot: #3660 out of 3892, or 6%.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

IMDb plot summary: Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden beside the camp.

Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Starring Cristian Friedel, Sandra Hüller and Johann Karthaus.

The Zone of Interest follows a German family where the patriarch manages Auschwitz, and he and his family live just on the other side of the wall. The story mostly just looks at the family's day-to-day lives, which on the surface are mundane, but of course they can't, be, because interspersed through all of it are the sounds, smells, sights, and unspoken understanding of the horrors mere feet from them. The movie is done well, but I think I admire its impact intellectually more than responded to it myself. It is unsettling to watch these people being able to tune out so much of their environment, just so they can move forward in peace with dinners and gardening and visits from family, and it is an important reminder of how easy it is to isolate ourselves and think, "As long as I'm OK, everything's OK." Sandra Huller turns in an especially good performance here -- what a year she had in 2023! So, yeah. Glad this movie exists and that it's getting attention.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Zone of Interest > Following

The Zone of Interest < Dark Passage

The Zone of Interest > Kajaki

The Zone of Interest < Waking Ned Devine

The Zone of Interest > The Whistleblower

The Zone of Interest < Wolf

The Zone of Interest < Ikiru

The Zone of Interest > Men in Black

The Zone of Interest > La jetee

The Zone of Interest > A Star Is Born (1937)

The Zone of Interest > Destroy All Monsters

The Zone of Interest > Moonlight

Final spot: #1307 out of 3891, or 66%.