Empire Records (1995)

IMDb plot summary: Twenty-four hours in the lives of the young employees at Empire Records when they all grow up and become young adults thanks to each other and the manager. They all face the store joining a chain store with strict rules.

Directed by Allan Moyle. Stars Anthony LaPaglia, Debi Mazar, and Maxwell Caulfield.

Empire Records is a day in the life of a record store owner and the many artsy teenagers working at the same store. While there are a bunch of different plot threads being followed, with each of the employees having their own little drama, the two larger plots being followed are 1) that the closing employee last night took the $9,000 that was meant to be deposited and gambled it away in Atlantic City, leaving the store owner panicked that it's going to mean the loss of the store, and 2) the store is hosting a giant meet and greet session for a popular star of yesteryear who is releasing his newest album. This is the most '90s film I have maybe ever seen. That's not a bad thing, I love this. The characters are dynamic, the dialogue is funny and sharp, definitely past the point of believability, but it's just so fun to hear them interact. While they have their relational problems, this group of employees also is weirdly heartwarming together. One scene where they host a fake funeral for the goth teen is a particularly perfect blend of comedy and sweetness. I'm not really sure how I missed out on this one all those years, but this one is a delightful gem and I definitely anticipate coming back to it at some point.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Empire Records (1995)

📊 Ranked #447/4042 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 89

beat John Wick (#2016 → #2018)

beat Widows' Peak (#1006 → #1008)

beat Revengers Tragedy (#502 → #500)

lost to Your Name. (#251 → #250)

lost to The Disaster Artist (held at #376)

lost to Hero (#439 → #437)

beat Bringing Out the Dead (#470 → #471)

beat Black Panther (#454 → #455)

lost to Women Talking (held at #446)

beat Carrie (#450 → #479)

beat The Maltese Falcon (held at #448)

beat The Kindergarten Teacher (#447 → #449)

The Pagemaster (1994)

IMDb plot summary: A cowardly boy, who buries himself in accident statistics, enters a library to escape a storm, only to be transformed into an animated illustration by the Pagemaster. He has to work through obstacles from classic books to return to real-life.

Directed by Pixote Hunt and Joe Johnston. Stars Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, and Kanin Howell.

The Pagemaster stars Macaulay Culkin as a young child who is afraid of everything, but when taking shelter in the library during the storm, he is abruptly drawn into the world of books (portrayed by a shift from live-action to animation) and must find his way out with the help of several genre looks. He encounters various literary characters such as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Long John Silver as he makes his way back home. This is cute. This is for kids. I'm all for stories that take literary concepts and characters and stories and condense them down so that kids can have a solid understanding of them. The plot itself doesn't really matter as much as the fun of coming across the different characters and having to interact with them. The book characters that Culkin journeys with are extremely broadly written tropes but they function fine as children's storybook sidekicks. I might have been way more into this as a kid, as someone who loved reading all these classics and would have enjoyed seeing them on screen all condensed together in the same world, but it doesn't offer a lot of new and exciting things for me as an adult. That's okay. It's not for me. I watched it too late. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Pagemaster (1994)

📊 Ranked #3292/4041 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 18

lost to Short Circuit (#2016 → #2012)

lost to The Accidental Tourist (#3024 → #2977)

beat Mr. & Mrs. Smith (held at #3533)

lost to A Stranger Among Us (#3280 → #3275)

beat Move Over, Darling (#3406 → #3477)

beat Asterix and Cleopatra (#3343 → #3347)

lost to Good Night, and Good Luck. (#3311 → #3288)

beat Carousel (#3327 → #3330)

beat Billy the Kid (#3319 → #3324)

beat Pepito y la lámpara maravillosa (#3315 → #3318)

beat Susannah of the Mounties (#3313 → #3316)

beat Bright Lights (#3312 → #3313)

A Real Pain (2024)

IMDb plot summary: Mismatched cousins reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother, but their old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.

Directed by Jesse Eisenberg. Stars Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg, and Olha Bosova.

A Real Pain is directed by Jesse Eisenberg and stars Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as cousins who go on a heritage tour to Poland, where their grandmother lived before escaping as a Jewish refugee. The two cousins are very different in personality and in how they absorb the  exploration of their family's history, with Eisenberg being solemn and restrained and Culkin being effusive and prone to emotional outbursts. This felt like the kind of movie that I haven't seen in a long time, although I'm sure I have and just can't bring anything to mind. It's such a simple setup for these characters to explore their identities and their relationship to pain and suffering. The dialogue is beautifully crafted, and the two lead actors in particular do a marvelous job bringing their characters to life. Watching them interact, or even watching them watch each other interact with others, is  so engrossing, and while I'm still processing the big overall ideas of the movie or what the ending means about the characters, I really loved getting to be a fly on the wall as these two characters work through their relationship. It's the kind of movie I compare in the most complimentary way to a really great piece of theater. Even with the big set pieces of touristy Poland, the stakes and the characters are small and intimate, and it pays off emotionally.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 A Real Pain (2024)

📊 Ranked #563/4040 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 86

beat I and You (#2015 → #2019)

beat Child's Play (#1006 → #1095)

lost to VeggieTales: King George and the Ducky (#502 → #484)

beat 5 Centimeters per Second (#754 → #757)

beat GoodFellas (#627 → #632)

lost to Happy Death Day (held at #564)

beat L.A. Without a Map (#595 → #599)

beat Paddington 2 (#579 → #581)

lost to The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (#571 → #554)

beat Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (held at #575)

beat Anatomy of a Murder (held at #573)

beat The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (#572 → #653)

Cool As Ice (1991)

IMDb plot summary: A rapper gets stuck in a small town and falls for a local girl whose family is in witness protection.

Directed by David Kellogg. Stars Vanilla Ice, Kristin Minter, and Naomi Campbell.

Cool As Ice was a film vehicle for rapper Vanilla Ice and is often named as one of the worst films of the '90s. Vanilla Ice plays a cool biker kid who falls in love with a straight A high school graduate, and then has to not only bridge the gap between their two worlds but also save her family from being kidnapped. Yeah, this is a pretty stupid film. It rests entirely on trying to make Vanilla Ice seem cool, and from the ratings that got it seems like that was not an easy task even back in 1991, but now he just seems incredibly laughably silly. He gets several opportunities to perform, and none of them are interesting or particularly useful in setting the tone to the story. The kidnapping subplot is truly bizarre and seems to belong in an entirely different film, as if they wrote a whole story about worlds colliding in romance and then realized that it was only a 30 minute film, so they tossed in some musical numbers and added some gangsters. As I was watching this, I kept pausing to complain to my family about how ridiculous this all sounded. Fortunately it moves pretty quickly so the silliness of it is over fast, but this is not a good movie.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Cool as Ice (1991)

📊 Ranked #3755/4039 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 7

lost to Coraline (#2015 → #2007)

lost to Chungking Express (#3023 → #3021)

lost to The Last Temptation of Christ (#3531 → #3407)

beat Live a Little, Love a Little (#3783 → #3786)

lost to There's Something About Mary (#3657 → #3580)

lost to Candleshoe (#3720 → #3656)

lost to Pride & Prejudice (#3751 → #3747)

beat Thr3e (#3767 → #3776)

beat Black Sheep (#3759 → #3765)

beat The Lone Ranger (#3755 → #3760)

lost to Martyrs (#3753 → #3750)

beat Black and White (#3754 → #3757)

Time After Time (1979)

IMDb plot summary: H.G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to the 20th Century when the serial murderer uses the future writer's time machine to escape his time period.

Directed by Nicholas Meyer. Stars Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen, and David Warner.

Time After Time is a 1979 film starring Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells, who has built an actual time machine and then has to use it to chase Jack the Ripper to the 1970s. It's a very simple premise but one that works incredibly well, and it's just a ton of fun to watch. It's a good combination of a story that is playful but does actually have high stakes. One thing that helps is that it's not just about the action of chasing down Jack the Ripper, but it's grounded in a heartfelt romance between Wells and a bank teller played by Mary Steenburgen. I especially like that, unlike many fish out of water stories, Wells is very intelligent when it comes to figuring out future tech. It's clear that he's already daydreamed about what the future might bring and has some of the scientific knowledge to be able to predict some of this semi-accurately, so he figures out patterns and how to survive in this new world very quickly, which is a refreshing take on this kind of story. The final third has some weird acting choices from Steenburgen in particular, which is a bit off-putting because she has been so good up until that point, but fortunately at that time the action is more the front and center rather than the romance, so whatever she's doing  is not destroying anything that's been set up. Overall, a really fun ride that I knew nothing about going into it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Time After Time (1979)

📊 Ranked #828/4038 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 80

beat The Wedding Singer (#2014 → #2019)

beat The Voices (#1005 → #1010)

lost to 22 Jump Street (#502 → #501)

lost to Tell It to the Bees (#754 → #735)

beat Pather Panchali (#879 → #883)

lost to Support Your Local Sheriff! (#816 → #814)

beat Hawking (#847 → #1176)

beat The Offence (#831 → #832)

lost to Kismet (#823 → #826)

lost to Companion (#827 → #824)

beat Brazil (#829 → #1059)

beat 9 (#828 → #830)

The Wild Robot (2024)

IMDb plot summary: After a shipwreck, an intelligent robot called Roz is stranded on an uninhabited island. To survive the harsh environment, Roz bonds with the island's animals and cares for an orphaned baby goose.

Directed by Chris Sanders. Stars Lupita Nyong'o, Pedro Pascal, and Kit Connor.

The Wild Robot is an animated film starting Lupita Nyong'o as a robot that mistakenly lands on Earth and looks around for a task to fulfill. She accidentally destroys a family of birds and decides that her task is going to be to nurture and care for the one baby bird that survives. The film then follows her relationship with the bird, as the rest of the creatures in the forest that do not trust her, and eventually, she must grapple with her destiny to return to home. The pacing of  this movie is a little strange. It feels like it took two separate stories and mashed them into one, so our act one ending feels like a decisive final ending, and the second half felt like an afterthought. I believe this is based on a series of books, so maybe that is literally what happened, that it took two separate books and combined them to make this version. It's definitely a sentimental film but it does a pretty good job of making it work overall. For example, there's a scene where, during a particularly bad winter, the robot shelters as many forest animals as she can in her little house with a fire. They decide to, temporarily at least, accept her help, accept her as one of them, and stop trying to kill each other. The scene shouuld be too cheesy to work, but somehow it feels plausible here. A couple of other positives that I want to mention include Pedro pascal, who should absolutely be doing voice work as on a regular basis. I didn't realize it was him until halfway through the movie, but he makes the fox an incredibly compelling character. There are also some really gorgeous large animation shots of the landscapes as the robot makes her way through. I think all the pieces individually work, and I think like 80% of it works together as a whole. It's a little uneven throughout, but I think it sticks the landing well enough. Definitely a sweet movie and one worth watching. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Wild Robot (2024)

📊 Ranked #838/4037 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 79

beat The Year of Living Dangerously (#2014 → #2308)

beat The Other Boleyn Girl (#1005 → #999)

lost to Rise of the Planet of the Apes (#502 → #489)

lost to Come from Away (#754 → #750)

lost to Whale Rider (#879 → #867)

beat The Hateful Eight (#942 → #935)

beat Volver (#910 → #997)

beat Hustlers (#894 → #893)

beat Being There (#886 → #1136)

lost to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (#882 → #836)

beat Pather Panchali (#884 → #879)

beat The Sting (#883 → #902)

Sully (2016)

IMDb plot summary: When pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger lands his damaged plane on the Hudson River in order to save the flight's passengers and crew, some consider him a hero while others think he was reckless.

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Stars Tom Hanks, Aaron Eckhart, and Laura Linney.

Sully is a film based on a true story, starring Tom Hanks as a pilot who ends up landing a large passenger plane in the Hudson River after both of its engines are taken out during takeoff. Miraculously everybody survives, but the story follows the investigation afterward, where Hanks must prove that his decision to land the plane in the river rather than try to make it back to LaGuardia or to a neighboring airport was the best decision in the moment. For having such a narrow focus of story, over only a few days and focusing on one specific incident, there's a lot of suspense here, as well as some psychological exploration. While it's fairly certain from the get-go that Sully did do his due diligence as a pilot, we still get to see him grapple with self-doubt and lingering trauma from the event, which would of course be part of anybody's experience in this case. The story is surprisingly restrained, not really leaning into melodramatics. In fact, the final climactic moment of the movie revolves entirely around watching a series of simulated flight landings, with no added on drama to it. But watching  airplane simulations has never been as tense as it was in this film. Tom Hanks often manages to play restraint or reservedness with some deep subtext underneath, and he does that very well here. Not a film I would have expected it myself to get invested in, but this is pretty solid.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Sully (2016)

📊 Ranked #1185/4036 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 71

beat The Sea Gull (#2016 → #2020)

lost to What's Eating Gilbert Grape (#1006 → #1011)

beat Nothing in Common (#1510 → #1584)

beat The Exterminating Angel (#1256 → #1400)

beat Henry V (#1135 → #1195)

lost to The Philadelphia Story (#1035 → #161)

lost to Barbie (#1103 → #1078)

lost to Room (#1097 → #231)

lost to Cradle Will Rock (#1106 → #239)

lost to The Bad Seed (#1131 → #1106)

lost to It (#1134 → #1131)

lost to The Secret of NIMH (#1130 → #1124)