Sound of Falling (2025)

IMDb plot summary: A remote German farm harbors generations of secrets. Four women, separated by decades but united by trauma, uncover the truth behind its weathered walls.

Directed by Mascha Schilinski. Stars Hanna Heckt, Lena Urzendowsky, and Susanne Wuest.

Sound of Falling is a German film following four generations of women all living in the same house from the 1800s all up to modern day. The film cuts non-linearly between the four of them, hopping from story to story and timeline to timeline. I found it a little jarring until I finally settled into it. As a result, I liked the film more in concept than an execution. Many of these scenes were so slice-of-life and so slow that it was difficult to really connect to the characters or to the conflict of the moment, although there were definitely a few that stood out. I think I may need to re-watch it again now that I have a stronger understanding of the film's concept, as well as hopefully having an easier time identifying the different characters the second time around. Even though the stories were set several decades apart, I still found it difficult to tell when I was in which timeline. However, it is a really creative film, and I totally understand why people are loving it, even if its structure kept it from totally landing for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Sound of Falling (2025)

📊 Ranked #2186/4312 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 51

lost to The Girl on a Motorcycle (#2196 → #2184)

beat Bright Lights (#3266 → #3488)

beat Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (#2730 → #2731)

beat Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (#2462 → #2463)

beat The Accidental Tourist (#2328 → #2329)

beat The Seventh Seal (#2261 → #2262)

beat Ender's Game (#2228 → #2229)

beat The Dawn Patrol (#2212 → #2213)

beat Serpico (#2204 → #2205)

beat The Lair of the White Worm (#2200 → #2202)

beat Away We Go (#2198 → #2199)

beat The Score (#2197 → #2198)

Hello Again (1987)

IMDb plot summary: A suburban housewife chokes to death and is brought back to life by a spell cast by her wacky sister.

Directed by Frank Perry. Stars Shelley Long, Judith Ivey, and Gabriel Byrne.

Hello Again is a 1987 comedy about a woman who unexpectedly dies, and then a year later her witch sister manages to find the spell that will raise her from the dead. She then has to figure out whether she wants to return to her original life or start something new, now that everybody has kind of moved on. Shelley Long absolutely carries this whole movie. She is clumsy and awkward, but refreshingly real in her portrayal, rather than being that movie version of it that nobody who is actually clumsy and awkward ever relates to. I totally connected with this woman and her discomfort and her sense of eternal shame in not being able to be the smooth one at the parties her husband brings her to. As a result, watching her try to redo her life is really engaging. The ending is pretty cheesy, but it's still an enjoyable ride for most of the way, largely because she's such a fun person to observe on screen.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Hello Again (1987)

📊 Ranked #1339/4326 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 69

beat The Forbidden Kingdom (#2200 → #2201)

lost to The Fugitive Kind (#1091 → #703)

beat Space Sweepers (#1650 → #1702)

beat City of God (#1370 → #1535)

lost to A Bug's Life (#1231 → #1232)

lost to His Girl Friday (#1301 → #1298)

lost to Sling Blade (#1335 → #1334)

beat A Serious Man (#1352 → #1400)

beat Unbreakable (#1343 → #1342)

lost to Serial Mom (#1339 → #1335)

beat Wonder Boys (#1341 → #1340)

beat The Post (#1340 → #1371)

Terminal (2018)

IMDb plot summary: A film noir taking place in a train terminal at night. Add two male assassins, a female assassin, a waitress, a teacher, a janitor, and a crime boss. Add revenge. Who says mystery is a lost art?

Directed by Vaughn Stein. Stars Margot Robbie, Simon Pegg, and Dexter Fletcher.

Terminal is sort of a two-pronged story. One piece featuring Margot Robbie as an assassin, where we watch her going around and accomplishing her work and one featuring Simon Pegg as a man who is dying of terminal cancer and runs into Robbie's character in a diner. The film juxaposes these talky scenes about death with a lot of more intense action sequences. There are fun moments to this, but overall it falls flat for me. It definitely feels like two different movies and when the first half ends, the second half doesn't feel connected to it. So it all feels a little disjointed. I didn't mind either half individually, but together they don't help each other out very much. Kind of a disappointing watch, even with a talented cast.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Terminal (2018)

📊 Ranked #2907/4325 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 37

lost to Rififi (#2201 → #1964)

beat The Witches of Eastwick (held at #3280)

lost to Internal Affairs (#2741 → #2613)

beat Firecreek (#3015 → #3017)

lost to The Subject Was Roses (#2885 → #2614)

beat Chinatown (#2950 → #3264)

beat Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (#2917 → #2934)

lost to Liz & Dick (#2901 → #2887)

beat Soylent Green (#2909 → #3239)

beat Mad Dog and Glory (#2905 → #2909)

beat Street of Chance (#2903 → #2908)

beat The Hollars (#2902 → #2912)

Buddies (1985)

IMDb plot summary: The film follows a New York City gay man, in a monogamous relationship, becoming a "buddy" or volunteer bedside companion to another gay man dying of AIDS, and the friendship that develops. Restored in 2020.

Directed by Arthur J. Bressan Jr. Stars Geoff Edholm, David Schachter, and Billy Lux.

Buddies is a film from 1985, known as the first feature film to be about AIDS. Our story follows a young man hospitalized with the disease and a much more sheltered gay man who volunteers as a “buddy” to keep him company during his hospital stay. This is absolutely a low-budget, simply made film, and at times that feels wonky, but overall I found it incredibly moving. It is significant that this is such an early film to deal with the AIDS epidemic and how devastating that was. While the acting is all just a little tiny bit wooden and obvious, the characters do still somehow feel like real people. They have different reactions to both the disease and the public response, and even while everything feels very scripted out, the reality of the story rings true, which is an impressive take for something that is, could have been just like unbearably corny and cheesy. It does end up being a little stilted, but I found myself really drawn to the story regardless. Worth a watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Buddies (1985)

📊 Ranked #793/4310 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 81

beat Hellboy (#2169 → #2404)

beat The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (#1086 → #1085)

lost to Dope (#549 → #556)

beat Spotlight (#821 → #819)

lost to Won't You Be My Neighbor? (#688 → #411)

lost to Running on Empty (#754 → #714)

lost to Philadelphia (#787 → #518)

beat The Wild Robot (#803 → #870)

beat The Shape of Water (#795 → #900)

lost to The Manchurian Candidate (held at #791)

lost to Megamind (held at #793)

lost to The Stepford Wives (held at #794)

Time of the Wolf (2003)

IMDb plot summary: When Anna and her family arrive at their holiday home, they find it occupied by strangers. This confrontation is just the beginning of a painful learning process.

Directed by Michael Haneke. Stars Isabelle Huppert, Anaïs Demoustier, and Béatrice Dalle.

Time of the Wolf is a Michael Haneke film set in a vaguely apocalyptic setting where food is scarce and people are fending for themselves. We follow a widow and her two children as they make their way and ultimately end up joining in with a large group of other wanderers hoping to make their way somewhere better. I really go back and forth on Michael Haneke. Some of his, like Amour or The Seventh Continent absolutely break me in the best way, and I love them. And then others, like The White Ribbon or this, just kind of leave me cold. On the surface, I should love the apocalyptic nature of this story, but it moves so glacially that I can't stay interested. That pace does lend itself to a sense of doom -- that the world is broken and can never be put back together -- but not in a way that I find particularly compelling. Overall, a good concept that ended up being pretty disappointing for me personally.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Time of the Wolf (2003)

📊 Ranked #2816/4307 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 39

lost to Lenny (#2168 → #2100)

beat The Forger (#3255 → #3287)

lost to The Asphalt Jungle (#2704 → #2623)

beat Anything Else (#2983 → #2998)

beat Flightplan (#2845 → #2833)

lost to Superman (#2779 → #2782)

lost to Green Street Hooligans (#2812 → #2791)

beat Mad Dog and Glory (#2828 → #2836)

beat ¡Three Amigos! (#2820 → #2828)

lost to The Love Witch (#2816 → #2757)

lost to Laura (#2818 → #2696)

beat Unsung Hero (#2819 → #2817)

Summer School (1987)

IMDb plot summary: Freddy the gym teacher has to teach remedial English in summer (high) school, if he wants tenure. As he can only teach gym and his students want fun, emphasis is on "field trips" - until he's fired unless all his students pass the test.

Directed by Carl Reiner. Stars Mark Harmon, Kirstie Alley, and Robin Thomas.

Summer School is a comedy starring Mark Harmon as a PE teacher who is unwillingly roped in to teach remedial English in summer school. He is not prepared for this and the students have no intention of letting him do it, so he has to resort to unorthodox measures to achieve those goals. I didn't have high expectations for this but it ended up mostly working for me. It's both cleverer and kinder than a lot of films in this vein often are, but it also manages to avoid being sentimental the way a film might be if it were striking a more dramatic tone. Obviously this is a horrible example of good boundaries in teacher-student relationships, but in the context of a film where we're letting our suspension of disbelief take the reins, it was a good time, and I did laugh a lot more than I thought I was going to, so nicely done.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Summer School (1987)

📊 Ranked #840/4309 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 80

beat EDtv (#2171 → #2176)

beat Open Your Eyes (#1087 → #1069)

lost to Argo (#548 → #601)

lost to The Karate Kid (#819 → #605)

beat Sisters (#953 → #996)

beat Brooklyn (#885 → #854)

lost to Back to the Future Part III (#852 → #888)

beat Shiva Baby (#868 → #968)

beat Society of the Snow (#860 → #891)

beat Bubba Ho-tep (#856 → #889)

lost to Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (#854 → #838)

lost to Roxanne (#855 → #839)

Mustang (2015)

IMDb plot summary: When five orphan girls are seen innocently playing with boys on a beach, their scandalized conservative guardians confine them while forced marriages are arranged.

Directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven. Stars Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, and Tugba Sunguroglu.

Mustang is a Turkish film about 5 orphaned sisters whose guardians begin to significantly restrict their freedom in an attempt to marry them off and get them settled. This one was kind of a mixed bag for me. I really appreciated the idea behind it and seeing all these different girls with their interests and their hopes and seeing how things all kind of went down for them was very interesting in theory. I found it difficult to keep the different girls straight in my mind though, so some of the character beats got lost in trying to decipher who was who. As the story went on, it became a lot more compelling for me and so I settled into it for sure, but it took me a long time to get started and in the end, I just didn't love it as much as I hoped I would. Still a very good movie, but not one that I am really in love with.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Mustang (2015)

📊 Ranked #1863/4308 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 58

beat The Crazies (#2168 → #2161)

lost to The Other Boleyn Girl (#1087 → #1101)

lost to I and You (#1626 → #1400)

beat The Green Knight (#1894 → #1900)

beat Ponyo (#1761 → #1785)

lost to Single White Female (#1692 → #1617)

beat Island of Lost Souls (#1725 → #1814)

lost to Singles (#1708 → #1626)

beat Sorcerer (#1716 → #1769)

beat Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (#1712 → #1779)

beat Radhe Shyam (#1710 → #1843)

beat Harakiri (#1709 → #1864)