A Cinderella Story: Starstruck (2021)

IMDb plot summary: Finley Tremaine, a small town farm girl, longs to spread her wings and soar as an aspiring performer.

Directed by Charlotte Colbert and Michelle Johnston. Stars Bailee Madison, Michael Evans Behling, and April Telek.

A Cinderella Story: Starstruck is a retelling of the Cinderella story, this time featuring a young girl who helps run her deceased father's farm but secretly wants to be an actress. When a big-budget production comes to town, her stepmother won't let her audition, so she dresses up as a man for the audition, gets a part, and along the way falls in love with her male lead. This isn't a Disney Channel movie, but it feels about that level of quality. The acting is all pretty stagey, in not a positive way. The twists and turns are predictable. The leads are generically good-looking young people, but they don't really have a lot of charisma. And of course the step-siblings and stepmother are written so broadly that it's hard to really see them as much of an actual threat. It's not necessarily a painful watch, just so much as an incredibly boring one. I didn't love the original A Cinderella Story either, but I feel like it has to have been at least a little bit more well-thought-out than this, which just feels cookie-cutter at every turn.

🎥 A Cinderella Story: Starstruck (2021)

📊 Ranked #3962/4321 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 9

lost to Exotica (#2199 → #2099)

lost to Sunshine (#3273 → #3226)

lost to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (#3799 → #3801)

beat Dragonball Evolution (#4060 → #4061)

lost to Move Over, Darling (#3930 → #3890)

beat Ouija House (#3995 → #3961)

lost to Mannequin (#3962 → #3964)

beat The Good Doctor (#3978 → #3988)

beat The Boy Friend (#3970 → #3973)

lost to The Story of the Weeping Camel (#3966 → #3968)

beat The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (#3968 → #3972)

beat Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein (#3967 → #3971)

A Pure Formality (1994)

IMDb plot summary: Onoff is a famous writer who hasn't published any new books for quite some time and has become a recluse. He is picked up by the police one stormy night, without any identification, out of breath and running madly, without clear memory of recent events.

Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. Stars Gérard Depardieu, Roman Polanski, and Sergio Rubini.

A Pure Formality stars Gerard Depardieu as a writer who is detained by the police after a body is found near his residence. He is reluctant to talk with them, and we follow the interrogation throughout the course of the movie. Until the end of the film, I was entirely bored with this movie. This is why I almost never give up on a movie partway through, because sometimes the ending can recontextualize the whole thing in a way where it suddenly works for me. Reading some reviews online, it looks like people hated the ending to this, for exactly the same reasons that I loved it. I suspect it largely comes down to how much you were enjoying it beforehand. If you were going in with different expectations, it could be a really disappointing shift in direction, but it was an exciting one for me and made me more interested in rewatching it sometime.

🎥 A Pure Formality (1995)

📊 Ranked #2201/4320 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 51

lost to The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (#2199 → #2106)

beat The Pajama Game (#3273 → #3282)

beat Casino (#2735 → #2733)

beat Scarface (#2466 → #2467)

beat Poulenc: Dialogues des Carmélites (#2332 → #2337)

beat The Invention of Lying (#2265 → #2282)

lost to Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (#2231 → #2170)

lost to The Blues Brothers (#2247 → #2200)

lost to To Be or Not to Be (#2255 → #2169)

beat State Fair (#2259 → #2269)

beat Union Pacific (#2257 → #2253)

beat Zelig (#2256 → #2272)

The Handmaiden (2016)

IMDb plot summary: In 1930s Korea, a girl is hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress who lives a secluded life on a countryside estate. But the maid has a secret: She is a pickpocket recruited by a swindler to help seduce the Lady and steal her fortune.

Directed by Park Chan-wook. Stars Kim Min-hee, Ha Jung-woo, and Cho Jin-woong.

The Handmaiden is a Korean psychological drama about a woman who becomes a handmaiden to a mysterious and beautiful lady, and we see how their relationship and their many secrets play out. I'm not going to go into much more detail than that, because this goes in a lot of unexpected directions that I think are served best with surprise. I didn't realize how much of a psychological drama/thriller this was -- in my head, it was just a traditional period piece, but it certainly isn't that. Like many psychological dramas, it has moments that are delightful twists and moments where it feels like it's getting too far into the weeds to hold my interest. It also always verges right on the edge of being exploitative in its explicit scenes, and I'm not convinced that it sticks the landing. Overall though, if you like twisty-turny psychological stories, this is probably one you should watch.

🎥 The Handmaiden (2016)

📊 Ranked #1807/4319 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 59

beat Meet John Doe (#2198 → #2194)

lost to The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (#1091 → #1015)

lost to Splice (#1654 → #1664)

beat 300 (#1927 → #2045)

lost to The Informer (#1793 → #1819)

beat Kagemusha (#1860 → #1864)

beat Walk on the Wild Side (#1827 → #1777)

lost to Interview with the Vampire (#1809 → #1829)

beat Chaos Theory (#1818 → #1773)

beat The Great Gatsby (#1814 → #1835)

beat A Star Is Born (#1812 → #1822)

beat Anybody's Woman (#1811 → #1832)

Cocaine Bear (2023)

IMDb plot summary: An oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converge on a Georgia forest where a huge black bear goes on a murderous rampage after unintentionally ingesting cocaine.

Directed by Elizabeth Banks. Stars Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, and O'Shea Jackson Jr.

Cocaine Bear is a thriller/comedy about a drug dealer who accidentally loses a bunch of cocaine in the woods, only for a bear to consume it and go on a wild rampage. This is as silly as it sounds, and it's occasionally entertaining, but the joke only stretches so far. I appreciate the wide variety of talented comedians brought in to bring the story to life, and they do bring in some creativity. (Jesse Tyler Ferguson was an especially high point for me.) But I really think this would work better as a series of sketches on SNL or a short film on YouTube -- the jokes and the characters don't quite stretch to fill feature length, and I found myself anxious for the story to end long before the credits rolled around.

🎥 Cocaine Bear (2023)

📊 Ranked #2658/4318 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 42

lost to Melody Time (#2198 → #1997)

beat Tallulah (#3271 → #3519)

beat Star! (#2733 → #2769)

lost to The Forbidden Kingdom (#2464 → #2192)

lost to Ghost Ship (#2594 → #2592)

beat Death on the Nile (#2662 → #2667)

lost to Focus (#2628 → #2627)

lost to She Loves Me (#2644 → #2651)

lost to Star Trek: Nemesis (#2652 → #2376)

beat Elle (#2656 → #2664)

beat The Little Prince (#2654 → #2665)

beat Le Week-End (#2653 → #2659)

Boiling Point (2021)

IMDb plot summary: A chef must deal with pressures in and out of the kitchen of a high end restaurant in the Christmas rush.

Directed by Philip Barantini. Stars Stephen Graham, Vinette Robinson, and Alice Feetham.

Boiling Point follows an intense shift at a restaurant, seen primarily through the owner and head chef's eyes, as he also deals with family problems, homelessness, and discord among his staff. If you're a fan of the TV show The Bear, you *need* to see this movie, as I think it will scratch a very similar itch, but distilled into a single shot over 90 minutes rather than over several episodes. Stephen Graham plays our protagonist, and he is electric, in a surprisingly quiet and understated way -- you just want everything to work out for him and are on the edge of your seat the whole time. The film is one long continuous shot, which really amplifies the tension the whole way through. While the focus is on Graham's character, we continue to get glimpses of the back stories for several other characters as well, and they're just as compelling. The artistry is on full display for this film, and it's very much worth a watch.

🎥 Boiling Point (2022)

📊 Ranked #400/4317 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 90

beat Melody Time (#2197 → #2198)

beat Southside with You (#1091 → #1093)

beat Garden State (#546 → #661)

lost to The City of Lost Children (held at #259)

beat WarGames (#400 → #401)

lost to Bells Are Ringing (held at #327)

lost to Fantasia (held at #363)

lost to Blood Simple (held at #379)

lost to Welcome to Dongmakgol (held at #388)

lost to A Simple Plan (held at #392)

lost to Half a Sixpence (held at #394)

lost to Won't You Be My Neighbor? (held at #395)

lost to Pink Floyd: The Wall (held at #396)

Creepshow (1982)

IMDb plot summary: Five grisly tales from a kid's comic book about a murdered father rising from his grave, a bizarre meteor, a vengeful husband, a mysterious crate's occupant, and a plague of cockroaches.

Directed by George A. Romero. Stars Hal Holbrook, Leslie Nielsen, and Adrienne Barbeau.

Creepshow is an anthology of five Stephen King horror stories, woven together through a loose frame of a young boy reading the Creepshow magazine. As with all anthologies, the quality varies from short to short, but overall I had a good time with this one. I appreciate the thread of goofiness that flows through every piece of it -- I had several laugh-out-loud moments, particularly in the first story. The one starring Stephen King himself is easily the weakest, particularly because King is truly awful in it, even if the final scenes are great fun. But other than that, they're all pretty solid and I enjoy the creativity of each story as it played out. An enjoyable watch, with only one really worth skipping.

🎥 Creepshow (1982)

📊 Ranked #1382/4316 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 67

beat National Theatre Live: The Seagull (#2197 → #2186)

lost to Pom Poko (#1089 → #975)

beat The Tragedy of Macbeth (#1651 → #1645)

lost to She's Gotta Have It (#1369 → #1364)

beat The Green Mile (#1512 → #1624)

beat Ping Pong Playa (#1438 → #1543)

beat Manchester by the Sea (#1403 → #1551)

lost to The Shoes of the Fisherman (#1385 → #1370)

beat Undercover Blues (#1395 → #1387)

beat World War Z (#1390 → #1383)

lost to The Killing of a Sacred Deer (#1388 → #1381)

beat SubUrbia (#1389 → #1404)

The Day of the Beast (1995)

IMDb plot summary: Bent on committing as many sins as possible to avert the birth of the beast, a Catholic priest teams up with a Black Metal aficionado and an Italian connoisseur of the occult. Now, he must become an unrelenting sinner. Is there still hope?

Directed by Álex de la Iglesia. Stars Álex Angulo, Armando De Razza, and Santiago Segura.

The Day of the Beast is a horror film about a priest who believes he can find the secret of the Antichrist's birth in metal music, and he teams up with a metalhead to commit as many sins as possible to prevent the end of the world. On paper, this sounds like an amazing concept, but it's flatter in execution. I wanted the film to land more solidly in either camp or horror, and instead it treads the line in a way that ends up just being kind of boring. It takes itself surprisingly seriously for being such a ridiculous premise, and not even in a so-bad-it's-good way. It's possible that there are pieces of this I'm missing culturally that would make it land better for me. But as it was it was a mediocre movie that I wanted to be more interesting.

🎥 The Day of the Beast (1995)

📊 Ranked #2660/4315 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 42

lost to Zelig (#2196 → #2198)

beat The Fugitive (#3268 → #3266)

beat Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (#2731 → #2727)

lost to Finding Vivian Maier (#2462 → #2399)

lost to A Foreign Affair (#2592 → #2596)

beat 10 (#2659 → #2945)

lost to The Harder They Fall (#2626 → #2370)

beat Death on the Nile (#2642 → #2662)

lost to The Keep (#2634 → #2373)

beat Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (#2638 → #2921)

lost to The Devil Wears Prada (#2636 → #2630)

lost to A Cure for Wellness (#2637 → #2238)