Local Hero (1983)

IMDb plot summary: An American oil company has plans for a new refinery and sends someone to Scotland to buy up an entire village, but things don't go as expected.

Directed by Bill Forsyth. Stars Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, and Fulton Mackay.

Local Hero stars Peter Riegert as a man who is sent by his oil company employer to a small town in Scotland, where he is offering to purchase all the land from them and is sent there to negotiate a price. The people are excited and ready to sell, but they want to negotiate a higher price, and so they keep him around for a while. While he's there, he ends up falling in love with the village and the people there and questioning whether he wants to facilitate this sale after all. This is a very quiet, slow film. Because of that, it took me a while to register the kind of story that I was seeing. It didn't hit the traditional hallmarks or beats I expected, which is a good thing on one hand because it was outside of the box, but on the other hand it meant that it took me a long time to get settled into the story and to figure out whether I was meant to look at our protagonist as a hero or a villain. It took me a long time to get emotionally invested in the story. If I went back and re-watched it, knowing what kind of vibe it was going for, it might be a much easier sell and a much quicker investment in the characters. There are so many different characters being shown to us that I can't process all of their plot lines on a first watch, so I do feel like one viewing doesn't give me the full picture of it. But after one viewing I wasn't sold on it the way I hoped I would be.

🎥 Local Hero (1983)

📊 Ranked #2307/4212 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 45

lost to Phantom of the Opera (held at #2140)

beat The Forger (#3184 → #3185)

beat Easy Virtue (#2661 → #2662)

beat Neighbors (#2401 → #2402)

lost to Waves (held at #2268)

beat The Last Temptation of Christ (#2335 → #2336)

lost to Holiday Affair (held at #2302)

beat The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (#2318 → #2319)

beat A Complete Unknown (#2310 → #2311)

lost to Malignant (held at #2306)

beat Just Like Heaven (#2308 → #2309)

Rodney King (2017)

IMDb plot summary: Roger Guenveur Smith performs his one man show focusing on the life and times of Rodney King.

Directed by Spike Lee. Stars Roger Guenveur Smith.

Rodney King is a filmed spoken word performance piece, directed by Spike Lee. This one-man show stars Roger Guenveur Smith as he dissects the life, death, and legacy of Rodney King. I was so young when King's beating and the aftermath happened, that my primary reference point for it was pop culture references years later. This is definitely, as I said, a spoken word performance rather than a play. There is deliberate poetry with the choice of words and cadence. Smith is an electric performer, embodying all these different characters in really engaging ways, and putting together a really compelling and occasionally gut-punching exploration of this story. Not necessarily something I'd revisit, but it was well done. And, truly, I love that Spike Lee does weird things like this and Passing Strange. Heck yes, find these marvelous performance pieces from the Black community and get them preserved so that these are available for people later. I just really appreciate that that is something that he has decided to do with his career.

🎥 Rodney King (2017)

📊 Ranked #1945/4211 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 54

beat In the Mood for Love (#2140 → #2141)

lost to Re-Animator (held at #1101)

lost to 7 Plus Seven (held at #1618)

lost to A Warm Corner (held at #1884)

beat The Fixer (#2011 → #2012)

beat The Little Things (#1947 → #1948)

lost to Daria in 'Is It Fall Yet?' (held at #1915)

lost to Fanboys (held at #1931)

lost to One Way Pendulum (held at #1939)

lost to Batman (held at #1943)

beat Toy Story 4 (#1945 → #1946)

I Lost My Body (2019)

IMDb plot summary: A story of Naoufel, a young man who is in love with Gabrielle. In another part of town, a severed hand escapes from a dissection lab, determined to find its body again.

Directed by Jérémy Clapin. Stars Hakim Faris, Victoire Du Bois, and Patrick d'Assumçao.

I Lost My Body is a French animated film with elements of the surreal. Its story is divided into two halves. One is a fairly realistic story about this young delivery man who ends up developing feelings for one of his customers. Alongside this, we have a plot where a severed hand escapes from a lab and makes its way across the country. I couldn't see how these two fit together until the very end, and even then I'm not entirely sure. I do think that the final connection of these two stories was very emotionally impactful, but not in a way that I could articulate what it means, it just made me feel things. I really like our central character -- his journey is worth watching even when he's making terrible decisions. The segments with the hand are funny and weird and creatively told, and I never minded when we interrupted the clearer story for a severed hand scene, because I enjoyed watching them. There are some really good moments for this but it doesn't cohere as nicely as I want it to. I also might just need to think about it a little bit longer and see if it rises in my estimation.

🎥 I Lost My Body (2019)

📊 Ranked #1890/4210 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 55

beat Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (#2141 → #2142)

lost to Blink Twice (held at #1102)

lost to The Phoenician Scheme (held at #1619)

lost to White Heat (held at #1885)

beat Alice (#2012 → #2013)

beat The Ghost and the Darkness (#1948 → #1949)

beat The Trouble with Harry (#1916 → #1917)

beat Secret in Their Eyes (#1900 → #1901)

beat Rush (#1892 → #1893)

lost to Trading Places (held at #1888)

beat 8-Bit Christmas (#1890 → #1891)

42 (2013)

IMDb plot summary: In 1947, Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era when he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and faces considerable racism in the process.

Directed by Brian Helgeland. Stars Chadwick Boseman, T.R. Knight, and Harrison Ford.

42 is a biopic based on the life of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player brought onto a Major League Baseball team. It stars Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and a wide supporting cast, including Harrison Ford as the progressive team owner who makes the decision to actually bring him onto the team and tries to pave the way, while knowing it's going to be a really difficult time for Robinson. What makes this film stand out and makes it worth watching is Boseman as Robinson. He does a great job of showing the humanity of this character. He makes him truly feel like just a regular human instead of some larger-than-life character, and we get to see how difficult it is for him to hold back and not retaliate against racist behaviors, because he knows anything he does is going to be used as an excuse to never bring another Black player in again. I think the film does an especially good job of showing how little power Robinson had to respond to the racism around him because anything he did would be framed as an overreaction, and I really like how the film does put the onus on the white people around him to put themselves on the line to defend him, since they have more power and less to lose. Obviously that can tread a "white savior" line, but I think it does a pretty good job of calling the privileged to task. None of the baseball parts of this film are interesting to me, but Boseman is interesting, and framing his character as being willing to lean on others who have more power in this situation to use that power on his behalf is an angle I didn't expect.

🎥 42 (2013)

📊 Ranked #2406/4209 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 43

lost to Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (held at #2141)

beat Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (#3180 → #3181)

beat The Muppets Take Manhattan (#2660 → #2661)

lost to Camp Rock (held at #2400)

beat Men Without Law (#2530 → #2531)

beat One, Two, Three (#2466 → #2467)

beat Finding Vivian Maier (#2431 → #2432)

beat Jesus Christ Superstar (#2415 → #2416)

beat King Kong Escapes (#2407 → #2408)

lost to Revolutionary Road (held at #2403)

lost to Kinky Boots: The Musical (held at #2405)

She's Gotta Have It (1986)

IMDb plot summary: Story of a woman and her three lovers.

Directed by Spike Lee. Stars Tracy Camilla Johns, Tommy Redmond Hicks, and John Canada Terrell.

She's Gotta Have It is Spike Lee's first feature film. I watched it as part of a challenge that included a black and white movie, so I went for a newer option. It follows the story of Nola, a young woman living in the city, and her three lovers who she's all dating at once. They all meet very different emotional and physical needs in her life. The story focuses a lot on how all three of them want her to give up the other two and be with just them, while she's just not terribly interested in tying herself down like that. I haven't seen as much Spike Lee as I would like to, but watching this definitely makes me want to prioritize that, because there's an energy to this that is compelling even if I'm not always sold on the narrative on the page. The actress playing Nola especially is incredibly compelling. Even when she's making decisions that are hurting people or that demonstrate she doesn't know what she wants, she's just fun to watch on screen, as are the three men who play her boyfriends. (One of them is played by Spike Lee himself.) I really enjoyed how immediately distinct these three men are, so each interaction we see them have with Nola and each other are unique based on those dynamics. I'm not sure that I'm invested in any of the like big questions being asked by this film so much as I just really enjoy watching the characters interact. Definitely one that makes me want to watch more of Lee's work. This is a heck of a debut.

🎥 She's Gotta Have It (1986)

📊 Ranked #1353/4208 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 68

beat The Girl on a Motorcycle (#2135 → #2136)

lost to The Menu (held at #1092)

beat Hamlet (#1611 → #1612)

lost to Serial Mom (held at #1352)

beat The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (#1481 → #1482)

beat The Song of Lunch (#1417 → #1418)

beat The Descendants (#1385 → #1386)

beat The Artist (#1368 → #1369)

beat The Unholy Three (#1360 → #1361)

beat Corrina, Corrina (#1356 → #1357)

beat Memories of Murder (#1354 → #1355)

Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

IMDb plot summary: An unceasingly kind Italian peasant and his family are blatantly exploited by a tobacco baroness.

Directed by Alice Rohrwacher. Stars Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, and Alba Rohrwacher.

Happy as Lazzaro is an Italian film about a wealthy landowner and the serfs that work her land. Specifically, we focus on one young man, Lazzaro, who has some sort of potentially intellectual disability and is not always fully cognizant of how to react to things, but he ends up befriending the son of the wealthy landowner. Then the whole family's lives are turned completely upside down and Lazzaro has to adjust to the new life and what this means about the relationship that he had built with the landowner's son. Watching this right after Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter was interesting because they're not dissimilar in terms of tone and vibe, especially that combination of heartwarming and devastating. This one also has a s sense of dread that nothing is going to go right for this character. It's the kind of film that I think I might have liked more ten years ago in terms of my movie taste and now it feels a little bit overtold in terms of theme. Overall, I enjoyed the setting of it and the way that it put the story together, but it didn't gel the way it might have for me at a different time in my life.

🎥 Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

📊 Ranked #2264/4207 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 46

lost to True Romance (held at #2134)

beat Without a Clue (#3175 → #3176)

beat Heat (#2653 → #2654)

beat Charulata (#2392 → #2393)

lost to Rebecca (held at #2263)

beat Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (#2327 → #2328)

beat Absolute Power (#2295 → #2296)

beat The Secret Life of Pets (#2279 → #2280)

beat The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (#2271 → #2272)

beat The Party (#2267 → #2268)

beat Hamlet (#2265 → #2266)

You’re Next (2011)

IMDb plot summary: When the Davison family comes under attack during their wedding anniversary getaway, the gang of mysterious killers soon learns that one of the victims harbors a secret talent for fighting back.

Directed by Adam Wingard. Stars Sharni Vinson, Joe Swanberg, and AJ Bowen.

You're Next is a horror film about a couple who are spending some time in a remote cabin with the man's family, only for things to go suddenly horribly wrong when a mysterious intruder starts to kill off the family members. One by one they disappear, and it becomes clear that the one person who might be able to stop everything is the man's girlfriend, who knows the family the least. I had high hopes for this one, and I probably should have tamped that down a little bit, because I think that let me down by the end. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun little horror movie. It's got some fun, horror-y deaths, many of which are super gross (and at least one that I will be thinking about for a long time). I also appreciate the way the story sets up its heroes and villains, both in terms of the external threat of a murderer coming after them, but also in terms of the internal dynamics throughout where everybody kind of hates each other. It's a good ride. I'm not sure it stands way above in terms of horror, which I was expected for some reason, but it's a fun little slasher film that does what it's trying to do pretty well.

🎥 You're Next (2011)

📊 Ranked #1990/4206 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 53

beat The Girl on a Motorcycle (#2134 → #2135)

lost to Till Death (held at #1091)

lost to Backbeat (held at #1610)

lost to Children of Paradise (held at #1877)

beat The Guard (#2005 → #2006)

lost to Batman (held at #1941)

lost to The Group (held at #1973)

lost to Two Weeks Notice (held at #1989)

beat Meek's Cutoff (#1997 → #1998)

beat Journey to Greenland (#1993 → #1994)

beat Sweet Dreams (#1991 → #1992)