The Secret Agent (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Amid the political turmoil of 1977 Brazil, a technology expert is forced into hiding and seeks help from the underground resistance as he tries to flee the country with his young son.

Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. Stars Robson Andrade, Wagner Moura, and Rubens Santos.

The Secret Agent is a foreign film set in Brazil during the 1970s and follows a man who is living as a refugee in the city, trying to avoid being arrested for his past. There is a lot of plot and political intrigue in this movie that sometimes obscures the humanity of the story. Based on the reviews I've seen and the response to this film at the Oscars, I'm clearly in the minority thinking that, but aside from the woman who runs the house for refugees, I find myself very disconnected emotionally from most of these characters. I like the added framing of the story being told through recorded audio files being researched by people decades later, that helps to put some of the story in perspective, and it does land a little bit better at the end, but overall this one left me a little cold, especially in comparison to something like I'm Still Here, another recent film set in the same setting.

🎥 The Secret Agent (2025)

📊 Ranked #3061/4255 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 32

lost to The Master (#2148 → #2099)

beat Sweet and Lowdown (#3211 → #3214)

beat Kung Fury (#2674 → #2681)

beat The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (#2414 → #2416)

lost to Hopscotch (#2285 → #2300)

beat Avanti! (#2351 → #2355)

beat My Family (#2318 → #2341)

beat Camp (#2301 → #2388)

lost to Corpse Bride (#2292 → #2301)

beat It Had to Be You (#2296 → #2268)

beat Beaches (#2294 → #2287)

beat The Sasquatch Gang (#2293 → #2314)

Cube (1997)

IMDb plot summary: A group of strangers awaken to find themselves placed in a giant cube. Each one of them is gifted with a special skill and they must work together to escape an endless maze of deadly traps.

Directed by Vincenzo Natali. Stars Nicole de Boer, Maurice Dean Wint, and David Hewlett.

Cube is a psychological horror thriller in which a group of strangers wake up to discover that they have all been kidnapped and placed inside a maze of giant cubes full of deadly traps. The group bands together to solve the puzzle of their prison and escape. I really enjoy single concept horror films set in small enclosed spaces, but what really makes that work is if the characterization, dialogue, and acting all hold up to the challenge. It reminds me of a black box theater play in the amount of precise intelligent writing it requires to make that work. And this doesn't have that. The dialogue makes me roll my eyes, and when most of the movie is dialogue with an occasional gory death in there, I really need it to keep me connected to the characters. There are some very cool images, particularly as they reached the outer edges of the cube, and some inventively gross deaths, but neither of those quite make up for the bizarre writing.

🎥 Cube (1998)

📊 Ranked #3075/4251 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 31

lost to Raising Arizona (held at #2153)

beat Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (held at #3211)

lost to Avengers: Age of Ultron (#2678 → #2680)

lost to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (#2947 → #2890)

beat Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (#3078 → #3086)

lost to FernGully: The Last Rainforest (#3013 → #2909)

lost to The Fighter (#3045 → #3037)

beat Analyze This (#3062 → #3061)

beat A Soldier's Sweetheart (#3053 → #3067)

lost to The Fifth Element (#3049 → #3043)

lost to Hiroshima Mon Amour (#3051 → #3039)

lost to Whisper of the Heart (held at #3052)

Maniac (2012)

IMDb plot summary: As he helps a young artist with her upcoming exhibition, the owner of a mannequin shop's deadly, suppressed desires come to the surface.

Directed by Franck Khalfoun. Stars Elijah Wood, Nora Arnezeder, and America Olivo.

Maniac is a horror movie in which, and I don't think this is a spoiler because it's clear very early on, Elijah Wood plays a psychopathic killer of young women. This is one of the lower points in my trek through watching all of Elijah Wood's movies. It's so cheesily written, and the armchair psychology of this psychopathic character is the kind of thing that we were super into as a culture in 2000s and 2010s, and it just seems awkward now. There is a little enjoyment to be gotten out of the first-person filming gimmick, where so often we see things from Wood's point of view. Every so often it is done effectively, but most of the time it feels just like a gimmick. With so many great slasher horror movies out there, this one is definitely one to skip.

🎥 Maniac (2013)

📊 Ranked #4230/4254 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 1

lost to Bonnie and Clyde (held at #2139)

lost to Did You Hear About the Morgans? (held at #3205)

beat African Kung-Fu Nazis (#3744 → #3745)

lost to Silver Streak (#3477 → #3478)

lost to The Monkey King (held at #3609)

lost to Wild Strawberries (#3676 → #3675)

beat How the Grinch Stole Christmas (held at #3712)

lost to The Killing of Sister George (#3696 → #3697)

lost to Dutch (#3697 → #3698)

lost to Antz (#3710 → #3709)

beat King of the Zombies (held at #3711)

lost to Stage Door Canteen (held at #3719)

Jennifer's Body (2009)

IMDb plot summary: A newly-possessed high-school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?

Directed by Karyn Kusama. Stars Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, and Adam Brody.

Jennifer's Body is a Horror film starring Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox as two mismatched best friends whose friendship starts going through some difficulties when one of them suddenly has some dramatic behavior changes after a traumatic experience. I didn't know much more about the actual plot than that going in, so I'm not going to give you any more just in case, because watching it unfold without knowing the destination was a ton of fun. I did not realize until the end that it was written by Diablo Cody, but that seems obvious in hindsight. The dialogue is absolutely Cody's blend of sincerity and cringe and wit that is a very unique voice, and I think it's exactly the right tone for this movie and its dance around the edge of campy horror. Both Fox and Seyfried are excellent in this and give the right kind of over the top portrayals of their stereotyped characters. This movie is definitely not going to be for everyone, but I fully understand why this has become a cult classic. It takes big artistic choices and big swings and that may not pay off for everybody, but they made it a great watch for me.

🎥 Jennifer's Body (2009)

📊 Ranked #814/4252 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 81

beat Cat's Eye (#2146 → #2147)

beat Twister (#1100 → #1104)

lost to I ♥ Huckabees (#568 → #569)

lost to The Babysitter (#834 → #639)

beat Bandits (#966 → #1017)

beat The Departed (#888 → #896)

lost to City Girl (#869 → #871)

lost to Taxi Driver (#884 → #886)

lost to Sansho the Bailiff (#892 → #890)

lost to Music and Lyrics (#898 → #900)

beat Ghost Town (#899 → #904)

lost to Hidden Figures (#900 → #901)

Jay Kelly (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Famous movie actor Jay Kelly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting his past and present with his devoted manager Ron. Poignant and humor-filled, pitched at the intersection of regrets and glories.

Directed by Noah Baumbach. Stars George Clooney, Adam Sandler, and Stanley Townsend.

Jay Kelly is a Noah Baumbach movie starring George Clooney as an action star having a midlife crisis and trying to figure out what the purpose of his life has been. Baumbach can be hit or miss for me, and this one is enjoyable throughout but not necessarily memorable. Adam Sandler is a standout here as Clooney's manager, perfectly portraying the exhaustion of someone who has given far too much of his life to helping someone else succeed and now has very little to show for it. The movie is a mix of comedy and drama in a way that feels very rooted and grounded in reality and the absurdities of life and fame without ever feeling forced or stilted. A pretty good movie and well-crafted, even if it didn't hit me as powerfully as I hoped it would.

🎥 Jay Kelly (2025)

📊 Ranked #1287/4250 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 70

beat The Call (#2153 → #2196)

lost to Chronicle (#1101 → #1082)

lost to Ghostbusters (#1619 → #1623)

beat Natural Born Killers (#1887 → #1968)

beat The Parent Trap (#1755 → #1759)

lost to Sling Blade (#1685 → #1518)

lost to The Miracle Worker (#1722 → #1564)

beat Phone Booth (#1739 → #1738)

beat Lady Bird (#1731 → #1578)

beat Flora and Son (#1726 → #1575)

beat The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (#1724 → #1729)

beat The Big Chill (#1723 → #1746)

The Shadow in My Eye (2021)

IMDb plot summary: The fates of several Copenhagen residents collide when a WWII bombing mission accidentally targets a school full of children.

Directed by Ole Bornedal. Stars Bertram Bisgaard, Ester Birch, and Ella Josephine Lund Nilsson.

The Shadow in My Eye is a Danish movie telling the story of a fuel bombardment that happened in German-occupied Denmark during World War 2. In an attempt to bomb a Gestapo headquarters, the fighters unintentionally bomb a school and cause a ton of collateral damage. We follow a handful of children and their parents as they deal with the aftermath of this. This is a pretty good movie, and a lot of that rests in the little moments that it highlights. I'm particularly struck by the story of one boy who is selectively mute as a result of trauma from having witnessed a car bombing, and watching him try to heal and then having to go through a similar trauma again is very compelling as a story and you really want him to be OK. I was a little surprised coming back to write this review after a week or two at how little I remembered of the movie. I had almost forgotten I'd seen it. When I sit and think about it, of course I remember all the pieces that stood out to me very good, but I do have to put in the actual effort to think about it, because it doesn't rise to the top automatically. I would still recommend it because I think it's a well done movie, but for whatever reason it didn't land in the top echelon for me.

🎥 The Shadow in My Eye (2022)

📊 Ranked #2283/4249 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 49

lost to George of the Jungle (#2143 → #2114)

beat SpaceCamp (#3202 → #3204)

beat Peter Pan Live! (#2672 → #2833)

beat Splash (#2409 → #2411)

beat David Copperfield (#2281 → #2280)

lost to Hellboy (#2214 → #2212)

beat Avengers: Infinity War (#2248 → #2226)

beat Safety Not Guaranteed (#2231 → #2463)

lost to Vanya on 42nd Street (held at #2222)

lost to A Cure for Wellness (#2226 → #2221)

lost to Malcolm X (#2229 → #2213)

beat Forever Young (#2230 → #2302)

Pennies From Heaven (1981)

IMDb plot summary: During the Great Depression, a sheet-music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent schoolteacher.

Directed by Herbert Ross. Stars Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, and Jessica Harper.

Pennies From Heaven stars Steve Martin as a mostly unsuccessful sheet music salesman in the early 1900s, Jessica Harper as his frigid wife, and Bernadette Peters as the naive school teacher he takes up an affair with. The film is also a musical, with characters doing lip synced song and dance numbers to recordings of classic songs from the era. I went through the whole gamut of emotions watching this movie. In the first third or so I loved it and thought it was one of the best movies I'd seen in awhile. I loved the creativity of the musical numbers and how it fit into the world. But as the story went on, I became less and less invested in the narrative, even though many of the musical numbers were still entertaining. This film definitely feels like it's trying to say something, but the tone is so muddled it's hard to take much out of it. The darkness of the story takes you by surprise in a way that I wonder if it would sit differently on a rewatch, knowing where the story is headed. I still say it's worth a watch because it is a creative way of making a musical and the musical numbers themselves are often really enjoyable, but it doesn't come together the way that I hoped it would when I first started watching it.

🎥 Pennies from Heaven (1981)

📊 Ranked #2168/4247 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 51

beat Corpse Bride (#2163 → #2307)

lost to Oliver Twist (held at #1116)

beat Ghostbusters (#1635 → #1660)

lost to Shadow of the Vampire (#1385 → #1386)

lost to The Sound of Music (held at #1510)

lost to The Ref (#1572 → #1573)

lost to Mrs Brown (#1603 → #1604)

beat The Front (#1618 → #1625)

lost to Die Hard (#1610 → #1612)

beat mother! (#1614 → #1615)

lost to The Meg (#1612 → #1588)

lost to Interiors (#1613 → #1587)