Waves (2019)

IMDb plot summary: Traces the journey of a suburban family - led by a well-intentioned but domineering father - as they navigate love, forgiveness, and coming together in the aftermath of a loss.

Directed by Trey Edward Shults. Stars Taylor Russell, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Alexa Demie.

Waves is a 2019 drama about a family. The first half of the story follows the teenage son and the stress that he is under as he deals with losing his prospects of a career in wrestling, and then learning that his girlfriend is pregnant and planning to keep the baby, which is going to make his life even worse. The second half of the film follows primarily the daughter in the family, as she grapples with the choices that her older brother made and how it affects her life and her family's life. This is a very slow, character-heavy drama that was enjoyable moment to moment, but left almost no impact on me in the long run. I had to go read through the Wikipedia summary to remember what happened in this movie, and a lot of what I read, I genuinely don't remember. On one hand, it's good that I don't remember anything that I disliked about it, but on the other hand, it's probably not a good sign that I don't remember a single thing about it. This is a solid cast, and they bring good quality acting work to their roles. I very much see how this could be a movie that would be very affecting to someone, but it just didn't have that effect on me, unfortunately.

🎥 Waves (2019)

📊 Ranked #2262/4204 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 46

lost to The Girl on a Motorcycle (held at #2133)

beat The Deadly Affair (#3173 → #3174)

beat Jimmy the Kid (#2651 → #2652)

beat Bad Education (#2390 → #2391)

lost to Rebecca (held at #2261)

beat Pride & Prejudice (#2325 → #2326)

beat Beauty and the Beast (#2293 → #2294)

beat The Big Pond (#2277 → #2278)

beat The Truth About Youth (#2269 → #2270)

beat Cowboys & Aliens (#2265 → #2266)

beat Happy Christmas (#2263 → #2264)

Frankenstein (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Stars Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, and Christoph Waltz.

Frankenstein is Guillermo del Toro's take on the classic story of a man who attempts to create life by putting together corpse body parts and animating it with lightning. Here, Oscar Isaac is Dr. Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi is the creature. In many ways this is a very faithful adaptation of the original book, with one large exception that seems to alter the story not at all, and one small exception that seems to alter the story greatly. On one hand, we have the addition of Christoph Waltz's character, who is the one who encourages Frankenstein to pursue his morbid interests and helps to fund them. It is also his daughter, played by Mia Goth, who captures Frankenstein's heart. And then on the other hand, we have one tiny addition to the ending which turns the whole story into a more positive conclusion. I'm not going to explain exactly what it is here for spoiler-y reasons, but it's the kind of thing that ten years ago I would have rolled my eyes at. Here, however, I had something of a dramatic response to it. Expecting the dark, pitiless ending and getting something surprisingly warmer felt like a reminder that I don't always know how stories will end, in fiction or in life, and that we can change them if we want. An unexpected moment of empowerment from a film that most likely meant nothing of the kind, but it hit me in a very emotional way. On top of that, the movie also does, of course, look gorgeous, with the dark gothic feel that I want from both the story as a whole and Del Toro's style. If the ending hadn't moved me so much, this would just sit in the middle of my chart, but it was one of those films that I saw at just the right time and it pushed it much further up.

🎥 Frankenstein (2025)

📊 Ranked #897/4204 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 79

beat Laal Singh Chaddha (#2089 → #2090)

beat Finian's Rainbow (#1033 → #1034)

lost to Revengers Tragedy (held at #515)

lost to Muppets Most Wanted (held at #774)

beat Spellbound (#903 → #904)

lost to The Joy Luck Club (held at #838)

lost to Four Lions (held at #870)

lost to Out of Sight (held at #886)

lost to City Girl (held at #894)

beat Twister (#898 → #899)

lost to The History of Future Folk (held at #896)

Mother of Flies (2025)

IMDb plot summary: When a young woman faces a deadly diagnosis, she seeks dark magic from a witch in the woods - but every cure has costs.

Directed by John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser. Stars Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, and John Adams.

Mother of Flies is a folk horror film about a young woman who travels with her father to a reclusive natural healer in the hope of treating her terminal cancer. This is a moody eerie piece that really leans into the folk horror feminism vibe, but all the pieces feel a little amateur, especially the acting and writing. There are lots of stilted readings of awkwardly expository dialogue. The big twist is largely confusing and doesn't quite connect with the rest of the story. I appreciate that there is some satisfying resolution in the final moments of the movie but it's overall very messy and doesn't live up to the very cool atmosphere it sets up. I had hoped for more.

🎥 Mother of Flies (2025)

📊 Ranked #2745/4203 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 35

lost to The Dawn Patrol (held at #2088)

beat A Man Called Peter (#3139 → #3140)

lost to X (held at #2614)

beat Choke (#2872 → #2873)

lost to The Wiz (held at #2742)

beat The Day of the Triffids (#2806 → #2807)

beat Born Reckless (#2774 → #2775)

beat Spellbound (#2758 → #2759)

beat Finding Dory (#2750 → #2751)

beat Flightplan (#2746 → #2747)

lost to Dr. Seuss on the Loose (held at #2744)

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

IMDb plot summary: While trying to manage her own life and career, a woman on the verge of a breakdown must cope with her daughter's illness, an absent husband, a missing person, and an unusual relationship with her therapist.

Directed by Mary Bronstein. Stars Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien, and Danielle Macdonald.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You stars Rose Byrne as a truly overwhelmed mother. Her husband's job keeps him away from her for weeks at a time, and she's left having to care for their medically fragile daughter, and she's at the end of her rope. This film is terrifying, claustrophobic, and basically exactly what I imagine motherhood is like. I have never felt so validated in my decision to be childfree. It does a great job of showing how exhaustion and panic can start exaggerating and blurring reality in a really scary way -- there was a large portion of the movie that I was fully convinced was a dream, only for it to be revealed as reality. I also appreciate the choice to not show the daughter's face until the end. It makes it easier for us to empathize with Byrne and feel the overwhelm. The ending seems a bit abrupt and doesn't fully work for me, but I appreciate what it's trying to do. An interesting movie, albeit one I never want to watch again, and a tour de force performance from Rose Byrne.

🎥 If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

📊 Ranked #1840/4202 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 56

beat Happythankyoumoreplease (#2101 → #2102)

lost to Heathers: The Musical (held at #1039)

lost to Ping Pong Playa (held at #1566)

lost to Swiss Army Man (held at #1837)

beat Malcolm & Marie (#1969 → #1970)

beat My Date with Drew (#1903 → #1904)

beat The Three Musketeers (#1870 → #1871)

beat Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert (#1854 → #1855)

beat Oddity (#1845 → #1846)

beat Splice (#1841 → #1842)

lost to Lord of War (held at #1839)

Dutch (1991)

IMDb plot summary: To get to know his girlfriend's son, a working-class good guy volunteers to pick him up from his prep school, only to learn that he isn't the nicest young man.

Directed by Peter Faiman. Stars Ed O'Neill, Ethan Embry, and JoBeth Williams.

Dutch stars Ed O'Neill as a man dating a divorced woman, and he offers to drive her spoiled son (played by Ethan Randall) home from boarding school for break, to let the two of them bond. Road trip hijinks ensue as the two constantly try to gain the upper hand over the other. This film is written by John Hughes, and when his films work, it's because he engenders empathy for his characters and helps us root for them, but that's nowhere to be found here. I suspect I'm meant to feel a stronger sense of karma as the spoiled kid gets what he "deserves," but he's just a hurting kid, not villainous enough for me to get a kick out of his comeuppance. There aren't a lot of laughs here and even less heart. This is one of the lower points in my Hughes filmography challenge. It's not a particularly long movie, but I felt like I was watching it for decades, because it was so unenjoyable.

🎥 Dutch (1991)

📊 Ranked #3596/4201 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 14

lost to How I Live Now (held at #2099)

lost to The Disappearance of Alice Creed (held at #3153)

beat Father Brown (#3679 → #3680)

lost to Pinocchio (held at #3415)

lost to Freaky Friday (held at #3549)

beat You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (#3614 → #3615)

lost to The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (held at #3581)

beat Premonition (#3597 → #3598)

lost to Robin Hood: Men in Tights (held at #3589)

lost to Weekend (held at #3593)

lost to The Formula (held at #3595)

Together (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country. With tensions already flaring, an encounter with an unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love and their flesh.

Directed by Michael Shanks. Stars Dave Franco, Alison Brie, and Damon Herriman.

Together stars James Franco and Alison Brie as a couple who move from their city home to a remote location for Brie's job. The move reveals some cracks in their relationship, and that's even before they get temporarily trapped in a mysterious cave and start having bizarre physical symptoms. This movie is definitely horror, but it's equal parts relationship drama, and I didn't anticipate that, going into it. The film has such a claustrophobic feel to it, particularly as we sit inside Dave Franco's discontent in the relationship as it is. The body horror actually takes a long time to kick in, but when it does, it ramps up fast and spikes in really intense ways. Some spoilers ahead here: The final scene is such an optimistic ending to what has been, up until that point, a pretty horrific series of events, and then suddenly it culminates in something that I found extremely... life-affirming. Definitely a unique movie, definitely a strange one, but I had a good time with it.

🎥 Together (2025)

📊 Ranked #837/4200 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 80

beat How I Live Now (#2098 → #2099)

beat Heathers: The Musical (#1038 → #1039)

lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (held at #518)

lost to True Lies (held at #778)

beat Support Your Local Sheriff! (#907 → #908)

beat Manon of the Spring (#842 → #843)

lost to Mars Attacks! (held at #810)

lost to Weapons (held at #826)

lost to Pather Panchali (held at #834)

beat The Wild Robot (#838 → #839)

lost to Cats (held at #836)

The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)

IMDb plot summary: James Bond is targeted by the world's most expensive assassin, while he attempts to recover sensitive solar cell technology that is being sold to the highest bidder.

Directed by Guy Hamilton. Stars Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, and Britt Ekland.

The Man With the Golden Gun is a Roger Moore James Bond film, in which the titular Man with the Golden Gun sends Bond a threat, which leads to 007 traipsing around the world looking for his potential assassin, and the piece of technology that he's stolen. This definitely cements for me that the Roger Moore era of Bond is the one I'm most likely to enjoy. It's big and bold and often silly, especially in its final moments -- one of Bond's near scrapes with death comes from a scantily clad woman accidentally hitting the wrong lever with her rear end. Since the story is set in Asia, there's an unfortunate amount of orientalism, which is certainly hard to watch at times. The film is on much surer footing once we get to the island, as Christopher Lee is delightful as the villainous Salamanca. There are now two Bond films I can confidently say I like, and both are Moore. Guess I should watch the rest of his!

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

📊 Ranked #971/4199 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 77

beat Deep Impact (#2098 → #2099)

beat The Other Boleyn Girl (#1038 → #1039)

lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (held at #518)

lost to True Lies (held at #778)

lost to Support Your Local Sheriff! (held at #907)

beat Little Women (#972 → #973)

lost to Kwaidan (held at #939)

lost to Westworld (held at #955)

lost to Sisters (held at #963)

lost to The Beguiled (held at #967)

lost to The House (held at #969)

lost to Mirage (held at #970)

beat The Impostors (#971 → #972)