Ivan's Childhood (1962)

IMDb plot summary: During WWII, Soviet orphan Ivan Bondarev strikes up a friendship with three sympathetic Soviet officers while working as a scout behind the German lines.

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Starring Nikolay Burlyaev, Valentine Zubkov, and Evgeniy Zharikov.

Ivan's Childhood is a very early Andrei Tarkovsky movie about a young boy who works as an informant during a war. We follow him and various other people around him as they navigate the conflict. Tarkovsky and I are usually not a very good fit, as I get impatient with his meandering philosophical dialogue and his multi-minute long shots. This film of his is early enough that he hadn't fully grown into his style yet, and as such it doesn't have a lot of the things that turn me off of the other works in his filmography. It's a pretty straightforward story, edited together pretty concisely, and the characters speak about what's actually relevant in the moment instead of ruminating on abstract concepts. I found the first half of it pretty engaging, especially watching the relationship between young Ivan and the soldiers he works with. It does flag a bit for me in the second half, but for anyone who's had a tough time getting into Tarkovsky like I have, this might be a good bridge to get into his other work.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Ivan's Childhood < The Keep

Ivan's Childhood > Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Ivan's Childhood < Dirty Dancing

Ivan's Childhood < Labor Day

Ivan's Childhood > A Month by the Lake

Ivan's Childhood < So I Married an Axe Murderer

Ivan's Childhood > Wild Hogs

Ivan's Childhood > The Doorway to Hell

Ivan's Childhood < Tombstone

Ivan's Childhood > The Amazing Spider-Man

Ivan's Childhood > Red Cliff

Ivan's Childhood > The Fifth Element

Final spot: #2516 out of 3568, or 29%.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007)

IMDb plot summary: A historic chronicle based on the book by Dee Brown explains how Native Americans were displaced as the United States expanded west.

Directed by Yves Simoneau. Starring Adam Beach, August Schellenberg, and Aidan Quinn.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is an HBO TV movie about the Wounded Knee massacre it follows several of the involved Native Americans as well as the government entities continually go back on their promises.  I'll be honest, this is the part of history that I know very little about. I have over the years picked up more information about all the horrible things that the United States did to those who lived here.  This movie , based on the book of the same name, did a great job of setting the scene and showing all the different moving parts that led to this horrible mass murder.  I definitely appreciated that most of the story was told from the Native perspective, rather than primarily centering the white people who were responsible for the atrocities. the film doesn't always nicely balanced the smaller personal stories with the bigger political ones. they just feel like they're part of different films, the romance and the personal advancement of the young Native boy sent to White schools , versus the constant negotiations of treaties. of course, they do connect , but they have very different emotional tones and I found difficult to switch between them.  Overall though, I would say that this is an extremely solid and well told adaptation of a story that is important to continue telling.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee > Gas, Food, Lodging

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee < Till Death

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee > Hereditary

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee < The Power of the Dog

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee > The Circus

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee > Moonwalker

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee > Everybody's Talking About Jamie

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee > Full Metal Jacket

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee < Dogma

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee > Up in the Air

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee < What's Eating Gilbert Grape

Final spot: #1120 out of 3556, or 69%.

My Reputation (1946)

IMDb plot summary: A recent widow meets an army major while skiing and despite pressures from friends and family becomes romantically involved with him.

Directed by Curtis Bernhardt. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, and Warner Anderson.

My Reputation stars Barbara Stanwyck as Jessica Drummond, a widow who finds that the life she wants to live after her husband's death clashes with the rigid social mores expected of her. The romance being told in this movie is... kind of an odd one, with the male lead being framed in such a way that I couldn't tell if I was actually supposed to root for them to get together or not. I think ultimately it doesn't matter as much whether I like *him* as it does whether I like *her* and want her to be able to pursue the life she wants. Stanwyck does a good job of showing us both the serious devoted mother and the unexpectedly single woman who wants to be able to pursue love again. That definitely gives us some good scenes, and I think the movie tackles some interesting questions being raised about how useful social traditions are in the face of individual lives, but despite those good moments, overall, it feels kind of long and plodding and isn't one I'd watch again.

How it entered my Flickchart:

My Reputation < Fahrenheit 451

My Reputation > My Friend Irma

My Reputation < Dirty Dancing

My Reputation > Labor Day

My Reputation > Footloose (2011)

My Reputation > The Hurt Locker

My Reputation > Wes Craven's New Nightmare

My Reputation > Frankie Go Boom

My Reputation > They Made Me a Fugitive

My Reputation > Flypaper

My Reputation < The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Final spot: #2237 out of 3574, or 37%.

The Vagabond King (1930)

IMDb plot summary: The story takes place in medieval France. Poet-rogue Francois Villon, sentenced to hang by King Louis XI for writing derogatory verses about him, is offered a temporary reprieve. His hanging will be postponed for 24 hours, and in that time he must defeat the invading Burgundians and win the love of the beautiful Katherine.

Directed by Ludwig Berger. Starring Dennis King, Jeanette MacDonald, and O.P. Heggie.

The Vagabond King is a 1930 movie based on an operetta of the same name. The story focuses on a young, poor revolutionary who is arrested by the king and given the chance to live as a king himself for seven days before he dies. This, more than most of the other movies I've watched from 1930, *feels* old and stagey. Everything from the way the musical numbers are staged to the diction habits of our lead actor feels like I'm watching a 1920s stage performance. (I did enjoy how one of the musical numbers was suddenly in color -- it added a bit of oomph to an otherwise uninteresting song!) The staginess isn't necessarily a bad thing for me. It definitely takes a little getting used to, but it gives it an interesting flavor that I hadn't been seeing as much of in my other 1930 films so far. The main character's arc is pretty thin, but the female lead has a much more interesting journey, so if you watch it, have fun rooting for her.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Vagabond King < The Keep

The Vagabond King > Big Fat Liar

The Vagabond King > Sullivan's Travels

The Vagabond King > Get Shorty

The Vagabond King < A Hard Day's Night

The Vagabond King > Once Upon a Time in the West

The Vagabond King > A Bridge Too Far

The Vagabond King > Stillwater

The Vagabond King < De-Lovely

The Vagabond King < Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)

The Vagabond King < Vanya on 42nd Street

The Vagabond King > Melinda and Melinda

Final spot: #1908 out of 3567, or 47%.

Weekend (1967)

IMDb plot summary: A surreal tale of a married couple going on a road trip to visit the wife's parents with the intention of killing them for the inheritance.

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Starring Mireille Darc, Jean Yanne, and Jean-Pierre Kalfon.

Weekend is a Jean-Luc Godard film about a couple who goes on a weekend vacation that gets... violent and surreal and French new wave. I should probably put in the preface that Godard is one of those filmmakers that I find actively irritating, so I did not have high hopes for this. I have had long conversations about him with friends who adore his work and I just never come any closer to liking it. This mostly stays in that vein -- long sprawling shots that seem to be doing nothing, rambling philosophical conversations that seem to have nothing to do with the plot, camerawork that feels so pretentious in a way I find myself constantly resisting. There is, however, one sequence that I found remarkably effective. Early on, there is almost an eight-minute scene that is one long tracking shot following a traffic jam over probably three-quarters of a mile, and as we follow one car trying to get past the blockage and see the reactions of all the other drivers stuck in place, it remains surprisingly compelling throughout, only to end in a scene of violence that I found even more startling given the sense of slow mundanity the film had lulled me into. I thought that was fascinating, and I thought to myself, "Maybe this will be the Godard film that changes my mind." But sadly, that was the only piece of the film I liked.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Weekend < Gas Food Lodging

Weekend < Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Weekend > The House With Closed Shutters

Weekend < There's No Business Like Show Business

Weekend > Courage Under Fire

Weekend > Pretty Poison

Weekend < Palo Alto

Weekend > Captive State

Weekend > Premonition

Weekend < Eddie the Eagle

Weekend > The Formula

Final spot: #2928 out of 3564, or 18%.

Tell it to the Bees (2018)

IMDb plot summary: In 1950s small town Britain, a doctor develops a relationship with her young patient's mother.

Directed by Annabel Jankel. Starring Gregor Selkirk, Anna Paquin, and Holliday Grainger.

Tell It to the Bees is set in 1950s Scotland, told through the eyes of a young boy whose father has run off. He befriends the new female doctor in town, as does his mother, and soon there are rumors flying that the relationship between the mother and the doctor is something beyond friendship. While this kind of forbidden love story is sometimes told in an almost lurid fashion, I liked how here it is centered initially on their friendship and companionship, only later blossoming into something more. There's a sweetness to the movie which is very charming, and when things get particularly difficult for this little family it feels just sadly *off*, like these people shouldn't have to have such a tough go of it. The sweetness grounds it, however, rather than making it cheesy or sentimental, and it keeps it from feeling overly melodramatic or exploitative of these characters' misery. It's not a spectacular film, but it is one that I enjoyed.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Tell It to the Bees > The Keep

Tell It to the Bees > Munich

Tell It to the Bees < The Maltese Falcon

Tell It to the Bees < Synecdoche, New York

Tell It to the Bees > Is It College Yet?

Tell It to the Bees < Au Revoirs les Enfants

Tell It to the Bees > The Great Gatsby

Tell It to the Bees < Sanjuro

Tell It to the Bees < Roxanne

Tell It to the Bees < Il Postino: The Postman

Tell It to the Bees < Do the Right Thing

Tell It to the Bees > Flee

Final spot: #749 out of 3559, or 79%.

Jeopardy (1953)

IMDb plot summary: A family vacationing on the coast of Mexico have to cope with multiple threats to their safety.

Directed by John Sturges. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, and Ralph Meeker.

Jeopardy tells the story of a family vacationing in rural Mexico when a freak accident leaves the husband trapped under a log by the beach as the tide is coming in. His wife must go off on her own to try to find someone to help them before he is fully submerged, but the only person she finds is going to be more danger to them than anything else. This is a really engaging little self-contained story. The tension of the rising tide and her husband's impending doom is easily felt, and frequently showing us how he's doing as she's off trying to find someone who speaks English enough to help her helps keep that tension high. The movie is short, at just over an hour, and that's the perfect length for something with this simple a narrative throughline, so there's definitely not enough time to get bored or feel like they're padding the length. I'd never heard of this before watching it but it's a pretty great little gem to have found!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Jeopardy > The Keep

Jeopardy > A Room With a View

Jeopardy < Broadway Danny Rose

Jeopardy < Colossal

Jeopardy > Is It College Yet?

Jeopardy > Red Carpet

Jeopardy > Great Expectations (1946)

Jeopardy > Bride of Frankenstein

Jeopardy > Raya and the Last Dragon

Jeopardy < The Pawnbroker

Jeopardy > Spencer

Final spot: #672 out of 3566, or 81%.

A Stranger Among Us (1992)

IMDb plot summary: Emily, a tough NYPD cop, is sent to an orthodox Jewish community to investigate a missing person plus $720,000 in missing diamonds. To solve what becomes a murder case, she has to join the community.

Directed by Sidney Lumet. Starring Melanie Griffith, Eric Thal, and John Pankow.

A Stranger Among Us is a Sidney Lumet film about a female police detective investigating a murder in a Hassidic Jewish community. Since she expects one of the community members to be the murderer, she works with the rabbi to go undercover and live among the community in the hopes of solving the mystery. Along the waym she learns more about their customs their beliefs and even starts to develop some feeling for one of them. This felt to me like it was trying to be a slight variation on the movie Witness, but it wasn't done nearly as well. Our protagonist is extremely unlikable, not only in her flippant disregard for an entire community's beliefs and rituals, but also in her extremely bad decision-making as she's trying to pass herself off as one of them. She just comes across as not very intelligent and exceptionally bad at her job, and while we are supposed to see her as hot-headed I don't think we're supposed to see her as stupid. The movie does have some interesting scenes that talk about living in a space distinctly set apart from the culture and what makes that worth doing, but it's all infiltrated throughout with this incredibly unrelatable protagonist, which makes it difficult to get anything out of.

How it entered my Flickchart:

A Stranger Among Us < Gas Food Lodging

A Stranger Among Us < Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

A Stranger Among Us > The House with Closed Shutters

A Stranger Among Us < There's No Business Like Show Business

A Stranger Among Us > Courage Under Fire

A Stranger Among Us < Stardust Memories

A Stranger Among Us < Davy Crockett and the River Pirates

A Stranger Among Us > Stepsister From Planet Weird

A Stranger Among Us > Chaos Walking

A Stranger Among Us > The Bone Collector

A Stranger Among Us < The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Final spot: #2979 out of 3560, or 16%.

People on Sunday (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Two men and two women enjoy a pleasant Sunday at the beach amid the unending toil of the working week.

Directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer. Starring Erwin Splettstößer, Brigitte Borchert, and Wolfgang von Waltershausen.

People on Sunday is a German film that famously cast non-actors to portray a day in the life of an average Berlin resident. It's also the earliest movie I've seen credited to Billy Wilder as a writer, several years before he went on to his well-known work in the United States. This film, like many in this 1930 project, is more historically interesting than narratively interesting, at least for me. Realism wasn't super in vogue at this point in film history, so seeing it sought for in this film, even to the post of not wanting trained actors in the role, is an interesting change from many of the other films I've been seeing. The movie also does keep the stakes realistically low -- characters go on picnics, flirt with each other, and have small arguments, but not with anything resembling an arc. It's just a little slice-of-life film. While I don't have any interest in returning to it any time soon, I'm glad I've seen it and know a little bit more about this movie now.

How it entered my Flickchart:

People on Sunday < Frank

People on Sunday > My Friend Irma

People on Sunday < Dirty Dancing

People on Sunday < The White Ribbon

People on Sunday > Red River

People on Sunday > The Devil is a Woman

People on Sunday > Blue Valentine

People on Sunday > The Milagro Beanfield War

People on Sunday > Sweet and Lowdown

People on Sunday < State Fair (1945)

People on Sunday < Saludos Amigos

People on Sunday < Kiki's Delivery Service

Final spot: #2462 out of 3572, or 31%.

L'Age d'Or (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A surrealist tale of a man and a woman who are passionately in love with each other, but their attempts to consummate that passion are constantly thwarted by their families, the Church, and bourgeois society.

Directed by Luis Buñuel. Starring Gaston Modot, Lya Lys, and Caridad de Laberdesque.

L'Age d'Or is a Luis Bunuel film, which means it's surrealist and experimental and avant-garde, which is definitely not my vibe. There are definitely some moments of narrative throughout, but mostly it's sort of a visual artistic interpretation of the evils of excess and greed and abundance. Unlike some other Bunuel films, there aren't really any images here that held onto me past the credits rolling. They all definitely contributed to a atmospheric sense of decadence but none of them made a distinct mark on me. I wonder sometimes if "excesses of the wealthy" is a theme that just doesn't sit right with me. There are a host of films in classic cinema that deal with this theme, and many of them are light on narrative, and I don't know whether it's that lack of narrative or the theme itself that fails to connect with me on any level. Regardless, this is an important film, it's one that I'm glad to have seen for my own film literacy, but it's not one that I particularly cared for and it's not one that I could see ever re-visiting.

How it entered my Flickchart:

L'age d'Or < Gas Food Lodging

L'age d'Or > Big Fat Liar

L'age d'Or < Dirty Dancing

L'age d'Or < The White Ribbon

L'age d'Or < A Month by the Lake

L'age d'Or < What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

L'age d'Or > CQ

L'age d'Or > A Civil Action

L'age d'Or < Susannah of the Mounties

L'age d'Or < Pepito and the Magic Lamp

L'age d'Or < Warm Bodies

L'age d'Or < Rebel Without a Cause

Final spot: #2627 out of 3558, or 26%.

Kimi (2022)

IMDb plot summary: An agoraphobic Seattle tech worker uncovers evidence of a crime.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Starring Zoe Kravitz, Byron Bowers, and Rita Wilson.

Kimi is Steven Soderbergh's latest movie, a pandemic-era thriller about a girl responsible for cataloging errors for the newest Siri-style digital assistant. One day, she hears what sounds like a violent act, and as she digs deeper, she discovers both that it might be worse than she thought and that she doesn't know who to tell about it. This is a fantastic concept, and being set at a point in the pandemic where a lot of folks (including our protagonist) are still working from home gives it a vibe that reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. That being said, the mystery isn't as tight as that one was. It unravels a bit in the final third as the conspiracy gets slightly too big and involves too many pieces and makes our protagonist feel less relatable, but it's a minor quibble as the rest of the movie is paced and shot beautifully, feeling claustrophobic even in the scenes when we're out in the world. Definitely worth a watch, even if it doesn't land as smoothly as I hoped.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Kimi > The Keep

Kimi < Till Death

Kimi > Timecop

Kimi < The Power of the Dog

Kimi > Woodstock 99: Peace, Love and Rage

Kimi > The Boys of Paul Street

Kimi > Evita

Kimi > Cake

Kimi < Dogma

Kimi < Up in the Air

Kimi < VeggieTales: Rack, Shack & Benny

Kimi > The French Dispatch

Final spot: #1123 out of 3555, or 68%.

Paramount on Parade (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A musical revue that basically has Paramount stars and contract-players doing things some had never done on screen, and wouldn't again.

Directed by Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, and Edmund Goulding. Starring Jean Arthur, Clara Bow, and Maurice Chevalier.

Paramount on Parade is a 1930 revue of stars involved in Paramount Pictures, including names I recognize now like Jean Arthur, Maurice Chevalier, and William Powell, as well as many, many stars I don't know at all. I assumed going in this would be primarily musical numbers, but it's pretty evenly split between musical numbers and silly sketches. My favorite of the latter is a mystery parody called "Murder Will Out" that features four actors portraying characters they were well-known for playing on-screen in mysteries, and it's spectacularly silly. Quite a few of these pieces, however, feel like they go right over my head, partly because the pop culture references are almost unrecognizably dated (even for someone relatively well-versed in classic cinema) and partly because the version I saw has definitely deteriorated enough that the sound quality was difficult to parse at times. When I did find moments I enjoyed, I REALLY enjoyed them, but there was a lot of waiting around until one piece was over in the hopes I'd like the next one better. An interesting little time capsule but not necessarily one I'd ever rewatch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Paramount on Parade < The Harder They Fall

Paramount on Parade < War of the Buttons (1994)

Paramount on Parade > In Cold Blood

Paramount on Parade < Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Paramount on Parade > Men of Honor

Paramount on Parade > Deja Vu

Paramount on Parade < Eddie the Eagle

Paramount on Parade < Call Northside 777

Paramount on Parade > Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Paramount on Parade > Maggie's Plan

Paramount on Parade > Start the Revolution Without Me

Paramount on Parade < Gigi

Final spot: #2913 out of 3532, or 18%.

Anna and the Apocalypse (2017)

IMDb plot summary: A zombie apocalypse threatens the sleepy town of Little Haven - at Christmas - forcing Anna and her friends to fight, slash and sing their way to survival, facing the undead in a desperate race to reach their loved ones.

Directed by John McPhail. Starring Ella Hunt, Malcolm Cumming, and Sarah Swire.

Anna and the Apocalypse is a Christmas zombie musical, which is an amazing combination. The titular Anna is in her last few days of high school, where she is making big decisions about where to go next, and when a zombie apocalypse breaks out, she, her friends, and her family have to try and survive together. On paper, this is SO MUCH FUN. Audio-only, this is SO MUCH FUN. But I found myself, to my disappointed surprise, not at all impressed by the visual interpretations of the songs. The horror fight scenes and chase scenes are filmed with so much energy and oomph, and then the songs are performed with the laidback stand-offishness of a "too cool to do anything" music video. It feels like a musical made by someone who didn't actually like musicals and wanted to downplay the musical emotions as much as they could visually. The only fun I had was during the principal's villain song -- he knew the assignment and RAN with it, maybe too far in the campy direction, but I at least was having a good time. Without the songs it'd be a fun zombie flick regardless, but with the songs, the pacing is disappointingly uneven.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Anna and the Apocalypse > The Keep

Anna and the Apocalypse < Munich

Anna and the Apocalypse < Hereditary

Anna and the Apocalypse > Scrooge

Anna and the Apocalypse < Strictly Ballroom

Anna and the Apocalypse > My Date With Drew

Anna and the Apocalypse > Wet Hot American Summer

Anna and the Apocalypse < The Exorcist

Anna and the Apocalypse > Jackie

Anna and the Apocalypse > Anna and the King

Anna and the Apocalypse < Rabbit Hole

Final spot: #1465 out of 3563, or 59%.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

IMDb plot summary: A Scottish lord becomes convinced by a trio of witches that he will become the next King of Scotland, and his ambitious wife supports him in his plans of seizing power.

Directed by Joel Coen. Starring Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, and Alex Hassell.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is Joel Coen's take on Shakespeare's "Scottish play," starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the scheming couple who murder a king to fulfill a mysterious prophecy and take his place, only to be slowly driven mad by it. Macbeth is one of my favorite Shakespeare tragedies, which made it all the more frustrating that this one feels so... stilted. Washington in particular is a disappointment. He's a great actor, but here his extremely understated line deliveries make it nearly impossible to follow the poetry of what he's saying, either factually or on an emotional level, and McDormand often seems to match that energy level. On the plus side, though, the film does look truly stunning. There were at least five or six moments that made me go, "Wow, that looks incredible." I love how each location seems to just blend into the next, as if we're all wandering through the fog and occasionally stumbling on an important place. And there are some good performances in here, particularly Corey Hawkins as Macduff, who brings a level of sympathy to the role I've rarely seen, and Kathryn Hunter as the Witches, who is utterly otherworldly. So it's a mixed bag when it comes to the big players, but there's a lot to like scattered throughout.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Tragedy of Macbeth > The Keep

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Munich

The Tragedy of Macbeth > Hereditary

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Just Imagine

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Nine to Five

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Backbeat

The Tragedy of Macbeth > Cafe Society

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Gone in 60 Seconds

The Tragedy of Macbeth < The Impossible

The Tragedy of Macbeth < Nobody's Fool

The Tragedy of Macbeth > Koyaanisqatsi

The Tragedy of Macbeth > Dan in Real Life

Final spot: #1304 out of 3561, or 63%.

Ladies of Leisure (1930)

IMDb plot summary: An upper-crust artist hires a 'party girl' as a model; romance follows.

Directed by Frank Capra. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Ralph Graves, and Lowell Sherman.

Ladies of Leisure is the 1930 movie that made Barbara Stanwyck a star after a series of flops. She plays an escort who becomes a model for a painter, and the two fall in love despite her unsavory background. The film certainly paints its story in broad strokes and doesn't ever quite sell the narrative that the two ever like each other until, bam, they're in love and you don't know why. But there are some really interesting moments here, particularly in seeing an early Stanwyck performance where the persona she crafted so beautifully in her later films was not yet there. She's flightier here than I've ever seen her, and while it's a little startling, it mostly works, and when she brings home the emotional stakes at the end as she has to decide whether or not to leave the man she loves, it DEFINITELY works. It's also interesting as an early Frank Capra film, as he uses some intriguing fade-ins and fade-outs that I'm not fully convinced make sense, but they are definitely an artistic editing *choice*, which has usually been less noticeable in other films of 1930, so it was fun to see it here.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Ladies of Leisure < The Keep

Ladies of Leisure > BASEketball

Ladies of Leisure > Sullivan's Travels

Ladies of Leisure < Venom

Ladies of Leisure > Onibaba

Ladies of Leisure > Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World

Ladies of Leisure < Remember the Night

Ladies of Leisure > Marathon

Ladies of Leisure < Moonstruck

Ladies of Leisure < Camelot

Ladies of Leisure < Fish Tank

Ladies of Leisure < Funny Girl

Final spot: #2038 out of 3553, or 43%.

Flee (2021)

IMDb plot summary: FLEE tells the extraordinary true story of a man, Amin, on the verge of marriage which compels him to reveal his hidden past for the first time.

Directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. Starring Daniel Karimyar, Fardin Mijdzadeh, and Milad Eskandari.

Flee is a Danish animated docudrama about Amin, a man who fled Afghanistan as a child refugee. The film features primarily voiceover of adult Amin over animation of him as a young and a young man making his journey to a safer country. The use of animation is striking here. As Amin shares his past, including the family he was told to never admit was still alive, it feels like the film is preserving some sense of privacy by not showing only an animated facsimile of his face. Older or more difficult memories are drawn as rough sketches, again almost giving the illusion of politely looking away to make it more comfortable for someone to bare their soul to us. It carves out an easy path for empathy but never feels like it's exploiting someone's tragedy. The very occasional use of live footage to show referenced location is jarring but all we need to remind us that, yes, this is still a real person sharing their story with us. I haven't seen many movies like this, but I was fascinated and I'm glad to have seen it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Flee > Gas, Food, Lodging

Flee > Munich

Flee < Walking and Talking

Flee < The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Flee > Is It College Yet?

Flee < The Offence

Flee < Do the Right Thing

Flee > Easy A

Flee > Twister

Flee > Upside Down

Flee > The Hunger Games

Flee > The Great Gatsby (2013)

Final spot: #745 out of 3533, or 79%.

C'mon C'mon (2021)

IMDb plot summary: When his sister asks him to look after her son, a radio journalist embarks on a cross-country trip with his energetic nephew to show him life away from Los Angeles.

Directed by Mike Mills. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffmann, and Woody Norman.

C'mon C'mon stars Joaquin Phoenix as a radio/podcast journalist who ends up caring for his young nephew while Phoenix's sister tries to persuade her mentally ill husband to get help. The boy follows Phoenix around as he travels, interviewing children and teenagers about how they see the world, and the two form a bond. I'm a little startled this didn't get many Oscar nods, as it feels like the absolute height of solid Oscarbait. That isn't meant as an insult or to be dismissive -- it's mostly a compliment that means all the pieces of this work well together, and that I feel there's something to be gotten here, but it isn't for me. Maybe it's that I am already tired of the trope of "child teaches middle-aged white man about life" and it's hard for me to pull out what makes this one better than the rest, if in fact it is. I don't really have any qualms with it, I just don't think anything about it at all, and that makes it incredibly difficult to review. It's just kind of... there.

How it entered my Flickchart:

C'mon C'mon < Fahrenheit 451

C'mon C'mon > My Friend Irma

C'mon C'mon > Sullivan's Travels

C'mon C'mon > Get Shorty

C'mon C'mon > Senna

C'mon C'mon > After the Wedding

C'mon C'mon > Safety Not Guaranteed

C'mon C'mon > Le Week-End

C'mon C'mon > The Elephant Man

C'mon C'mon > A Chorus of Disapproval

C'mon C'mon > Arctic

C'mon C'mon < The Misfits

Final spot: #1789 out of 3573, or 50%.

Forty Guns (1957)

IMDb plot summary: Showdown in Arizona between the Bonnell brothers, U.S.Marshals, and Jessica Drummond, the iron-fist rancher who controls the territory.

Directed by Samuel Fuller. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, and Dean Jagger.

Forty Guns is about a group of reformed gunslinger brothers who come to a town to help restore order. Currently the town is at the mercy of Jessica Drummond's gang of outlaws. Drummond is played by Barbara Stanwyck (by apparently complete coincidence, this is the second time she played a character by that name) and she is easily the best part of the movie. I've been watching a bunch of Stanwyck films over the last month, and I'm beginning to realize my favorite performances of her may be her later ones. She just gives off a different level of subtle charisma at 50 than she did at 30, and I find it very compelling how she can do so much with so little. The rest of the story feels like every other western about lawmakers trying to put a town back into shape, just from the occasional angle of "but what if the outlaw is a WOMAN?" which leads to a predictable and somewhat disappointing ending. Definitely worth watching if you're a fan of Stanwyck's work or of westerns in general, but it isn't a shining star outside of either of those categories.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Forty Guns < Dark and Stormy Night

Forty Guns > Rikki-Tikki-Tavi

Forty Guns > Sullivan's Travels

Forty Guns < Venom

Forty Guns < Deep Red

Forty Guns > Kicking and Screaming (1995)

Forty Guns < Legends of the Fall

Forty Guns > Naked Lunch

Forty Guns > Fun Size

Forty Guns > The Big Trail

Forty Guns > Streets of Fire

Forty Guns > Sreekaram

Final spot: #2148 out of 3570, or 40%.

Bottle Shock (2008)

IMDb plot summary: The story of the early days of California wine making featuring the now infamous, blind Paris wine tasting of 1976 that has come to be known as "Judgment of Paris".

Directed by Randall Miller. Starring Chris Pine, Alan Rickman, and Bill Pullman.

Bottle Shock tells the true story of a wine competition in France that invited California wines, which were seen as obviously inferior, to compete alongside French wines in a blind tasting. Alan Rickman plays the man coordinating the whole thing, who is pleased to find some wine of value in the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma, and we see him interacting with one vintner family in particular who are struggling to make ends meet. This is a sweet little underdog story that often relies too heavily on cheesy sentimentality for me to recommend it to everyone, but the charm of the cast and the goodheartedness of the story are exactly what some people are looking for, and it delivers that. And even though if offers few surprises, if you let yourself lean into rooting for people, it's pretty enjoyable to watch, particularly as we see Chris Pine's character step up and pursue something he cares about. A decent but not-stellar watch that I would pretty much immediately forget if I didn't live in wine country myself and have a personal connection to the story.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Bottle Shock < The Harder They Fall

Bottle Shock > Monkey Business (1952)

Bottle Shock < The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Bottle Shock > Saludos Amigos

Bottle Shock > Happy Christmas

Bottle Shock > Nashville

Bottle Shock > National Velvet

Bottle Shock > Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Bottle Shock > The Whole Nine Yards

Bottle Shock < Dark City

Bottle Shock > They Made Me a Fugitive

Final spot: #2213 out of 3534, or 37%.

The Palm Beach Story (1942)

IMDb plot summary: A New York inventor needs cash to develop his big idea, so his adoring wife decides to raise it by divorcing him and marrying an eccentric Florida millionaire with a capricious high-society sister.

Directed by Preston Sturges. Starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, and Mary Astor.

The Palm Beach Story is a screwball comedy by Preston Sturges about a woman who decides everyone would be better off if she and her husband divorced and she found a wealthy man to marry (and maybe even help financially support her then-ex). She doesn't want to leave her husband, but their financial woes have been putting a strain on their relationship. So off she goes, and off he goes after her to try to convince her not to. This lands more solidly for me than a lot of Sturges' work. The stakes still seem relatively light, even within the world of the comedy itself, and it meanders more than I like, but I did smile a lot at the sort of quirky resignation Claudette Colbert brings to the character of the wife. I still can't pinpoint exactly what it is that keeps Sturges' films at a distance for me, but there's less of that here than there usually is, and as a result I had a pretty good time and would recommend it to anyone who's a fan of the genre.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Palm Beach Story > The Misfits

The Palm Beach Story > The Game

The Palm Beach Story < The Goodbye Girl (1977)

The Palm Beach Story < Booksmart

The Palm Beach Story < The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

The Palm Beach Story < Before Sunset

The Palm Beach Story < The Pirates of Penzance

The Palm Beach Story < The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The Palm Beach Story < My Name Is Joe

The Palm Beach Story < Long Day's Journey Into Night

The Palm Beach Story > Munich

The Palm Beach Story < Till Death

Final spot: #892 out of 3578, or 75%.

Being the Ricardos (2021)

IMDb plot summary: Follows Lucy and Desi as they face a crisis that could end their careers and another that could end their marriage.

Directed by Aaron Sorkin. Starring Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, and J.K. Simmons.

Being the Ricardos tells the story of one particularly tense week in the life of Lucille Ball, when rumors were flying that she was a Communist, which could lead to her being blacklisted from her TV show. On top of that, she's just learned she's pregnant and having doubts about her husband's faithfulness, so it's a high-stress week all around. Given the fact that I often really love Sorkin's writing, I found this very disappointing. The dialogue doesn't sparkle the way his best work does, feeling instead like a dull by-the-book narrative that chose the least interesting pieces of the story to focus in on. The script is certainly the weakest part, though. Nicole Kidman does an impressively good job as Lucy, and Javier Bardem is pretty good as Desi, if never quite disappearing into the role the way Kidman does. The cinematography works for me as well, jumping between the stylized fantasy of 1950s television and the way things actually were in a way that highlights the contrast. There's enough good here to make it worth a watch if you're already a interested in the story or someone involved in the project, but if not, you can skip it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Being the Ricardos < Gas Food Lodging

Being the Ricardos > Big Fat Liar

Being the Ricardos > Sullivan's Travels

Being the Ricardos < Venom

Being the Ricardos < Tank

Being the Ricardos > Kicking and Screaming (1995)

Being the Ricardos < Wordplay

Being the Ricardos < The Avengers (2012)

Being the Ricardos > Max Dugan Returns

Being the Ricardos > Jezebel

Being the Ricardos < Tulpan

Final spot: #2160 out of 3562, or 39%.

Nomads (1986)

IMDb plot summary: A French anthropologist specializing in nomadic groups moves to Los Angeles with his wife, and starts following a group of sinister street punks who seem to live and move around in a black van. But they aren't what they seem.

Directed by John McTiernan. Starring Lesley-Anne Down, Pierce Brosnan, and Anna Maria Monticelli.

Nomads centers on a doctor who begins to have unsettling hallucinations and memories that aren't her own after witnessing a man's death in the ER. She realizes she's seeing his memories of a bizarre group of... possessed dead bodies? Also a cult? While the movie has a couple of really interesting horror bits, the plot is nearly incomprehensible and we abandon our protagonist abruptly about 15 minutes into the movie to get an extended flashback of a character we never saw. The horror elements get sillier and sillier and don't fit together nicely at all, though I do feel like that ending image could be utterly chilling... if I was sure I knew what it actually implied, plotwise. As it is, it gave me a chill and then made me go, "But wait. WHAT?!" For all the good moments this movie has, it has far more terrible ones, and some bad acting from our leading lady and a horrible French accent from Pierce Brosnan don't do much to help it along. At least he doesn't sing, I guess.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Nomads < Gas Food Lodging

Nomads > Big Fat Liar

Nomads < Dirty Dancing

Nomads > The White Ribbon

Nomads < Ghost

Nomads < Master Harold and the Boys (2010)

Nomads < Crumb

Nomads > Solo: A Star Wars Story

Nomads > How to Irritate People

Nomads < Alice in Wonderland (1999)

Nomads < Treasures of the Snow

Nomads < The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Final spot: #2424 out of 3557, or 32%.

Sarah and Son (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A ne'er-do-well husband, after years of abusing his wife, disappears with their son, and winds up selling him to a wealthy family. Years later, the wife--now a world-famous opera singer--finally has enough time and money to begin a search for him.

Directed by Dorothy Azner. Starring Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, and Fuller Mellish Jr.

Sarah and Son tells the story of an opera singer whose husband sells their baby to a rich couple in a desperate bid for money. She spends the next several years trying to find him as well as trying to make her way in the world as a singer. The lead actress was nominated for an Academy Award for this role but she really didn't do much for me. The 1930s definitely still leaned into the overacting melodrama style of performing, and she has this in spades -- more so than anyone else in the film. One article I read compared her performance here to Greta Garbo's in Anna Christie, but the performance here is miles less believable. I'm usually able to relax into the style but here there were so many moments when she would begin a devastated monologue and I would just start laughing. It's an interesting concept for a movie and it's scripted and paced pretty well, and if the rest of the cast had been following the same sort of melodramatic style I might have been able to get into it more. As it is though it's a very tough watch for me to engage with emotionally and I'm sure I'm not going to remember this for very long.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Sarah and Son < The Keep

Sarah and Son < BASEketball

Sarah and Son > Scrooged

Sarah and Son > The Machinist

Sarah and Son < 42nd Street

Sarah and Son > The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Sarah and Son > The Final Countdown

Sarah and Son < Wuthering Heights

Sarah and Son > The Rainmaker

Sarah and Son < Make Mine Music

Sarah and Son > The Peanut Butter Falcon

Final spot: #2792 out of 3550, or 21%.

The French Dispatch (2021)

IMDb plot summary: A love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional twentieth century French city that brings to life a collection of stories published in "The French Dispatch Magazine".

Directed by Wes Anderson. Starring Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, and Tilda Swinton.

The French Dispatch is Wes Anderson's new movie, and boy, is it a Wes Anderson movie. There's not a lot of plot to it. It is a sort of visual representation of an edition of a fictional magazine. We see the various stories and editorials dramatized for the screen, with all the big colors and stylized tableaux and half-animated sequences that give Anderson such a distinctive visual style. I feel about this much the same way as I felt about The Grand Budapest Hotel, in that I had an absolutely delightful time watching it but the story itself is so insubstantial and so episodic and the style so linked to Anderson as a filmmaker rather than to the core of the story or the narrative that it's almost impossible to remember as an entity in itself. It's just another chapter in Anderson's film history. It isn't set apart from Anderson's other work in any meaningful way. That doesn't mean it's a bad film, there are plenty of filmmakers who make basically the same film over and over again who I deeply love, but I suspect I will be left with the same lingering vague feelings of fondness for this as I do for Grand Budapest Hotel or Moonrise Kingdom or most other efforts by Anderson.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The French Dispatch > Dark and Stormy Night

The French Dispatch < Till Death

The French Dispatch > I Saw the Devil

The French Dispatch < The Power of the Dog

The French Dispatch > A Shot in the Dark

The French Dispatch > La jetee

The French Dispatch > A Little Night Music

The French Dispatch > Native Son (2019)

The French Dispatch < Dogma

The French Dispatch < Up in the Air

The French Dispatch < VeggieTales: Rack, Shack & Benny

The French Dispatch > Full Metal Jacket

Final spot: #1122 out of 3551, or 68%.

Last Night in Soho (2021)

IMDb plot summary: An aspiring fashion designer is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters a dazzling wannabe singer. But the glamour is not all it appears to be and the dreams of the past start to crack and splinter into something darker.

Directed by Edgar Wright. Starring Thomasin Mackenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Matt Smith.

Last Night in Soho stars Thomasin Mackenzie as a young fashion student with a gift for the supernatural. She becomes fascinated with a ghost, a young woman from the 1960s who seems to have it all, until the darker parts of her past are revealed and leave Mackenzie deeply troubled. This was nothing like I expected it to be as an Edgar Wright film, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, just a different one. It's not a comedy, for one thing, but a strange surreal horror/mystery that I found thoroughly compelling once I stopped expecting witty one-liners and meta commentary (though Wright's familiar gift for finding the perfect soundtrack is definitely on display here!). The story comes to a rather melodramatic climax, but it all works for me. The film goes on a ride from coming-of-age story to nightmarish horror to gothic melodrama, and maybe not having any inkling of what the film was before hand made that an easier transition, as I wasn't expecting it to "settle" into any of these one genres. It's absolutely nothing like Wright's made before, but it's a fascinating step in a new direction for him, and I wouldn't be sorry to see more of it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Last Night in Soho > The Keep

Last Night in Soho > Munich

Last Night in Soho < Hearts Beat Loud

Last Night in Soho < Grave of the Fireflies

Last Night in Soho > Is It College Yet?

Last Night in Soho < Judgment at Nuremberg

Last Night in Soho > The Great Gatsby (2013)

Last Night in Soho < Four Lions

Last Night in Soho < CODA

Last Night in Soho > Il Postino: The Postman

Last Night in Soho > Holiday (1930)

Last Night in Soho < Roxanne

Final spot: #744 out of 3554, or 79%.

Furlough (2018)

IMDb plot summary: When an inmate is granted one weekend out of prison to see her dying mother, a rookie correction officer struggles to keep her under control.

Directed by Laurie Collyer. Starring Melissa Leo, Tessa Thompson, and Edgar Ramirez.

Furlough stars Tessa Thompson as a prison guard who is tasked with escorting prisoner Melissa Leo to visit her dying mother. Thompson is young and eager for a promotion and determined to take this assignment very seriously. Leo is excited to be out in the world after so long, and we're never sure if she's going to try to make things difficult for Thompson or if she's just enjoying the time she has out. These are two good actresses turning into two good performances in a film that is occasionally a little obviously scripted -- and by that I mean that we can see the strings working. The ending in particular, the climactic moment of the story, is a little too easy and a little too sweet to come out of the story that came before it. Thompson and Leo both make this believable on the whole and let us root for both of them at alternate moments. Interestingly, this is almost entirely a story about relationships rather than any kind of comment on the prison industrial system, aside from a very brief comment from Thompson's sister at the beginning asking her how she can be part of the system like this. It's a little awkward that that's brought up and then never really addressed again, but this isn't really a prison movie, it's a buddy movie. And while it's not amazing it mostly does what it's trying to do.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Furlough > The Keep

Furlough < Till Death

Furlough < Timecop

Furlough > Blood Diamond

Furlough > The Fly (1986)

Furlough > 12 Years a Slave

Furlough > A Doll's House (1973)

Furlough > Platoon

Furlough > The Nice Guys

Furlough < The River Wild

Furlough > Lifeforce

Final spot: #1336 out of 3552, or 62%.

Union Pacific (1939)

IMDb plot summary: In 1862, Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads compete westward across the wilderness toward California.

Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, and Robert Preston.

Union Pacific tells the story of building a railroad line across the country to reach California. There are two competing lines that are allowed to continue building until they meet up with the other, and so an unscrupulous businessman decides to sabotage one line so the other will be able to build more. We follow these efforts, as well as the man who's trying to stop them, and Barbara Stanwyck, postmistress of the railroad, who is caught in between. This is a Cecil B. Demille film and it definitely feels grand and expensive the way many of his did. Some of the railway laying scenes we're unexpectedly compelling, a close look at everything that went into making transport across the country possible. I also found myself unexpectedly caught up in the love triangle between Stanwyck and the two men on opposite sides who love her. Both of them are portrayed sympathetically so it's not as simple as good guy versus bad guy, which makes it more interesting. It's not an astonishingly good movie but it did draw me in much more than I would have expected when I first started this. An interesting look at an exciting time in our history.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Union Pacific > Dark and Stormy Night

Union Pacific < Till Death

Union Pacific < Timecop

Union Pacific > Source Code

Union Pacific < The Fly (1986)

Union Pacific < 7 Plus Seven

Union Pacific > It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

Union Pacific > Liberal Arts

Union Pacific < The Trouble with Harry

Union Pacific > The Help

Union Pacific > Damn Yankees

Union Pacific > Captain America: The First Avenger

Final spot: #1505 out of 3549, or 58%.