The Night Before (2015)

IMDb plot summary: On Christmas Eve, three lifelong friends spend the night in New York City looking for the Holy Grail of Christmas parties.

Directed by Jonathan Levine. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anthony Mackie.

The Night Before follows three friends who have had the same tradition every Christmas since college: going for a night of epic partying. Now as they've grown into adults with responsibilities, two of them are ready to put away the tradition, and so the three make this last Christmas Eve their best ever as a farewell. Raunchy drug party movies are usually not even close to being my genre, and I'm pretty mediocre on them at best, but a lot of the humor in this surprised me and made me laugh out loud. There were also plenty of jokes that didn't work for me, but I expected the ratio to be a lot more negative. It's also got a refreshingly supportive vibe for the genre, with everyone being pretty devoted to everyone having a good time. The strongest example is Rogen's character's wife, who could easily be framed as the nagging pregnancy wife irritated that her husband is going off partying without her on Christmas Eve (and then showing up extremely high at her family's Christmas Mass) but they neatly sidestep that trope and instead put them on the same team together helping him get through it, which is... refreshing. It's not my favorite movie by any means but I'm always pleased to find something in this vein that mostly works for me!

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Night Before > My Week With Marilyn

The Night Before < Anna Karenina

The Night Before < VeggieTales: Where's God When I'm S-Scared?

The Night Before > Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told

The Night Before > Y Tu Mamá Tambien

The Night Before > The Hidden Fortress

The Night Before > Talk Radio

The Night Before > The Mauritanian

The Night Before > Something to Sing About

The Night Before > The Romantics

The Night Before < Die Hard

Final spot: #1417 out of 3769, or 62%.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

IMDb plot summary: A medium and her husband stage a kidnapping in order for her to pretend to solve the crime and achieve fame.

Directed by Bryan Forbes. Starring Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough, and Margaret Lacey.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon follows a British woman who believes she can communicate with the dead and her doting husband, who appears skeptical of her abilities but supports her wholeheartedly. The two of them plan to kidnap a wealthy man's child so that the woman can pretend to solve the mystery with her powers to launch her into fame. I'd never heard of this movie before I came across it as part of a personal film challenge, and it was a wonderful surprise. It has a very Hitchockian feel to it, in that it takes advantage of the quietly building tension naturally built into this situation and the characters in it. It unfolds slowly until it all culminates is a finale that is both suspenseful and heartbreaking. The performances by Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough as the couple are also both really great, full of nuance amid what could have been more cartoonish characterization. I could have watched these two interacting for another hour, easily. This is definitely one I'll be recommending to others frequently!

How it entered my Flickchart:

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > My Week With Marilyn

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > Anna Karenina

Seance on a Wet Afternoon < Secretary

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > The Farewell

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > The Fabelmans

Seance on a Wet Afternoon < Black Panther

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > The Royal Tenenbaums

Seance on a Wet Afternoon < Romy and Michele's High School Reunion

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > Smashed

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > I Heart Huckabees

Seance on a Wet Afternoon > A Letter to Three Wives

Final spot: #545 out of 3768, or 86%.

Captain Thunder (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Victor Varconi plays a charming Mexican bandit gets involved in several conflicting paradoxical relations, including an alliance with a crooked rival bandit and a beautiful daughter of the governor.

Directed by Alan Crosland. Starring Fay Wray, Victor Varconi, and Charles Judels.

Captain Thunder is a Mexican bandit who gets caught up in an arranged engagement between a young woman and a wealthy white man, though the woman is in love with someone else. I had to remind myself of that with the Wikipedia entry, because despite that sounding like an interesting concept, I was absolutely bored out of my mind watching this, and it was nearly impossible to care about what was going on. There is a fun storytelling device in the very final minutes of the story, but that's about the only memorable piece. This movie came out about a decade after the character of Zorro began, and virtually any film interpretation of that character is going to be more worth watching than this one. If anyone is a big fan of this movie, I'd love to hear your take on it -- it's definitely one of the most forgettable viewings of my 1930 project so far.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Captain Thunder < My Week With Marilyn

Captain Thunder < Kicking & Screaming (2005)

Captain Thunder < Repo! The Genetic Opera

Captain Thunder < Martyrs

Captain Thunder > Interview

Captain Thunder > I Am Sam

Captain Thunder > Aquamarine

Captain Thunder > Clash by Night

Captain Thunder > No Greater Love

Captain Thunder > Agent Cody Banks

Captain Thunder > Snow White and the Huntsman

Captain Thunder > Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Final spot: #3533 out of 3767, or 6%.

The Bishop Murder Case (1930)

IMDb plot summary: When the body of a man nicknamed "Cock Robin" is found with an arrow in the heart on an archery range along with a chess bishop as a clue, Philo Vance investigates.

Directed by David Burton and Nick Grinde. Starring Basil Rathbone, Leila Hyams, and Roland Young.

The Bishop Murder Case stars Basil Rathbone as detective Philo Vance, who is in competition with the police to solve a serious of murders. Each one has a note left behind referencing a nursery rhyme, and Vance and the police are racing to solve the puzzles before the next murder takes place. The digital transfer I watched of this film was, unfortunately, pretty rough, and had a near-constant loud buzzing over all the dialogue. This made it really hard to get into the movie, and as the murder got more complicated and more characters were introduced, I ended up losing track and then losing interest. When the murderer and their grand plan is finally revealed, it was a character I could barely remember, let alone recall their possible motivations for the murder. I can't blame that all on the shoddy quality -- the film was definitely burdened with too many characters and not enough fleshing out of any of them -- but it certainly didn't help. A disappointing watch, despite a fun lead actor.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Bishop Murder Case < Dazed and Confused

The Bishop Murder Case > Kicking & Screaming (2005)

The Bishop Murder Case < Liz & Dick

The Bishop Murder Case < The Witches of Eastwick

The Bishop Murder Case < Red Cliff

The Bishop Murder Case < Kill List

The Bishop Murder Case > Ulysses

The Bishop Murder Case > I Am Number Four

The Bishop Murder Case > American Sniper

The Bishop Murder Case < VeggieTales: Are You My Neighbor?

The Bishop Murder Case < Last of the Red Hot Lovers

The Bishop Murder Case > Margaret

Final spot: #2772 out of 3766, or 26%.

Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Kitty Bellairs, a flirtatious young woman of 18th Century England, cuts a swath of broken hearts and romantic conquests as she visits a resort with her sister.

Directed by Alfred E. Green. Starring Claudia Dell, Ernest Torrence, and Walter Pidgeon.

Sweet Kitty Bellairs is a 1930 musical comedy about a young woman who is rather bold with her affections and has to choose between her suitors. There's also a subplot where she helps reconcile a friend with her emotionally distant husband. While this has a lot of fun pieces to it, it's all over the place in that kind of silly way you see in a lot of early movies that want a chance to show off all their stars' singing and dancing skills more than finding a coherent plot. Some of those moments work better than others, but overall the plot is so disjointed that none of them end up with any substance to them; it's just a series of vaguely enjoyable sequences. What I expect will happen is that individual moments from this are going to live in my memory, but I'll never remember that they all came from the same movie, let alone what movie that was.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > Dazed and Confused

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > Kicking & Screaming (2005)

Sweet Kitty Bellairs < Liz & Dick

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > The Witches of Eastwick

Sweet Kitty Bellairs < Holiday (1938)

Sweet Kitty Bellairs < Freaks

Sweet Kitty Bellairs < Willow

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > Beach Party

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > The Adjustment Bureau

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > The Divorcee

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > The Untouchables

Sweet Kitty Bellairs > Cellular

Final spot: #2559 out of 3765, or 32%.

Decision to Leave (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A detective investigating a man's death in the mountains meets the dead man's mysterious wife in the course of his dogged sleuthing.

Directed by Park Chan-wook. Starring Park Hae-il, Tang Wei, and Lee Jung-hyun.

Decision to Leave focuses on a detective who finds himself falling in love with the suspect of a murder he's investigating. I don't want to give away many more spoilers than that, but the two get more and more intertwined throughout the course of the story. This movie got a ton of attention last year, to the point where I was startled it didn't get a Best Foreign Film nomination at the Oscars, and it definitely was more interesting to me than many crime dramas are. The filmmaking itself is really lovely in this, shots and sound choices that reel you in and make you pay attention, and even when I wasn't fully drawn into the story I enjoyed just watching the scenes play out in and of themselves. The movie also brings it home in the final moments, at least for me. It ends in a way that I didn't anticipate but that I found... let's say striking. I definitely see why so many people connected to this movie, and while I didn't fall in love quite as much, it was something I'm glad I saw and I appreciate what it was doing.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Decision to Leave > My Week with Marilyn

Decision to Leave < Safe

Decision to Leave > VeggieTales: Where's God When I'm S-Scared?

Decision to Leave < Monte Carlo

Decision to Leave > Chain Reaction

Decision to Leave > The Theory of Everything

Decision to Leave > Native Son (2019)

Decision to Leave < Watchmen

Decision to Leave > The Descendants

Decision to Leave < Serial Mom

Decision to Leave > Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

Final spot: #1195 out of 3763, or 68%.

Monte Carlo (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A countess flees to Monte Carlo on the day of her wedding, where she is courted by a count posing as a hairdresser.

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Starring Jeanette MacDonald, Jack Buchanan, and Claud Allister.

Monte Carlo is a very early Ernst Lubitsch romance about a woman who runs away from her rich fiance and ends up falling in love with her hairdresser (who, unbeknownst to her, is another rich man). This is an early musical, and I found myself surprised by how much I loved the songs. My personal musical style definitely tends toward the modern, and I often zone out a bit during older musical movies, but the songs in this are delightful and fun and catchy in all the best ways. It definitely helps that a good-quality version of this film still exists, which is definitely not the case for a lot of 1930 movies, and it helps the songs sound their best. And the rest of the movie is also very good -- while the romance isn't one I'm necessarily personally invested in, the dialogue is funny and clever and the stars give it their all. This is definitely one I could see growing to become a favorite even if it was only "very good" rather than "great" on this watchthrough.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Monte Carlo > My Week With Marilyn

Monte Carlo < Safe

Monte Carlo > VeggieTales: Where's God When I'm S-Scared?

Monte Carlo < The Producers (2005)

Monte Carlo > Chain Reaction

Monte Carlo > The Theory of Everything

Monte Carlo > Native Son (2019)

Monte Carlo > Watchmen

Monte Carlo > The Artist

Monte Carlo > Whisky Galore!

Monte Carlo > The Mummy (1932)

Monte Carlo > Show Me Love

Final spot: #1176 out of 3762, or 69%.

Wizards (1977)

IMDb plot summary: On a post-apocalyptic Earth, a wizard and his faire folk comrades fight an evil wizard who's using technology in his bid for conquest.

Directed by Ralph Bakshi. Starring Bob Holt, Jesse Welles, and Richard Romanus.

Wizards is a Ralph Bakshi animated movie set millions of years in the future, after humanity nuclear bombed itself nearly to extinction, and now there is an evil wizard who wants to... use World War 2 footage to inspire an evil army to... bring technology back? Look, this plot doesn't make even a tiny bit of sense, but fortunately it mostly doesn't have to. This movie is ALL about vibes, and it brings the vibes in full force. Bakshi's animation is truly stunning here, a surprising combination of these garishly colorful cartoon characters and these horrifying suggestive silhouettes and then sometimes, abruptly, live action news reel style footage. It reminds me, very loosely, of Mad God, in that it's creating this fascinating post-apocalyptic world that I don't understand at all but am so intrigued by. But while Mad God refused to deliver *any* concrete worldbuilding, Wizards delivers just enough to satisfy my curiosity and then just plays around with it. It's such a bizarre movie and I can't think of much else like it, but I had a surprisingly great time with it and am glad I saw it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Wizards > Kinky Boots the Musical

Wizards > Anna Karenina

Wizards < Secretary

Wizards < The Farewell

Wizards > Barbarian

Wizards < The Scarlet and the Black

Wizards < The Hunger Games

Wizards < Music and Lyrics

Wizards < The Road Warrior

Wizards < Sansho the Bailiff

Wizards < Shiva Baby

Wizards < City Lights

Final spot: #822 out of 3761, or 78%.

Shiva Baby (2020)

IMDb plot summary: At a Jewish funeral service with her parents, a college student runs into her sugar daddy and ex girlfriend.

Directed by Emma Seligman. Starring Rachel Sennott, Danny Deferrari, and Fred Melamed.

Shiva Baby is a mostly one-room drama about a young college graduate who is uncertain what she wants to do with her future and has been working as a sugar baby in the meantime. She accompanies her parents to the shiva of an extended family member, where she runs into her sugar daddy, his wife, and his baby. For the most part, this little indie drama works. The relationships and interactions feel believable, and it's easy to identify with our lead character who is feeling unmoored and claustrophobic as she shuffles from family member to family member, all eagerly asking her what she's doing next. Even as she makes some truly terrible decisions about how to deal with her stress, we get it. The mood-building in this movie is pretty fantastic -- I have hardly any true connections to this main character but I felt like I was there with her trying to hold it together through the gathering. Things fall apart a little in the final moments of the film, where it feels not so much like it ends as that it meant to end but ran out of time. Still an interesting snapshot of a moment in this person's life, even if I wish it wrapped up more creatively.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Shiva Baby > Kinky Boots the Musical

Shiva Baby > Anna Karenina

Shiva Baby < Secretary

Shiva Baby < The Farewell

Shiva Baby > Judas and the Black Messiah

Shiva Baby < The Scarlet and the Black

Shiva Baby < The Hunger Games

Shiva Baby < Music and Lyrics

Shiva Baby < The Road Warrior

Shiva Baby < Sansho the Bailiff

Shiva Baby > City Lights

Shiva Baby < Kismet

Final spot: #820 out of 3760, or 78%.

After Yang (2021)

IMDb plot summary: In a near future, a family reckons with questions of love, connection, and loss after their A.I. helper unexpectedly breaks down.

Directed by Kogonada. Starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja.

After Yang is a sci-fi drama set in a future in which families can purchase robot/AI siblings for children adopted internationally. These siblings are programmed to serve as a connector to those children's biological heritage. The story takes off when Yang, one of those AI siblings, shuts down unexpectedly, and the owner runs around to various places trying to see if they can get him fixed. This sounds like the recipe for a potentially high-stakes, action-packed story, but this film keeps it all extremely quiet. It becomes a sort of meditative look at humanity, family, and memory, seen through Yang's memories, which have been extracted from his body. It's very interesting to see a sci-fi take on a sort of dreamy memory play, but I found myself drifting in and out of interest. The world was interesting enough that I wanted to dig into the details more deeply, and instead the movie deliberately skirts them. Once I settled into the vibe that the movie was going to give me, I found a lot to like about it, and pieces of this are definitely going to stick with me, but a part of me still wants to see the movie I thought this was going to be.

How it entered my Flickchart:

After Yang > King Kong Escapes

After Yang < Anna Karenina

After Yang > The Romantics

After Yang > Ghost World

After Yang < Manhattan Murder Mystery

After Yang < Leave No Trace

After Yang > Kind Hearts and Coronets

After Yang < VeggieTales: Lyle, the Kindly Viking

After Yang < The Lost City

After Yang > The Village

After Yang > A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit

After Yang < Wonder Man

Final spot: #1139 out of 3759, or 70%.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A father's wish magically brings a wooden boy to life in Italy, giving him a chance to care for the child.

Directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson. Starring Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, and Gregory Mann.

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is a stop-motion version of the famous Italian story. The narrative is a familiar one: a lonely woodcarver's marionette comes to life and gets into all kinds of trouble while learning moral truths about lying and greed and so on. I've never been a fan of the story in any adaptation -- I find it a combination of preachy and horrific in a way that is deeply off-putting to me. Del Toro's aesthetic is just the right combination of fantastical and unsettling to make this story work, for the most part. I didn't know this one was a musical, and the musical numbers are great, neither a traditional musical theater sound nor the pop Broadway sound that's permeated most of our modern musicals. These completely fit the style of the film and are just unexpected enough to keep them interesting throughout. Without giving too much away, I also really like how this one ends. It's not the typical magical happy ending that gets attached to the narrative, and it feels like a much more fitting resolution to this kind of story. This is probably about the best version of Pinocchio you can make, in my opinion, and it's well worth a watch.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > King Kong Escapes

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio < Anna Karenina

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > The Romantics

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio < The Mummy (1932)

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio < Spellbound (2002)

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Panic Room

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > The Intouchables

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > The Circus

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Born Yesterday

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Beauty and the Beast (2017)

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Invictus

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio > Man on Wire

Final spot: #1292 out of 3758, or 66%.

The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993)

IMDb plot summary: In Missouri, during the 1840s, young Huck Finn fearful of his drunkard father and yearning for adventure, leaves his foster family and joins with runaway slave Jim in a voyage down the Mississippi River toward slavery free states.

Directed by Stephen Sommers. Starring Elijah Wood, Courtney B. Vance, and Robbie Coltrane.

The Adventures of Huck Finn is a 1993 Disney take on the classic story by Mark Twain, starring Elijah Wood as the titular character and Courtney B. Vance as his companion, runaway slave Jim. We follow Huck as he runs away from his abusive father and gets tangled up in a series of adventures, including examining his own morals on whether he should help Jim escape or turn him in. I feel like I must have read this book at some point in my life, but as I watched this movie, I remembered absolutely none of these events, despite most of them being in fact in the book (at least according to Wikipedia). It's a lot jauntier than I thought it might be, leaning heavier into Disneyfied broad comedy at times, and sometimes into a Disneyfied broad version of race that occasionally is very jarring. Elijah Wood brings to the role almost a winking-at-the-camera vibe which fits well when his mischievous character is going on silly adventures (though again, doesn't work so well when we are about to watch a man be killed for escaping slavery). It's a strange mix of a movie that definitely made me want to go back and read (or reread?) the book to see if that tonal shift is present there as well.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Adventures of Huck Finn < Kinky Boots the Musical

The Adventures of Huck Finn > La Dolce Vita

The Adventures of Huck Finn > Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Adventures of Huck Finn > Belfast

The Adventures of Huck Finn > Internal Affairs

The Adventures of Huck Finn < Escape from New York

The Adventures of Huck Finn > Pitch Perfect 2

The Adventures of Huck Finn > A Walk on the Moon

The Adventures of Huck Finn < The Beach

The Adventures of Huck Finn < High School Musical 3: Senior Year

The Adventures of Huck Finn < Fatherhood

The Adventures of Huck Finn < My Girl

Final spot: #1951 out of 3756, or 48%.