The Limey (1999)

IMDb plot summary: An extremely volatile and dangerous Englishman goes to Los Angeles to find the man he considers responsible for his daughter's death.

Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Starring Terence Stamp, Peter Fonda, and Lesley Ann Warren.

The Limey is a Stephen Soderbergh movie starring Terrence stamp as a British man who travels to the US to find out what really happened to his daughter and exact revenge along the way as needed. This kind of story is a very familiar one among crime movies, where defending the defenseless women in their lives is frequently the motivation for a lot of male crime movie protagonists. While I like Soderbergh as a director in general, this movie just doesn't draw me in. It's like the most textbook example of how to play out these tropes in the exact expected way. That's not a bad thing necessarily -- Soderbergh continues to be a good director who makes good use of the visuals and the pacing of his films -- but there's nothing in here that makes me think or set up and pay attention in any way. If this is a genre you really are connected to this is a solid entry, but if you're looking for something a little bit more out of the box, this one isn't it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Limey < Bad Education

The Limey > Pepito and the Magic Lamp

The Limey < Adam

The Limey > The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The Limey < Murphy's War

The Limey < Neighbors (1920)

The Limey < The Lost Weekend

The Limey < The Adjustment Bureau

The Limey > Beach Party

The Limey < Paradise

The Limey < Immortal Beloved

The Limey > The 101-Year-Old Man Who Skipped Out on the Bill and Disappeared

Final spot: #2596 out of 3789 so far, or 31%.

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

IMDb plot summary: Ben Sanderson, a Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his alcoholism, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.

Directed by Mike Figgis. Starring Nicolas Cage, Elisabeth Shue, and Julian Sands.

Leaving Las Vegas stars Nicholas Cage as an alcoholic who has entirely given up on life and decides to go to Las Vegas to drink himself to death, and Elisabeth Shue as the prostitute who forms an unusual bond with him and is willing to stay by his side as he slowly kills himself with his addiction. There is somehow simultaneously a hopefulness and a hopelessness in this movie, and the two battle it out from scene to scene. It certainly doesn't shy away from the more upsetting aspects of addiction, as it shows Shue having to deal with behavioral issues and bodily fluids everywhere, as well as having to explain to the people around her who this person is and why she's allowing him to stay in her life. But the strong sense of connection and compassion that the two have for each other is very compelling. It would almost be called inspirational if the story as a whole wasn't so depressing. This kind of movie could easily be campier and more dramatic, but it really lands in discovering its characters and that's where it excels the most. It's one of those films that's hard to imagine wanting to rewatch ever, but it certainly had a strong impact on me this one time.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Leaving Las Vegas > Bad Education

Leaving Las Vegas < Elf

Leaving Las Vegas > Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella

Leaving Las Vegas > We're No Angels (1955)

Leaving Las Vegas > The Secret Garden (1987)

Leaving Las Vegas > Beyond the Sea

Leaving Las Vegas > Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken

Leaving Las Vegas < The Menu

Leaving Las Vegas > A Room With a View

Leaving Las Vegas > The Palm Beach Story

Leaving Las Vegas < Tower

Final spot: #965 out of 3788, or 75%.

Mommy (2014)

IMDb plot summary: A widowed single mother, raising her violent son alone, finds new hope when a mysterious neighbor inserts herself into their household.

Directed by Xavier Dolan. Starring Anne Dorval, Antoine Olivier Pilon, and Suzanne Clément.

Mommy is a foreign film about a woman whose high school-aged son has been kicked out of multiple schools and programs due to his antisocial behavior and tendency toward violence. With nowhere else to take him, she brings him home to care for him herself and ends up befriending her new neighbor in the process. I have also seen Xavier Dolan's film Lawrence Anyways and had a similar strong emotional response to that one. The thing that really pulls at the heart here is the strong relationship between mother and son. Even while trying to deal with their own stuff, including his occasionally uncontrollable rages and her furious responses, it is clear from every other interaction they have that they have a very close bond and care for each other very much, even if they don't really know how to handle each other in the real world. The film also makes really beautiful use of its music to give us brief glimpses into the workings of the characters' inner lives. The ending certainly doesn't wrap everything up neatly, but I found myself very moved by it and don't think I'll be forgetting it anytime soon.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Mommy > The Last Dragon

Mommy > Key Largo

Mommy > Six Degrees of Separation

Mommy < Fright Night (1985)

Mommy > Before Sunset

Mommy < I'm Not Scared

Mommy < Broadway Danny Rose

Mommy > The Banshees of Inisherin

Mommy < Shattered Glass

Mommy < Fail-Safe

Mommy < And Now for Something Completely Different

Mommy < The Young Girls of Rochefort

Final spot: #339 out of 3787, or 91%.

Class Reunion (1982)

IMDb plot summary: It's been 10 years since Lizzie Borden High School's class of '72 graduated, and the preppies, the hippies and the in-crowd have returned to reminisce over good times past.

Directed by Michael Miller. Starring Gerrit Graham, Michael Lerner, and Fred McCarren.

Class Reunion is a broad 80s comedy set at a ten-year high school reunion where one of the returning graduates has plans for murder. All the characters we meet are based on high school stereotypes. To be honest, very few of the jokes land at all. This is a very early John Hughes script, and he had neither grasped the humor nor the heart that his later films would deliver. There's nothing wrong with broad comedy, but very little of this works. There is one truly hilarious running gag that suddenly brings the fantastical into a world that is otherwise portrayed as an over-the-top but real-world scenario, but that's really the only one. This also feels like the kind of movie that's begging to be a big name ensemble, and maybe I'm just out of the loop of 1980s actors, but I didn't know any of these people, and this is absolutely the kind of thing that would work beter seeing established actors in these simple character tropes that we can enjoy. A messy unclear movie that never finds its footing.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Class Reunion < Bad Education

Class Reunion < Pepito and the Magic Lamp

Class Reunion > Epic

Class Reunion < Send Me No Flowers

Class Reunion < Uncut Gems

Class Reunion < Stage Door Canteen

Class Reunion < Miracle on 34th Street (1994)

Class Reunion > The Mirror

Class Reunion < Julia

Class Reunion < Meet Me in St. Louis

Class Reunion < Psych-Out

Class Reunion > Out of the Past

Final spot: #3297 out of 3786, or 13%.

Elvis (2022)

IMDb plot summary: The life of American music icon Elvis Presley, from his childhood to becoming a rock and movie star in the 1950s while maintaining a complex relationship with his manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

Directed by Baz Luhrmann. Starring Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, and Olivia DeJonge.

Elvis is Baz Luhrmann's biopic of Elvis Presley, starring Austin Butler as the titular star. The story mostly focuses on Elvis' relationship with his manager Colonel Parker, played here in campy villainy by Tom Hanks. I had high hopes for this, not so much because I'm such an Elvis fan as because I'm a fan of how Luhrmann uses music in his movies, and I couldn't wait for him to go full-on musical biopic. While it didn't go AS all-in as I was hoping, it was still a very effective use of sound design and editing to convey what exactly it was that made Elvis such a big star. And it took enough liberties with the style and script that it actually made it feel like a movie about a person rather than a symbol, something many biopics never manage to effectively do. That being said, it is a long movie that doesn't always justify its length. I will join the crowd saying that Austin Butler's work in this was really good,  he really brings the character to life, but as far as musicals by Baz Luhrmann go, I'm sticking with Moulin Rouge.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Elvis > The Last Dragon

Elvis < Key Largo

Elvis > Cafe Society

Elvis > Date Night

Elvis < The Secret Garden (1987)

Elvis > A Christmas Carol (1951)

Elvis > Dangerous Liaisons

Elvis < What the Deaf Man Heard

Elvis < Frankenweenie

Elvis < Session 9

Elvis > Kursk

Elvis > Gandhi

Final spot: #1090 out of 3785, or 71%.