Love in the Rough (1930)

IMDb plot summary: When shipping clerk Jack Kelly is recruited by his employer to help his golf game, his boss insists he conceal his humble identity at the country club.

Directed by Charles Reisner. Starring Robert Montgomery, Sarah Y. Mason, and Joseph Farnham.

Love in the Rough is, weirdly, the second golf-centric romantic comedy I've seen in my film trek through the year 1930. In this one, a shipping clerk is invited along on a golf trip by his boss and ends up finding love with another golfer, although he misleads her about his financial situation. All these 1930 rom coms are starting to blend together. They didn't do a lot of varying character traits or set up chemistry between characters in a very interesting way. This one, aside from being golf romance #2, is also pretty uninteresting. At least it breaks up its boring characters with some fun musical numbers, which are done pretty well, even if entirely inconsequential to the story -- in true 1930s musical style. A forgettable but not unpleasant watch, overall.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Love in the Rough < Le voyage au Groenland

Love in the Rough > K-19: The Widowmaker

Love in the Rough < Anchors Aweigh

Love in the Rough < The Lost Weekend

Love in the Rough < The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Love in the Rough > Fracture

Love in the Rough > The Devil Is a Woman

Love in the Rough > Andrei Rublev

Love in the Rough > Teorema

Love in the Rough < Luther

Love in the Rough < Dear Evan Hansen

Love in the Rough > 12 Days of Terror

Final spot: #2856 out of 3944, or 28%.

Civil War (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.

Directed by Alex Garland. Starring Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Cailee Spaeny.

Civil War is Alex Garland's latest film, set in a not-far-distant future where the United States has descended into civil war. Kirsten Dunst is our protagonist, a jaded photojournalist on a mission to document the war, and she and her crew make their way across the states to D.C. to try and get a photo of and interview with the President. Alex Garland is one of my favorite filmmakers currently, and although this is probably my least favorite of his thus far, it's still a thoughtful and engaging watch. Keeping the focus on the journalists lets us see things slightly more from the "outside," perceiving all the horrors as both everyday and still horrible. Dunst has really come into her own as an actress over the past decade, and she is excellent here as well. While it's probably my least favorite of Garland's four directorial works, it still is striking and is something that I think is going to sit with me for awhile.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Civil War > Love Exposure

Civil War > Kuroneko

Civil War < The Legend of 1900

Civil War > The Farewell

Civil War < The Fabelmans

Civil War > 5 Centimeters Per Second

Civil War < Summer Wars

Civil War < Beautiful Boy

Civil War < Dawn of the Dead (1978)

Civil War < Super

Civil War < Face/Off

Civil War < Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

Final spot: #677 out of 3943, or 83%.

Fearless (1993)

IMDb plot summary: A man's personality is dramatically changed after surviving a major airline crash.

Directed by Peter Weir. Starring Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, and Rosie Perez.

Fearless stars Jeff Bridges as a man who survives a devastating plane crash, only to have a great deal of difficulty settling back into every day life afterward. While he claims to be fine and turns down offers of therapeutic assistance, his actions become more and more distanced from his family as he tries to identify how that near-death experience has changed him. It was interesting watching this film directly after Hero, another movie about a deadly plane crash and a man becoming an unexpected hero because of it. But this movie takes a very different angle, focusing on the many different ways grief, loss, and PTSD can show up in different people, and how difficult that can be for folks on the outside to comprehend. It's a slow-moving story that is grounded in some very good acting performances, particularly Bridges, who is so incredibly difficult to read in his state of lingering shock. It's a complex performance that I find very compelling, and the film is worth watching for that alone.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Fearless > Love Exposure

Fearless < Kuroneko

Fearless < The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain

Fearless > The Sword in the Stone

Fearless > Death at a Funeral (2007)

Fearless < Timecop

Fearless < Raising Cain

Fearless > Death to Smoochy

Fearless > American Outlaws

Fearless < Phone Booth

Fearless < Kill Bill Vol. 1

Fearless > Three Thousand Years of Longing

Final spot: #1576 out of 3942, or 60%.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

IMDb plot summary: In 1880s India, two former British soldiers decide to set themselves up as Kings in Kafiristan, a land where no white man has set foot since Alexander the Great.

Directed by John Huston. Starring Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer.

The Man Who Would Be King stars Michael Caine and Sean Connery as two British officers who decide to, on their own, head into a remote Eurasian country full of individual warring tribes and conquer it. This was an odd movie to watch, and I'm still not at all sure what to make of it. It's set up like a jaunty heist movie, but underpinning the whole thing is the fact that it's all about a group of entitled British men deciding to take over a non-white country. While there's a little bit of self-awareness in this -- they are ultimately unsuccessful in their goal, and it indicates that their hubris was a big part of it, which is compelling -- but I'm not sure that it was *wholly* convinced its protagonists were the bad guys, just that they did their colonizing badly. And it leans into and supports so many tropes about non-white civilizations that I was just uncomfortable much of the time. I'd like to see this story retold either in a way that is more confidently critical of our leads or, at the very least, in a way that recentered the stories of the people at the heart of the conflict. There may be more nuance to this narrative than I found, but it ultimately felt too much like a colonization romp for me to get into it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Man Who Would Be King < Love Exposure

The Man Who Would Be King > Ulysses

The Man Who Would Be King > Company (1997)

The Man Who Would Be King > The Stalking Moon

The Man Who Would Be King > Pitch Perfect 2

The Man Who Would Be King < The Harder They Fall

The Man Who Would Be King > Power

The Man Who Would Be King < Something the Lord Made

The Man Who Would Be King < Star Trek: Nemesis

The Man Who Would Be King > Candyman (2021)

The Man Who Would Be King > Hellboy

The Man Who Would Be King > Q & A

Final spot: #2056 out of 3941, or 48%.

Chimes at Midnight (1965)

IMDb plot summary: When King Henry IV ascends to the throne, his heir, the Prince of Wales, is befriended by Sir John Falstaff, an old, overweight, fun-loving habitual liar. Through Falstaff's eyes we see the reign of King Henry IV and the rise of Henry V.

Directed by Orson Welles. Starring Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, and Margaret Rutherford.

Chimes at Midnight is Orson Welles' cinematic retelling of Shakespeare's Henry history plays, focusing nearly all the action through the eyes of the young carefree prince's constant companion, Falstaff. Welles himself plays Falstaff and we see his friendship with the prince change over the course of the film. Shakespeare's histories have never been my favorite of his plays, and I struggled as always to connect with this story on an emotional level. Welles is, of course, a very engaging orator, and his Falstaff monologues were fairly engaging, but there's just not much else for me to latch onto. I admire what it's trying to do, and, on a very specific note, I really appreciated the range of vocal choices being made by all the actors throughout. Even when I couldn't care about the story, I could just appreciate the vocal work bringing all the minor characters to live. If I was a bigger fan of the original histories, I'm sure this would be a more compelling watch, but as it was, it was well-done and I was unmoved.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Chimes at Midnight < Le voyage au Groenland

Chimes at Midnight > Ulysses

Chimes at Midnight < The Happiest Millionaire

Chimes at Midnight > Father of the Bride (1950)

Chimes at Midnight > National Velvet

Chimes at Midnight > BlackBerry

Chimes at Midnight > For Your Consideration

Chimes at Midnight > Call Me By Your Name

Chimes at Midnight < The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Chimes at Midnight > Jezebel

Chimes at Midnight < Wild Zero

Chimes at Midnight > The Secret of Nikola Tesla

Final spot: #2472 out of 3940, or 37%.

Phir Hera Pheri (2006)

IMDb plot summary: Baburao, Raju and Shyam are living happily after having risen from rags to riches. Still, money brings the joy of riches and with it the greed to make more money. And so, with a don as an unknowing investor, Raju initiates a new game.

Directed by Neeraj Vora. Starring Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, and Paresh Rawal.

Phir Hera Pheri follows three men who lose all their wealth to an investment scam and get into various hijinks trying to regain that money. This is apparently a sequel, but I haven't seen the original, and while it might be helpful to understand how the characters got to where they are, it's certainly not necessary for character development, as these are incredibly broad characters and problems. The new revelations of dangers and hare-brained schemes to get money felt so repetitive after the first few times, and there wasn't a story arc so much as just an episodic series of events, which is too bad, because I can feel them trying to reach those exaggerated farcical heights where everything gets zanier and zanier until it explodes in chaos at the end. But this plods way too much to get there, most of the jokes don't land (or at least not without a cultural knowledge I don't have), and none of the characters are engaging enough to care about their journey. By far the least interesting of my Bollywood watches this month.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Phir Hera Pheri < Le voyage au Groenland

Phir Hera Pheri < Obvious Child

Phir Hera Pheri > The Last Picture Show

Phir Hera Pheri < The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Phir Hera Pheri > Simone

Phir Hera Pheri > Nobel Son

Phir Hera Pheri < Easter Parade

Phir Hera Pheri < Freaky Friday (1976)

Phir Hera Pheri > Casino Royale (2006)

Phir Hera Pheri > Suez

Phir Hera Pheri > The Fast and the Furious

Phir Hera Pheri > Abraham Lincoln

Final spot: #3247 out of 3940, or 18%.

The Fall Guy (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A stuntman, fresh off an almost career-ending accident, has to track down a missing movie star, solve a conspiracy and try to win back the love of his life while still doing his day job. What could possibly go right?

Directed by David Leitch. Starring Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

The Fall Guy stars Ryan Gosling as a former stuntman who is injured badly on the job and quits. When he hears that his former lover, played by Emily Blunt, wants him to work on her new picture despite him ghosting her completely after his accident, he agrees to come back for one last picture. Gosling is of course a phenomenally charismatic actor, gifted at action, comedy, and heart, and all of those work together here, where his persona carries the majority of the picture. There are also, as there should be in a film about stuntmen, some really fun action scenes as Gosling runs around trying to solve the mystery he finds himself in the middle of. It's a big fun popcorn flick that keeps the mystery interesting but not overly complicated, and there are some nice human emotions grounding the whole thing. Am I going to remember it? No. But if somebody else tosses it on, will I occasionally look up at the screen and chuckle? Sure.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Fall Guy > Love Exposure

The Fall Guy < Anna Karenina (2012)

The Fall Guy < Kajaki

The Fall Guy > The Sword in the Stone

The Fall Guy < Ben-Hur (1959)

The Fall Guy > The Speed Cubers

The Fall Guy > Albert Nobbs

The Fall Guy > Mosaic

The Fall Guy < Nothing in Common

The Fall Guy > Mr. Holmes

The Fall Guy > The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

Final spot: #1609 out of 3939, or 59%.

Lovin' the Ladies (1930)

IMDb plot summary: Jimmy Farnsworth (Allen Kearns) bets his friend $5,000 that he can get any two people, under the proper environment, to fall in love and become engaged within a month.

Directed by Melville W. Brown. Starring Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, and Allen Kearns.

Lovin' the Ladies is a 1930 movie in which a man makes a bet that he can make any woman and any man fall in love with each other. He's taken up on the challenge and presented a working man and an extremely snobby upper class woman. Along the way, however, his male target finds himself falling in love with the better's girlfriend instead of the woman he's supposed to be pursuing. This is a quick, light story that I had very few lingering feelings about. I had a decent time watching it as it played out, but almost immediately forgot I had seen it. There are some mildly entertaining mistaken identity moments, and our romantic hero and heroine are a nice couple, but not a lot to make the film stand out very much.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Lovin' the Ladies < Le voyage au Groenland

Lovin' the Ladies > In the Line of Fire

Lovin' the Ladies < Company (1997)

Lovin' the Ladies > Roman J. Israel, Esq.

Lovin' the Ladies < Short Circuit

Lovin' the Ladies < My Girlfriend's Boyfriend

Lovin' the Ladies > Awake

Lovin' the Ladies < Saturday Night Fever

Lovin' the Ladies < The Big Sleep

Lovin' the Ladies < Dracula

Lovin' the Ladies > Bronson

Lovin' the Ladies < Li'l Abner

Final spot: #2674 out of 3938, or 32%.

Suspect (1987)

IMDb plot summary: When a homeless man is accused of murdering a Justice Department file clerk, a public defender is tasked with mounting his legal defense.

Directed by Peter Yates. Starring Cher, Dennis Quaid, and Liam Neeson.

Suspect is a Peter Yates film starring Liam Neeson as a homeless man accused of murder, Cher as the attorney defending him, and Dennis Quaid as the juror doing his own investigating. Quaid continuously feeds information to Cher as he discovers it, despite concerns that they'll be discovered for jury tampering. Yates continues to be a very eclectic director as I make my way through his filmography, but this is a return to fluffy crime thriller as we saw with Eyewitness earlier this decade. The story doesn't try to overcomplicate itself, and while sometimes that comes across as tropey, it mostly means that it's just a fun, lighthearted ride. The mystery has a satisfying ending, and that's mostly what I care about. The romance between Cher and Quaid is a lot less exciting, but fortunately doesn't take up too much screen time, so I can just roll my eyes and tune out of those scenes until they get back to solving the murder question. Overall, not an amazing watch, but I enjoyed it more than Yates' previous thrillers and had a good enough time with it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Suspect > Love Exposure

Suspect < Anna Karenina (2012)

Suspect < The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

Suspect > The Sword in the Stone

Suspect > Ben-Hur (1959)

Suspect < Talk Radio

Suspect < The Hunt (2020)

Suspect > VeggieTales: Are You My Neighbor?

Suspect < Three Thousand Years of Longing

Suspect > The Imposter

Suspect > American Outlaws

Final spot: #1577 out of 3937, or 60%.

The Last Picture Show (1971)

IMDb plot summary: In 1951, a group of high schoolers come of age in a bleak, isolated, atrophied North Texas town that is slowly dying, both culturally and economically.

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Starring Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, and Cybill Shepherd.

The Last Picture Show is a coming-of-age story by Peter Bogdanovich about a young adult graduating high school in a tiny Texas town. We follow him and a few of his peers as he tries to navigate life and relationships, including an affair with an older married woman. This is an extremely atmospheric movie, to the point where it made me deeply, almost viscerally claustrophobic. The choice to film in sepia-tinted black and white keeps the whole film feeling closed in, even in scenes featuring the sprawling Western desert that *should* feel more open. I admit some of this may come from my own growing up in a small town (though not nearly as small as this one) and having absolutely zero desire to return to it, so some of this might be a personal response. But I just couldn't get myself terribly interested in these people's lives that just seemed doomed to the same cycle over and over. There's clearly deliberate thought put into all the choices to make the movie. It just doesn't do much for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Last Picture Show < Le voyage au Groenland

The Last Picture Show < Obvious Child

The Last Picture Show < Annie (1982)

The Last Picture Show > Hidalgo

The Last Picture Show > The Story of the Weeping Camel

The Last Picture Show > Sahara

The Last Picture Show > The Country Bears

The Last Picture Show > Fun With Dick and Jane (2005)

The Last Picture Show > The Passion of Joan of Arc

The Last Picture Show > Cocktail

The Last Picture Show > No More Baths

The Last Picture Show > Mission to Mars

Final spot: #3445 out of 3936, or 12%.

Namastey London (2007)

IMDb plot summary: A man takes his thoroughly-British daughter to his home country, India. There, he arranges her marriage to someone she considers a fool. The daughter attempts to outwit them, but the groom quietly and patiently hatches his own plan.

Directed by Vipul Amrutlal Shah. Starring Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, and Rishi Kapoor.

Namastey London is a Bollywood romantic comedy about a British Indian woman whose parents are trying to set her up with a nice Indian husband from the home country. After she reluctantly participates in a traditional marriage ceremony in India, the couple returns back to England, where she declares the traditional ceremony won't be recognized as a legal marriage in London, and she intends to marry someone else. Her Indian husband sticks around to see if he can persuade her otherwise. This is a very silly movie that only sometimes works. Katrina Kaif isn't what I'd call a particularly *good* actress in this, but she's very charismatic, and watching her fight and manipulate her way into being able to make her own decisions was fun. Akshay Kumar jumps in and out on how much I root for his character, but we do get some good big romantic gestures that are entertaining even if they don't always hit on a deeper level. A very surface-level movie but fun and light enough to enjoy.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Namastey London < Le voyage au Greenland

Namastey London > In the Line of Fire

Namastey London < The Happiest Millionaire

Namastey London > The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Namastey London > Scotland, PA

Namastey London > Choke

Namastey London > Adam

Namastey London < No Highway in the Sky

Namastey London > Nothing Like a Dame

Namastey London < Mongol

Namastey London > Easy Rider

Final spot: #2480 out of 3935, or 37%.

The Color Purple (2023)

IMDb plot summary: A woman faces many hardships in her life, but ultimately finds extraordinary strength and hope in the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood.

Directed by Blitz Bazawule. Starring Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, and Marsha Norman.

The Color Purple is based on the musical adaptation of Alice Walker's book, although I suspect most people are familiar with it through the Steven Spielberg movie. The story follows a poor, plain Black woman named Celie whose father marries her off to a rich abuser, and it follows her journey as she learns how to stand up for herself and seek out what she wants out of life. It's rare for me to say this about a musical, but I'm not sure the songs added much of anything to this story, aside from "I'm Here" and the finale, which do feel like emotional capstones on top of the full story. The performances, however, are good. Fantasia Barrino played this part on Broadway when it first debuted, and she returns to the role here, bringing a lot of warmth to Celie, and Taraji P. Henson is nicely charismatic as the successful Shug Avery. And while the songs don't contribute anything exciting to the story, they mostly don't take away from it either. Not a tremendous success, but pretty good.

How it entered my Flickchart:

The Color Purple > Le voyage au Greenland

The Color Purple < Safe

The Color Purple > The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)

The Color Purple < Batman Returns

The Color Purple > Loins of Punjab Presents

The Color Purple > The Pirate Movie

The Color Purple > Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

The Color Purple > Whisky Galore!

The Color Purple > Show Me Love

The Color Purple > Corrina, Corrina

The Color Purple < Time Bandits

Final spot: #1233 out of 3934 or 69%.

Destroy All Neighbors (2024)

IMDb plot summary: Struggling prog-rock musician William Brown finds himself in a living nightmare when he accidentally kills Vlad, the neighbor from hell.

Directed by Josh Forbes. Starring Jonah Ray, Kiran Deol, and Randee Heller.

Destroy All Neighbors stars Jonah Ray as a music studio technician who has dreams of creating his own progressive rock masterpiece, but all of that seems impossible as long as his next door neighbor turns his EDM music up obnoxiously loud. What starts as a small feud with the neighbors spirals in wild unexpected directions, and mayhem ensues. This is like... Airheads meets The Voices meets Studio 666, and I had a great time with it. It's so goofy and over-the-top, and our protagonist is such a loser of a character that we can never quite tell whether we want him to win or not, but it ends up being a very silly and satisfying arc at the end. It definitely builds to that atmosphere -- it takes a little while before we get there, but once he's got some more band members assembled, everything kicks into high gear and becomes way more fun. Overall, I had a blast with this and am glad I watched it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Destroy All Neighbors > Love Exposure

Destroy All Neighbors > Anna Karenina (2012)

Destroy All Neighbors < The White Tiger

Destroy All Neighbors < Onward

Destroy All Neighbors < City Lights

Destroy All Neighbors > The Paper

Destroy All Neighbors > BigBug

Destroy All Neighbors > Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Destroy All Neighbors > The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Destroy All Neighbors > The Dictator

Destroy All Neighbors > Barbarian

Destroy All Neighbors < Wizards

Final spot: #862 out of 3933, or 78%.

Eleni (1985)

IMDb plot summary: A mother's love for her children leads to a son's revenge for her death in this dramatic thriller that begins during the Greek civil war.

Directed by Peter Yates. Starring Kate Nelligan, John Malkovich, and Linda Hunt.

Eleni stars John Malkovich as journalist Nicolas Gage, who returns to his native country of Greece to try to find some details around his mother's death during the Greek Civil War. The film is told in a combination of current-day investigation and flashbacks revealing the things he learns about her fate. The flashbacks are by far the more interesting portion of the film, as Eleni is a slightly more engaging character to watch interact, so it's nice that the majority of the film follows her. The film seems unexpectedly low-budget for a well-known director and lead actor, but the portion of the story set in the past is engaging enough that it doesn't feel low-effort. It's a time I know very little about, historically, and it definitely raised my interest in learning more about it and how it affected people like Eleni. A decent movie with some good highlights.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Eleni < Le Voyage au Greenland

Eleni > In the Line of Fire

Eleni < The Happiest Millionaire

Eleni > The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Eleni > Scotland, PA

Eleni > Choke

Eleni < Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town

Eleni > Withnail & I

Eleni < Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Eleni < Satantango

Eleni > Jurassic World

Eleni > Diner

Final spot: #2499 out of 3932, or 36%.

Cure (1997)

IMDb plot summary: A frustrated detective deals with the case of several gruesome murders committed by people who have no recollection of what they've done.

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Starring Masato Hagiwara, Koji Yakusho, and Tsuyoshi Ujiki.

Cure is a Japanese psychological horror film about a policeman trying to solve a bizarre series of crimes in which the murderers seem to attack out of nowhere and carve an "X" into their victims' bodies. The answer gets weirder and weirder the more they dig into it. Like a lot of crime movies, this drags for me around the more procedural bits of the story, but the ultimate answer and the reveals are delightfully unsettling, and it ends on a pretty perfect note. Those dragging moments get to me enough, though, that I may like it better as a concept than as an actual movie. I enjoyed rereading the Wikipedia article summarizing the story maybe more than watching the film, as the slowed pacing wasn't an issue for me. Worth a watch for its fun and creative concepts, but it may be an easier sell for folks who are already going to like the procedural aspects of a police drama to begin with.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Cure > Love Exposure

Cure < The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Cure > Kajaki

Cure < Batman Returns

Cure > Air

Cure < The Song of Lunch

Cure < The Zone of Interest

Cure < The Sound of Music

Cure > Florence Foster Jenkins

Cure > Westfront 1918

Cure < Akira

Cure > Goosebumps

Final spot: #1337 out of 3928, or 66%.