The Secret Agent (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Amid the political turmoil of 1977 Brazil, a technology expert is forced into hiding and seeks help from the underground resistance as he tries to flee the country with his young son.

Directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. Stars Robson Andrade, Wagner Moura, and Rubens Santos.

The Secret Agent is a foreign film set in Brazil during the 1970s and follows a man who is living as a refugee in the city, trying to avoid being arrested for his past. There is a lot of plot and political intrigue in this movie that sometimes obscures the humanity of the story. Based on the reviews I've seen and the response to this film at the Oscars, I'm clearly in the minority thinking that, but aside from the woman who runs the house for refugees, I find myself very disconnected emotionally from most of these characters. I like the added framing of the story being told through recorded audio files being researched by people decades later, that helps to put some of the story in perspective, and it does land a little bit better at the end, but overall this one left me a little cold, especially in comparison to something like I'm Still Here, another recent film set in the same setting.

🎥 The Secret Agent (2025)

📊 Ranked #3061/4255 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 32

lost to The Master (#2148 → #2099)

beat Sweet and Lowdown (#3211 → #3214)

beat Kung Fury (#2674 → #2681)

beat The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (#2414 → #2416)

lost to Hopscotch (#2285 → #2300)

beat Avanti! (#2351 → #2355)

beat My Family (#2318 → #2341)

beat Camp (#2301 → #2388)

lost to Corpse Bride (#2292 → #2301)

beat It Had to Be You (#2296 → #2268)

beat Beaches (#2294 → #2287)

beat The Sasquatch Gang (#2293 → #2314)

Cube (1997)

IMDb plot summary: A group of strangers awaken to find themselves placed in a giant cube. Each one of them is gifted with a special skill and they must work together to escape an endless maze of deadly traps.

Directed by Vincenzo Natali. Stars Nicole de Boer, Maurice Dean Wint, and David Hewlett.

Cube is a psychological horror thriller in which a group of strangers wake up to discover that they have all been kidnapped and placed inside a maze of giant cubes full of deadly traps. The group bands together to solve the puzzle of their prison and escape. I really enjoy single concept horror films set in small enclosed spaces, but what really makes that work is if the characterization, dialogue, and acting all hold up to the challenge. It reminds me of a black box theater play in the amount of precise intelligent writing it requires to make that work. And this doesn't have that. The dialogue makes me roll my eyes, and when most of the movie is dialogue with an occasional gory death in there, I really need it to keep me connected to the characters. There are some very cool images, particularly as they reached the outer edges of the cube, and some inventively gross deaths, but neither of those quite make up for the bizarre writing.

🎥 Cube (1998)

📊 Ranked #3075/4251 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 31

lost to Raising Arizona (held at #2153)

beat Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (held at #3211)

lost to Avengers: Age of Ultron (#2678 → #2680)

lost to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (#2947 → #2890)

beat Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (#3078 → #3086)

lost to FernGully: The Last Rainforest (#3013 → #2909)

lost to The Fighter (#3045 → #3037)

beat Analyze This (#3062 → #3061)

beat A Soldier's Sweetheart (#3053 → #3067)

lost to The Fifth Element (#3049 → #3043)

lost to Hiroshima Mon Amour (#3051 → #3039)

lost to Whisper of the Heart (held at #3052)

Maniac (2012)

IMDb plot summary: As he helps a young artist with her upcoming exhibition, the owner of a mannequin shop's deadly, suppressed desires come to the surface.

Directed by Franck Khalfoun. Stars Elijah Wood, Nora Arnezeder, and America Olivo.

Maniac is a horror movie in which, and I don't think this is a spoiler because it's clear very early on, Elijah Wood plays a psychopathic killer of young women. This is one of the lower points in my trek through watching all of Elijah Wood's movies. It's so cheesily written, and the armchair psychology of this psychopathic character is the kind of thing that we were super into as a culture in 2000s and 2010s, and it just seems awkward now. There is a little enjoyment to be gotten out of the first-person filming gimmick, where so often we see things from Wood's point of view. Every so often it is done effectively, but most of the time it feels just like a gimmick. With so many great slasher horror movies out there, this one is definitely one to skip.

🎥 Maniac (2013)

📊 Ranked #4230/4254 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 1

lost to Bonnie and Clyde (held at #2139)

lost to Did You Hear About the Morgans? (held at #3205)

beat African Kung-Fu Nazis (#3744 → #3745)

lost to Silver Streak (#3477 → #3478)

lost to The Monkey King (held at #3609)

lost to Wild Strawberries (#3676 → #3675)

beat How the Grinch Stole Christmas (held at #3712)

lost to The Killing of Sister George (#3696 → #3697)

lost to Dutch (#3697 → #3698)

lost to Antz (#3710 → #3709)

beat King of the Zombies (held at #3711)

lost to Stage Door Canteen (held at #3719)

Jennifer's Body (2009)

IMDb plot summary: A newly-possessed high-school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?

Directed by Karyn Kusama. Stars Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, and Adam Brody.

Jennifer's Body is a Horror film starring Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox as two mismatched best friends whose friendship starts going through some difficulties when one of them suddenly has some dramatic behavior changes after a traumatic experience. I didn't know much more about the actual plot than that going in, so I'm not going to give you any more just in case, because watching it unfold without knowing the destination was a ton of fun. I did not realize until the end that it was written by Diablo Cody, but that seems obvious in hindsight. The dialogue is absolutely Cody's blend of sincerity and cringe and wit that is a very unique voice, and I think it's exactly the right tone for this movie and its dance around the edge of campy horror. Both Fox and Seyfried are excellent in this and give the right kind of over the top portrayals of their stereotyped characters. This movie is definitely not going to be for everyone, but I fully understand why this has become a cult classic. It takes big artistic choices and big swings and that may not pay off for everybody, but they made it a great watch for me.

🎥 Jennifer's Body (2009)

📊 Ranked #814/4252 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 81

beat Cat's Eye (#2146 → #2147)

beat Twister (#1100 → #1104)

lost to I ♥ Huckabees (#568 → #569)

lost to The Babysitter (#834 → #639)

beat Bandits (#966 → #1017)

beat The Departed (#888 → #896)

lost to City Girl (#869 → #871)

lost to Taxi Driver (#884 → #886)

lost to Sansho the Bailiff (#892 → #890)

lost to Music and Lyrics (#898 → #900)

beat Ghost Town (#899 → #904)

lost to Hidden Figures (#900 → #901)

Jay Kelly (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Famous movie actor Jay Kelly embarks on a journey of self-discovery, confronting his past and present with his devoted manager Ron. Poignant and humor-filled, pitched at the intersection of regrets and glories.

Directed by Noah Baumbach. Stars George Clooney, Adam Sandler, and Stanley Townsend.

Jay Kelly is a Noah Baumbach movie starring George Clooney as an action star having a midlife crisis and trying to figure out what the purpose of his life has been. Baumbach can be hit or miss for me, and this one is enjoyable throughout but not necessarily memorable. Adam Sandler is a standout here as Clooney's manager, perfectly portraying the exhaustion of someone who has given far too much of his life to helping someone else succeed and now has very little to show for it. The movie is a mix of comedy and drama in a way that feels very rooted and grounded in reality and the absurdities of life and fame without ever feeling forced or stilted. A pretty good movie and well-crafted, even if it didn't hit me as powerfully as I hoped it would.

🎥 Jay Kelly (2025)

📊 Ranked #1287/4250 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 70

beat The Call (#2153 → #2196)

lost to Chronicle (#1101 → #1082)

lost to Ghostbusters (#1619 → #1623)

beat Natural Born Killers (#1887 → #1968)

beat The Parent Trap (#1755 → #1759)

lost to Sling Blade (#1685 → #1518)

lost to The Miracle Worker (#1722 → #1564)

beat Phone Booth (#1739 → #1738)

beat Lady Bird (#1731 → #1578)

beat Flora and Son (#1726 → #1575)

beat The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (#1724 → #1729)

beat The Big Chill (#1723 → #1746)

The Shadow in My Eye (2021)

IMDb plot summary: The fates of several Copenhagen residents collide when a WWII bombing mission accidentally targets a school full of children.

Directed by Ole Bornedal. Stars Bertram Bisgaard, Ester Birch, and Ella Josephine Lund Nilsson.

The Shadow in My Eye is a Danish movie telling the story of a fuel bombardment that happened in German-occupied Denmark during World War 2. In an attempt to bomb a Gestapo headquarters, the fighters unintentionally bomb a school and cause a ton of collateral damage. We follow a handful of children and their parents as they deal with the aftermath of this. This is a pretty good movie, and a lot of that rests in the little moments that it highlights. I'm particularly struck by the story of one boy who is selectively mute as a result of trauma from having witnessed a car bombing, and watching him try to heal and then having to go through a similar trauma again is very compelling as a story and you really want him to be OK. I was a little surprised coming back to write this review after a week or two at how little I remembered of the movie. I had almost forgotten I'd seen it. When I sit and think about it, of course I remember all the pieces that stood out to me very good, but I do have to put in the actual effort to think about it, because it doesn't rise to the top automatically. I would still recommend it because I think it's a well done movie, but for whatever reason it didn't land in the top echelon for me.

🎥 The Shadow in My Eye (2022)

📊 Ranked #2283/4249 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 49

lost to George of the Jungle (#2143 → #2114)

beat SpaceCamp (#3202 → #3204)

beat Peter Pan Live! (#2672 → #2833)

beat Splash (#2409 → #2411)

beat David Copperfield (#2281 → #2280)

lost to Hellboy (#2214 → #2212)

beat Avengers: Infinity War (#2248 → #2226)

beat Safety Not Guaranteed (#2231 → #2463)

lost to Vanya on 42nd Street (held at #2222)

lost to A Cure for Wellness (#2226 → #2221)

lost to Malcolm X (#2229 → #2213)

beat Forever Young (#2230 → #2302)

Pennies From Heaven (1981)

IMDb plot summary: During the Great Depression, a sheet-music salesman seeks to escape his dreary life through popular music and a love affair with an innocent schoolteacher.

Directed by Herbert Ross. Stars Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, and Jessica Harper.

Pennies From Heaven stars Steve Martin as a mostly unsuccessful sheet music salesman in the early 1900s, Jessica Harper as his frigid wife, and Bernadette Peters as the naive school teacher he takes up an affair with. The film is also a musical, with characters doing lip synced song and dance numbers to recordings of classic songs from the era. I went through the whole gamut of emotions watching this movie. In the first third or so I loved it and thought it was one of the best movies I'd seen in awhile. I loved the creativity of the musical numbers and how it fit into the world. But as the story went on, I became less and less invested in the narrative, even though many of the musical numbers were still entertaining. This film definitely feels like it's trying to say something, but the tone is so muddled it's hard to take much out of it. The darkness of the story takes you by surprise in a way that I wonder if it would sit differently on a rewatch, knowing where the story is headed. I still say it's worth a watch because it is a creative way of making a musical and the musical numbers themselves are often really enjoyable, but it doesn't come together the way that I hoped it would when I first started watching it.

🎥 Pennies from Heaven (1981)

📊 Ranked #2168/4247 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 51

beat Corpse Bride (#2163 → #2307)

lost to Oliver Twist (held at #1116)

beat Ghostbusters (#1635 → #1660)

lost to Shadow of the Vampire (#1385 → #1386)

lost to The Sound of Music (held at #1510)

lost to The Ref (#1572 → #1573)

lost to Mrs Brown (#1603 → #1604)

beat The Front (#1618 → #1625)

lost to Die Hard (#1610 → #1612)

beat mother! (#1614 → #1615)

lost to The Meg (#1612 → #1588)

lost to Interiors (#1613 → #1587)

Send Help (2026)

IMDb plot summary: An overworked analyst and her arrogant nepo-baby boss survive a plane crash near Thailand and must cooperate to survive on a remote jungle island while their workplace power dynamic collapses around them.

Directed by Sam Raimi. Stars Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien, and Edyll Ismail.

Send Help stars Rachel McAdam as a dowdy office worker who is consistently made fun of by her cryptobro misogynist coworkers, but when she and her boss are the sole survivors of a plane crash on a deserted island, her love for the TV show Survivor is what keeps them alive. I had a ton of fun with this one. It's directed by Sam Raimi and it really in many ways feels like a callback to his work with the Evil Dead trilogy, where there are so many scenes where I am both deeply grossed out and laughing hysterically at how ridiculous the whole thing is. McAdam is tremendous in this, balancing the nice and not-so-nice aspects of her personality perfectly so that she continuously surprises you. This is a fun big film and I had a great time watching it.

🎥 Send Help (2026)

📊 Ranked #595/4246 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 86

beat The Call (#2166 → #2168)

beat Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (#1119 → #1150)

lost to West Side Story (#595 → #596)

lost to Four Lions (#861 → #855)

beat It Happened on Fifth Avenue (#988 → #992)

beat The Pursuit of Happyness (#925 → #930)

beat Nurse Betty (#892 → #891)

beat Nosferatu (#877 → #903)

beat Smiles of a Summer Night (#868 → #898)

lost to Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (held at #864)

lost to Companion (#866 → #867)

beat A Haunting in Venice (#867 → #870)

Is This Thing On? (2025)

IMDb plot summary: As their marriage unravels, Alex faces middle age and divorce, seeking new purpose in the New York comedy scene. Meanwhile, his wife Tess confronts sacrifices made for their family, forcing them to navigate co-parenting and identities.

Directed by Bradley Cooper. Stars Will Arnett, Laura Dern, and Andra Day.

Is This Thing On? is a romantic drama/comedy starring Will Arnett as a man who discovers he really loves stand-up comedy after the unexpected dissolution of his marriage. At least that's how the film sells it to you for the first half, and then we get a slightly different turn of events in the second half, which is really where the film snapped into focus for me. The film ends on an unexpectedly heartwarming note that I didn't anticipate going into it, and I'm hesitant to even say much about it here because having no concept of it was really what made it special for me. It also manages to avoid that problem that so many films about art have where showing the art itself is a let down, but in this case the film is populated with so many actual real life stand-up comedians that it truly brings an authenticity to the world, and even when Arnett's jokes don't land, it's easy to believe that other people are enjoying them and it doesn't detract from the story. I was iffy on A Star Was Born and haven't seen Maestro, but this made me want to see more of Bradley Cooper's directorial work in future because there is a gentleness and a warmth to this that I appreciate.

🎥 Is This Thing On? (2025)

📊 Ranked #477/4245 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 88

beat Space Pirate Captain Harlock (#2169 → #2171)

beat The Body Snatcher (#1126 → #1129)

lost to The Edge of Seventeen (#603 → #439)

lost to Turning Red (#867 → #868)

lost to The Substance (#994 → #995)

beat An American Werewolf in London (#1060 → #1062)

beat 20th Century Women (#1027 → #1042)

lost to Steven Universe: The Movie (held at #1010)

beat Mr. Brooks (#1019 → #1022)

beat Wag the Dog (#1014 → #1018)

beat Hannah and Her Sisters (#1012 → #1013)

beat Anomalisa (held at #1011)

Get Low (2009)

IMDb plot summary: A movie spun out of equal parts folk tale, fable and real-life legend about the mysterious, 1930s Tennessee hermit who famously threw his own rollicking funeral party... while he was still alive.

Directed by Aaron Schneider. Stars Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, and Sissy Spacek.

Get Low stars Robert Duvall as a cranky old hermit who decides to hold a funeral for himself while he's still alive and invite everyone he knows to tell the stories they've heard about him. I see where this one is trying to go, but it doesn't always work. The pacing of his history feels awkward at times, and because of that, the ending climactic moment of the funeral itself is a little bit of a disappointment. Duvall plays this kind of character well, but it's hard to tell whether he's doing anything unique here or just playing exactly to the expectations of the kind of character he's he is. Not a stellar watch but it's OK.

🎥 Get Low (2010)

📊 Ranked #2742/4253 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 40

lost to Cat's Eye (#2147 → #2152)

beat Did You Hear About the Morgans? (held at #3210)

beat Bye Bye Birdie (#2673 → #2680)

beat Splash (#2413 → #2416)

lost to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (#2284 → #2295)

beat Monsters and Men (#2349 → #2350)

beat My Family (#2317 → #2339)

lost to Good Night, and Good Luck. (#2300 → #2253)

lost to Laal Singh Chaddha (#2308 → #2174)

beat The Secret Life of Pets (#2312 → #2329)

beat Space Pirate Captain Harlock (#2310 → #2319)

beat Day Zero (#2309 → #2496)

Us and Them (2018)

IMDb plot summary: Ten years ago, on a train home, fate brings Xiaoxiao and Jianqing together. Like many young couples, they meet, fall in love, and strive to make it work, but eventually, the harsh realities of life make them drift apart.

Directed by Rene Liu. Stars Boran Jing, Dongyu Zhou, and Zhuangzhuang Tian.

Us and Them is a Chinese romantic drama following a couple's tumultuous young romance, and then picking up several years later when they happened to run into each other again in much more stable personal circumstances. I kept wanting to really like this movie but it never worked for me. Every time there would be a moment that drew my attention because it seemed fresh and new -- for example, the ongoing saga of the video game he was trying to make that capture a romantic loss -- then it would be surrounded by so many moments that were long and slow and dull. It made it really hard for me to care about the outcome of these characters in the long run. I feel like if I remember anything about this movie and take anything away from it, it's going to be a series of unconnected thoughts and scenes that I'll have to work hard to remember were from this movie. A disappointing watch.

🎥 Us and Them (2018)

📊 Ranked #3259/4248 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 26

lost to Eyes Wide Shut (#2140 → #2139)

lost to The Phantom of the Opera (#3199 → #3156)

beat Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (#3742 → #3699)

beat The Card Counter (#3473 → #3577)

beat The Giver (#3331 → #3328)

beat Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#3264 → #3265)

beat 12 Days of Terror (#3230 → #3233)

beat Darkness (#3214 → #3219)

lost to The Robe (#3206 → #3160)

beat Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (#3210 → #3211)

lost to Soylent Green (#3208 → #3163)

beat Despicable Me (#3209 → #3207)

Nouvelle Vague (2025)

IMDb plot summary: The behind the scenes of the filming of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1960), a landmark of the French New Wave film movement.

Directed by Richard Linklater. Stars Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch, and Aubry Dullin.

Richard Linklater made two movies this year about real-life people who were masters of their craft. One was Blue Moon and one was this, about Jean-Luc Godard making his film Breathless. One thing to note as going into this is that I absolutely hate Godard as a filmmaker. I've seen maybe four of his films and find his work extremely irritating and pretentious, and this film certainly did nothing to convince me of anything otherwise. It was also extremely unhelpful to watch this back-to-back with Day or Night because I could not keep the two of them straight most of the time. The character interactions are engaging because Linklater is excellent at working with character dialogue, but I just couldn't care about the story being told. Blue Moon was incredible, this one kept left me a little cold.

🎥 Nouvelle Vague (2025)

📊 Ranked #2443/4244 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 47

beat Show Girl in Hollywood (#2170 → #2163)

lost to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (#1126 → #987)

lost to Manhunter (#1644 → #1630)

lost to 12 Angry Men (#1909 → #2428)

beat John and Mary (#2039 → #2165)

lost to VeggieTales: God Wants Me to Forgive Them!?! (#1974 → #1904)

beat Pat and Mike (#2007 → #2109)

lost to The Forest (#1990 → #1992)

lost to The Last Castle (#1998 → #1997)

beat The Light in Her Eyes (#2002 → #2000)

beat Malcolm & Marie (#2000 → #2010)

lost to Dot the I (#1999 → #1836)

Day for Night (1973)

IMDb plot summary: A committed film director struggles to complete his movie while coping with a myriad of crises, personal and professional, among the cast and crew.

Directed by François Truffaut. Stars Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Léaud, and François Truffaut.

Day for Night is a Francois Truffaut film from the 1970s about a director making a film and the many dramas, small and large, that come along with it. One has to assume this is at least partly autobiographical, considering Truffaut also plays the director character in the film, and the plotlines and characters certainly have a ring of authenticity to them. I haven't seen a lot of Truffaut's work, but I have often not meshed with French new wave in general, so I was a little hesitant about this one. The individual moments in it were engaging enough, and I kind of found myself invested in whether this movie was going to come together. But ultimately it ended up being more a matter of the sum of its parts not adding up to more.

🎥 Day for Night (1973)

📊 Ranked #2953/4243 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 34

lost to Cast Away (#2176 → #2071)

beat Labor Day (#3213 → #3215)

beat Casino (#2689 → #2692)

beat Following (#2431 → #2432)

beat David Copperfield (#2305 → #2324)

lost to One 2 Ka 4 (#2243 → #2161)

beat The Dinner Guest (#2273 → #2281)

lost to To Be or Not to Be (#2258 → #2246)

lost to Miracle on 34th Street (#2265 → #2259)

beat Fly Me to the Moon (held at #2269)

lost to Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (#2267 → #2176)

lost to A Time to Kill (#2268 → #2262)

The Long Walk (2025)

IMDb plot summary: A group of teenage boys compete in an annual contest known as "The Long Walk," in which they must maintain a certain walking speed or get shot.

Directed by Francis Lawrence. Stars Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, and Garrett Wareing.

The Long Walk is a movie based on a Stephen King story, about a post-apocalyptic world where every year a group of young people are chosen to walk until they die. The last one standing gets a wish granted. I am definitely a sucker for stories about dystopias with weirdly specific rules trying to give people a chance to escape -- think this and Hunger Games -- and this does a good job making this compelling. The variety of characters we encounter on the road is enjoyable and you can pretty quickly begin rooting for your favorites. It's also paced very well, ramping up the horror slowly enough that you get teasers of it early on, but then really feel the exhaustion as the story continues. This is definitely something that will appeal to other folks like me who enjoy the genre.

🎥 The Long Walk (2025)

📊 Ranked #1003/4242 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 77

beat Cast Away (held at #2176)

lost to The Favourite (#1123 → #1122)

beat The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (#1642 → #1662)

beat Orgazmo (#1392 → #1433)

beat High Strung (#1262 → #1270)

lost to Song of the Sea (#1195 → #1181)

beat Gone Baby Gone (#1225 → #1231)

lost to Airheads (#1210 → #1207)

lost to Frankenweenie (#1217 → #1208)

beat The Magnificent Seven (#1221 → #1256)

beat OBEX (#1219 → #1222)

beat The Secret of Roan Inish (#1218 → #1239)

I'm No Longer Here (2019)

IMDb plot summary: In Monterrey, Mexico, a young street gang spends their days dancing to slowed-down cumbia and attending parties. After a mix-up with a local cartel, their leader is forced to migrate to the U.S. but quickly longs to return home.

Directed by Fernando Frias. Stars Kevin Ryan, Juan Daniel García Treviño, and Xueming Angelina Chen.

I'm No Longer Here tells the nonlinear story of a young man who was involved with a dance crew in Colombia and then has to leave town and emigrate to America after his crew becomes entangled in gang violence. I actually found the nonlinear aspect surprisingly difficult to follow. It took me 2/3 of the way through the movie to realize that it was out of order. While usually I'd blame that on myself, I do feel like I was paying pretty close attention, so something got lost there. It hits a lot of familiar beats here, both in stories about gang violence and stories about refugees, but it does bring an interesting new angle with the aspect of dance being the grounding point for this character. That doesn't get explored very often in film. That being said, though, overall it was not a film that really stood out to me, and I'm pretty sure the only thing I'm going to remember about it a month out is the dancing.

🎥 I'm No Longer Here (2019)

📊 Ranked #2632/4241 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 42

lost to Dunkirk (#2171 → #2169)

beat Captain January (#3213 → #3295)

lost to The 39 Steps (held at #2685)

beat The Ice Storm (#2949 → #2943)

lost to Flypaper (#2820 → #2907)

lost to An Ideal Husband (held at #2883)

beat Choke (#2916 → #2913)

beat The Rocky Horror Picture Show (#2899 → #2896)

beat No Country for Old Men (#2891 → #2889)

beat Streets of Fire (#2886 → #2884)

lost to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (#2884 → #2780)

beat Little Big League (#2885 → #2968)

Bugonia (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth.

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Stars Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and Aidan Delbis.

Begonia is a Yorgos Lanthimos film starring Jesse Plemons as a doomsday prepper type character who kidnaps successful businesswoman Emma Stone because he is convinced that she is an alien come to invade his planet, and he has to get her to agree to take him to her ship and bargain to get them to leave Earth alone. Lanthimos is becoming one of my favorite modern directors. He always gets phenomenal performances out of his actors, but it doesn't hurt that he's choosing actors like Stone and Plemons who are gems in anything they do. I did have portions of this story spoiled for me before watching it, and I was curious if that was going to make me less interested, but the way it played out was compelling enough to watch in the moment that I didn't mind. The back and forth between Stone's and Plemons' characters is electric. And while I won't be the one to spoil the story for everybody else the way it was for me, I found the final few minutes absolutely astonishing. I'm going to be thinking about that ending for ages. I loved it, totally get why other people wouldn't... as is the case with most Lanthimos films.

🎥 Bugonia (2025)

📊 Ranked #572/4240 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 86

beat Revolutionary Road (#2177 → #2236)

beat Pretty Woman (#1123 → #1141)

lost to Dogville (#601 → #598)

lost to Companion (#865 → #863)

beat Contact (#992 → #993)

beat Madam Satan (#929 → #953)

beat Southside with You (#896 → #891)

beat The Hunger Games (#881 → #886)

beat The Graduate (#872 → #899)

beat Last Night in Soho (#868 → #869)

beat The Grand Budapest Hotel (#866 → #897)

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A man, driven by his desire for a multi-million dollar inheritance, begins to care for his terminally ill grandmother. However, winning her favor will not be an easy task and he is not the only one with an eye on the money.

Directed by Pat Boonnitipat. Stars Putthipong Assaratanakul, Usha Seamkhum, and Sanya Kunakorn.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies is a Thai film about a young unemployed man who decides to befriend his grandmother in the hopes that she'll leave everything to him when she dies. This one took a little bit of time but in the end it really won me over. Our main character starts off being a pretty terrible person, and while the film does hint that he's going to go through a character growth journey, watching it play out is very satisfying. The movie manages to avoid ever being too sappy or sentimental about the topic at hand, but I had to trust it to get there, because the beginning makes it feel like it WILL go that route. But the film makes it work, and tells the story in a way that really brings the audience along for the ride. A good one to check out.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024)

📊 Ranked #1120/4239 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 74

beat Mr. Nice Guy (#2195 → #2194)

lost to Kneecap (#1125 → #1130)

beat Sweet Smell of Success (held at #1605)

beat Hocus Pocus (#1394 → #1441)

beat Scrooge (#1260 → #1286)

lost to Top Secret! (#1197 → #1225)

beat Kursk (#1361 → #1371)

lost to Safe (#1211 → #1075)

lost to Chronicle (#1220 → #1085)

lost to What the Deaf Man Heard (#1223 → #1217)

beat The Dark Knight (#1124 → #1186)

beat Studio 666 (#1221 → #1271)

Arco (2025)

IMDb plot summary: In 2075, a girl witnesses a mysterious boy in a rainbow suit fall from the sky. He comes from an idyllic far future where time travel is possible. She shelters him and will do whatever it takes to help him return to his time.

Directed by Ugo Bienvenu. Stars Margot Ringard Oldra, Oscar Tresanini, and Nathanaël Perrot.

Arco is an animated sci-fi story about a time traveling boy who gets lost in time and must be helped home by a girl from the near Earth future. The number one word that I would use to describe this movie is sweet. There are some creative world building moments -- for example, I like the way the robot nanny was integrated into the rest of the story, and it was kind of cool to see a future story where both people were from the future, while neither was from the world that we live in right at this moment. That was a unique take. The rest of the story hits mostly expected beats along the way, and the characters are likeable but not super compelling. I could definitely see showing this to kids and having them really enjoy it, but as an adult it just was OK for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Arco (2025)

📊 Ranked #880/4238 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 79

beat Frances Ha (#2194 → #2195)

lost to Father of the Bride (held at #1137)

beat Sling Blade (#1664 → #1666)

beat The Descent (#1413 → #1417)

lost to Heaven Knows What (held at #1281)

beat Maine Pyar Kiya (#1349 → #1355)

lost to The Woodsman (#1313 → #1153)

beat Unbreakable (#1329 → #1327)

beat After Yang (#1321 → #1325)

lost to Father Goose (held at #1316)

beat The Color Purple (#1318 → #1356)

lost to Time Bandits (#1317 → #1318)

American Factory (2019)

IMDb plot summary: In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a factory in an abandoned General Motors plant, hiring two thousand Americans. Early days of hope and optimism give way to setbacks as high-tech China clashes with working-class America.

Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert.

American Factory is a documentary about a Chinese company's attempt to open a manufacturing plant in America. This is a depressing watch. I find it fascinating as a documentary how much of the back behind the scenes footage they were able to get an error that really show how fundamentally our system makes it impossible for labor workers to succeed in this country, and how the work ethic of another country overlaps and highlights these problems in both areas. It doesn't necessarily bring to light anything that I wasn't somewhat aware of, but it does a good job of highlighting in one particular instance the kinds of personal impact that can happen when we treat people as drones rather than human beings and push toward productivity above all else. I can't imagine wanting to rewatch it at any point, it's too upsetting to realize how then this is in our country, but I think it was overall pretty well done.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 American Factory (2019)

📊 Ranked #2714/4237 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 41

lost to Frances Ha (held at #2194)

beat The Forger (#3221 → #3222)

beat Certified Copy (held at #2700)

lost to Star Trek: Nemesis (held at #2444)

lost to Son of Rambow (held at #2568)

beat Heartbeat (held at #2634)

lost to Woman in Gold (held at #2601)

beat The Interpreter (held at #2618)

lost to Legally Blonde (held at #2609)

lost to A Star Is Born (held at #2614)

beat Thoughtcrimes (held at #2616)

beat The Vagabond King (held at #2615)

Sorry, Baby (2025)

IMDb plot summary: After a tragic event, a woman finds herself alone while everyone else continues with their lives as if nothing had happened.

Directed by Eva Victor. Stars Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, and Louis Cancelmi.

Sorry, Baby follows a young woman throughout two chapters in her life: one in which she is groomed by one of her college professors, and the second in which she comes to terms with that and how it has affected her in ways she didn't necessarily recognize at first. This is the directorial debut of Eva Victor, and it's an astoundingly good one. It's one of those films that really lets its characters live in the world, and even as there is obviously drama and plot and action happening around them, the overall feeling is one of sitting with the characters in the quiet spaces in their heads. Besides directing, Victor also plays our lead, and she is incredible here. She conveys subtly but believably all the conflicting emotions going on with this character throughout the story. I found the ending very moving. It doesn't have a big dramatic happy resolution, but it does conclude the emotional journey that we've been on in a way that I appreciated. I also really loved how they portrayed the female friendships in this movie, both the positive ones and the ones that are less healthy. Overall an incredibly strong debut and I cannot wait to see more of what this director puts out.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Sorry, Baby (2025)

📊 Ranked #515/4236 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 87

beat 2046 (#2200 → #2201)

beat I Want You Back (#1149 → #1154)

beat Regarding Henry (#616 → #623)

beat Akeelah and the Bee (#292 → #305)

lost to Up (#126 → #127)

lost to Speed (#200 → #209)

lost to Dawn of the Dead (#238 → #247)

beat Ball of Fire (#269 → #292)

lost to Sabrina (#258 → #269)

lost to The Fly (#264 → #171)

lost to Jean de Florette (#267 → #166)

lost to Weapons (#268 → #264)

South Pacific (1958)

IMDb plot summary: On a South Pacific island during World War II, love blooms between a young nurse and a secretive Frenchman who's being courted for a dangerous military mission.

Directed by Joshua Logan. Stars Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, and John Kerr.

South Pacific is a musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein, set during World War II. It tells the story of group of soldiers and nurses stationed in the South Pacific, focusing in particular on a series of romances and the racial biases that they must confront along the way. Rodgers & Hammerstein have never been my favorite, and this one doesn't win me over either. It does have some lovely songs performed well by the film's cast, but I've never been really convinced by how these songs enhance the story or vice versa. I was also unenthused by the film's decision to place all musical numbers behind a gauzy haze. I imagine that it's trying to lean into the romanticization of it, as if they've left reality by singing, so we're also leaving reality in terms of visuals, but mostly it didn't work for me. This is one of Rodgers and Hammerstein's more boring works in my opinion, and this film version didn't convince me otherwise.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 South Pacific (1958)

📊 Ranked #2708/4235 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 41

lost to Frank (#2200 → #2202)

beat The White Ribbon (#3224 → #3234)

beat Uptight (#2704 → #2713)

beat Wrong Turn (#2449 → #2451)

lost to The Year of Living Dangerously (#2326 → #2238)

beat Lost in America (#2387 → #2415)

lost to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (#2356 → #2297)

lost to The Woman in Black (#2371 → #2407)

lost to Killing Season (#2379 → #2240)

beat Get Shorty (#2383 → #2384)

lost to Rosemary's Baby (#2381 → #2251)

beat North (#2382 → #2383)

Descendant (2022)

IMDb plot summary: Follows descendants of the survivors from the Clotilda, the last ship that carried enslaved Africans to the United States, as they reclaim their story.

Directed by Margaret Brown.

Descendant is a documentary about the last known slave ship to dock in the US, and the descendants' attempts to find it as part of discovering their own history. This film does a good job as a documentary of highlighting interesting facts about history, both personal and national history, and why it's still important for us to learn about it. It's also structured well in terms of jumping between the past and future to show their interconnectedness. It successfully shows the effects the ripple effects of that slave ship landing in how it still impacts people even today, down to who controls the land in this area. Like most documentaries, the narrative is kind of hampered by the fact that real life doesn't usually have a nice neatly wrapped up ending, but as a film that is drawing attention to something, I think it does a good job.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Descendant (2022)

📊 Ranked #2568/4234 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 45

lost to Malcolm X (#2199 → #2219)

lost to Goldfinger (#3223 → #3233)

beat The Lizzie McGuire Movie (#3736 → #3737)

beat Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (#3484 → #3462)

beat The Fortune Cookie (#3354 → #3365)

beat McCabe & Mrs. Miller (#3287 → #3294)

beat Gozu (#3254 → #3268)

beat Where Eagles Dare (#3238 → #3259)

beat Theorem (#3230 → #3214)

lost to Whisper of the Heart (#3226 → #3159)

beat 12 Days of Terror (#3228 → #3212)

beat We're No Angels (#3227 → #3244)

Dilwale (2015)

IMDb plot summary: The younger siblings of two estranged lovers fall for each other, unaware of the violent past that drove the elder ones apart.

Directed by Rohit Shetty. Stars Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, and Varun Dhawan.

Dilwale is a Bollywood musical movie about a couple that falls in love, only to find out that their older siblings are an estranged couple themselves, who were torn apart by gang rivalries. This reunites Kajol & Shah Rukh Khan from Dilwale Dilwale La Jahuenge, which I just saw and adored, but this one is a little less exciting. The generational aspect of this story is often a perk of Bollywood films, but here it makes the film feel a little bloated. There are some good individual songs -- I was familiar with "Janam Janam" and it's absolutely stunning context, and it's worth watching for that alone. But of all the Bollywood movies that I have been watching as part of my recent movie viewing, this is one that definitely is going to fade from my memory because it just didn't stand out. Not bad, but it pales in comparison to a lot of its better options.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Dilwale (2015)

📊 Ranked #2289/4233 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 49

lost to Celeste & Jesse Forever (#2197 → #2114)

beat Häxan (#3222 → #3229)

beat Wedding Crashers (#2702 → #2792)

beat The Commuter (#2447 → #2277)

beat The Year of Living Dangerously (#2324 → #2336)

lost to The Blues Brothers (#2262 → #2266)

beat Road House (#2292 → #2465)

lost to Top Hat (#2277 → #2205)

beat The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (#2284 → #2298)

lost to Safety Not Guaranteed (#2280 → #2264)

lost to Sorry, Wrong Number (#2282 → #2232)

beat Mank (#2283 → #2294)

Highest 2 Lowest (2025)

IMDb plot summary: When a titan music mogul is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.

Directed by Spike Lee. Stars Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, and Ilfenesh Hadera.

Highest 2 Lowest is a Spike Lee remake of an Akira Kurosawa film, about a wealthy man whose son is kidnapped and held for ransom. He and the people around him must figure out how to respond. This is more interesting in concept than it is in execution. It seems like it would be a natural transition into the modern era, but it ultimately ends up feeling clunky, with overly expository dialogue, even given Lee's expository style. The first half is more interesting conceptually than the second, where it just becomes a typical action flick. The acting is uneven as well. Jeffrey Wright does a great job (when does he ever not?) but Denzel Washington feels didactic and stagey in the worst way. Mostly this just made me want to go back and watch the original, because although this is a great concept for a story and Wright is worth watching, so much of it is just kind of disappointing.

🎥 Highest 2 Lowest (2025)

📊 Ranked #1810/4233 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 58

beat Camp Rock (#2199 → #2278)

lost to Speak No Evil (#1148 → #1166)

lost to The Meg (#1668 → #1568)

lost to Dressed to Kill (held at #1935)

beat Blow Dry (#2060 → #2062)

lost to Away We Go (#1998 → #1986)

beat For Pete's Sake (#2029 → #2093)

lost to A Song Is Born (#2012 → #2016)

lost to State and Main (#2021 → #1937)

beat One 2 Ka 4 (#2025 → #2089)

beat The Seventh Seal (#2023 → #2021)

lost to Shine (#2022 → #1936)

The Straight Story (1999)

IMDb plot summary: Alvin Straight, a 73-year-old, learns that his estranged brother, Lyle is critically ill. Unable to drive, Alvin embarks on a journey from Iowa to Mt. Zion by riding a lawn mower.

Directed by David Lynch. Stars Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, and Jane Galloway Heitz.

The Straight Story is a David Lynch drama about an elderly man who plans to travel the country to visit his estranged brother, who has had a stroke. Only problem is, he has no way to get there, until he decides to drive his riding mower. This is a huge departure from what Lynch is most known for -- this is a quiet, realism-centered, heartwarming story, rather than the bizarre fever dreams I associate with him. It's easier to follow for sure, but also just kind of sits there for me. It's so slow and so quiet, there's almost nothing happening. There's no denying it is a pleasant and warm film, but I did almost immediately forget it. I have no doubt this is going to be some people's favorite movie by Lynch, but it all fell a little flat for me.

🎥 The Straight Story (1999)

📊 Ranked #1812/4232 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 58

lost to The Fourth Kind (#2198 → #2193)

beat The Revengers' Comedies (held at #3222)

beat Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (#2702 → #2703)

beat King Richard (#2446 → #2516)

beat Mad Max (#2322 → #2319)

beat Hairspray (#2261 → #2398)

beat Vampyr (#2229 → #2299)

beat Tiny Furniture (#2213 → #2211)

beat Being the Ricardos (#2205 → #2203)

beat Exhuma (#2201 → #2215)

lost to Camp Rock (#2199 → #2198)

beat We Need to Talk About Kevin (#2200 → #2199)

It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)

IMDb plot summary: Two homeless men move into a mansion while its owners are wintering in the South.

Directed by Roy Del Ruth. Stars Don DeFore, Ann Harding, and Charles Ruggles.

It Happened on Fifth Avenue tells the story of a group of down-on-their-luck people who squat in a rich man's mansion for the winter while he's in his summer home. When the daughter of the rich man joins them -- although the others have no idea who she is -- she starts hatching a plan to help them get back on their feet. This is a warm movie with lots of Christmas spirit that I can definitely see growing on me and becoming part of my yearly rotation. I kind of hoped for a more staunchly anti-hoarding message, more than "rich people just need to learn to be generally kind," but this is a nice contrast to the more materialistic stories. It's fun to watch the large cast of characters grow and interact with each other in various ways. There aren't a lot of laugh out loud moments, but it's very cozy, and I plan to return to it and see if it grows on me further.

🎥 It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947)

📊 Ranked #980/4229 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 77

beat Eddington (#2131 → #2132)

beat Blink Twice (#1110 → #1111)

lost to The Big Sick (held at #595)

lost to Bodies Bodies Bodies (held at #853)

lost to Anna Karenina (held at #978)

beat Wag the Dog (#1044 → #1045)

beat The Man in the Iron Mask (#1013 → #1014)

beat Boy A (#993 → #994)

beat Little Women (#985 → #986)

beat Mirage (#981 → #982)

lost to Twins (held at #979)

La Moustache (2005)

IMDb plot summary: Mark is a middle-aged man who has spent most of his life with a mustache on his face. He suddenly decides to shave it.

Directed by Emmanuel Carrère. Stars Vincent Lindon, Emmanuelle Devos, and Mathieu Amalric.

La Moustache is a French film about a man who, on a whim, shaves his moustache. Then things start getting weird: his wife insists he never had a moustache, and other things about his life seem to be breaking with his known reality. I was kind of dreading this one, given my not-great relationship with both semi-surreal films and French film, but it won me over much more than I expected. The score, by Philip Glass, does a lot of the heavy lifting in connecting me with the film emotionally, particularly during one long mostly-wordless section where our main character basically tries to run away from the whole situation. While it could have been irritating that we never get an explanation as to what's actually happening to this character, it mostly worked and hit the emotional beats as we just see him figure out how to cope with it. Our main character's behavior is believable even when his circumstances are bonkers, so it's easy to follow along with him on that journey. It's an interesting and strange little film that captured me.

🎥 The Moustache (2005)

📊 Ranked #1075/4228 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 75

beat Eddington (#2130 → #2131)

beat Barbie (#1110 → #1111)

lost to The Big Sick (held at #595)

lost to Bodies Bodies Bodies (held at #853)

lost to Anna Karenina (held at #978)

lost to Wag the Dog (held at #1044)

beat Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (#1075 → #1076)

lost to Cannibal! The Musical (held at #1059)

lost to The Pirates of Penzance (held at #1067)

lost to Hot Millions (held at #1071)

lost to Shin Godzilla (held at #1073)

Obex (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Conor Marsh's secluded life is disrupted when he plays the OBEX game. His dog Sandy disappears, blurring reality and game. Conor enters the OBEX world to rescue Sandy, navigating its strange realms.

Directed by Albert Birney. Stars Albert Birney, Callie Hernandez, and Frank Mosley.

Obex is a strange little film about a very introverted man in the late 80s who is very into new tech. He gets the chance to try a new computer game called Obex, but it starts blurring the line between reality and fiction, and eventually captures his dog from the real world into the game world, and he has to go rescue him. The vibe of this is very much that one man and maybe his two buddies made a movie in their apartment and with a green screen, but it's definitely also part of the aesthetic, especially as we're also focusing on the late-80s tech and the pixelated computer screens. I appreciate I never knew where this movie was going. It managed to keep surprising me, but even more so as it got to the ending, which was an unexpectedly pleasant landing place. I left with very warm feelings toward it, which were not what I anticipated given the pretty terrifying moments of tension throughout so much of the film. A fascinating little movie that I'm very glad I got to see.

🎥 OBEX (2026)

📊 Ranked #1213/4227 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 71

beat Raising Arizona (#2130 → #2131)

lost to Barbie (held at #1110)

beat Backbeat (#1620 → #1621)

beat Corrina, Corrina (#1364 → #1365)

beat The Awful Truth (#1236 → #1237)

lost to Brazil (held at #1172)

lost to Come and See (held at #1205)

beat Auntie Mame (#1220 → #1221)

lost to The Last Seduction (held at #1212)

beat Hoodwinked! (#1216 → #1217)

beat Gone Girl (#1214 → #1215)

The Rock (1996)

IMDb plot summary: An FBI chemical weapons expert, and a former SAS soldier turned political prisoner, must break into Alcatraz prison when a rogue military group, led by a renegade general, take it over and threaten a nerve gas attack on San Francisco.

Directed by Michael Bay. Stars Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, and Ed Harris.

The Rock is a Michael Bay film in which a U.S. military leader takes over Alcatraz with a threat to launch devastating bombs at the city if his demands are not met. An explosives expert, played by Nicolas Cage, and a convict who escaped from Alcatraz years ago, played by Sean Connery, must break back in and disarm the bombs before they're launched. The only Michael Bay movie I think I can say I actually enjoyed is Ambulance, and this movie adds another to the "meh" list for me. It's a good concept, and I love the motivation of the lead villain -- that's ripe for cinematic exploration -- but they get super lazy and just drop it when it gets inconvenient. Nicolas Cage is hamming it up, but very inconsistently, and Sean Connery is playing the whole thing pretty straight, and the combo is awkward. Overall pretty disappointing as an action film, although admittedly this is not a genre tailor-made for me to begin with

Had some difficulties saving my Flickchart full ranking, but it landed at 55% on my chart.

Bruno (2009)

IMDb plot summary: Flamboyant, gay Austrian Brüno looks for new fame in America.

Directed by Larry Charles. Stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Gustaf Hammarsten, and Clifford Bañagale.

Bruno is a film by Sacha Baron Cohen where, much like he did with Borat, he plays an outlandish character interacting with real people in the real world. Here, Bruno is a gay Austrian model determined to become famous, but his vapidness and aggressive sexual drive is at odds with most of the people he encounters. I enjoyed Borat and pieces of Sacha Baron Cohen's TV show that launched these characters, but this one just REALLY didn't work for me. While Borat was about discovering people's lines and boundaries around racism and misogyny, and exposing what they thought they'd do when it was a safe space, Bruno focuses far, far too often on the title character basically sexually harrassing or assaulting people around him, and that never makes me laugh, even if it's happening to quote-unquote "bad people." There are one or two good moments -- one series of interviews with actors parents that is equal parts hilarious and horrifying, and one interview with a conversion therapy pastor where his attempts to explain the concept to someone as unintelligent as Bruno forces him to say some of the quiet parts out loud. But much more of the movie just seeing how explicit Bruno can get with someone before they get angry, and in a #MeToo world that absolutely includes gay men as victims, the attempt at satire disappears. Definitely one of the weaker efforts from this creator.

🎥 Brüno (2009)

📊 Ranked #3507/4225 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 17

lost to The Internship (held at #2156)

lost to Dear Evan Hansen (held at #3205)

beat Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (#3716 → #3717)

lost to Magic in the Moonlight (held at #3461)

beat Atomic Blonde (#3589 → #3590)

beat Arlington Road (#3526 → #3527)

lost to Highlander (held at #3494)

beat The Words (#3510 → #3511)

lost to The Peanut Butter Falcon (held at #3502)

lost to Talk to Her (held at #3506)

beat The Color of Pomegranates (#3508 → #3509)

Sicario (2015)

IMDb plot summary: An FBI agent joins a covert DoD task force targeting a Mexican cartel. Operating outside legal boundaries with a CIA handler and a mysterious fixer, she discovers the mission's true purpose goes far beyond what she was told.

Directed by Denis Villeneuve. Stars Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, and Benicio Del Toro.

Sicario is a Denis Villeneuve film starring Emily Blunt as an FBI agent who gets pulled into a mysterious operation involving Mexican drug cartels. She begins to suspect it's not quite on the up-and-up but wants to get to the bottom of it and continues getting in deeper. Sometimes Villeneuve works perfectly for me, but a lot of his more crime-centric ones fall a little flat, and that is definitely the case here. Maybe I'm too cynical these days to get out of these movies what I'm supposed to, but it seemed pretty obvious to me early on how shady everything was, and so Emily Blunt's character's disillusionment never quite landed for me. It doesn't help that Blunt feels particularly bland to me in action films, while she's very good in others -- here, she just seems to blend into the background, so the story of her realization doesn't land. This one is pretty well acclaimed, so there must be something about it that sets it apart from other similar crime films, but it wasn't evident to me.

🎥 Sicario (2015)

📊 Ranked #2188/4224 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 48

lost to Cropsey (held at #2155)

beat Dear Evan Hansen (#3204 → #3205)

beat Mystic River (#2673 → #2674)

beat Cambio de ruta (#2416 → #2417)

beat Cowboys & Aliens (#2284 → #2285)

beat Country Strong (#2219 → #2220)

lost to Bottle Shock (held at #2187)

beat The Wailing (#2203 → #2204)

beat The Worst Person in the World (#2195 → #2196)

beat The Good Dinosaur (#2191 → #2192)

beat Splash (#2189 → #2190)

Drunken Angel (1948)

IMDb plot summary: A drunken doctor with a hot temper and a violence-prone gangster with tuberculosis form a quicksilver bond.

Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Stars Takashi Shimura, Toshirō Mifune, and Reizaburō Yamamoto.

Drunken Angel is an early Akira Kurosawa film starring Takashi Shimura as an alcoholic doctor and Toshiro Mifune as the young reckless yakuza diagnosed with tuberculosis. The two form a begrudging bond as their self-destructive tendencies threaten to end them both. This definitely has a lot of Kurosawa hallmarks, including of course two of his favorite actors, and although it feels a little raw in its execution, overall it works very well. Our two leads are, unsurprisingly, extremely charismatic, and it's worth it just to watch the two of them go back and forth with their disparate worldviews. It definitely leans into an older style of acting, the kind I expect to see in a lot of older films, and one that is refreshingly absent in Kurosawa's later, more realism-based work. There are a few moments that are a little slower or more didactic than Kurosawa's later works, but it's still well worth a watch, especially if you're a fan of his to begin with.

🎥 Drunken Angel (1948)

📊 Ranked #579/4223 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 86

beat The Internship (#2155 → #2156)

beat Whip It (#1123 → #1124)

beat The Reader (#603 → #604)

lost to Deathtrap (held at #299)

lost to Rurouni Kenshin Part I: Origins (held at #463)

lost to The White Tiger (held at #536)

lost to Life After Beth (held at #570)

beat Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (#586 → #587)

lost to Being John Malkovich (held at #578)

beat The Kid Detective (#582 → #583)

beat Spotlight (#580 → #581)

Fyre (2019)

IMDb plot summary: An exclusive behind the scenes look at the infamous unraveling of the Fyre music festival.

Directed by Chris Smith.

Fyre is one of the two Fyre Festival documentaries released at the same time. This one was the one released on Netflix. I couldn't tell you anything about the other one or if this one is better than it. I do know the story it's telling is absolutely insane: a group of people who attempt to put on a giant music festival with zero preparation and no effort put into things as simple as ensuring that there were enough beds, or that people could get water. It's wild. Watching it made me extremely claustrophobic and frightened for the times that i have had to do administrative paperwork -- I'm pretty sure this is how this is going to go every time, because i don't trust myself with that, so I felt this anxiety watching it, thinking, "Oh no, what if I too was in charge of a music festival?" (Of course, the nice thing is that I don't ever have to be in charge of a music festival. The organizers should also have made that choice.) The actual festival itself is gone through very quickly and then almost blown past. We almost don't get an ending piece to it. We jump from first night, where people arrive and are getting angry, to suddenly everybody's home. The stories that are most compelling are those of the people who knew this was going to be a disaster and were trying to stop it, saying, "Hey, we've got to tell people the truth about this." It's an interesting story, and this film does a pretty good job telling it. I wish I knew a little bit more about the aftermath -- that gets overlooked a little bit in this story -- but still definitely an interesting film to watch, especially if you were there for the memes and always wondered how did this happen in the first place.

🎥 Fyre (2019)

📊 Ranked #2062/4222 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 51

beat VeggieTales: Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler (#2152 → #2153)

lost to Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (held at #1122)

lost to Kajaki (held at #1635)

lost to I Lost My Body (held at #1898)

lost to The Bishop's Wife (held at #2024)

beat Bonnie and Clyde (#2088 → #2089)

lost to The Last Castle (held at #2056)

beat America's Sweethearts (#2072 → #2073)

beat Disturbia (#2064 → #2065)

lost to EDtv (held at #2060)

beat Spy Game (#2062 → #2063)

When We Were Kings (1996)

IMDb plot summary: Boxing documentary on the 1974 world heavyweight championship bout between defending champion, George Foreman, and the underdog challenger, Muhammad Ali.

Directed by Leon Gast.

When We Were Kings is a 1996 documentary about Muhammad Ali and his fight with George Foreman. I did watch this at an unfortunate time in my viewing when I was watching two documentaries at the same time and couldn't ever quite get myself in the right headspace for either of them, so I admit that there is something about this that i couldn't quite get into. That could easily be my fault as much as it is the movie's. I liked its portrayal of Ali. I felt like I knew him a little bit better by the end, which was nice because i really didn't have any sense of who he was as a persona. They do a really good job of pointing out what made him unique as a public figure, in his wit and his cocky boldness, which came across as charming and young rather than rather than just macho posturing. I did not particularly care to follow along with the politics of where and when to have this fight. That was much less interesting to me than just watching Ali as a human. I'm sure some of this is just a missed era of pop culture for me, where it's just not something that I know a lot about, so I don't have any stakes in it. There's some really nice music in this as well. The score really helped to bring home the whole vibe of Ali as a figurehead representing his community, for better or for worse. Probably more interesting if you had a connection to the story, but I did feel like I learned something.

🎥 When We Were Kings (1996)

📊 Ranked #2517/4221 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 40

lost to Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (held at #2151)

beat 12 Days of Terror (#3203 → #3204)

beat The Man Who Knew Too Much (#2667 → #2668)

lost to Neighbors (held at #2411)

beat Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (#2539 → #2540)

lost to Safety Not Guaranteed (held at #2476)

lost to Meet Me in St. Louis (held at #2507)

beat National Theatre Live: The Habit of Art (#2523 → #2524)

lost to Free Guy (held at #2515)

beat Anna (#2519 → #2520)

beat Raffles (#2517 → #2518)

A Man Called Ove (2015)

IMDb plot summary: Ove, an ill-tempered, isolated retiree who spends his days enforcing block association rules and visiting his wife's grave, has finally given up on life just as an unlikely friendship develops with his boisterous new neighbors.

Directed by Hannes Holm. Stars Rolf Lassgård, Bahar Pars, and Filip Berg.

A Man Called Ove is a Swedish film about an elderly man whose wife has recently passed, and he has decided to end his life. However, he keeps getting interrupted by his new neighbors, an immigrant family who frequently need his help. I had seen the American remake of this starring Tom Hanks and thought it was just okay, but oh my gosh, I love this one so much. There are two things that make this one stand out in comparison. One is that it allows itself to have much more humor. The scenes where he is interrupted are genuinely very funny, many of the scenes where he is so upset are genuinely very funny, and the American version doesn't seem to allow itself that kind of darkness in the comedy. The other thing that I think makes a huge difference is that Hanks plays the character as a normal grumpy man who is fed up with life and is mad at everybody, but in the original, Ove is absolutely 100% neurodivergent, probably an autistic man. His rigid adherence to rules is not him being a tool, his difficulty relating to other people and his frustration that they don't follow his rules are not him being obnoxious and controlling. It's him trying to find a way to cope and relate to others. So when these characters manage to find a way into his heart, it's not because the magic of children has suddenly opened up a cranky man's heart who hates everyone. It's that he doesn't have to play the social games anymore, because the mom and her children scoot past them, and they actually relate to him and accept his weirdness. Through that lens, it's an entirely different story. I don't have to be convinced that this family has changed his heart. In this case, they just made a comfortable space for him, and the kindness that was always a part of him that he reserved gets released. It's both darker and more life-affirming than the American remake. I often like the non-subtlety of a lot of American remakes -- I gravitate toward the theatricality -- but if you get a chance to watch this one, it's such a gem and I will definitely watch it again.

🎥 A Man Called Ove (2015)

📊 Ranked #408/4220 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 90

beat The Shining (#2157 → #2158)

beat Miss Saigon: 25th Anniversary Performance (#1130 → #1131)

beat The Way Way Back (#611 → #612)

lost to Annihilation (held at #306)

beat Boyz n the Hood (#472 → #473)

lost to Fail Safe (held at #386)

beat High School Musical 2 (#424 → #425)

lost to Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (held at #403)

beat Before Sunset (#412 → #413)

lost to Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (held at #407)

beat Adaptation. (#409 → #410)

Babylon (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.

Directed by Damien Chazelle. Stars Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Jean Smart.

Babylon is Damien Chazelle's movie from 2022, a giant sprawling three-hour epic about early Hollywood, specifically the transition from silence into talkies. We follow a few different key figures: a young Mexican security guard who finds himself rising through the ranks, and two stars who do not adjust particularly well in the transition from silence to talkies. Notably the first 25 minutes is an enormous decadent orgy party at a producer's home, and it continues on this big decadent road. A lot of this works, although both this and La La Land show me that Chazelle is not my ideal crafter of movies about movies. I like the ensemble casting here, but I can't tell if I love or hate the strange absurdist tone in the latter half of the film. There's a scene toward the end where one of the characters watches Singin' in the Rain in the 50s, where the characters are very much reminiscent of these two actors who were not able to make the transition smoothly, and it makes the comedic scenes hit in a different way. I both loved and hated that. It did have the emotional punch needed, but I also felt very aware that the entire movie had been written for that scene, and it was hard to hold that awareness without at least a little eye rolling. The three-hour runtime is also a LOT. You could tell this story just as effectively in two. There are a lot of great individual scenes in this (I particularly enjoyed a confrontation between Brad Pitt and Jean Smart), but it's so long, and the ending does hit you over the head in a way doesn't feel like our long journey had been fully justified.

🎥 Babylon (2022)

📊 Ranked #1406/4219 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 67

beat Dunkirk (#2157 → #2158)

lost to Miss Saigon: 25th Anniversary Performance (held at #1130)

beat Sin Takes a Holiday (#1642 → #1643)

lost to Shadow of the Vampire (held at #1386)

beat Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (#1515 → #1516)

beat How to Train Your Dragon (#1450 → #1451)

beat Duck Soup (#1418 → #1419)

lost to Death by Hanging (held at #1402)

beat Under the Skin (#1410 → #1411)

beat Child's Play (#1406 → #1407)

lost to Summer Stock (held at #1404)