Train Dreams (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Based on Denis Johnson's beloved novella, Train Dreams is the moving portrait of Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker who leads a life of unexpected depth and beauty in the rapidly-changing America of the early 20th Century.

Directed by Clint Bentley. Stars Joel Edgerton, Clifton Collins Jr., and Felicity Jones.

Train Dreams is a slow western drama starring Joel Edgerton as a lumberjack working on the railroad at the turn of the century, as industrial revolution is starting to kick in and things are starting to become mechanized. We follow him over the course of his life and how his world changes and how he copes with life and loss. It's a very slow meditative film. I understand why got nominated for the awards it did and why so many people loved it, although it is not my typical style of film. I'm such a city girl that I really struggle to connect with films about loners off living in the woods by themselves, but Edgerton does a lot to bring some depth to this character beyond just making him vaguely unreadable and stoic. He brings humor and kindness and care, especially in the way that he talks to the William H. Macy's character. It's a very thoughtful movie, one that definitely you're just supposed to sit in and live in that world for a while. I don't think that it's one that I am connecting to in such a way that I want to go back and re-watch it anytime soon but I appreciate it for what it is and for what it is about.

🎥 Train Dreams (2025)

📊 Ranked #809/4216 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 81

beat The Benson Murder Case (#2159 → #2160)

beat Baby Driver (#1133 → #1134)

lost to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (held at #616)

beat Monsieur Lazhar (#873 → #874)

lost to Le Trou (held at #745)

beat Brooklyn (#809 → #810)

lost to Damn Yankees (held at #777)

lost to Jeopardy (held at #793)

lost to A Different Man (held at #801)

lost to Bride of Frankenstein (held at #805)

lost to The Mask of Zorro (held at #807)

Hot Rod (2007)

IMDb plot summary: Self-proclaimed stuntman Rod Kimble is preparing for the jump of his life - to clear fifteen buses to raise money for his abusive stepfather Frank's life-saving heart operation.

Directed by Akiva Schaffer. Stars Andy Samberg, Isla Fisher, and Ian McShane.

Hot Rod stars Andy Samberg as a man-child wannabe stunt man who decides he's going to do a massive stunt, one-upping Evil Knievel's bus jumping record, so that he can raise money to provide his stepfather with an organ transplant ... specifically so that his stepfather can recover and Andy Samberg can beat him up to earn his respect. I really enjoy the ludicrousness of the stakes at play here. It's a good window into what the rest of the film is like. I love Lonely Island and other things they've done, such as Popstar. This one has fewer moments that are perfect, but it has all these little tiny throwaway lines that may be improvised, may just have pitch-perfect delivery. They hit me the same way that Napoleon Dynamite did -- where lines are not necessarily comedic but are said so dryly that they become funny. For example, in one scene, they're filling up a little kiddie pool in the backyard, and Bill Hader casually says, "Man, you know what? Pools are really perfect for holding water." It's such a dumb sentence, and it made me laugh super hard because it's delivered so sincerely. So it's full of little things like that and little moments that really work. Overall a really fun movie. A lot of people I knew really got into this in college, and I can see why. It's made of the same stuff as a Napoleon Dynamite or an Anchorman that so easily become a beloved film with no end to quotable moments.

🎥 Hot Rod (2007)

📊 Ranked #1005/4215 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 76

beat An Innocent Man (#2159 → #2160)

beat Match Point (#1133 → #1134)

lost to Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (held at #616)

lost to Monsieur Lazhar (held at #873)

lost to The African Queen (held at #1002)

beat The Voices (#1067 → #1068)

beat Man on the Moon (#1034 → #1035)

beat Fargo (#1018 → #1019)

beat Apollo 13 (#1010 → #1011)

beat The Paper (#1006 → #1007)

lost to Wicked: For Good (held at #1004)

The Descent (2005)

IMDb plot summary: A caving expedition goes horribly wrong when six explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators.

Directed by Neil Marshall. Stars Shauna Macdonald, Natalie Mendoza, and Alex Reid.

The Descent is a horror film about a group of women friends meeting for the first time in a while to go spelunking in an Appalachian cave. When they get there, they become trapped. There's nobody coming to rescue them, and there are also creatures down there in the dark with them. I watched this one on Amazon Prime, and it was extremely helpful to have the Amazon X-ray the Prime X-ray function available so that when I couldn't figure out which of the seven identical women was on screen, it told me who it was. Otherwise I would never have kept any of these women straight. This movie is claustrophobic and brings that vibe out strongly throughout. The characters are a little bit slower than I'd like in gathering or inferring information about the creatures... although of course, they're panicking, so they're not going to be as focused on discovery as I wanted them to be. I didn't like the ending at all. I found to be a needlessly stupid jump scare style ending that wasn't helpful at all in terms of the story or the scares. I liked the film up until that moment, and that brought it way down in my estimation. That aside, though, if you want a creepy claustrophobic people-in-the-dark movie, this is a pretty good one.

🎥 The Descent (2005)

📊 Ranked #1382/4214 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 67

beat An Innocent Man (#2158 → #2159)

lost to Baby Driver (held at #1132)

beat The Tragedy of Macbeth (#1642 → #1643)

beat DragonHeart (#1388 → #1389)

lost to Airheads (held at #1260)

lost to A League of Their Own (held at #1324)

lost to She's Gotta Have It (held at #1355)

lost to L'Atalante (held at #1371)

lost to Watchmen (held at #1379)

beat Overboard (#1384 → #1385)

lost to Just Imagine (held at #1381)

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)

IMDb plot summary: When Raj meets Simran in Europe, it isn't love at first sight but when Simran moves to India for an arranged marriage, love makes its presence felt.

Directed by Aditya Chopra. Stars Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, and Amrish Puri.

Dilwale Dulaniya Le Jayenge, or DDLJ as it is known, is a 1995 Bollywood film that stars Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan as a young couple that meet and fall in love. She, however, is engaged to a rich man back in her hometown, so he vows that he's going to come and win over her family so they will agree to their marriage instead. I was first introduced to this movie in the film A Nice Indian Boy, where it's held up as the pinnacle of idealized romance for our main character, and I totally get it. It is beautifully put together. The characters are so delightful, the dance and musical numbers are some of the best that I've seen... it is impeccably created. I love these characters and how sweet they are together and how kind they are to the people around them while they're trying to make this work.  If you like either rom coms or musicals, it's a really great one if you haven't seen it. It's one that I think I'm going to come back to again and again.

🎥 Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995)

📊 Ranked #552/4213 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 87

beat The Butter Battle Book (#2158 → #2159)

beat Match Point (#1132 → #1133)

beat Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (#616 → #617)

lost to Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (held at #311)

lost to The Parent Trap (held at #479)

lost to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (held at #551)

beat Ex Machina (#582 → #583)

beat Bend It Like Beckham (#566 → #567)

beat The Basketball Diaries (#558 → #559)

beat Grease (#554 → #555)

beat A Man for All Seasons (#552 → #553)

Local Hero (1983)

IMDb plot summary: An American oil company has plans for a new refinery and sends someone to Scotland to buy up an entire village, but things don't go as expected.

Directed by Bill Forsyth. Stars Burt Lancaster, Peter Riegert, and Fulton Mackay.

Local Hero stars Peter Riegert as a man who is sent by his oil company employer to a small town in Scotland, where he is offering to purchase all the land from them and is sent there to negotiate a price. The people are excited and ready to sell, but they want to negotiate a higher price, and so they keep him around for a while. While he's there, he ends up falling in love with the village and the people there and questioning whether he wants to facilitate this sale after all. This is a very quiet, slow film. Because of that, it took me a while to register the kind of story that I was seeing. It didn't hit the traditional hallmarks or beats I expected, which is a good thing on one hand because it was outside of the box, but on the other hand it meant that it took me a long time to get settled into the story and to figure out whether I was meant to look at our protagonist as a hero or a villain. It took me a long time to get emotionally invested in the story. If I went back and re-watched it, knowing what kind of vibe it was going for, it might be a much easier sell and a much quicker investment in the characters. There are so many different characters being shown to us that I can't process all of their plot lines on a first watch, so I do feel like one viewing doesn't give me the full picture of it. But after one viewing I wasn't sold on it the way I hoped I would be.

🎥 Local Hero (1983)

📊 Ranked #2307/4212 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 45

lost to Phantom of the Opera (held at #2140)

beat The Forger (#3184 → #3185)

beat Easy Virtue (#2661 → #2662)

beat Neighbors (#2401 → #2402)

lost to Waves (held at #2268)

beat The Last Temptation of Christ (#2335 → #2336)

lost to Holiday Affair (held at #2302)

beat The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (#2318 → #2319)

beat A Complete Unknown (#2310 → #2311)

lost to Malignant (held at #2306)

beat Just Like Heaven (#2308 → #2309)

Rodney King (2017)

IMDb plot summary: Roger Guenveur Smith performs his one man show focusing on the life and times of Rodney King.

Directed by Spike Lee. Stars Roger Guenveur Smith.

Rodney King is a filmed spoken word performance piece, directed by Spike Lee. This one-man show stars Roger Guenveur Smith as he dissects the life, death, and legacy of Rodney King. I was so young when King's beating and the aftermath happened, that my primary reference point for it was pop culture references years later. This is definitely, as I said, a spoken word performance rather than a play. There is deliberate poetry with the choice of words and cadence. Smith is an electric performer, embodying all these different characters in really engaging ways, and putting together a really compelling and occasionally gut-punching exploration of this story. Not necessarily something I'd revisit, but it was well done. And, truly, I love that Spike Lee does weird things like this and Passing Strange. Heck yes, find these marvelous performance pieces from the Black community and get them preserved so that these are available for people later. I just really appreciate that that is something that he has decided to do with his career.

🎥 Rodney King (2017)

📊 Ranked #1945/4211 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 54

beat In the Mood for Love (#2140 → #2141)

lost to Re-Animator (held at #1101)

lost to 7 Plus Seven (held at #1618)

lost to A Warm Corner (held at #1884)

beat The Fixer (#2011 → #2012)

beat The Little Things (#1947 → #1948)

lost to Daria in 'Is It Fall Yet?' (held at #1915)

lost to Fanboys (held at #1931)

lost to One Way Pendulum (held at #1939)

lost to Batman (held at #1943)

beat Toy Story 4 (#1945 → #1946)

I Lost My Body (2019)

IMDb plot summary: A story of Naoufel, a young man who is in love with Gabrielle. In another part of town, a severed hand escapes from a dissection lab, determined to find its body again.

Directed by Jérémy Clapin. Stars Hakim Faris, Victoire Du Bois, and Patrick d'Assumçao.

I Lost My Body is a French animated film with elements of the surreal. Its story is divided into two halves. One is a fairly realistic story about this young delivery man who ends up developing feelings for one of his customers. Alongside this, we have a plot where a severed hand escapes from a lab and makes its way across the country. I couldn't see how these two fit together until the very end, and even then I'm not entirely sure. I do think that the final connection of these two stories was very emotionally impactful, but not in a way that I could articulate what it means, it just made me feel things. I really like our central character -- his journey is worth watching even when he's making terrible decisions. The segments with the hand are funny and weird and creatively told, and I never minded when we interrupted the clearer story for a severed hand scene, because I enjoyed watching them. There are some really good moments for this but it doesn't cohere as nicely as I want it to. I also might just need to think about it a little bit longer and see if it rises in my estimation.

🎥 I Lost My Body (2019)

📊 Ranked #1890/4210 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 55

beat Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (#2141 → #2142)

lost to Blink Twice (held at #1102)

lost to The Phoenician Scheme (held at #1619)

lost to White Heat (held at #1885)

beat Alice (#2012 → #2013)

beat The Ghost and the Darkness (#1948 → #1949)

beat The Trouble with Harry (#1916 → #1917)

beat Secret in Their Eyes (#1900 → #1901)

beat Rush (#1892 → #1893)

lost to Trading Places (held at #1888)

beat 8-Bit Christmas (#1890 → #1891)

42 (2013)

IMDb plot summary: In 1947, Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball in the modern era when he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and faces considerable racism in the process.

Directed by Brian Helgeland. Stars Chadwick Boseman, T.R. Knight, and Harrison Ford.

42 is a biopic based on the life of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player brought onto a Major League Baseball team. It stars Chadwick Boseman as Robinson and a wide supporting cast, including Harrison Ford as the progressive team owner who makes the decision to actually bring him onto the team and tries to pave the way, while knowing it's going to be a really difficult time for Robinson. What makes this film stand out and makes it worth watching is Boseman as Robinson. He does a great job of showing the humanity of this character. He makes him truly feel like just a regular human instead of some larger-than-life character, and we get to see how difficult it is for him to hold back and not retaliate against racist behaviors, because he knows anything he does is going to be used as an excuse to never bring another Black player in again. I think the film does an especially good job of showing how little power Robinson had to respond to the racism around him because anything he did would be framed as an overreaction, and I really like how the film does put the onus on the white people around him to put themselves on the line to defend him, since they have more power and less to lose. Obviously that can tread a "white savior" line, but I think it does a pretty good job of calling the privileged to task. None of the baseball parts of this film are interesting to me, but Boseman is interesting, and framing his character as being willing to lean on others who have more power in this situation to use that power on his behalf is an angle I didn't expect.

🎥 42 (2013)

📊 Ranked #2406/4209 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 43

lost to Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (held at #2141)

beat Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (#3180 → #3181)

beat The Muppets Take Manhattan (#2660 → #2661)

lost to Camp Rock (held at #2400)

beat Men Without Law (#2530 → #2531)

beat One, Two, Three (#2466 → #2467)

beat Finding Vivian Maier (#2431 → #2432)

beat Jesus Christ Superstar (#2415 → #2416)

beat King Kong Escapes (#2407 → #2408)

lost to Revolutionary Road (held at #2403)

lost to Kinky Boots: The Musical (held at #2405)

She's Gotta Have It (1986)

IMDb plot summary: Story of a woman and her three lovers.

Directed by Spike Lee. Stars Tracy Camilla Johns, Tommy Redmond Hicks, and John Canada Terrell.

She's Gotta Have It is Spike Lee's first feature film. I watched it as part of a challenge that included a black and white movie, so I went for a newer option. It follows the story of Nola, a young woman living in the city, and her three lovers who she's all dating at once. They all meet very different emotional and physical needs in her life. The story focuses a lot on how all three of them want her to give up the other two and be with just them, while she's just not terribly interested in tying herself down like that. I haven't seen as much Spike Lee as I would like to, but watching this definitely makes me want to prioritize that, because there's an energy to this that is compelling even if I'm not always sold on the narrative on the page. The actress playing Nola especially is incredibly compelling. Even when she's making decisions that are hurting people or that demonstrate she doesn't know what she wants, she's just fun to watch on screen, as are the three men who play her boyfriends. (One of them is played by Spike Lee himself.) I really enjoyed how immediately distinct these three men are, so each interaction we see them have with Nola and each other are unique based on those dynamics. I'm not sure that I'm invested in any of the like big questions being asked by this film so much as I just really enjoy watching the characters interact. Definitely one that makes me want to watch more of Lee's work. This is a heck of a debut.

🎥 She's Gotta Have It (1986)

📊 Ranked #1353/4208 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 68

beat The Girl on a Motorcycle (#2135 → #2136)

lost to The Menu (held at #1092)

beat Hamlet (#1611 → #1612)

lost to Serial Mom (held at #1352)

beat The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (#1481 → #1482)

beat The Song of Lunch (#1417 → #1418)

beat The Descendants (#1385 → #1386)

beat The Artist (#1368 → #1369)

beat The Unholy Three (#1360 → #1361)

beat Corrina, Corrina (#1356 → #1357)

beat Memories of Murder (#1354 → #1355)

Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

IMDb plot summary: An unceasingly kind Italian peasant and his family are blatantly exploited by a tobacco baroness.

Directed by Alice Rohrwacher. Stars Adriano Tardiolo, Agnese Graziani, and Alba Rohrwacher.

Happy as Lazzaro is an Italian film about a wealthy landowner and the serfs that work her land. Specifically, we focus on one young man, Lazzaro, who has some sort of potentially intellectual disability and is not always fully cognizant of how to react to things, but he ends up befriending the son of the wealthy landowner. Then the whole family's lives are turned completely upside down and Lazzaro has to adjust to the new life and what this means about the relationship that he had built with the landowner's son. Watching this right after Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter was interesting because they're not dissimilar in terms of tone and vibe, especially that combination of heartwarming and devastating. This one also has a s sense of dread that nothing is going to go right for this character. It's the kind of film that I think I might have liked more ten years ago in terms of my movie taste and now it feels a little bit overtold in terms of theme. Overall, I enjoyed the setting of it and the way that it put the story together, but it didn't gel the way it might have for me at a different time in my life.

🎥 Happy as Lazzaro (2018)

📊 Ranked #2264/4207 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 46

lost to True Romance (held at #2134)

beat Without a Clue (#3175 → #3176)

beat Heat (#2653 → #2654)

beat Charulata (#2392 → #2393)

lost to Rebecca (held at #2263)

beat Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (#2327 → #2328)

beat Absolute Power (#2295 → #2296)

beat The Secret Life of Pets (#2279 → #2280)

beat The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (#2271 → #2272)

beat The Party (#2267 → #2268)

beat Hamlet (#2265 → #2266)

You’re Next (2011)

IMDb plot summary: When the Davison family comes under attack during their wedding anniversary getaway, the gang of mysterious killers soon learns that one of the victims harbors a secret talent for fighting back.

Directed by Adam Wingard. Stars Sharni Vinson, Joe Swanberg, and AJ Bowen.

You're Next is a horror film about a couple who are spending some time in a remote cabin with the man's family, only for things to go suddenly horribly wrong when a mysterious intruder starts to kill off the family members. One by one they disappear, and it becomes clear that the one person who might be able to stop everything is the man's girlfriend, who knows the family the least. I had high hopes for this one, and I probably should have tamped that down a little bit, because I think that let me down by the end. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun little horror movie. It's got some fun, horror-y deaths, many of which are super gross (and at least one that I will be thinking about for a long time). I also appreciate the way the story sets up its heroes and villains, both in terms of the external threat of a murderer coming after them, but also in terms of the internal dynamics throughout where everybody kind of hates each other. It's a good ride. I'm not sure it stands way above in terms of horror, which I was expected for some reason, but it's a fun little slasher film that does what it's trying to do pretty well.

🎥 You're Next (2011)

📊 Ranked #1990/4206 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 53

beat The Girl on a Motorcycle (#2134 → #2135)

lost to Till Death (held at #1091)

lost to Backbeat (held at #1610)

lost to Children of Paradise (held at #1877)

beat The Guard (#2005 → #2006)

lost to Batman (held at #1941)

lost to The Group (held at #1973)

lost to Two Weeks Notice (held at #1989)

beat Meek's Cutoff (#1997 → #1998)

beat Journey to Greenland (#1993 → #1994)

beat Sweet Dreams (#1991 → #1992)

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014)

IMDb plot summary: A jaded Japanese woman discovers a hidden copy of Fargo (1996) on VHS, believing it to be a treasure map indicating the location of a large case of money.

Directed by David Zellner. Stars Rinko Kikuchi, Nobuyuki Katsube, and Kanako Higashi.

Kumiko the Treasure Hunter is a film about a lonely Japanese woman who becomes convinced that the movie Fargo is, in fact, real life, and she sets out to travel to North Dakota to try to find the stolen money in the story. She has no money, no friends, and very little grasp of English, but is determined to make her way across the country to find the treasure she's looking for. This movie made me extremely tense as I was watching it because I just knew that this could not end in a positive way. And while the gritty reality of the story absolutely does indicate that it doesn't end positively for her -- and I don't think that's a spoiler, because as I said, you know pretty early on that this can't possibly go well -- but it does move into some magic realism that allows it to at least put a more hopeful spin on this grim story. The actress playing Kumiko is almost too good at being determinedly vulnerable, and that often makes it difficult to watch. Seeing her interact with the different people attempting to help her make her way to Fargo is a mix of heartwarming and devastating. I appreciate that the film doesn't try to lean too hard on one of those feelings, but really lets both of them exist at the same time. An interesting movie, but a sad and difficult one to watch.

🎥 Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014)

📊 Ranked #1538/4205 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 63

beat The Girl on a Motorcycle (#2133 → #2134)

lost to Till Death (held at #1091)

beat Backbeat (#1609 → #1610)

lost to The Country Girl (held at #1350)

lost to True Grit (held at #1479)

beat Interiors (#1545 → #1546)

lost to North by Northwest (held at #1513)

lost to Oscar (held at #1529)

lost to His Girl Friday (held at #1537)

beat The Piano (#1541 → #1542)

beat She's Having a Baby (#1539 → #1540)

Waves (2019)

IMDb plot summary: Traces the journey of a suburban family - led by a well-intentioned but domineering father - as they navigate love, forgiveness, and coming together in the aftermath of a loss.

Directed by Trey Edward Shults. Stars Taylor Russell, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Alexa Demie.

Waves is a 2019 drama about a family. The first half of the story follows the teenage son and the stress that he is under as he deals with losing his prospects of a career in wrestling, and then learning that his girlfriend is pregnant and planning to keep the baby, which is going to make his life even worse. The second half of the film follows primarily the daughter in the family, as she grapples with the choices that her older brother made and how it affects her life and her family's life. This is a very slow, character-heavy drama that was enjoyable moment to moment, but left almost no impact on me in the long run. I had to go read through the Wikipedia summary to remember what happened in this movie, and a lot of what I read, I genuinely don't remember. On one hand, it's good that I don't remember anything that I disliked about it, but on the other hand, it's probably not a good sign that I don't remember a single thing about it. This is a solid cast, and they bring good quality acting work to their roles. I very much see how this could be a movie that would be very affecting to someone, but it just didn't have that effect on me, unfortunately.

🎥 Waves (2019)

📊 Ranked #2262/4204 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 46

lost to The Girl on a Motorcycle (held at #2133)

beat The Deadly Affair (#3173 → #3174)

beat Jimmy the Kid (#2651 → #2652)

beat Bad Education (#2390 → #2391)

lost to Rebecca (held at #2261)

beat Pride & Prejudice (#2325 → #2326)

beat Beauty and the Beast (#2293 → #2294)

beat The Big Pond (#2277 → #2278)

beat The Truth About Youth (#2269 → #2270)

beat Cowboys & Aliens (#2265 → #2266)

beat Happy Christmas (#2263 → #2264)

Frankenstein (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Dr. Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist, brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Stars Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, and Christoph Waltz.

Frankenstein is Guillermo del Toro's take on the classic story of a man who attempts to create life by putting together corpse body parts and animating it with lightning. Here, Oscar Isaac is Dr. Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi is the creature. In many ways this is a very faithful adaptation of the original book, with one large exception that seems to alter the story not at all, and one small exception that seems to alter the story greatly. On one hand, we have the addition of Christoph Waltz's character, who is the one who encourages Frankenstein to pursue his morbid interests and helps to fund them. It is also his daughter, played by Mia Goth, who captures Frankenstein's heart. And then on the other hand, we have one tiny addition to the ending which turns the whole story into a more positive conclusion. I'm not going to explain exactly what it is here for spoiler-y reasons, but it's the kind of thing that ten years ago I would have rolled my eyes at. Here, however, I had something of a dramatic response to it. Expecting the dark, pitiless ending and getting something surprisingly warmer felt like a reminder that I don't always know how stories will end, in fiction or in life, and that we can change them if we want. An unexpected moment of empowerment from a film that most likely meant nothing of the kind, but it hit me in a very emotional way. On top of that, the movie also does, of course, look gorgeous, with the dark gothic feel that I want from both the story as a whole and Del Toro's style. If the ending hadn't moved me so much, this would just sit in the middle of my chart, but it was one of those films that I saw at just the right time and it pushed it much further up.

🎥 Frankenstein (2025)

📊 Ranked #897/4204 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 79

beat Laal Singh Chaddha (#2089 → #2090)

beat Finian's Rainbow (#1033 → #1034)

lost to Revengers Tragedy (held at #515)

lost to Muppets Most Wanted (held at #774)

beat Spellbound (#903 → #904)

lost to The Joy Luck Club (held at #838)

lost to Four Lions (held at #870)

lost to Out of Sight (held at #886)

lost to City Girl (held at #894)

beat Twister (#898 → #899)

lost to The History of Future Folk (held at #896)

Mother of Flies (2025)

IMDb plot summary: When a young woman faces a deadly diagnosis, she seeks dark magic from a witch in the woods - but every cure has costs.

Directed by John Adams, Zelda Adams, and Toby Poser. Stars Zelda Adams, Toby Poser, and John Adams.

Mother of Flies is a folk horror film about a young woman who travels with her father to a reclusive natural healer in the hope of treating her terminal cancer. This is a moody eerie piece that really leans into the folk horror feminism vibe, but all the pieces feel a little amateur, especially the acting and writing. There are lots of stilted readings of awkwardly expository dialogue. The big twist is largely confusing and doesn't quite connect with the rest of the story. I appreciate that there is some satisfying resolution in the final moments of the movie but it's overall very messy and doesn't live up to the very cool atmosphere it sets up. I had hoped for more.

🎥 Mother of Flies (2025)

📊 Ranked #2745/4203 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 35

lost to The Dawn Patrol (held at #2088)

beat A Man Called Peter (#3139 → #3140)

lost to X (held at #2614)

beat Choke (#2872 → #2873)

lost to The Wiz (held at #2742)

beat The Day of the Triffids (#2806 → #2807)

beat Born Reckless (#2774 → #2775)

beat Spellbound (#2758 → #2759)

beat Finding Dory (#2750 → #2751)

beat Flightplan (#2746 → #2747)

lost to Dr. Seuss on the Loose (held at #2744)

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

IMDb plot summary: While trying to manage her own life and career, a woman on the verge of a breakdown must cope with her daughter's illness, an absent husband, a missing person, and an unusual relationship with her therapist.

Directed by Mary Bronstein. Stars Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien, and Danielle Macdonald.

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You stars Rose Byrne as a truly overwhelmed mother. Her husband's job keeps him away from her for weeks at a time, and she's left having to care for their medically fragile daughter, and she's at the end of her rope. This film is terrifying, claustrophobic, and basically exactly what I imagine motherhood is like. I have never felt so validated in my decision to be childfree. It does a great job of showing how exhaustion and panic can start exaggerating and blurring reality in a really scary way -- there was a large portion of the movie that I was fully convinced was a dream, only for it to be revealed as reality. I also appreciate the choice to not show the daughter's face until the end. It makes it easier for us to empathize with Byrne and feel the overwhelm. The ending seems a bit abrupt and doesn't fully work for me, but I appreciate what it's trying to do. An interesting movie, albeit one I never want to watch again, and a tour de force performance from Rose Byrne.

🎥 If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

📊 Ranked #1840/4202 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 56

beat Happythankyoumoreplease (#2101 → #2102)

lost to Heathers: The Musical (held at #1039)

lost to Ping Pong Playa (held at #1566)

lost to Swiss Army Man (held at #1837)

beat Malcolm & Marie (#1969 → #1970)

beat My Date with Drew (#1903 → #1904)

beat The Three Musketeers (#1870 → #1871)

beat Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert (#1854 → #1855)

beat Oddity (#1845 → #1846)

beat Splice (#1841 → #1842)

lost to Lord of War (held at #1839)

Dutch (1991)

IMDb plot summary: To get to know his girlfriend's son, a working-class good guy volunteers to pick him up from his prep school, only to learn that he isn't the nicest young man.

Directed by Peter Faiman. Stars Ed O'Neill, Ethan Embry, and JoBeth Williams.

Dutch stars Ed O'Neill as a man dating a divorced woman, and he offers to drive her spoiled son (played by Ethan Randall) home from boarding school for break, to let the two of them bond. Road trip hijinks ensue as the two constantly try to gain the upper hand over the other. This film is written by John Hughes, and when his films work, it's because he engenders empathy for his characters and helps us root for them, but that's nowhere to be found here. I suspect I'm meant to feel a stronger sense of karma as the spoiled kid gets what he "deserves," but he's just a hurting kid, not villainous enough for me to get a kick out of his comeuppance. There aren't a lot of laughs here and even less heart. This is one of the lower points in my Hughes filmography challenge. It's not a particularly long movie, but I felt like I was watching it for decades, because it was so unenjoyable.

🎥 Dutch (1991)

📊 Ranked #3596/4201 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 14

lost to How I Live Now (held at #2099)

lost to The Disappearance of Alice Creed (held at #3153)

beat Father Brown (#3679 → #3680)

lost to Pinocchio (held at #3415)

lost to Freaky Friday (held at #3549)

beat You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (#3614 → #3615)

lost to The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (held at #3581)

beat Premonition (#3597 → #3598)

lost to Robin Hood: Men in Tights (held at #3589)

lost to Weekend (held at #3593)

lost to The Formula (held at #3595)

Together (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie find themselves at a crossroads as they move to the country. With tensions already flaring, an encounter with an unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love and their flesh.

Directed by Michael Shanks. Stars Dave Franco, Alison Brie, and Damon Herriman.

Together stars James Franco and Alison Brie as a couple who move from their city home to a remote location for Brie's job. The move reveals some cracks in their relationship, and that's even before they get temporarily trapped in a mysterious cave and start having bizarre physical symptoms. This movie is definitely horror, but it's equal parts relationship drama, and I didn't anticipate that, going into it. The film has such a claustrophobic feel to it, particularly as we sit inside Dave Franco's discontent in the relationship as it is. The body horror actually takes a long time to kick in, but when it does, it ramps up fast and spikes in really intense ways. Some spoilers ahead here: The final scene is such an optimistic ending to what has been, up until that point, a pretty horrific series of events, and then suddenly it culminates in something that I found extremely... life-affirming. Definitely a unique movie, definitely a strange one, but I had a good time with it.

🎥 Together (2025)

📊 Ranked #837/4200 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 80

beat How I Live Now (#2098 → #2099)

beat Heathers: The Musical (#1038 → #1039)

lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (held at #518)

lost to True Lies (held at #778)

beat Support Your Local Sheriff! (#907 → #908)

beat Manon of the Spring (#842 → #843)

lost to Mars Attacks! (held at #810)

lost to Weapons (held at #826)

lost to Pather Panchali (held at #834)

beat The Wild Robot (#838 → #839)

lost to Cats (held at #836)

The Man With the Golden Gun (1974)

IMDb plot summary: James Bond is targeted by the world's most expensive assassin, while he attempts to recover sensitive solar cell technology that is being sold to the highest bidder.

Directed by Guy Hamilton. Stars Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, and Britt Ekland.

The Man With the Golden Gun is a Roger Moore James Bond film, in which the titular Man with the Golden Gun sends Bond a threat, which leads to 007 traipsing around the world looking for his potential assassin, and the piece of technology that he's stolen. This definitely cements for me that the Roger Moore era of Bond is the one I'm most likely to enjoy. It's big and bold and often silly, especially in its final moments -- one of Bond's near scrapes with death comes from a scantily clad woman accidentally hitting the wrong lever with her rear end. Since the story is set in Asia, there's an unfortunate amount of orientalism, which is certainly hard to watch at times. The film is on much surer footing once we get to the island, as Christopher Lee is delightful as the villainous Salamanca. There are now two Bond films I can confidently say I like, and both are Moore. Guess I should watch the rest of his!

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

📊 Ranked #971/4199 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 77

beat Deep Impact (#2098 → #2099)

beat The Other Boleyn Girl (#1038 → #1039)

lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (held at #518)

lost to True Lies (held at #778)

lost to Support Your Local Sheriff! (held at #907)

beat Little Women (#972 → #973)

lost to Kwaidan (held at #939)

lost to Westworld (held at #955)

lost to Sisters (held at #963)

lost to The Beguiled (held at #967)

lost to The House (held at #969)

lost to Mirage (held at #970)

beat The Impostors (#971 → #972)

Kpop Demon Hunters (2025)

IMDb plot summary: A world-renowned K-Pop girl group balance their lives in the spotlight with their secret identities as demon hunters.

Directed by Chris Appelhans and Maggie Kang. Stars Arden Cho, May Hong, and Ji-young Yoo.

Kpop Demon Hunters is an animated film about a mega-popular girl group who are secretly using the power of music to ward off demons. But one day, a rival boy band, made up of demons masquerading as humans, comes to challenge their spot... and one of them discovers some of their secrets. This was a huge hit this year, and I totally get why -- this is a good movie! Of course, the music is the biggest draw here, and it works. These are great, catchy songs (although the one nominated for the Oscar was by far the least interesting one in here). But there's a lot of entertaining fantasy metaphor going on in this story as well, and a great coming-of-age story. I do read and watch enough YA that I see a lot of similarities to other fantasy trauma metaphors in recent years, so it doesn't feel new enough to blow me away, but the music helps keep it fresh for sure. Overall simple but likeable, with some very fun music.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 KPop Demon Hunters (2025)

📊 Ranked #1090/4198 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 74

beat Happythankyoumoreplease (#2098 → #2099)

lost to Steven Universe: The Movie (held at #1039)

beat The United States vs. Billie Holiday (#1564 → #1565)

beat Punch-Drunk Love (#1302 → #1303)

beat The Woodsman (#1169 → #1170)

beat Australia (#1104 → #1105)

lost to Point Break (held at #1071)

lost to Joyeux Noel (held at #1088)

beat Barbie (#1096 → #1097)

beat H.M.S. Defiant (#1092 → #1093)

beat Pariah (#1090 → #1091)

Impromptu (1991)

IMDb plot summary: In 1830s France, pianist/composer Frédéric Chopin is pursued romantically by the determined, individualistic woman who uses the name George Sandsn.

Directed by James Lapine. Stars Judy Davis, Hugh Grant, and Mandy Patinkin.

Impromptu is a period piece primarily centering around the romance between composer Frederic Chopin and writer George Sand. Sometimes I'm very much down for a good period romance, but this one is really a slog. Hugh Grant is a year or two off from really hitting it big as Hollywood's leading man, and he's awkwardly dull and lifeless here. I really want to like Judy Davis as Sand, but her neediness makes the romance so uninteresting. The ups and downs of the different characters start feeling tedious far too early in the film, and it never gets better. There's just not a lot to remember or appreciate about this one, sadly.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Impromptu (1991)

📊 Ranked #3814/4197 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 9

lost to Happythankyoumoreplease (held at #2098)

lost to Sliding Doors (held at #3151)

lost to Father Brown (held at #3676)

beat Little Miss Marker (#3935 → #3936)

lost to The Battle of Algiers (held at #3805)

beat Mannequin (#3870 → #3871)

beat It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (#3837 → #3838)

beat The Host (#3821 → #3822)

lost to The Haunting (held at #3813)

beat Raid on Rommel (#3817 → #3818)

beat The Christmas That Almost Wasn't (#3815 → #3816)

It Was Just an Accident (2025)

IMDb plot summary: An unassuming mechanic is reminded of his time in an Iranian prison when he encounters a man he suspects to be his sadistic jailhouse captor. Panicked, he rounds up a few of his fellow ex-prisoners to confirm the man's identity.

Directed by Jafar Panahi. Stars Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, and Ebrahim Azizi.

It Was Just an Accident is an Iranian film about a group of former political prisoners who, years later, discover the man who they believe they recognize as their cruelest captor, and the group must decide what to do with him. I really wish this had gotten more attention around the Oscar season, because I think this is a seriously great movie. It does such a beautiful job of highlighting all these different characters and how they have processed and continued to process their past trauma, and what it has led to them being as humans. These acting performances are so compelling, and it truly feels at times like just watching a group of actual people work through a serious dilemma, with all the panic and anger that comes along with it. Without giving anything away, I was also really pulled in by the ending, which allowed for just enough resolution for it to feel meaningful without undercutting how impossible the whole situation was. It's a good movie that is easily my pick for best foreign film this Oscar season.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 It Was Just an Accident (2025)

📊 Ranked #908/4196 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 78

beat How I Live Now (#2095 → #2096)

beat Fever Pitch (#1039 → #1040)

lost to All Quiet on the Western Front (held at #518)

lost to True Lies (held at #778)

lost to Support Your Local Sheriff! (held at #907)

beat American Dreamz (#972 → #973)

beat Misery (#939 → #940)

beat Sansho the Bailiff (#923 → #924)

beat Ghost Town (#915 → #916)

beat Easy A (#911 → #912)

beat The Graduate (#909 → #910)

The Oxford Murders (2008)

IMDb plot summary: At Oxford University, a professor and a grad student work together to try to stop a potential series of murders seemingly linked by mathematical symbols.

Directed by Álex de la Iglesia. Stars Elijah Wood, John Hurt, and Leonor Watling.

The Oxford Murders stars Elijah Wood as an American graduate student who comes to Oxford to try and study with a particular professor. To his disappointment, the professor refuses to work with him, but then the two become entangled in a serial murder case when the first victim is a mutual friend. Oh, this one is a mess. It's one of those fairly obnoxious mysteries that things it's being much, much cleverer than it is, when really it just feels pretentious. On top of that there are weird small dialogue issues, like the fact that they cast Elijah Wood as this character and yet everything he says is very British, in very British dialect. I don't know if that was an initial issue with the script, or if they didn't intend to cast an American at the beginning and then never adjusted the script afterward, but it's jarring and immediately sets the tone that this is going to be a movie that does not care with its text. That continues on for the rest of the movie, with really clunky exposition and really underwhelming twists and turns throughout the mystery, all culminating in an ending that doesn't work. Not a lot that I liked about this one.

🎥 The Oxford Murders (2008)

📊 Ranked #3686/4195 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 12

lost to The Lair of the White Worm (held at #2094)

lost to Two for the Money (held at #3147)

lost to Bus Stop (held at #3674)

beat Little Miss Marker (#3933 → #3934)

beat The Battle of Algiers (#3803 → #3804)

beat Epic (#3738 → #3739)

beat Baby Mama (#3706 → #3707)

beat For Love of the Game (#3690 → #3691)

lost to Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (held at #3682)

beat Bohemian Rhapsody (#3686 → #3687)

lost to Holy Ghost People (held at #3684)

Becoming Led Zeppelin (2024)

IMDb plot summary: The film traces the journeys of the four members of the Stairway To Heaven rockers through the music scene of the 1960s and their meeting in the summer of 1968, culminating in 1970.

Directed by Bernard MacMahon.

Becoming Led Zeppelin is a documentary about the forming of Led Zeppelin, primarily centering around interviews with the living members of the band, more so than those in their circle or influenced by them. Watching documentaries about bands I have no connection to is always kind of an interesting task. My primary litmus test is whether it made me want to listen to their music more, and, for this one, it mostly didn't. What it did do was give me a fondness for the nerdery of the band members. They seem much less like hugely successful musicians and more like college besties just enjoying how much fun music is. It does turn out that everything that they love most about music is not what draws me to music. They're talking about all these amazing guitar choices and drum choices and rhythm choices and while I really love hearing them talk about something that they are so passionate about, I'm a lyrics person and a melody person. I do appreciate this extra understanding of what it is that makes this band special. It just also highlights for me that this is not going to be a band that is going to be my favorite. But if you want to hear people just nerd out about music theory for like 2 hours, this is a surprisingly fun watch, and definitely a different take from many music documentaries that focus so heavily on the stress of the celebrity life.

🎥 Becoming Led Zeppelin (2025)

📊 Ranked #2438/4194 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 42

lost to The Score (held at #2093)

beat Two for the Money (#3146 → #3147)

beat Skylark (#2618 → #2619)

lost to A Silent Voice: The Movie (held at #2354)

beat Smokin' Aces (#2486 → #2487)

lost to The Keep (held at #2418)

beat My Girl (#2453 → #2454)

lost to Hellboy (held at #2437)

beat The Rescuers (#2445 → #2446)

beat Power (#2441 → #2442)

beat Elle (#2439 → #2440)

Shine (1996)

IMDb plot summary: David Helfgott, a gifted pianist, struggles through childhood adolescence as his strict father abuses him and his siblings. Years later, he suffers a mental breakdown but manages to return as a legend.

Directed by Scott Hicks. Stars Geoffrey Rush, Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Justin Braine.

Shine is an Australian biopic starring Geoffrey Rush as David Helfgott, a talented child prodigy at piano who suffered a mental breakdown and spent much of his adult life in an institution. We follow his short-lived success, his years dealing with his mental health, and his journey toward healing and building new relationships. I watched this film as part of my 1996 project, where I'm trying to reach 100 movies seen from this year. This one got several Oscar nominations, and I can't say most of them are deserved. Geoffrey Rush's performance is the main reason to watch this, as his performance feels emotionally connected enough to keep it from being caricature. but as a film, it works a little too hard to weave together this clear simple narrative of the overly demanding father driving him to the breakdown, and it just feels like a bit of a stretch. If you'd like to see a really good performance by Rush, this is the movie for you, but if you're looking for a great movie overall, this isn't my recommendation.

🎥 Shine (1996)

📊 Ranked #1879/4193 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 55

beat Happythankyoumoreplease (#2096 → #2097)

lost to The Other Boleyn Girl (held at #1037)

lost to Ping Pong Playa (held at #1562)

lost to Swiss Army Man (held at #1833)

beat Malcolm & Marie (#1964 → #1965)

beat My Date with Drew (#1898 → #1899)

lost to The Three Musketeers (held at #1866)

beat The Wedding Singer (#1882 → #1883)

lost to White Heat (held at #1874)

lost to You've Got Mail (held at #1878)

beat Bowling for Columbine (#1880 → #1881)

Snack Shack (2024)

IMDb plot summary: Nebraska City, 1991, two best friends get the chance to run the swimming pool snack shack, that later comes to be the perfect scenario for transgression, fun, personal discovery and romance.

Directed by Adam Rehmeier. Stars Conor Sherry, Gabriel LaBelle, and Mika Abdalla.

Snack Shack follows two eighth grade boys looking to make some money and have an adventure in their last summer before high school. They decide to bid to run the pool's snack shop over the summer, and as they turn it into a very successful venture, they also start running into some hiccups along the way that threaten to dismantle their friendship. There's a lot to like about this raunchy, goofy coming-of-age movie. These characters are frequently obnoxious, but there's something delightful about watching them jump headlong into any idea that takes their fancy. There is a gleeful zaniness to this whole film, and while sometimes that zany tone feels like a bit much, especially in comparison to the more somber third act, overall it’s a pretty fun ride and I had a good time with it.

🎥 Snack Shack (2024)

📊 Ranked #1262/4192 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 70

beat Happythankyoumoreplease (#2095 → #2096)

lost to Heathers: The Musical (held at #1036)

beat Ping Pong Playa (#1561 → #1562)

beat Army of Shadows (#1299 → #1300)

lost to A Chorus Line (held at #1166)

lost to Cheaper by the Dozen (held at #1230)

beat Who Framed Roger Rabbit (#1265 → #1266)

lost to Airheads (held at #1249)

lost to It (held at #1257)

lost to High Strung (held at #1261)

beat Cool Runnings (#1263 → #1264)

Secrets & Lies (1996)

IMDb plot summary: Following the death of her adoptive parents, a successful young black optometrist establishes contact with her biological mother -- a lonely white factory worker living in poverty in East London.

Directed by Mike Leigh. Stars Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, and Phyllis Logan.

Secrets & Lies is a British film about a middle-aged woman whose biological daughter attempts to reestablish contact with her after being given up for adoption. The relationship throws the woman's life out of whack, and she and her whole family must figure out how to navigate it. Mike Leigh's work has been hit-or-miss for me at times, but this one is undeniably a hit. These characters are real and raw, and watching them figure out their lives together is captivating. I have to particularly call out Brenda Blethyn as the mother, whose performance is pitch perfect, both heartrending and endearing. The awkwardness of the family working so hard to keep up appearances despite not having a whole lot to brag about is palpable and makes for some great tense scenes where you are trying to figure out if one of them is going to explode any minute. While the story mostly focuses on the mom and her newly found daughter, there are also enough other subplots involving the rest of the family that it fully feels like a very fleshed out world. One of those rare films where I truly do feel like we're just getting a peek into somebody's life, and it's very naturally crafted.

🎥 Secrets & Lies (1996)

📊 Ranked #752/4191 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 82

beat Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (#2095 → #2096)

beat The Other Boleyn Girl (#1036 → #1037)

lost to He Loves Me… He Loves Me Not (held at #517)

beat Evil (#776 → #777)

lost to 21 Jump Street (held at #647)

lost to Beautiful Boy (held at #711)

lost to The Red Violin (held at #743)

beat Nurse Betty (#759 → #760)

lost to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (held at #751)

beat Casualties of War (#755 → #756)

beat Southside with You (#753 → #754)

One Battle After Another (2025)

IMDb plot summary: When their enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue the daughter of one of their own.

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro.

One Battle After Another is the newest Paul Thomas Anderson movie. The film begins with Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyana Taylor as anarchist rebels who are trying to start a revolution, but when Taylor ends up turning in her fellow anarchists, DiCaprio escapes with their daughter. Over a decade later, the father and his now-teenage daughter are found by people who wanted them dead, and DiCaprio has to try and keep his daughter safe. There is a lot going on in this movie, but I'm not convinced it's quite as impressive as the hyped made it sound. It's definitely got some fun, weird comedy/drama mixing. I was especially struck by the scene where DiCaprio first discovers his daughter is a target and is being transported to a safe house, but at the time he's heavily under the influence and is barely functional getting himself across town to find people who can help him. That scene could absolutely be right at home in an overt comedy (it's more than a little reminiscent of the same actor's Quaaludes scene in Wolf of Wall Street). But mostly I just feel like this is one of PTA's films that  misses me. It is a splashier, slightly more highbrow action movie. And while that aspect is certainly done well, it's not something that seems like the best movie of the year or anything like that. PTA often doesn't quite speak to me, so I guess it's not that surprising that this one didn't quite gel with me either.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 One Battle After Another (2025)

📊 Ranked #1626/4190 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 61

beat The Sparks Brothers (#2098 → #2099)

lost to Fever Pitch (held at #1038)

lost to Silent Hill (held at #1564)

beat Solaris (#1836 → #1837)

beat Fury (#1705 → #1706)

beat Elemental (#1629 → #1630)

lost to The Wolf of Wall Street (held at #1596)

lost to Stargate (held at #1612)

lost to Don't Look Up (held at #1621)

lost to Killers of the Flower Moon (held at #1625)

beat Dan in Real Life (#1627 → #1628)

beat The Tragedy of Macbeth (#1626 → #1627)

Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

IMDb plot summary: When her father decides to flee to England, young Sylvia Scarlett must become Sylvester Scarlett and protect her father every step of the way, with the questionable help of plenty others.

Directed by George Cukor. Stars Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Brian Aherne.

Sylvia Scarlett is a very, very early Katharine Hepburn film in which she is the daughter of a criminal who must go on the run, and so she disguises herself as a man to better serve him as his companion. Along the way, the two team up with Cary Grant, who plays another con man who agrees to help them. This was first brought to my attention on a TikTok about very early trans representation. While obviously this doesn't get too deep into that aspect of the story, given the time in which it was released, it does have some really fresh takes on gender, and coming from an actress like Hepburn, who was known for challenging stereotypical notions of gender, especially later in her career, it is a fascinating watch.  Aside from that though, the film isn't great. The romance is not likable or believable. The actors make very inconsistent choices as to what accents they're going to have at any point in the story. And the whole thing is all wrapped up very abruptly in a happy romance ending, tacked on to what was a fairly dark melodrama up until that point. So it's more valuable as a piece of interesting film history and early representation of non-typical gender performance than as an actual film in and of itself.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

📊 Ranked #3209/4189 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 23

lost to Fahrenheit 451 (held at #2096)

lost to The Preacher's Wife (held at #3143)

beat Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (#3669 → #3670)

beat Pinocchio (#3405 → #3406)

beat The Other Sister (#3273 → #3274)

lost to A Mighty Wind (held at #3208)

beat Gangs of New York (#3240 → #3241)

beat Baby Boom (#3224 → #3225)

beat Victor/Victoria (#3216 → #3217)

beat Our Paradise (#3212 → #3213)

beat Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (#3210 → #3211)

beat Inherent Vice (#3209 → #3210)

The Ballad of Wallis Island (2025)

IMDb plot summary: An eccentric lottery winner who lives alone on a remote island tries to make his fantasies come true by getting his favorite musicians to perform at his home.

Directed by James Griffiths. Stars Tom Basden, Tim Key, and Sian Clifford.

The Ballad of Wallis Island is set on a remote island where a folk musician is invited to perform a concert. The concert turns out to the brainchild of one man who has spent all of his lottery winnings on bringing this folk musician to the island, with the intention of reuniting him with his former musical partner, whom he parted with on bad terms. The two ultimately decide to try to work together and put on their one-person performance, and the three people, two musicians and their host, form some semblance of relationship. This is a really charming film that is really anchored by Tim Key playing their island host. He is charming but irritating and over-eager to please and ends up consistently rubbing people the wrong way. He's the one whose character arc is most compelling. The musician character arc is fine, but Key's performance is really the one that thematically and emotionally anchors the entire movie. It's a sweet movie in the best way. These characters are enjoyable to be around. We get some fun musical sequences and some small romances, while also not downplaying actual human need and sorrow. This one didn't get as much attention as I feel like it should have gotten, so if you haven't had a chance to check it out, you should. It's really delightful.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Ballad of Wallis Island (2025)

📊 Ranked #585/4188 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 86

beat Fahrenheit 451 (#2095 → #2096)

beat The Other Boleyn Girl (#1035 → #1036)

lost to That Night's Wife (held at #516)

beat Evil (#775 → #776)

beat 21 Jump Street (#646 → #647)

lost to The Mitchells vs. the Machines (held at #580)

beat Carrie (#612 → #613)

beat The Courtship of Eddie's Father (#596 → #597)

beat The Big Sick (#588 → #589)

lost to Marty (held at #584)

beat Stardust (#586 → #587)

beat It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (#585 → #586)

Exhuma (2024)

IMDb plot summary: The process of excavating an ominous grave unleashes dreadful consequences buried underneath.

Directed by Jang Jae-hyun. Stars Choi Min-sik, Kim Go-eun, and Yoo Hae-jin.

Exhuma is a South Korean horror film about a group of shamans who are investigating one particular family and their sketchy burial practices, which have now apparently come back to literally haunt them. This is a fun concept, and there are a few cool, spooky possession scenes that I do remember that stand out from the film, but a lot of it is just slow. The filmic choices showing the possessions are easily the most interesting part of the film, which felt overall very long at two hours and 14 minutes. The rest of the plot doesn't match the energy and the vibrance of those possession scenes, and so I found myself kind of tuning out whenever there wasn't something big and dramatic happening. I do wonder if there were some cultural differences that made this harder for me to process, which is obviously not the fault of the film. Overall, this one didn't quite do it for me.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Exhuma (2024)

📊 Ranked #2055/4187 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 51

beat The Sasquatch Gang (#2099 → #2100)

lost to Fever Pitch (held at #1037)

lost to Quartet (held at #1562)

lost to Solaris (held at #1835)

lost to Aladdin (held at #1968)

lost to John Wick (held at #2033)

beat Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (#2065 → #2066)

lost to Gold Diggers of 1933 (held at #2049)

beat The Firm (#2057 → #2058)

lost to Hail, Caesar! (held at #2053)

beat The Velvet Underground (#2055 → #2056)

lost to Deceiver (held at #2054)

The Nutty Professor (1996)

IMDb plot summary: Grossly overweight yet good-hearted professor Sherman Klump takes a special chemical that turns him into the slim but obnoxious Buddy Love.

Directed by Tom Shadyac. Stars Eddie Murphy, Jada Pinkett Smith, and James Coburn.

The Nutty Professor is a 1996 comedy starring Eddie Murphy as Professor Sherman Klump, a teacher and scientist who is studying methods of weight loss in mice. He himself is a very large person and is frequently the butt of the joke of everyone around him because of it. He eventually becomes desperate and tries his experimental treatment on himself, transforms into his thin, testosterone-filled alter ego, and decides he doesn't want to go back. The final message of this film is clearly intended to be something in a body positive vein -- he learns to appreciate himself and still gets the girl -- but it's all undercut by the fact that every single joke makes his weight a punchline. Even when it's done in a way that we're supposed to feel sympathy for the character, it's still punching down at him. I also don't find much fun in the scenes where Eddie Murphy is playing all the members of the Klump family. None of them are particularly interesting to me, and most of the jokes absolutely do not land. They're just sitting around being gross, which I understand is a very deliberate choice, but it made me anxious for those scenes to end. This is definitely the effect of trying to do a love-yourself-the-size-you-are movie in the 90s, where the cultural fatphobia is so prominent it takes over the story, even if you're kind of trying to speak against it. It ultimately doesn't work, either comedically or narratively.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 The Nutty Professor (1996)

📊 Ranked #3645/4186 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 13

lost to The Sasquatch Gang (held at #2099)

lost to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (held at #3147)

beat Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (#3666 → #3667)

lost to Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (held at #3408)

lost to Freaky Friday (held at #3537)

lost to You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (held at #3601)

lost to Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (held at #3633)

beat Animal House (#3649 → #3650)

lost to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (held at #3641)

beat Gomorrah (#3645 → #3646)

lost to Darkest Hour (held at #3643)

lost to You Were Never Really Here (held at #3644)

Blue Moon (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Tells the story of Lorenz Hart's struggles with alcoholism and mental health as he tries to save face during the opening of "Oklahoma!".

Directed by Richard Linklater. Stars Ethan Hawke, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott.

Blue Moon is a Richard Linklater film starring Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart, of Rodgers & Hart, trying to reunite with his former songwriting partner on the opening night of Oklahoma!, Rodgers' successful pairing with a new lyricist. The film takes place in real time over the course of the opening night party. I have always really loved when Linklater goes small and intimate in his stories and evokes a more black-box-theater style, and this is absolutely that. It harkens back to what I loved about Before Sunrise, where we really just got to watch these two characters, one also played by Ethan Hawke there, interact with each other. The dialogue here is snappy and funny and smart and worth listening to, even if it didn't have the underlying character development going through it. Hart is a fascinating character here, and Hawke does an amazing job playing him, really bringing out the character's desperation, and how frequently he tries to cover it up with scores of clever words. I also want to shout out the supporting cast. Andrew Scott, as Richard Rodgers, is an incredible job here and is a wonderful foil for Hawke as Hart. Margaret Qualley is fast becoming one of my favorite actresses, and she is also excellent here as Hart's supposed love interest. If you have any connections in your heart to theater, especially musical theater, this is absolutely a must-watch. There is not only so much going on narratively in the story that is theater-adjacent -- including some lovely little Easter eggs that made me chuckle -- but it also has a theatrical feel in its execution, which I love. The longer that it sits with me, the more I like it.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Blue Moon (2025)

📊 Ranked #294/4185 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 93

beat Blackadder: Back & Forth (#2099 → #2100)

beat Robin Hood (#1039 → #1040)

beat All Quiet on the Western Front (#517 → #518)

lost to Chicken Run (held at #258)

beat 25th Hour (#387 → #388)

beat The Virgin Spring (#322 → #323)

lost to Equus (held at #290)

beat Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (#306 → #307)

beat Fatal Attraction (#298 → #299)

beat Deathtrap (#294 → #295)

lost to Two Lovers and a Bear (held at #292)

lost to Midsommar (held at #293)

Unsung Hero (2024)

IMDb plot summary: A mother's faith stands against all odds and inspires her husband and children to hold onto theirs. Based on a remarkable true story.

Directed by Richard L. Ramsey and Joel David Smallbone. Stars Daisy Betts, Joel David Smallbone, and Kirrilee Berger.

Unsung Hero tells the true story of David and Helen Smallbone, who move from Australia to Nashville in an attempt to get David's music producing career back on track. They are met with an enormous amount of obstacles, and the "unsung hero" of the title is Helen, who holds the family together as David struggles with his career and the emotional toll this all takes on him. I have a pretty low expectation for faith-based films, but this one is not bad. It's definitely a little cheesy, but it does a pretty good job of having a decent baseline quality level. It's interesting to me that this is framed in marketing as the story of the artists of Rebecca St. James and the artists behind the band For King and Country, because that's barely part of the story -- For King and Country isn't even mentioned until the epilogue. It does feel very much like just a group of kids wanting to honor their parents by telling their stories. But that gets a little murky. I appreciate that it doesn't have an obviously didactic message the way that so many faith-based films do, but I wish that it was a little bit clearer in what it WAS trying to say, because where it does feel didactic, it feels unclearly so.  It seems like trying to teach a message both about the need for humility and the need for ambition, and how somehow this husband is failing at both at once, and that doesn't quite work. I think it does a good job of building the relationship with the family. As somebody who grew up in a large family and not a lot of money, I really appreciate the thoughtfulness put into that. It's not a bad movie if you like this kind of story, or if you're at all curious about the families of some of the big CCM names, but for me it sits along the lines of other mid-level inspirational stories. A step up for a lot of Christian films, but still not something that I want to watch again.

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Unsung Hero (2024)

📊 Ranked #2530/4184 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 40

lost to Cypher (held at #2101)

beat Le Cercle Rouge (#3146 → #3147)

beat The Man Who Knew Too Much (#2627 → #2628)

lost to The Blues Brothers (held at #2363)

lost to King Richard (held at #2495)

beat Dhamaal (#2561 → #2562)

lost to Rushmore (held at #2527)

beat The Vagabond King (#2545 → #2546)

beat The Hangover (#2535 → #2536)

beat Shame (#2531 → #2532)

lost to Stagecoach (held at #2529)

beat Elevator to the Gallows (#2530 → #2531)