James and the Giant Peach (1996)

IMDb plot summary: An orphan who lives with his two cruel aunts befriends anthropomorphic bugs who live inside a giant peach, and they embark on a journey to New York City.

Directed by Henry Selick. Stars Paul Terry, Joanna Lumley, and Pete Postlethwaite.

James and the Giant Peach is a partially animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl book of the same name. It tells the story of a young neglected boy named James who finds camaraderie with a group of bugs that live inside the mysteriously enormous peach that started growing in his yard. While I have occasionally enjoyed reading Roald Dahl, there is an ickiness to his stories that always comes out in the worst way in adaptations, and that ickiness is extremely present for me in this movie. The animation is truly so unsettling, and it's clearly a stylistic choice so I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying it makes *me* extremely not want to watch it. The script is also dumbed down enough for children that there isn't much depth here for me to latch onto in the story. I get why kids may have latched onto the quirky dark vibe, but it just feels gross to me. Not one I have any interest in rewatching at any point.

🎥 James and the Giant Peach (1996)

📊 Ranked #2993/4267 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 33

lost to The Adam Project (#2113 → #2010)

lost to Captain Marvel (#3214 → #3051)

beat Bohemian Rhapsody (#3766 → #3772)

lost to The Cocoanuts (#3485 → #3433)

beat Cinderella (#3624 → #3628)

lost to Get Smart (#3559 → #3496)

beat Hangman's Curse (#3592 → #3596)

beat A Most Wanted Man (#3576 → #3577)

lost to The Secret Agent (#3543 → #2992)

lost to Basic Instinct (#3571 → #3569)

beat A Decade Under the Influence (#3574 → #3590)

beat Arlington Road (#3573 → #3550)

The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)

IMDb plot summary: Ann Lee, the founding leader of the Shaker Movement, is proclaimed as the female Christ by her followers. This film depicts her establishment of a utopian society and the Shakers' worship through song and dance, based on real events.

Directed by Mona Fastvold. Stars Amanda Seyfried, Lewis Pullman, and Thomasin McKenzie.

The Testament of Ann Lee is a musical telling of the history of the Shakers in 1700s America, starring Amanda Seyfried as their leader, the titular Ann Lee. This is an interesting enough story on its own, but making it a musical adds this whole additional dimension to it that I found really compelling. I really enjoyed how well the repetitive nature of these folk songs and chants mirror sacred liturgy and rituals -- the two serve each other perfectly. The other thing that recommends the film is Seyfried's performance, which is excellent. Those things make it well worth watching, but the overall story doesn't hang together as well as I'd like and makes it fall a little flat in my memory by the very end. It's a very unique movie and I'd definitely recommend it, but I did want to connect with it more than I did ultimately.

🎥 The Testament of Ann Lee (2025)

📊 Ranked #1748/4264 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 60

beat Anna Christie (#2130 → #2298)

beat The Dictator (#1092 → #1089)

lost to Ordet (#565 → #630)

lost to The Player (#829 → #634)

beat Young Adult (#960 → #958)

lost to Companion (held at #894)

lost to Music and Lyrics (#927 → #928)

lost to Happy Death Day (#944 → #824)

beat Kwaidan (#952 → #951)

beat Daria in 'Is It College Yet?' (#948 → #947)

lost to The Substance (held at #946)

beat The Man from Earth (#947 → #1042)

Wonka (2023)

IMDb plot summary: With dreams of opening a shop in a city renowned for its chocolate, a young and poor Willy Wonka discovers that the industry is run by a cartel of greedy chocolatiers.

Directed by Paul King. Stars Timothée Chalamet, Gustave Die, and Murray McArthur.

Wonka is a Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory prequel, starring Timothee Chalamet as the famous chocolatier, who arrives in town ready to set up a shop with his inventive treats. He has to battle the established conglomerate of chocolatiers who already dominate the town, and they are determined to keep him from breaking through. This is a much better movie than frankly it has any right to be. Starting from the intro song, which is cheery and tells us all we need to know about our character and the world he's in, I knew I was in for a treat. I am going to go out on a limb here and say this is Timothee Chalamet's best performance -- he radiates charm here in a way I've literally never seen in any of his other performances. The big picture story is generic, but the dialogue and characterization is so charmingly written that it doesn't make much difference. This was a huge surprise to me, and I'm pleased I finally watched it.

🎥 Wonka (2023)

📊 Ranked #707/4262 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 83

beat Raising Arizona (#2150 → #2152)

beat Twister (#1099 → #1101)

lost to A Letter to Three Wives (held at #567)

beat The Butler (#835 → #836)

lost to Waking Ned (#703 → #704)

lost to Labyrinth (#771 → #773)

lost to Drunken Angel (#802 → #690)

beat Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Undead (#819 → #835)

lost to The Manchurian Candidate (#811 → #812)

beat Great Expectations (#815 → #817)

beat Cloud Atlas (#813 → #819)

beat New York, New York (#812 → #816)

Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)

IMDb plot summary: A Mississippi district attorney and the widow of Medgar Evers struggle to finally bring a white supremacist to justice for the 1963 murder of the civil rights leader.

Directed by Rob Reiner. Stars Alec Baldwin, James Woods, and Whoopi Goldberg.

Ghosts of Mississippi stars Alec Baldwin as a lawyer who is asked to take on a decades-old case of a Black man's murder, potentially locking up an established member of the community. This film was released the same year as A Time to Kill, and both tackle racial injustice in the legal system in the South, and I think I like them both exactly the same. They both do a medium-but-not-spectacular job of keeping the tension high and addressing some of the societal issues at play in the story. It does stay on a pretty mid-90s surface level of the issues, but it's still worth examining. It keeps the courtroom scenes compellingly taut as they should be. It's not an incredible movie, but it's not a bad watch either.

🎥 Ghosts of Mississippi (1997)

📊 Ranked #1753/4263 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 60

lost to Memphis Belle (#2136 → #2188)

beat Legendary Weapons of China (#3168 → #3172)

beat Phantom of the Paradise (#2700 → #2697)

beat The Family Stone (#2404 → #2409)

lost to Rebecca (#2283 → #2215)

beat Forever Young (#2324 → #2278)

beat Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (#2273 → #2446)

lost to The Three Faces of Eve (#2252 → #2227)

lost to Alice Adams (#2259 → #2035)

beat Hustle & Flow (#2358 → #2468)

beat Nacho Libre (#2341 → #2344)

beat Pat and Mike (#2261 → #2271)

St. Vincent (2014)

IMDb plot summary: A young boy whose parents have just divorced finds an unlikely friend and mentor in the misanthropic, bawdy, hedonistic war veteran who lives next door.

Directed by Theodore Melfi. Stars Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy, and Naomi Watts.

St. Vincent stars Bill Murray as a crotchety hermit who finds himself a semi-unwilling babysitter for his new neighbor's young child. The two form a friendship and begin to learn new things about each other. "Cranky old man has life changed by child" is almost never going to be a subgenre that I'm drawn to, even when it's fairly competently made, as this one is. Bill Murray is a good choice for this main character, as he's especially good at capturing both likability and grumpiness. But even he can carry this concept only so far, and I'm not fully convinced by the character growth. I think I'd have to be more sold on the idea from the beginning for this to work, but as it is, it's just okay. Worth watching if the story or the actors hold immediate appeal for you.

🎥 St. Vincent (2014)

📊 Ranked #1973/4257 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 55

lost to I Love You, Man (#2148 → #2031)

beat Gigi (#3212 → #3213)

beat The Asphalt Jungle (#2671 → #2672)

beat In the Mood for Love (#2415 → #2416)

beat Deceiver (#2282 → #2283)

beat Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (#2219 → #2220)

beat Blackmail Is My Life (#2185 → #2186)

beat Mr. Nice Guy (#2164 → #2165)

lost to The Lost Skeleton Returns Again (#2156 → #2157)

beat The Matrix Reloaded (#2160 → #2161)

beat Lenny (#2158 → #2159)

lost to Laal Singh Chaddha (#2157 → #2158)

Pump Up the Volume (1990)

IMDb plot summary: Mark runs a pirate radio station and causes an uproar when he speaks his mind and enthralls fellow teens.

Directed by Allan Moyle. Stars Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, and Anthony Luke Lucero.

Pump Up the Volume is a 1990s drama starring Christian Slater as an angry teenager who lets out his angst by running an extremely crass radio show under a pseudonym, but when his rants inspire a student at his school to take their own life, Slater has to figure out what he wants to do moving forward. I had never heard of this film before a friend recommended it to me, and it was a wonderful discovery. It's a great early look at the 90s grunge teen who was just angry at a system, and then at how that anger can have unintended consequences if processed appropriately. While I didn't necessarily *relate* to most of these characters, I sympathized deeply with all of them, and I was very engaged in seeing how things were going to play out. It doesn't necessarily go the expected coming-of-age drama route, and I appreciated that. This one was worth a watch for sure.

🎥 Pump Up the Volume (1990)

📊 Ranked #935/4259 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 78

beat The Wrestler (#2151 → #2154)

lost to The Moustache (#1098 → #1100)

beat The Front (#1617 → #1619)

lost to Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (#1362 → #1185)

beat 35 Up (#1491 → #1509)

beat Under the Skin (#1427 → #1425)

beat DragonHeart (#1393 → #1391)

lost to Summer Stock (#1377 → #1378)

beat Memories of Murder (#1385 → #1384)

beat Monsters vs Aliens (#1381 → #1428)

beat L'Atalante (held at #1379)

beat In Search of a Midnight Kiss (#1378 → #1483)

Along Came Polly (2004)

IMDb plot summary: A buttoned-up newlywed finds his strictly organized life descend into chaos when he falls in love with an old classmate.

Directed by John Hamburg. Stars Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, and Debra Messing.

Along Came Polly is a romantic comedy starring Ben Stiller as a risk averse man getting over his wife's betrayal on their honeymoon and Jennifer Aniston as the commitment-phobic "girl that got away" from high school. I can see glimmers of enjoyment in here, but it's hidden under unpleasant raunch comedy and muddy character development. Our two leads have very little chemistry, and their on-and-off romance never seems believable. The film seems to *want* to be taken semi-seriously, given the way the final conflicts play out, but it just never takes its characters seriously enough for us to believe that. There's just not a lot enjoyable here. It's definitely one to skip.

🎥 Along Came Polly (2004)

📊 Ranked #3775/4258 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 14

lost to Bonnie and Clyde (#2150 → #2142)

lost to Snakes on a Plane (#3215 → #3206)

beat Running with Scissors (#3753 → #3732)

lost to Passion (#3483 → #3459)

lost to The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (#3618 → #3599)

beat Atomic Blonde (#3685 → #3668)

lost to Stardust Memories (#3651 → #3629)

beat 101 Dalmatians (#3668 → #3649)

lost to Mr. & Mrs. Smith (#3660 → #3644)

beat Instinct (#3664 → #3707)

beat Django, Prepare a Coffin (#3662 → #3726)

lost to Fedora (#3661 → #3641)