Movie Rankings (Fall 2018 - Present)

Horace's Globally Ordered Rankings

Zaibo's Also Globally Ordered Rankings

Qian's "Real Comedy" Rankings

Kevin's Fledgling Rankings

Isay's Questionable Rankings

Ozer's Nonexistent Rankings

Horace

5/5 (One of my favorite movies ever)

1. Parasite
2. Everything Everywhere All at Once
3. When Harry Met Sally
4. Royal Tenenbaums
5. Arrival
6. Silence of the Lambs
7. Children of Men
8. Drive
9. Paddington 2: Perhaps the most heartwarming and wholesome movie I've ever seen. It's kind of like a Wes Anderson film for kids. You could call it "The Dark Knight" of children's films.
10. Across the Spiderverse: Amazing film. Animation was leagues better than the first film, which was already a revolution in animation. I'm a big fan of Lord and Miller (21 jump street, lego movie, mitchell vs. the machines), and they haven't let me down yet. OTOH, I do feel a little bit guilty enjoying the movie considering what's come out about Lord and Miller's treatment of animators, but well.... considering the quality of the movie, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make :)
11. The Fighter
12. Dune Part 2: Better than the first in almost every way. In retrospect, my experience watching the first film may have been colored by my nervousness about whether the movie would have a sequel. But while at times I felt the first one was somewhat slow, I don't think many people would find the second film so.
13. The Good the Bad and the Ugly (rewatch): To some extent, this movie is largely carried by the soundtrack. It's not carried like a musical is, but the best moment by a mile is The Trio. The rest of the movie is fairly enjoyable, with plenty of standout comedic moments (particularly the whole dynamic between the Good and the Ugly). However, if it weren't for the musical moments, this movie wouldn't find its way into S tier.
14. Memento: My enjoyment of the movie went like this. "The premise is interesting, but I don't think it'll stand up to a whole movie. Hence why I haven't watched this movie yet" -> "Huh, I guess the premise leads to some interesting narrative moments + simulates the life of the protagonist. Knowing the answer to a whodunnit can be played around with interesting ways" -> "The premise leads to some interesting moments, but over the course of the whole movie, it ruins the suspense too much and makes the movie less enjoyable" -> "Wait......." -> "Holy shit". The movie gives me a whole new level of appreciation for a working memory. Definitely Nolan's purest/least commercialized movie. I once heard someone say that Nolan movies have great ideas but are marred by his desire to make commercially viable films. Memento is the exception.
15. In Bruges
16. Gone Girl: A very romantic love story :)
17. Godzilla Minus One: For the most part, I've viewed the Godzilla films I've seen as pure "popcorn" fare - you go to the movies to watch two really big monsters punch each other, and everything else isn't particularly important. This movies changes that in that I actually want the human characters to live as opposed to die. (Rewatch 8/24/25) It's ludicrous to me that anybody could watch this movie and think that Shikishima living is a "cop out" ending. The entire movie's premise is about the conflict between traditional Japan's honor-driven society and callousness for life with the optimism needed for a brighter future. If he died at the end it would basically nullify all of that and celebrate his inability to move on and live a better life. They even drove it home more explicitly with Noriko surviving, to make it even more obvious that him dying would have been completely futile. To be honest, that made it almost too blatant for me.
18. Nightcrawler: It's criminal that Jake Gyllenhaal didn't get nominated as best actor for this film. Overall, the film dives into a very interesting niche of media that I don't really think about much. It's best seen as a darkly satirical take on a classic American success story seen through the eyes of a twisted optimist.

4/5 (A very good movie, would recommend)

19. Bladerunner 2049
20. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotted Mind: Much like Synecdoche NY, this is very close to how much "art house" movie I can handle. Unlike Synecdoche NY, this has a much more understandable plot (compared to Synecdoche NY). I wasn't too interested in the B-plot of this movie, but the examination of choosing to lose memories and its true costs is brilliant.
21. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
22. The Thing: The best horror movie I've ever watched. Realistically smart characters faced with the worst of horrors and trying their best to cope. Watts's retelling from the monster's side adds a interesting dimension to the film.
23. Interstellar: Classic example of the "high highs, low lows" archetype. The tsunami scene (where the music represented the passing of time on Earth), the whole Mann arc (absurdly relatable), and the heel turn were highs that very few movies reach. However, the slow first third of the movie and the unbelievable "Deus Ex Machina"(much worse than the beginning) that was the ending almost ruined the movie for me. As a principle, I like to reward ambitious movies - hence why Interstellar still finds its way high on my list. Also, this is very funny
24. Too Big To Fail/The Big Short/Margin Call: The 2008 financial collapse trilogy. Too Big To Fail tells it from the government's perspective, The Big Short tells it from the investors' perspective, and Margin Call tells it from the banks' perspective.
25. Memories of Murder: I find it a bit unfortunate that I didn't watch this before the murderer (in real life) was caught - the intended effect of making the audience wonder if the murderer is sitting behind thm in the theater doesn't hit quite as hard. Regardless, the depiction of obsession, questioning everything you believe in, and overall failure ends up still being very compelling. The scene where the murderer chooses between the protagonist's wife and the high schooler on a whim was quite chilling as well.
26. Knives Out: A very accessible whodunnit that I enjoyed. It's nice to watch a relatively straightforward feel good movie - looking forward to Knives Out 2.
27. Synecdoche NY: Impossible to give this movie a legitimate rating. In some sense, I feel like I got "Eulered" into placing this movie so high. But, there were enough stand out quotes/moment (like the ending) that struck me that I do feel this movie deserves this placement. Might rewatch after watching YMS's analysis - too much of the movie confuses me to just watch the movie again. Wouldn't surprise me if the director was a DFW fan.
28. Her
29. Being John Malkovich: ????? I don't know what to say about this movie. I have a hard time imagining how the script writer pitched John Malkovich on this movie. One thing I thought was pretty interesting was how similar this movie was to Get Out. Both are about taking over anothers body, with some old white people secretly plotting behind the scenes. However, while Get Out is about the horror of being possessed, Being John Malkovich is about the possessors. Despite the comedy, the ending of Being John Malkovich is one of the darkest fates I've seen in any movie.
30. Challengers: The interpretation that Patrick loved Art, Art loved Tashi, and Tashi loved tennis seems right to me. Very funny to me that the potion seller guy wrote this script.
31. Ford V Ferrari: The second race in the movie is unbelievable. Overall, good to great performances from Christian Bale and Matt Damon, a solid autobiographical script, and some standout action moments make for a very enjoyable movie.
32. Baby Driver (rewatch): Plotwise, nothing special. One could likely have guessed much of it just from knowing the premise of the movie. Still, the movie manages to be entertaining partially due to stellar acting performances (particularly Jon Hamm's). However, where the movie peaks is when it starts to blend music and action (much of the cuts/movements/things that happen are synced with the music). The "Never Gonna Give You Up" scene in the diner is the pinnacle of this ideal, and in particular, the moment Buddy starts to sing the words of the song. Very fun movie, and massively entertaining.
33. Marriage Story
34. Jojo Rabbit
35. Shawshank Redemption: Loved the quote "get busy living, or get busy dying" before I even watched the movie, and the context only made it better. However, I'm somewhat disappointed with this film. Not because I disliked it - I thought it was a great film! The list of films in contention for the best movie of all time is short. Unluckily, after watching it, I wonder if Shawshank finds its way onto this list not due its spectacular highs but due to its consistency. Most people who watch this film will consider it a great film; I doubt many people will consider it the greatest film.
36. Life is Beautiful: This movie is a pretty good rom-com mashed with an excellent holocaust-comedy (if that's a genre...). While the first half does an excellent job of characterization, the true heart of this film lies in the second half, and in particular, the ending. To be honest, despite the ending not being some kind of wild twist, the final scene affected me more than I expected.
37. Hero: Some critics of this film call it Chinese propaganda. I don't see it. Not moreso than any American military or anti-terrorist film. Sacrificing one's own life for the greater good isn't a new idea. Nor is it an especially China-centric one. I personally felt that the sacrifices and decisions made by the characters in this movie were meaningful. Other than the messages of the movie, the movie is objectively beautifully shot. The usage of color themes is visually striking, and there are many visual shots/styles that I don't see present in western films.
38. Contact
39. Mad Max Fury Road (rewatch): When I first watched this movie I thought it was the "perfect" film - as in, no action film could surpass this. I still believe the action set pieces in this film are near perfection ("Witness me!"), and the action scenes do encompass more character development/world building than some give credit for. But on a second watch of the film, when the glamour starts to become overwhelming, the novelty fading, the second half of the film starts to drag. All my favorite moments were in the first half, but they were memorable enough to land this movie here on my list.
40. The Departed: The best film about lying I've ever seen. The premise originally stuck out to me as something I'd like, but I had no idea how far they could run with this premise. If you've pretended to be someone else for so long that nobody knows you're pretending, what's the difference? Besides the incredible amounts of intrigue packed into the movie, I find the casting to be phenomenal. DiCaprio and Damon both fit perfectly into their roles, and oh wow, Marky Mark what a performance. Single handedly stole every scene he was in. I've seen some rag on Nicholson's performance, but I haven't seen enough of them to find them cliched so I simply found them very ... evocative. One thing I find interesting is simply how many A-list actors found themselves in this movie. Perhaps that's why every discussion I've seen about this movie just uses the actor's names instead of the character's names. Perhaps that's another level of "pretending to be someone else you're not". As a side note, I'm not sure about the meta-levels of this concept fans have analyzed into the film. Ie: Is Damon impotent? Is Nicholson impotent? Is Damon gay? Is Nicholson gay? Truly the pinnacle of film analysis.
41. It's a Wonderful Life
42. Se7en: In some ways, the opposite of Interstellar. I watched both movies back to back on a flight. While Interstellar is a movie with great moments that's nearly ruined by the ending, Se7en is an adequate movie that's elevated to greatness by its 3rd act. I've heard some people say they thought the movie would still have been great without its 3rd act, and I disagree. The rest of the film was enjoyable enough, with the unique crimes and the budding relationship between Somerset and Mills, but it's the 3rd act of the film that cements this movie's place as a classic. Imagine how much less interesting the movie would have been if the villain had been your classic baddie and the movie ended with a chase sequence and shoot-out. No, the 3rd act ties the movie together and makes the film.
43. The Lego Movie: Surprisingly great. Most of the movie had funny moments, interesting dialogue, and unexpectedly interesting social commentary, but spoiler when Emmett fell out of the portal and into the real world, wow. That's the kind of story twist that could only have happened in The Lego Movie. Most of the movie isn't telling a story that fundamentally needed legos to be told (besides the smaller plot points like being a "Master Builder"), but the way that tied together 1. an interesting comment on the fabric of reality, 2. the strict father/rebelling son relationship, and 3. the rest of the plot of the movie was great. Also, I think I really enjoy animated movies seem to have a lot of really interesting stylistic choices, like Into the Spiderverse and this one.
44. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Banger movie.
45. Sicario
46. Prisoners
47. Shin Godzilla: Throughout history, Godzilla has represented whatever fears the Japanese public has had, from nuclear weapons to ecological concerns to, in Shin Godzilla, mid-level bureaucracy? A fairly enjoyable movie, absolutely hilarious that they tried to portray the Japanese actress as "American" though - terrible english. I watched in the theater with english subtitles, and for some reason, they decided that whenever the actors spoke english subtitles weren't needed (despite their english being quite difficult to understand). As a result, I probably understood the japanese parts better than the english phrases they said.
48. The Wild Robot
49. The Menu
50. Top Gun Maverick: I watched Top Gun about half a year before I watched this movie, and when I searched up Top Gun after the movie and found out there was a sequel, I was skeptical, to say the least. But... never bet against Tom Cruise. A couple notes about the movie. 1. The VFX in this movie is ... really good (check this out for a very interesting behind the scenes). As somebody says in that video, "you can't fake the G-forces". I don't know why movies with a lot of practical effects are so impressive, and I don't know if it's just placebo, but the effects in this movie are quite impressive. 2. I found it quite amusing the lengths to which the movie went to conceal the identity of the nation-state Tom Cruise is attacking. Perhaps in today's geo-political landscape, it pays to keep your options open. Or... perhaps after Russia's recent failures, the idea that they'd have any sort of technical advantage seems too unbelievable. 3. Pretty good diversity in this movie :)
51. Avengers: Endgame: Enjoyed this movie a lot more than I thought I would. I don't really consider myself a Marvel "fan" - I find most of the movies adequate, but most of them don't really stand out to me. I didn't even watch Infinity War in theaters. However, I do have a large amount of respect for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The level of dominance that Marvel has achieved over the last 7 years has been unprecedented, and Marvel movies have been such a cultural force over that span. Thus, I journeyed to watch this movie out of respect for the closing of an era, a pilgrimmage of sorts to the biggest movie moment in my lifespan. As for the movie itself, it banks heavily on cashing in on the emotional capital they've built up over 10 years - not that it's a bad thing. The time travel really highlighted that for me. When they showed the classic NYC Avengers shot, with the camera circling around the main cast, I thought of all the youtube videos I've seen that snippet in - Every Frame a Painting (RIP), Why CGI doesn't Suck, etc. That was great. Captain America picking up Mjolnir was another great moment. Picking up the hammer has been at the core of many great moments throughout Marvel, and that moment got the biggest cheer in my theater. Overall, Game of Thrones has shown me how badly a show can end, and I gained a lot of appreciation that this phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe ended with a great movie.
52. RRR: Basically a superhero movie, but with a lot more unique shots and action than any blockbuster I've seen in a while. The song at the end featured the girlfriend much more prominently than her role in the movie - we speculated that she was a famous singer of some kind essentially making a cameo.
53. Sound of Music: I actually didn't know that Ariana Grande's 7 Rings interpolated "My Favorite Things". Out of all the "golden era" musicals I've watched so far, I've liked this one the most so far. I came in expecting it to be something like Mary Poppins - just a lighthearted movie about Maria bonding with the children. However, this movie had a couple plot twists that lent it a surprising amount of heart and intrigue.
54. Moonrise Kingdom
55. Amadeus: Excellent character premise, and excellent character development. Unequal talent distribution is one of great existential tragedies, and this movie presents it very well. Unfortunately, the middle of the movie dragged a bit - perhaps if I watched the theatrical cut this wouldn't be a problem.
56. City of God: Nightcrawler if Jake Gylenhaal's character was split into Lil'Z and Rocket.
57. Jackie Brown: The most un-Tarantino movie of the Tarantino movies. I've heard some people call this his most mature film, and I'd probably agree. It definitely still has some classic Tarantino-isms, like the soundtrack, but the dialogue is somewhat uncharacteristic of Tarantino (perhaps because it's a novel adaptation). Maybe I'm just immature, but like his other films more.
58. Lawrence of Arabia: We spent 10 minutes at the beginning of the movie trying to debug why there was no video (just a black screen). Old movies were truly built different.
59. Cloud Atlas
60. Pulp Fiction
61. Avatar: The Way of Water: Never bet against James Cameron. Before this movie came out (and even through the first weekend!), many folks thought that nobody cared about Avatar, that the first movie had no cultural impact, and that the success of the first movie was a fluke that wouldn't be repeated. But this is a situation that James Cameron has found himself in repeatedly, both with the first Avatar as well as Titanic. As for the actual movie itself... it's pretty decent! The way I would describe this movie is that it has excellent visuals, excellent worldbuilding, with a serviceable plot + characters. The characters/plot aren't terrible, although they certainly won't win any awards for creativity or acting. To be honest, I think a significant part of James Cameron's appeal is his (relatively) straightforward plots. :)
62. Amélie: The purest embodiment of happiness I've seen in a movie.
63. Uncut Gems: Probably one of the most stressful movies I've watched.
64. Taxi Driver
65. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
66. Tar
67. Les Misérables: I don't know if my rating of this movie is unfairly high, as this movie was my first exposure to Les Mis the musical, and I listened to the soundtrack a bunch afterwards. :think:
68. Fantastic Mr. Fox: A very interesting animation style. Not nearly as cute as Paddington, however - I also didn't particularly care for the storyline involving the kid.
69. Paddington 1: Not nearly as good as Paddington 2 (which is essentially perfection), but still a pretty great kids movie.
70. Mulholland Drive: Perhaps I would enjoy this movie more if I understood it better. However, there were several standout scenes for me - the 2 scenes involving "Every Little Star" and "16 Reasons Why" were fantastic. Also, I feel like this movie has to be inspired by Material Girl by Madonna somehow - compare the beginning of the music video to the "This is the girl" scene from Mulholland Drive. Oh, also, Madonna's former house was on Mulholland Drive. Coincidence? I think not :)
71. Promising Young Woman
72. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
73. Frost/Nixon: I'm too young to have lived through the Nixon presidency, but the portrayal of Nixon as this underdog who crawled his way to the top makes me quite sympathetic to him. Perhaps the recent Trump administration has made me more tolerable of presidential missteps - I could never imagine this level of contrition or regret coming out from Trump. Have things really objectively deteriorated over the last several decades? I saw a comment on reddit that Nixon looked bad until Bush came along - I wonder if contemporary thoughts on Trump are similar. Another thing that intrigued me about this movie is how ... competent politicians/presidents are. I assume that presidents need to be quite charismatically gifted in order to become a president - I'd love to have the opportunity to discuss/debate things with one. There's a cool quote from Jack Brennan in the movie: "Well, in boxing, you know, there's always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger's face. It's that moment that he feels the impact from the champ's first jab. It's kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those months of pep talks and the hype, the psyching yourself up, had been delusional all along. You could see it in Frost's face. If he didn't know the caliber of the man that he was up against before the interview started, he certainly knew it halfway through the President's first answer." One last thing is that although I think Frank Langella did a great job, I personally prefer Anne Hathaway's performance. :)
74. 22 Jump Street: A really good comedy - better than the first one.
75. The Aviator
76. Spotlight: Great movie, loved the dialogue, and loved the overall plot. However, the movie perhaps suffered from a lack of characters to care about, with one of the only standouts (Mark Ruffalo near the end of the movie) being the highlight of the movie by far. It's not to say that there weren't plenty of emotional moments, but they mostly didn't die together into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
77. Big Fish & Begonia: Perhaps best summed up as a more ambitious but less polished Studio Ghibli movie. Also, it's from China. Considering that this is the country where Boonie Bears holds 6 of the top 11 top grossing animated movies, I think this is a remarkable step up, and hopefully demonstrates that there's a market for quality animation. The movie is mostly hand-drawn (and quite nicely), but there were a couple of uses of 3d animation that were absoutely jarring. Not only did the graphics look different, I think they also ran at a different frame rate. Absolutely bizarre choice.
78. Good Will Hunting
79. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: One of my least favorite Tarantino movies
80. Primer: This movie's plot feels like an excuse to try and write an consistent set of rules for time travel and examine how far the mechanism can be taken without breaking the rules entirely. Although the characters definitely take a backseat to the time travel, the characters are smart enough to really explore the consequences of this time travel, resulting in plenty of drama. Definitely not a movie everyone will like, but if you like smart movies/movies where your mind gets blown, this is definitely worth a watch.
81. Turning Red: Somewhat split on this movie. I'm not a big fan of the animation style (which reminds of this grubhub commercial), and most of the main cast was pretty cringy (from most cringy to least - purple, yellow, red, green). But... I thought the movie really came together in the final act, and I really enjoyed how the boy band song came together with the rest of the characters/plot in this scene. Maybe I'm just a sucker for musicals.
82. Nice Guys: Russell Crowe and (especially) Ryan Gosling really make this buddy-cop murder mystery movie. I know Ryan Gosling in particular from his roles in movies like Drive, Blade Runner 2049, or First Man, where he plays the stoic bad-ass. I view his role in this movie as a parody of his roles in those films.

3/5 (Alright movies)

73. Chinatown
74. First Man
75. 21 Jump Street
76. The Truman Show
77. In the Heights
78. Spider Man: Far From Home
79. Fabelmans: Meh, large parts of this movie I just could not take seriously (particularly the mother). I also don't understand how the mother is meant to be sympathetic at all - she cheats on the husband with his best friend, reluctantly moves away with her family, and then breaks down and says that she has to leave her husband and kids to be with the guy she cheated with?? The best scene by a mile was the ending scene, which was apparently fairly true to life. Last shot was also pretty cute.
80. Tenet: Perhaps I just don't understand this movie - specifically, the fundamentals of how the physics works. How does a forward person fight against an inverted person? Like, let's say the forward and inverted people try to push against each other. Is that possible? How does it work?
81. Do the Right Thing
82. The Super Mario Bros Movie: More or less what I expected. A competently animated movie with plenty of callbacks + a barebone story. I'm not complaining though - I'll probably watch every single Nintendo animated movie that comes out.
83. Dr. Strangelove
84. Moonlight
85. V for Vendetta: Perhaps modern neckbeard culture and the hacker group Anonymous have made me too cynical of the imagery in this movie, but I found V to be somewhat ... cringy. He just felt a lot like a neckbeard. He loves swords, he says edgy things, he has a "iamverysmart" demeanor, and just reminds me of m'lady. My favorite scene, by far, was the scene with the dominoes. I guess I just love montages in general.
86. Babe: For a children's movie, this was far darker than I expected.
87. Dunkirk
88. Sunshine: Very much like a worse interstellar, in more ways than one. Just like Interstellar, this movie has some incredible highs (or maybe I'm just a sucker for epic space moments), like this one (SPOILER). Actually, I'm probably even more of a sucker for epic music paired with movie scenes ("Captain Kaneda, what do you see?"). Another thing this movie did really well was the portrayal of the Sun (and the accompanying brightness) as horror, as opposed to the typical dark = horror associations. The religious overtones around the portrayal of the sun also lent a lot of intrigue to the film. HOWEVER, the latter third of this movie fell flat for me. The movie shifted the "enemy" from the environment to a personification of the environment in a way that lost much of the intrigue that had been built up. It felt more like a B-movie slasher flick than anything else. Interstellar had something similar, but whereas I thought Dr. Mann was one of the best parts of interstellar, the villian in Sunshine was mostly boring. Oh also, re: the soundtrack - I originally was slightly taken out of the scene I linked above because I thought that they were reusing a track from a different film (which felt somewhat ... cheap). But actually, this song was written for this film :O.
89. Roma
90. Rashomon: Likely falling prey to the "Seinfield effect". At this point, I've seen multiple movies that leveraged the "Rashomon effect" - Gone Girl and Hero for instance. The movie didn't particularly stand out to me otherwise.
91. Kung Fu Hustle
92. The Woman King: Decent, a little bit cliche, at least the girl didn't go off with the guy at the end. I know there's a bit of outrage about the historical inaccuracy of this film, and although I'm not particularly bothered by it, I do find it somewhat ironic (if you're unaware, Dahomey was very much not on the side of anti-slavery, and in fact actively resisted the British after the British had outlawed slavery).
93. Joker: This movie gets too much credence for being a "non-trivial" superhero film. I find it quite derivative of Taxi Driver, and the ending sequence felt like a really cheap tie in to Batman. On the other hand, there were some pretty great monologues and scenes in this film - Joaquin Phoenix deserved his Oscar.
94. The King's Speech: Fairly solid, but ultimately forgettable. It's criminal that this won Best Picture over The Social Network.
95. Coherence: Less mind-bending than Primer, but a more likable character arc. Ending seemed like a bit of a cheap twist.
96. No Country For Old Men: Disappointed with this film. I thought I would really love this film, but left underwhelmed. There's a couple of really great scenes, notably the gas station one, but the overall tone of the movie was too nihilistic for me to appreciate.
97. Air
98. American Psycho: Watched it for the memes, found the movie more disturbing than I thought it'd be. Christian Bale really carries the movie for me - I can't really find the core themes interesting enough to find the movie to be phenomenal. My favorite scenes from the movies are the scenes I watched before the movie that convinced me to watch the movie in the first place. Huey Lewis and the News, as well as the cardstock scene.
99. Sing Street: A fairly entertaining movie. However, I don't think I watched this movie at the right stage of my life. I think there are times where I would have absolutely loved this movie and rated it a 4 or 5.
100. This is Spinal Tap: Some funny scenes - just didn't stand out that much to me.
101. Free Guy: Ryan Reynolds doing Ryan Reynolds things, some really funny action sequences, and a lot of gamer bait. I found this movie very enjoyable, although definitely not a flawless movie by any means.
102. The Greatest Showman: I'm a bit of a sucker for musicals - I enjoyed some of the music in this film, along with the choreography (particularly the silks/trapeze part). However, the overall plot felt pretty disjointed and the music didn't integrate that well with the movie.
103. 1917: Considering I didn't really like Dunkirk that much either, maybe I just don't like war movies... I just found this movie to be somewhat bland and boring. The dialogue was just somewhat boring, the plot points were pretty repeatable, and I found the Benedict Cumberbatch cameo to actually be somewhat comedic - perhaps because it was immersion breaking. The one-take gimmick didn't really add much to my experience - at some point, I actively groaned that the one take gimmick would require the actors to actually traverse several miles. Overall, very low emotional impact, some technically impressive shots - not a movie I would like to watch again.
104. Aladdin: This was better than I expected. Unlike the other Disney remakes, I felt that this one had an unique heart to it. Contrary to what people may have thought from the trailers, I thought Will Smith did a phenomenal job - he was the best part of this movie by a significant margin. The emphasized role of Princess Jasmine was pretty interesting, and although I found her role to be fairly shallow (and the video was hilarious), I liked the new song.
105. The Wandering Earth: Watched on poor quality, halved FPS, and with a bunch of overlayed text floating around, which probably detracted from the experience. Ambitious film with some great moments (an archetype I like), I thought the final "plan" was well done. However, suffers from somewhat formulaic action sequences and some characters I didn't really care for.
106. The Fountain: In some sense, I was put off by this film in the same way that I'm put off by propaganda films. It's definitely a very spiritual film with some great moments, but I think I'm currently incompatible with its fundamental message. I just moved this movie's ranking from below Contagion to below The Wandering Earth, as I think the great moments (especially loved the tree of life/present day arcs) in this movie should be given credit. Definitely a candidate for "movie that might grow on me over the years".
107. Lost in Translation: This movie has three scenes that really stood out to me, two positively and one negatively. The karaoke scene, Charlotte looking back, and the prostitute scene. I wanted to like this movie - I really like the metaphor (maybe thanks to Kanye...), but the alienation of the Japanese jarred me in this movie. The prostitute scene in particular was incredibly uncomfortable to watch. I understand that it's necessary for the main dynamic between the leading characters, and that these scenes arguably furthered the dynamic. I just wish that it wasn't necessary to play into every Japanese stereotype to do so.
108. Murder on the Orient Express (2017): I think I'm a sucker for "murder mystery" movies. I really enjoyed Knives Out, and I enjoyed this movie too, despite its incredibly cheesy performances. We also watched part of the 1974 movie after finishing this one... it was pretty difficult to watch. Like, the 2017 film has a large amount of good actors/actresses and pretty nice scenery. The 1974 movie has a main character that sounds like Mario and is limited by the technology of its time.
109. Zodiac: For me, this movie is marred by the knowledge that it's a presenting a non-mainstream view of history. A lot of the moments lose its impact for me from knowing this.
110. Forrest Gump: This might just be a cultural zeitgeist type of thing, but I didn't really connect with the film. None of the cultural events that happen emotionally register with me, and neither does Forrest as a character. He was sympathetic enough of a character and I rooted for him, but not enough to carry the film. Also, really didn't like Jenny in the film. I get that a lot of her manipulative actions stemmed her from her abuse as a child, but just as your parents don't excuse you from all blame, neither does Jenny's terrible past excuse her from taking advantage of Forrest for most of her life. I see why people call this a conservative movie - the army glory, Forrest overcoming his disabilities (although he was blessed with being great at running...), the self made film, the condemnation of Jenny's "alternative" lifestyle, etc. I wouldn't say its conservative - more so "traditional". Whether you consider that an euphemism or not, Forrest Gump seems like a story about the non-talented everyday American who succeeds through hard work and doing what he's told. As I said, might just be the zeitgeist of 90s America, an age where the US turned its attention from the USSR inwards and focused on itself.
111. The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Actually a hilarious title. Reminiscent of the age of "Scary Movie" parody movies.

2/5 (Meh)

107. Zombieland: I think Michael Cera has a monopoly on his archetype in Hollywood (quirky awkward guy). I wonder if some writers write their scripts with him in mind. I can't imagine any other actor giving the same performance in this movie. Overall, another guilty pleasure movie. I enjoyed Tallahassee especially. Not much else to say about this movie. If you enjoy this kind of "satirical but not really" version of a zombie movie, you'll like it.
108. Clue: So so so much worse than Knives Out. It's like Knives Out, but without any of the likable characters, or any of the interesting plot twists. I did find the "3 endings" thing interesting though, but I wonder if that hurt the quality of the plot twists.
109. Tucker and Dale vs. Evil: Like Zombieland, a "satirical but not really" horror movie. The overwhelming emotion I felt in this movie was disbelief for how stupid the kids are. I get that's the point of the movie, but wow, those kids were dumb. Like, really dumb.
110. Contagion: This movie felt a bit too clinical for me. Feels like a CDC propaganda film (vaccines, anti-pseudoscience, etc.). I believe that the movie is extremely scientifically accurate - I just don't think it makes for extremely compelling cinema. Not that I didn't enjoy the movie, or that it didn't have drama. I'm just unconvinced that this kind of "drama by collective" can create a truly phenomenal movie.
111. Alien: I feel like this is a movie whose age really detracts from the viewing experience of the film. There were several scenes where the CGI was immersion breaking - in particular, the scene where the alien is blasted out of the spaceship. It was difficult for me to take these scenes seriously. I thought the plot was decent, and so was the world building, but the outdated effects took away from a lot of the horror of this film.
112. Unbreakable
113. How To Train Your Dragon 3: Eh. 1 >> 2 >> 3. My main issue with this film is that the villain seemed tacked on. The villains in 1 had a clear purpose, as well as the one in 2. This movie seemed to just meander around, and the villain never really seemed present throughout the movie. I learned after the movie that the villain in this movie was not the original plan, that the original plan for 2 and 3 involved Hiccup's mother fighting him, and putting the villain from 2 in the 3rd movie. This movie just seemed like a step down in stakes. I did enjoy the ending though, I was surprised that they ended on a somewhat bittersweet note. Props to the movie for doing that. Interestingly, other than who I watched the movie with, nobody else was in the movie theater when I watched this. Strange experience.
114. Limitless: Another guilty pleasure movie. In much the same way I enjoyed Now You See Me's omniscient villains, I enjoyed watching Eddie Morra outwit everyone else. This movie also deserves credit for popularizing the idea of nootropics. However, the movie shoots past my suspension of disbelief with how "smart" the character is. I get that writing characters that are smarter than you is hard, but Eddie gets essentially supernatural powers. I think I would really enjoy a scifi film that examined the societal effect of a mechanism that moderately increases human intelligence. Kinda like Gattaca, but extended towards brain-level effects.
115. Godzilla: King of the Monsters: Phenomenal trailers (perhaps the best trailers I've ever seen), but they also put 90% of the great moments in it. The human characters were forgettable.
116. Now You See Me: Very much so a guilty pleasure movie. Terrible movie - I didn't care about any of the characters, the twist at the end seemed convoluted and a classic example of a bad twist. Feels like the writers wanted to make The Prestige, but worse. Still, I loved the Prestige, and I tend to love magic movies and villains that seem omniscient, so I enjoyed watching the movie. Still a bad movie though.
117. Annie Hall (unfinished): Watched this film because I saw someone say that Harry Met Sally and Annie Hall are two rom coms for people who don't like rom coms. I loved Harry Met Sally, but didn't care for the characters in this movie. However, this was the 7th? movie I'd watched that day and I went to sleep right after, so I've been meaning to give this movie another shot.

1/5 (Active distaste)

118. There Will Be Blood (unfinished): I watched the first half, and I wasn't very engaged. I've heard some people mention that this movie is "80% drudgery made up with some phenomenal moments", so I want to finish this film at some point.
119. The Imitation Game: The worst film I've watched in a long time. I just didn't care for any of the characters. The fact that this movie drastically departs from Turing's real story, pitting him against the government, the coworkers, a Russian spy, or basically anything that will characterize Turing even more as an isolated tortured genius doesn't help. I tend to have a soft spot for movies like this, but I found this movie unbelievably boring.
120. Under The Skin (unfinished): I have found the limits of how much "art house" I can handle in a movie.
121. Game of Thrones Season 8: I will make an exception from movies for this one.

Unratable

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey: Doesn't seem proper to rate this as a movie. It's also difficult to rate this movie simply due to how much of a cultural icon it is.

Zaibo

S tier - Best 10/10

10 means these movies are virtually perfect. They are engaging throughout, and usually end in a way that is satisfying. There is usually some X-factor that pulls a movie up to a 10. The Fighter is the ultimate masculine fantasy. Cloud Atlas leaves you with a feeling that I can only describe as the togetherness of humanity. The Before Trilogy gives a sense of following a couple over the course of many years that I've only ever felt from watching Jim and Pam in the Office.

1. Before Trilogy - 10+/10. Together, the three movies are much stronger than the sum of it's parts. I wanted to give an 11/10, but I didn't want to break my scale and set a bad precedent.
2. When Harry Met Sally - 10/10.
3. The Fighter - 10/10. A slow start
4. Cloud Atlas - 10/10.
5. Cloud Atlas (rewatch) - 10/10. Cloud Atlas is described on Wikipedia as a "epic science fiction film" - I want to watch more of these. This movie has something for everyone. The Somni arc is a Jesus-like origin story and a romance plot in one. Halle Berry's arc is a mystery/reporter movie. Past-future story is a bit of sci-fi action (the old-new language is clever). I don't know how to describe the composer story but it was unique. Ship story and being stuck in a retirement home were meh. Upon rewatching, I've noticed the Cloud Atlas Sextet themes and variations inlaid throughout the entire movie. The fact that all the actors the actors are reused really fits form with function. Although there are certainly blemishes and plotlines that I'm not interested in, this film is super ambitious and executes the idea very well. There are only a handful of three hour movies that can fully capture my attention, and this is all deserving of a perfect score.
6. Everything Everywhere All At Once - 10/10. Before I gush about this movie, I will talk about the bad. I don't like the multiverse trope. It's too played out for me. It feels like it entered popular consciousness and now all these different franchises have adopted it (Avengers, Pokemon, Rick & Morty) come to mind. In spite of that, this is a fantastic movie. It's feels arthouse but the plot is simple enough that anyone can follow it, which gives it popular appeal unlike, say, Muholland Drive. This movie is somewhat similar to Cloud Atlas, but the latter resonated more strongly with me which is why it ranks below.

• CGI - The highlight for me was when Jobu Tupaki is first revealed and kills a bunch of police officers. It was an absolutely stunning sequence; the cuts between different outfits were perfect. It's the exact fighting style of a punk-goth God that I didn't know I wanted. In general, the fight scenes that span across multiple dimensions where delightful to watch. Besides the bagel costume, the rest of Jobu's outfits were great. Really captured the aesthetic.
• Actors - The main cast was fantastic. Joy/Jobu rises above the rest, but everyone did a great job of changing their personalities.
• Pacing - Similar to costumes, I usually only acknowledge pacing when it's bad. But the pacing of this movie was one of the best I've seen. The middle portion of the movie plays out as a comedy. I was laughing for 40 minutes straight. The last third of the movie becomes a lot more serious but the transition worked out great. Even the funny timelines (Racoontouille and Hotdog hands) are resolved in a serious and satisfying way. In the middle there's a long respite where two rocks talk to each other, providing a catharic break between the action.
• Sound editing - Another element of the movie which I rarely notice. I went into this movie knowing nothing so the beginning was a bit weird. I didn't know it was going to be supernatural so the sound effects didn't make any sense to me. Once we learned more about the world though, things became more coherent. There's a lot of quirky and interesting sounds mixed in and I'd probably notice more of them on a rewatch but this stood out to me. The title card for "Everything" with the big wash of holy chorus was also well done. Of course the soundtrack was great too.
• Intro - The beginning of the movie all the way to the title card set my expectations very high. I think there was a ticking noise throughout which made me feel stressed out. I honestly don't remember the details here except that I enjoyed it a lot.
• Misc - Loved the reference to 2001 Space Odyssey.

1. About Time - 10/10. This will certainly be a bold ranking. Movie is like a mix of When Harry Met Sally and Cloud Atlas for me. Just like Cloud Atlas, it's an ambitious film which gives you a feeling which is hard to describe.
2. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - 10/10. McDonagh is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors. This movie and In Bruges were both fantastic. The characters are great. We are introduced Mildred Hayes and sympathize for her at the start. Then we find out Willoughby has cancer and suddenly morality is less clear. Dixon starts as an idiotic racist who redeems himself. Characters like James (Peter Dinklage), Penelope and Anne Hayes only appear for only a few scenes yet I feel like I really "get them". Characters are also super efficent. It's similar to a musical where in a tight knit cast every character has a relationship with the others (think Dear Evan Hansen). The comedy is so witty. I love the scene where the ex-husband keeps making fun of his son for having cereal in his hair - so many subtle jabs. The director often sticks a tragic and comedic scene next to each other. The first one that immediately comes to mind is when Willoughby shoots himself (that was so emotional) and we go to a shot of Dixon being an idiot. McDonaugh puts a lot of focus on his setting. This is most apparent in In Bruges where Bruges represents purgatory on earth. I think this context is important for watching his films. The ending where Dixon and Mildred team up is satisfying. I love that they say that will "decide on the way".
3. Marriage Story - 10/10. This movie is similar to Before Midnight in that it feels like a realistic depiction of struggling relationships. Give me more of these and I will give them all 10s. ScarJo, Adam and the actress for Nora were all fantastic. In general, the characters were great. I liked all the lawyers and Nicole's family. I liked the simple camera work. A lot of scenes are just two or three people talking in a room and there's nothing fancy done, but the scenes feel fairly dynamic and it just works. I liked the first scene too because it introduces the characters and subverts expectations of a romantic relationship. I didn't really understand how difficult divorce is until I watched this movie. The big argument scene in Charlie's apartment crazy good. The pacing was also really good. My favorite line is "I hacked your email you dumb fuck!"
4. Before Sunset - 10/10. From the start of the movie, I wanted Jesse to take Celine in his arms and kiss her... but that never happens. There's a lingering suspense for the entire film over whether they will get back together. The film is shot in real time, which gives a much stronger sense of being "in" the movie. The little cues such as when Celine directs Jesse with "let's take a left here" give the sense of being in the present. The style in this movie is stronger and even better than the first. The best scene in the movie was Celine's outburst in the cab. There was so much emotion all at once. That's when you know the feelings are still there for both of them. The dialouge is also very good. They talk exactly the way I'd expect them to after not seeing each other for 9 years. The actors for Jesse and Celine were also producers for the film, and that shows in the development of their characters and dialogue. After the movie ended, I listened to Carmen Fantasy and I felt like I understood the piece in a way I've never felt before.
5. Before Midnight - 9.5/10. The reason this isn't a 10 is the ending wasn't satisfying to me. There's this huge climax of a fight and it's unclear how the two will resolve their issues. Then, suddenly, they made up. In the beginning of the series, an arguing couple leads to the two of them to start talking but by the end, they become that couple. It's genuinely hard to take sides during the argument and I felt so emotionally attached to the characters at that point. It's also hard for me to figure out who is right in the argument - I think that's really well done. I wanted so much for them to make up and stay together. The scene at the table was awesome - the banter between all the couples was great. I'm in agreement with Cinefix that this movie is the most honest depiction of love. It's rare to get a series of films that follow a couple over a scale of years. Most RomComs end with the couple getting together. The only thing that comes close is Pam and Jim's relationship in the Office and that took place over many years of the series. The Before Trilogy was able to capture that in three movies which is something special.

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A tier - Really good 8-9/10

9s are films that have something missing that deny them a 10. Ford vs Ferrari and Children of Men don't end well. Parasite is great, but it didn't have a huge effect on me post-watch unlike most 10s. 8s are above average. It's usually the minimum rating to recommend a film to others.

1. Ford vs Ferrari - 9+/10. If this is considered an action movie, it would be my favorite action movie of all time. The racing sequences were all so exciting, especially the Daytona one. I could feel my heart pounding for a five minute sequence. I don't think I've experienced that while watching a movie before... I'm glad I watched this in theaters. Damon and Bale both had great performances but Bale stood out more. There was also an interesting anti-corporation motif that rubbed off on me. I thought the ending was a bit blotched. Miles dying felt a little random, but I imagine they put it in for historical accuracy. I also wish the last race were more exciting. It felt like a character development race, unlike the Daytona one which was pure action aesthetic. Perhaps this movie is the ultimate male fantasy.
2. Silence of the Lambs - 9/10.
3. In Bruges - 9+/10. Feel like there were two reasons to make this film: to insult Belgium for 1.5 hours and (SPOILER) the scene where Ken is trying to kill Ray who is killing himself. (1/19/20 Update: bumped to 9+, because it's the best movie in it's genre)
4. Midsommar - 9/10. I loved this movie but just like Synecdoche, NY, I would never recommend it to anyone else. This was the goldilocks of horror movies. A small but significant bit of gore and no jump scares. The rest is mainly psychological and it is creepy as hell! Dani was played so well. Her expressions are amazing, first at the beginning of the movie and again at the end :( -> :) . The directing style was unique and overall, I liked it. The shots of note are the conversations through the mirror and the clean cuts (from the dorm bathroom to the airplane bathroom). The unique shot composition helps the pacing for the intro to the movie which is very tame. The cinematography is on the level of Grand Budapest Hotel, maybe even better. I love the artistic depictions that essentially describe what will happen. There are so many beautiful shots. I love that the temple is just a yellow pyramid. The costume designs were good but of course the centerpiece is the May Queen flower dress. A lot of people talk about how the cult gives Dani a family but crowning her as May Queen also gives her power which she didn't really have before. The crying in unison + sex scene was surreal. In general, the final act when it's just Dani and Christian is absolutely crazy. At a high level, it's fairly clear what is going to happen - Dani will become May Queen and Christian will elope and be killed afterwards. Still, the actual execution of this series of events is something far more interesting. This movie moved me in a way that I don't feel very often. It's deeply unsettling but I also can't help but feeling happy and satisfied when I see that smile at the end. It's not jk pure face of joy though, you see the bags under Dani's eyes and can't help but remember what she went through. I can still Midsommar being a very polarizing film. There are lots of ways to dislike it, but if you like it, you like every part of it. I'm in that latter group. A few other callouts: Mark has some amazing one liners, Pelle is creepy as fuck, Chidi Anna Kendrick is from the Good Place no? Most of the cult members looked fairly similar and it was hard to differentiate between them. Until the last scenes, I couldn't really identify Inge (Pelle's sister). The bear shit was kinda lit. :( -> :)
5. Dune Part 2 - 9/10. Better than part 1 in all respects. It's hard to judge this movie because I know the plot. But the visuals are absolutely incredible. The sound mixing is great. The sandworms are super fucking cool. It's awesome to see this story on the screen. I have some qualms with how the plot changed
6. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - This sequel was miles better than the original! As a caveat, I did watch this in theaters whereas I streamed the original. As with the first, the animation was absolutely incredible and enhanced from seeing it in theaters. I loved the opening vignette with Spider-Woman. I distinctly remember the color palette when she's talking to her dad and it just looked fantastic. I thought at this point that the movie would star her as the protagonist (and that would have been great!) I love that this movie jumps off from the previous and tunes the Spider-Verse to 100. We literally see hundreds of different and incredibly creative Spider people. Just seeing Gwen and Miles travel across the city is a pleasure to watch. The soft romance plot between Miles and Gwen struck me with a deep nostalgia of being a teenager.
7. Minari - 9/10. I started watching the Handmaid's Tale a few days after and the storytelling in Minari really shines in its simplicity. There are no flashbacks, yet the dialogue is written so that you totally understand the family's story up until the start of the movie. There are subtlties like the mother calling out to David not to run before we learn about his heart problems. I would categorize this movie with Roma and Moonlight - they are all semi-autobiographical movies that reflect on the author/director's childhood. Of those three films, Minari's story is the most captivating. There's not to much fanfare overall, most of the scenes take place in a small house or out in the grass fields. Still, I couldn't help feel a sense of dread throughout, that the entire livelihood was on a knife's edge. The ending felt a little abrupt but wraps up the whole story. The wife shows that she cares about the farm. The husband shows he cares more about his wife than the vegatables. The kid shows his love for the grandmother. This was by far the best scene - it revealed their love for each other and resolves Monica's previous worry about not being able to overcome hard times. The kid and the grandma where definitely the stars of this movie. Absolutely fantastic performances from both of them, they fit their roles very well.
8. Children of Men - 9/10.
9. Citizen Kane - 9/10. I watched this at 1.4x but I think it deserves a watch at normal speed. This movie would make a good audio. Beginning was a little weird. Like Casablanca, it starts in a documentary style. Kane is introduced as an incredibly interesting character. I was immediately hooked and wanted to learn more about his life. He reminded me of a character from Atlas Shrugged - idealistic, adheres to principles (in particular, I'm thinking about the scene where he completes the negative opera review). I feel like Kane is somehow a victim of circumstance, which is strange because he has all the money in the world. I was left with a sense of existential dread at the end. Is childhood the best there will be?
10. Parasite - 9/10. I thought this was a horror movie - it's not. I thought this movie was going to be something like Contagion where some insects destroy humanity. In the middle of the movie, I thought "I wish there were a more defined main character" because you see close-ups on the father a lot but he splits time with the rest of the cast. After watching a video, I found out that the director also did Snowpiercer and things started to make a lot more sense (Every Frame a Painting has a video on how the protagonist of Snowpiercer has to choose between left and right through a series of closeups). For the most part, the directing did not feel like that from a foreign film. I was also reminded of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - this film is similar in that the first acts are exclusively on character development. There are tensions that rise bit by bit and it culminates into an explosive third act. Because it's not an American film, there are no guns, just knives. Each character is constructed well. The set design is immaculate, particularly the Park family home. The portrayal of both families are done well and the class disparity is culturally relevant. The plot moves a bit slowly in the middle when the last members of the family are recruited. One memorable shot was when the first introduction to the basement. There's a tracking shot that feels immersive.
11. Moonlight - 9/10. Gorgeous film. So many fantastic shots in this movie. I love the three act structure of the movie, and how the protagonist goes by three separate names. The cast is tight. Although she's a side character, you get to see the mother grow and change over the three acts too. The third act is the most interesting. At first, I didn't even recognize that it was the same character. The act is really just two conversations, but in the second one, you really see the layers peel away. When he talks to Kevin, he becomes Chiron again. The actor played this part really well. The exposition in this movie is definitely less in-your-face than most. For example, the fact that Juan dies is a single line of dialogue and there's not much more that's talked about. The dialouge feels more realistic. End of act 2 is pretty sad to watch.
12. Listening to Kenny G - 9/10. One of the best documentaries I've seen. I've got to applaud the director's vision which really pulls this doc together. The outtakes of Kenny G's interviews is the real deal. It feels raw and completely genuine - this is who Kenny is and directly connects to his career. Two moments stand out to me. In his interview, in the outtake he asks the director how he's doing, if he should add more movement, less movement, etc. The second is when he goes to his old highschool and in an unedited cut, we see Kenny think deeply to come up with a meaningful quote to sign the wall with. Kenny is such a loveable protagonist and his enthusiasm and optimisim are a joy to watch. Honestly and unironically, I enjoy his music - it is beautiful! The other highlight is John Halle's interviews. It's a great juxtoposition to the jazz critic with the top hat and red glasses. The critic comes in with his mind made up and he is trying to tell us what to think. John Halle is really on the fence throughout the whole doc. But the most piviotal moment is his last segment where he kinda figures things out for himself - "Is Kenny G consent in musical form?". The role he plays is the same as the audience in evaluating how to feel about Kenny. There's a universal appeal to this documentary and it's one that I would recommend to almost anyone.
13. Tár - 9/10. Phenomenal performance from Cate Blanchett. She completely carries the film and should win 2023 best actress over Michelle Yeoh. I get Devil Wears Prada Meryl Streep vibes. I am a sucker for stories that end in a downward spiral like Requiem for a Dream, Dune, and Lawrence of Arabia. The ending to this one almost feels like a 2.5 hour joke. But it's cool how it contrasts to the first scene when she is at the height of her career. Going into this movie, I thought it was based on a true story. I was really interested in seeing Tar perform live. It was only at the end that I found out this was a fictional story (sad). This film felt a bit slow and I think a 2 hour runtime would have been more enjoyable. It teeters of the fringe of fantasy and supernatural. There are some many solo scenes of Lydia's routine where she hears strange sounds and sees strange phenomena. We aren't sure whether this is all in her head or if it's real. The bits when she's out running make it seem like we could suddenly transition to a horror movie. The dialogue in this movie is unforgiving. Some of it is simply too high level music theory for a pleb to understand. Then there's so many characters mentioned and introduced by name that makes it hard to keep track. This would be even more confusing in theaters, at least subtitles help us follow the conversation. Some highlights include the opening interview scene, the Julliard class, the accordion song, and the final sequence.
14. The Nice Guys - 9/10. This is the kind of comedy that I LOVE! The lead trio all had fantastic performances, but I'd give the gold medal to Ryan Gosling. I enjoy seeing the "cool guy" play a bumbling idiot, and Gosling's performance reminds me of Brad Pitt's character in Burn After Reading. Sure, the humor from Gosling is not unlike his other roles (he is incredibly awkward), but I think to Drive and Blade Runner where he is cool, calculated and methodical. I particularly liked that this movie had a serious plot which is what sets it apart from other films (off the top of my head: Hot Fuzz, War Dogs). I loved the running gags of things falling. I loved the "Hitler was just following orders" and that it was rehashed several more times. The actress that played Amelia really gave her an aura of mystery but what a real shame when she died like that. This movie put Shane Black on my radar and he will be a go-to when I next want to watch another comedy!
15. The Menu - 9/10. This movie turned out differently than what I imagined from the trailer. I thought the dinner was going to turn into some man hunt but in reality, that was just one scene/one course. This is my kind of horror! No jump scares but I was on the edge of my seat after the sous chef blew his head off. I thought the first 40 minutes were sublime (basically before any of the horror). I really enjoyed the scene where all the guests are seated and we get to listen to the conversations. We get to hear all the backstories and although it's succinct, there is depth to the characters. The first few courses were hilarious (breadless bread + tacos). I assumed that Margot and Tyler were dating which turned out to be a misdirection(?). Perhaps it's ambiguous but the interaction when first getting on the island and Tyler bring the wrong guest made me think she was the girlfriend. I suppose the fact that he didn't have a prom date was evidence to the contrary though. From a plot perspective, I thought the s'mores ending wasn't spectacular, but it's really about the way the ending makes you feel. It's similar to the way Midsommar made me feel. The shot of Margot eating a cheeseburger sitting on the boat was extremely satisfying because the simple shot contrasts the weight of all that happened before. We went to in-n-out for cheeseburgers afterwards.
16. Zodiac (rewatch) - 9/10. I was close to putting this movie above Silence of the Lambs, so I think there's been some overall rating inflation. I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entire movie and the pacing was very good. I'm always impressed when three hour movies don't feel long. The third act of this movie where Jake enters center stage is the most interesting. Now that I live in the bay, this movie feels closer to home to me. Although the movie biases towards a particular suspect which is supposedly not accurate, I find it entertaining nonetheless
17. Blade Runner 2049 - 8.5/10. Wish there was more content in this world. Am interested in watching the first movie (again).
18. Do the Right Thing - 8.5/10. This movie is similar to Three Billboards - all the characters, even the minor ones, have particular personalities; the network of characters is densely populated; it's all about conflict. The beginning was a little slow but after most of the characters are introduced, the middle of the film is just a series of tiny tiny conflicts. Everyone is bickering with each other. The conflicts merge into a tragic climax. It reminds me of the riots in the Joker. I wanted so badly for everyone to make peace and go home! Sal was such an interesting character. So many moments where you think "wow he's a great guy" and then he goes back to being a crank. I also liked Da Mayor. There are no real good guys. It's hard for me to figure out who is right and who is wrong. The real villain is the heat (and the police). I am reminded of the line "Why we argue anyway? Oh, I forgot, it's summertime" from Devil in a New Dress.
19. Casablanca - 8.5/10. I usually don't like old movies but this one was pretty good. Because it's old, I'm a bit more lenient when they have cheesy tropes. I loved the way they introduced Rick's character. I wish there was a bit less exposition on his whole "I don't stick my neck out for anyone" (he says it explicitly a lot). The big quotes from the movie were a bit lost on me - what the fuck does "Here's looking at you kid" mean? Why does he say it to his lover? The other line "Louie, I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship" also wasn't particularly resonant. The emphasis on the setting of the movie reminded me of In Bruges. Casablanca isn't purgatory persay, but it is a kind of Limbo. Rick was the only standout character; I was not a huge fan of anyone else. I definitely could sense that this was a movie from a different time - the women feel more like plot catalyst than characters. Most notable scenes for me were when Rick drank after seeing Ilsa and when they started singing La Marseillaise over the Germans.
20. Lawrence of Arabia - 8.5/10. I went into this movie blind and made some jokes about how this is the Dune prequel. Well turns out it kinda is because Herbert was heavily inspired by this movie. The fact that this movie exists is baffling to me. I can't imagine a project like this being funded today... A four hour movie?! Unbelievable.
21. The ending is so strange; I really liked it. It's weird seeing Lawrence die in the first few minutes of the movie. I don't know how to feel about it but I suppose he died the way he lived?
22. Although I've read the whole messiah story in Dune already, it's still a refreshing plot arc. I feel empty and betrayed when Lawrence yells "No Prisoners!!" and massacres a much of turks. Still afterwards, he does try to unit the Arabs to no avail. It's all very ambiguous.
23. The black dot coming from the horizon is truly one of the most memorable scenes in cinema. I only wish I saw this in theaters instead of on TV. I'm glad to add this to my cinema corpus. It's certainly had a strong influence on Dune and other desert movies.
24. Quicksand (cue NPR episode about it) is so damn weird.
25. This movie is carried by Lawrence and later on his friendship with Sherif Ali. What fantastic performances.
26. One weird thing that happened several times in this movie was how characters changed their minds so quickly that I couldn't follow. There was once where Auda is convinced to help Lawrence and another time when Lawrence is convinced by the general to push to Damascus. Is this just what old movies were like? It was very offputting to my modern tastes.
27. Top Gun: Maverick - 8.5/10. As far as sequels go, this was one of the best executed that I've seen. It calls to the previous movie just enough while still being able to stand alone. The way the previous characters progressed (Mav and Ice) were very realistic. Mav has not progressed nearly as far as his peers because he enjoys flying. They did a good job of sticking true to Mav's character. Even though it's been 36 years, it's still the same character.

• We learned that the footage in the air was all practical effects and this is totally noticable. It reminds me of the Elon Musk montage of rocket explosions, there really is nothing like the real thing. There are so many memorable scenes of jets flying through an environment. The other benefit of practical effects is the actors are genuinely experiencing the Gs in flight.
• The action sequences are a treat to watch. The non-action scenes are basically filler. I thought the ending and the ending song were really off. The movie should have ended when they landed the plane on the carrier but they needed to wrap up the romance plotline. I would compare this to a sports movie like Remember the Titans or the Fighter where the movie should end when the team wins.
• The new characters were decent. I liked the girl pilot the most. Jon Hamm doesn't have a significant role besides being "the bureauacracy" and it wasn't memorable at all. Miles Teller was decent, but didn't have a standout performance either. These actors feel replacable.
• The sound mixing is fantastic. This is one of those movies that's so much better in theaters. You can feel the engine sounds.
• They very clearly didn't want to identify the enemy in the movie, which was probably a smart move.

1. Chinatown - 8.5/10. This movies makes the audience focus on the details the same way a private investigator would. We ask the same questions that Gittes does. There's a big reveal that Mrs. Mulwray's secret is her sister/daughter. This reminded me of Mr. Robot where it's revealed that Elliot was abused as a child. I'm not sure why but I'm not a huge fan of this stuff. I wanted Chinatown to be about the water and some conspiracy behind it. In Mr. Robot, I wanted it to be about hacking and society, not "people problems". The movie is super tight. There is no scene that's wasted and each one reveals some clue that is used in the future. My favorite example is when Mulwray bangs her head on the steering wheel and that turns out to be the way she dies. Towards the end, I got a sense that the ending was going to be like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. That is, we had a fairly slow plot with unrelated characters that all clashes in a huge action packed climax where a lot of people die. That's not far from what actually happened. The pacing was a little slow at times. There were a lot of characters and honestly they looked pretty similar. I also couldn't figure out all the character's motivations. I felt a lot of paranoia over who were the good and bad guys. I was confused for a large part of the movie. I'm pretty satisfied with the plot - Gittes reveals that he used be a cop that didn't give a shit. He develops a sense of compassion and he has some sense of morality that drives him to solve the case (he doesn't seem to care about the money). He ultimately fails at saving the person he was trying to protect and that causes him to rebound back to his old self - "As little as possible." <There was a posthoc bump from 8- to 8.5 after watching the Maltese Falcon>
2. The Lobster - 8.5/10. Very interesting idea, dialogue was super unsettling. Great directing to make such a creepy tone. A surprisingly good movie.
3. Synecdoche NY - 8.5/10.
4. Schindler's List (rewatch) - 8.5/10. Feel like I matured a bit since my first watching a couple years ago. The score and Itzhak was really well done.
5. Mamma Mia - 8.5/10. This musical is fantastic because it doesn't take itself too seriously. It just looks like everyone is having a fun time. Lay All Your Love On Me for example - you have all these men dressed in scuba gear doing a dumb dance. What is not to love? Meryl Streep had such an incredible performance wow. I can't believe how juvenille she acts. The music is also extremely catchy. Looking forward to watching the sequel.
6. Brokeback Mountain - 8/10. This movie takes the cute scenes that are part of a normal romance movie and invents the gay equivalent. That was so well done. Gyllenhaal (Jack fucking Twist) has another great performance and I'm interested in watching more movies that he stars in. Was a shock when he died. <This movie has been a gatekeeper for 8's. This is actually a pretty high bar because I remember BBM very fondly>
7. Knives Out - 8/10. Every time I watch a whodunit, I think to myself - there's only so many ways this can go down... one of the characters we know did it. But still, the twist caught me off guard (the entire suicide/homicide deal). It's definitely leagues ahead of Clue. A lot more interesting and acting that wasn't trying to be comical. The detective had a weird accent but was cast pretty good. Had some Frank Underwood vibes. IIRC, this was Chris Evan's first role since Captain America and he nailed it. Refreshing that he plays an asshole in this movie. Marta was okay, nothing spectacular. The fake knife scene "in for a penny, in for a pound scene" was a great touch. Overall, a very engaging movie, would recommend to anyone who is into mystery movies, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.
8. Come From Away - 8/10. Really engaging story! Normally, I find musical plots to be simple and contrived but this one had a sense of gravity. This feels like an 8 across the board - the music, actors, characters were all great.
9. Goodfellas - 8/10. This movie made me realize I like mob movies. The cast was very similar to The Irishman. I know the plot was going to be similar but I will eat that shit up. The start of the movie is iconic. Highlight is how any times "busting my balls" was said.
10. Dune - 8/10. Wooooooomp. The sound design and cinematography was heavily inspired by Arrival (yes, they are the same director). Being a two-parter is annoying, I really want to learn more about the world of Dune; I'll probably read the book before the second movie. It also feels like all the characters that aren't in part 2 needed to die for casting reasons. In the last third of the movie, we pretty much see everyone die. I was pretty sad that Duncan and the Judge of Change didn't make it. In contrast, Zendaya was barely in this movie and the trailers are a gigantic bait. The sand worms was super cool. The rest of the cinematography was great although the pacing was at times, slow. Looking forward to part 2 and Villeneuve joins the list of directors (among Tarantino, Nolan) who's movies I will always see in theaters.
11. Lost in Translation - 8/10.
12. The Aviator - 8/10. This movie felt like the precessor to "The Wolf of Wallstreet". I think three hour movies are usually pretty hard to sit through but Scorsese makes it work. Katherine Hepburn actor was fantastic, the accent was very interesting. Favorite lines in the movie were "hot dog" and "golly". Lots of memorable scenes - the lightbulbs crunching on the red carpet, Hughes' film projected onto his body, Hughes meets the Hepburns. Ben Wyatt and Galvin Belson have cameos in the movie.
13. Breakfast at Tiffany's - 8/10. I wanted to see this movie after watching the opening scene. I like that the movie has a theme (Moon River), that is played throughout. Audrey Hepburn had a standout performance. The first movie I watched from her was Roman Holiday - her character in both movies are quite similar. I want to see some more of her work. These aren't my words but there was a great job capturing the bohemian lifestyle of New York in the time. This is a pretty good rom com.
14. Avengers: Endgame - 8/10
15. The Greatest Showman - 8/10. This movie was part of an experiment - what happens if I listen to a movie before watching it? I listened to the movie audio of the Greatest Showman over the course of the previous week. Doing a listen through the movie definitely attributed to the high rating. Results were interesting! The film was much more colorful than I expected, and I paid a lot more attention to it. Charity and the daughters had a color palette that was different from the rest of the cast. I saw the movie poster so while listening, I imagined that everything in the movie was blue. I did not expect the Lettie to be a bearded woman, although I did think that she was black. I only knew Hugh Jackman was the movie (but a friend spoiled that Zac Efron and Zendaya were in this movie). The movie gives a lot of screen time Zendaya but especially in the beginning, it's just scenes of her looking at Zac so I missed this entire romantic subplot. This is why even after knowing Zendaya was in the movie, I had no idea which character she was. Prior to watching the movie, I really wanted to see the Rewrite the Stars scene because I liked that song the most. I decided to wait and it was so worth it! That scene is fucking amazing!! The song is so much more powerful with the visuals. I have a similar feeling about Million Dreams to a lesser extent. Jenny was more attractive in the movie than in my head. The plot is relatively simple, but I've come to expect that of musicals. It's reeeeeeeeally similar to Hamilton - Barnum is Hamilton; Charity is Eliza; Jenny is Angelica; the main character's ambition causes him to lose sight of what is truly important.
16. Joker - 8/10. The high rating is for how the film made me feel. At first, I didn't really want to see the film, but after reading the accompanying culture war, I decided it would be worth. I enjoyed watching this in the theater to gauge other people's. The film can be uncomfortable to watch at times. Some online communities think the media is dumb for describing this film as a banner call for incels. I disagree... The protagonist is a loner who ultimately gains admiration for violence. Perhaps the difference between this and something like American Psycho is it's a lot more personable. I found myself enjoying this movie a lot more than Taxi Driver. The broad strokes of both plots are relatively similar. Maybe it's the little Batman universe plot points throughout the movie that make it more exciting (I love Nolan's Batman movies.) The plot is not particularly strong. There are lots of scenes that disturb my suspension of belief. I normally don't like movies with a weak plot, but the "effect" of the film makes up for it. I recall leaving the theater feeling really shitty. The laughs that Arthur makes were fucking creepy, really well done. Parts of the Gotham City setting feel out of place. To my understanding, it's suppose to represent NYC sometime in the 20th century. Some of the problems in Gotham (high crime rate) don't exist today. Of course, there's income inequality which is relevant. I love this quote from Todd Phillips: "I literally described to Joaquin at one point in those three months as like, ‘Look at this as a way to sneak a real movie in the studio system under the guise of a comic book film’…. It was literally like ‘Let’s make a real movie with a real budget and we’ll call it f–ing Joker’." More interesting discussion on /r/theMotte
17. Good Will Hunting (rewatch) - 8/10. (Only because rewatch)
18. The Departed (rewatch) - 8/10.
19. Coherence - 8/10. (1/17/20: bumped down a bit)
20. Devil Wears Prada (rewatch) - 8/10.
21. Drive (second watch) - 8/10. In my original watch, I put this movie in the F tier. What changed? First, I watched it at 2x speed. There are a lot of moments in the movie that feel super slow. The driver doesn't talk much and there are times were we just watch the LA street view. Being able to speed through those parts made it more enjoyable. My tastes have changed a bit since I last saw this movie. There's a lot of violence and gore in this movie that originally felt distasteful, but after watching films like The Hateful Eight, OUATH, and Parasite I've grown more accustom to it. The violence in this film serves an important purpose. After watching films like Casablana, Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, and Citizen Kane, the "character study of a male anti-hero" trope is more interesting (this is the noir element right?). Chinatown might be the closest example, where a character has a dark and mysterious past and has a choice between light and darkness. In Drive, we see that take place in the elevator, where he stomps on the guys face one too many times and it's clear he can't live a normal life no matter how he tries. That reddit post that talked about Drive being the "ultimate male fantasy" added some much needed context for me. I liked the soundtrack. The intro with Nightcall felt right. The outro might be one of my favorite song outros - the chorus repeats "A real human being, a real hero" as the Driver drives away. Ryan Gosling does a great job. He doesn't have too much dialogue but he really nails the coolness of his character. A lot of his acting in this movie is just shots of his face.
22. Sicario - 8/10. Over the past year or so, I've started to enjoy action films a lot more (Ford v Ferrari was a movie that "indoctrinated" me). Consequentially, I don't care about how "realistic" the movie is. Sicario has some really great action sequences and it is intense. I like scenes where there's a squad doing some kind of covert operation (like the final action sequence in Tenet). This review captures the tone of the movie best so I don't really have anything better to contribute.
23. Little Women - 8/10. I love the editing in this movie. Sometimes it was hard to follow when the scene was taking place but I have no complaints. For the most part, the flashbacks were the most fun and enjoyable scenes. Laurie is such a player. He basically involves himself with every girl except Beth. Between this movie and Midsommar, Florence Pugh is becoming one of my favorite actresses. She just has such great facial expressions. The rest of the cast is equally great - Meril Streep and Laura Dern were fantastic. Emma Watson was good too. I wish the plot of this movie didn't treat Jo as the main character and instead gave every girl their own arc (except for Beth, I didn't really care much for her). I wanted to see more of Amy's and Meg's stories and less of Jo's. The plot of this movie is somewhat similar to the Help where the protagonist is a woman trying to make it as a writer. Then the book that's published becomes the movie. I'm not too satisfied with Laurie marrying Amy and that whole part where Jo realizes she's in love with Laurie but it's too late. I also didn't like the writing montages. I don't know what could have been done differently, but I didn't like the ending very much but I do appreciate that they show the alternative timelines where Beth doesn't die and Jo gets with Friedrich.
24. Enemy - 8/10. I was fairly confused after watching this film, but the "Explained" videos bumped up the rating considerably. In fact, the "explained" videos create a much more interesting movie since they highlight the important scenes. I've been listening to Yeezus and Dissect's season on the album and this movie felt very similar, thematically. The main character resolves to be faithful until the "twist" ending which indicates that he might be back to his old ways - a tale as old as time. The ending was pretty damn scary. The two women were cast so similarly that I thought they were the same person. This confused me for a large part of the movie. I think I might have enjoyed watching this movie for a second time rather than watching an explained video.
25. Isle of Dogs - 8/10. Some meta points about rating: This movie is a baseline 8. The plot is pretty standard and feels like it could be a Disney movie. The cinematography and art style sets it apart and bumps it to an 8. This is basically the peak of a Wes Anderson film for me. The style is enjoyable every once in a while, but the plot of the film isn't complex enough for me to rate any higher. I absolutely loved all the art in this movie. In particular, the being where they tell the old legends. It's all very Shakespearian. The female characters were all super lame, they act exclusively as love interests for the protagonists. I appreciate my dog a little more.
26. The Super Mario Bros. Movie - 8/10. What can I say? I'm a sucker for this kind of franchise bait. It was really cool to see all these games I've played as a kid get brought to the screen. I particularly liked the mario karting. The plot is passable and it really isn't draw of the movie anyway.
27. Knives Out: Glass Onion - 8/10. This was a highly anticipated sequel and it didn't quite live up to my expectations. To be fair, it's difficult to create a sequel to a whodunit. Marta was a much more sympathetic character than Andi. The first movie felt grounded while this one felt fantastical. The Klear plot point was too outlandish. I want a Knives Out that's more grounded in reality with some regular people. I'm still watching the next one but my expectations have been tempered.
28. Burn After Reading - 8/10. A late review so I don't remember too many details. I will say that the Cohen brothers have a very specific type of movie (I remembered that I had watched Hail Caesar before) and it definitely has its place. It's funny, witty, and a bit chaotic. I'll say that Brad Pitt has by far the best performance. I was disappointed that he died simply because he wouldn't have anymore on screen time. The entire movie feels like a build up to the final punchline delivered by JK Simmons - it's well worth it. I'd throw this movie in the same bin as RRR - it opens me up to a genre of film (Bollywood and the Cohen bros) and I definitely have an appetite for more... maybe at the rate of one per year. I certainly don't want to binge the entire Cohen corpus but I'm willing to watch more.
29. Spiderman: Far From Home - 7.5/10. This movie far exceeded my expectations and part of the reason for the high rating is because the theater made the experience much better. I liked the meta comments about super heros, the world building of the post Iron Man death world. The fight sequence that ends with Spiderman being hit by the train was one of the coolest I've seen, I love when everything goes quiet. In general, Spiderman has to be my favorite action movie franchise. I like that Spiderman fights with some strategy since he is not the strongest being.
30. Remember the Titans - 7.5/10. Left side! Strong side! This was all you could ask for in a sports movie. Compelling characters all around and a coach that reminded me of my high school cross country coach. Certainly not as good the Fighter, which stands as my favorite sports movie but this was very good. Wasn't a huge fan of the little girls though, that took me out of my immersion. Almost exactly as good as Jaws
31. Rush - 7.5/10. I'm gonna take this movie at face value and assume that everything actually happened. What an amazing story - I can see why Nikki is so revered in F1. The women in this movie are basically treated like objects which is foreshadowed in beginning with "men love women, but even more than that, men love cars". I loved Nikki's mindset and attitude. I enjoyed listening to his accent.
32. Jaws - 7.5/10. I don't really have high expectations for the classic popular films like Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, etc. I'm not exactly sure why. When it comes to old films, I definitely perfer more crtically acclaimed ones than super popular. Jaws definitely exceeded my expectations here. I thought the third act was super exciting. The shark felt very real. Overall, very decent movie.

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C tier - OK Movies 5-7/10

7s are okay. There are a lot of movies that are passable. It was enjoyable to watch, but nothing special about it. I find that many things I watch in the theater are 7s because they are decent and watching in theaters can give the movie a little boost. Lots of franchise stuff like Toy Story, Alaadin or Avengers would end up here. I wouldn't enthusiastically rewatch this movies. 6s are 5s with some redeeming qualities. Mad Max has great set design but the plot was poor so it wasn't that engaging to watch. TGTBTU has a spectacular end but is otherwise long and uninteresting. Snowpiercer is ruined by its ending. Harold and Kumar is funny but Bad 5s are barely enjoyable films. After the movie, I think to myself "by the slightest margin, that was more enjoyable than being on reddit or youtube for the past two hours"

1. Jojo Rabbit - 7.5/10. Cute movie that reminded me of the Grand Budapest Hotel. I was doing work in parallel so I didn't pay full attention to the movie. Most of the characters were charming. ScarJo was very good. The Nazi guy was cool and his end was very sad. Jojo was well acted and his fat friend came in at funny times. I wasn't a huge fan of the Jewish girl.
2. Amadeus - 7.5/10. This movie would have been rated higher if it was more historically accurate. I feel a new connection to the classical music I used to play. Seeing Mozart materialized as a person on a page rather than a name really changes how I perceive the music. I wonder if it's really possible for one composer to take a look at the music and instantly see the genius. Could an author do the same? Not sure, seems like the author needs to read the entire novel or at least a chapter. I'm not sure I could judge a codebase by a small sample either. The ending was super abrupt. I did not at all expect Mozart to die then and there, even though I knew there were only 15 minutes left to the movie. Mozart's laugh was interesting. I liked the actor, but because the movie was not historically accurate, I can't trust anything really. Stanzi is such a nagger, oh my lord. All she does this entire movie is nag Mozart. The actress looked super young but she was 20 when she was married. The entire story is pretty sad though. Imagine devoting yourself to god only to be completely worse than the degenerate Mozart xD. The last line "I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint." is beautiful.
3. The Tree of Life - 7.1/10. Watched about half of this movie with Horace before we went to sleep. I guess it's an ambitious film, but honestly it's really confusing. The premise is simple enough - an adult reflecting on his memories to figure out why he is who he is. I didn't understand that until reading explainations of the film. A lot of confusing sequences (the Big Bang up until dinosaurs etc.) Ending of the movie was meh. Brad Pitt did a nice job as a stern father and they built up his character well. I did like how they depicted the life of a surburban kid's upbringing, it does remind me of mine, and I recognize that that is hard to do.
4. Spiderman: into the Spiderverse - 7+/10. It's a cute movie. Stylistically, it's interesting. The animation is well done and the soundtrack deserves recognition but the plot wasn't particularly interesting. Perhaps I would have been more engaged if I knew the villains, rather Octo lady was just a villain like any other and didn't particularly pull me in. The anime, noir, and porky spider men were cool. A lot of this movie is good, but because I didn't enjoy it that much, it remains in C tier.
5. The Woman King - 7+/10. Pretty good. The two lead actresses had great performances. I honestly would not have minded leaving the movie when the last battle was going to start. It feels very predictable how the movie is going to end and I've seen the story enough times to not be enthralled. They win the battle, she finds out she is the Kwisatz Haderach, her mentor dies, she gets saved, they reconcile. The pacing was a bit slow - coming out of the theaters, it felt like a long movie and I found myself checking the time midway through. As with all historical movies, I really take them at face value. That is, I assume that they are being historical accurate. Turns out that the tribe actually was pro-slavery so that entire plot point is a bit revisionist. In that light, I would have preferred if this was a completely ficticious instead. Initially, I found the African accents to be off-putting. In particular, there are scenes that reference the langauge ("When you are in my place, speak our language"), which, in universe, is English. I thought the mini love story between the main character and Malik was a bit contrived and unnecessary. The action scenes were boring. I did really enjoy the training arc though; I'm a sucker for those. It sounds like I'm more negative about this movie than I am. It was a flatly decent movie. Nothing special but entertaining enough. Also, isn't the title just clickbait? I don't really understand what it meant at the end when she is crowned the Woman King. She's not actually a King at all... Feels like woke bait to me.
6. A Star is Born - 7/10. I watched this movie for the plot, so I actually skipped all the scenes where they scene, even the last one, (except for Shallow). I'm glad he died at the end, made sense.
7. Crazy, Stupid, Love - 7/10. (1/17/20: I'm not sure why this is was a 6/10, I bumped it up)
8. The King's Speech - 7/10.
9. Rashomon - 7/10. When watching foreign films, there's always a sensation that something is "off" in the acting/cinematography/directing. This is doubly true for Rashomon since it's also a very old movie. It helped to learn later on that Kurosawa wanted the actors to behave as if they were in a silent film. The best example of this is the bandito's laughs, why were they so weird? The movie starts out very slow - two minutes of the woodcutter walking through the woods seemed unnecessary. I guess it's justified given we learn that he lied about his story at the end. I think that the story could have been told in 30-40 minutes to the same effect. It is natural for the first quarter of the film to be slow though, since we haven't heard any controversy in the story yet. I found myself believing each story at face value when it happened, even though we were previously fed a contradiction. A reddit comment pointed out how in each story, the actors behave in the same style as the story teller - in the woodcutter's version, the husband and bandito are afraid because the woodcutter is afraid. I thought that was really cool. As far as old movies go, this one was decent but nothing spectacular. I'm glad I watched it but it's not something I would ever recommend. Props to the actress playing the priestess that told the husband's story, that was super creepy.
10. Primer - 7/10.
11. The Thing (1982) - 7/10.
12. Scott Pilgrim v. The World - 7/10. (1/17/20: Slight post-hoc bump because of the music and some memorable scenes)
13. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - 7/10. Marvel movies are almost always 7/10. Not amazing but pretty good. I enjoyed the first two action scenes (bus + side of building). The last fight scene felt so small. It's the end of the world, yet each army has <100 people... The dragon CGI was very cool well done. I thought the poet was such a weird addition to the cast, I wonder why he was written in. The BMW product placement was crazy - the entire sequence to Ta Lo was basically an ad.
14. Detective Pikachu - 7?/10. Love seening Pokemon, but didn't add this so I forgot a lot of the movie.
15. A Few Good Men - 7/10. Part of the reason I watched this movie is because on /r/moviesuggestions, it was cited as a movie with a competent villain. I don't completely agree. One of the main attractions for this movie was Jack Nicholson's monologue. It didn't really live up to the hype for me. Tom Cruise is a baller. Military law is weird.
16. Avengers, Infinity War - 7/10 Exactly the movie I expected. Was much more enjoyable watching on Netflix because I could skip through scenes that I found boring. Otherwise, this would be a 5/10
17. Judas and the Black Messiah - 7/10 I liked the introduction to the protagonist. We were the only people in the theater watching this movie - it's nice to have a giant screen but I wish there were subtitles because it was difficult to fully understand what Chairman Fred was saying (great job by the actor though). I was pretty hungry and my mind was distracted by getting a reservation at Superhot so I wasn't completely engrossed in the movie. Most of it wasn't super memorable, with the exception of the ending, and 'Judas' deciding to take the money. I thought the framing of the movie was very good. There were a lot of parallels to Judas in JCS. The movie gave me a moral quandry. Every faction in this movie is a shade of grey. It's hard for me to identify anyone as a good guy. The rat actor did a great job of making it unclear if he was actually into the BPP.
18. Too Big to Fail - 7/10. This movie completes the "2008 crash cinematic universe" (along with the Big Short and Margin Call.) I loved the casting of Henry Paulson - he had a standout performance. The other performances were decent. There's no way to feel 'good' about this movie given the subject matter. It all feels very distant now that over 10 years have passed. This is definitely the weakest of three films.
19. Annie Hall (rewatch) - 7/10. I saw this the first time after watching two other movies that day. Horace and I ended up stopping halfway. I was inspired to watch this movie because I saw a video about 500 Days of Summer and this movie was mentioned as the rom-com of its generation. Through that lense, the movie was a lot more interesting. I watched this at 1.5x. Overall, a bit more appreciation for the film but nothing spectacular.
20. Rocky (rewatch) - 7/10. Rocky Balboa is an interesting movie protagonist. I don't know any other non-comedy movie that has such a dumb main character. It's like the opposite of the quippy Marvel personalities like Iron Man which is refreshing. I had basically forgotten most of the movie by this rewatch. Really there are two memorable scenes - the montage and the fight. Nowadays, a training montage feels cliche but it's cool to see the original. It's similar to how I felt seeing the noir tropes in the Maltese Falcon. I was pretty disappointed with the pacing of the fight. I really wanted it to last longer but we see one or two rounds and then it cuts to round 14, 15 etc. It doesn't feel like Rocky is "Going the Distance". Besides that, the rest of the movie is surprisingly slow. We get a sense of Rocky's character and we see him walk a lot. There's practically no action. I'm not sure how I'm suppose to feel about Creed. Is he suppose to be unlikeable because he's cocky? Am I suppose to dislike him because he's all business and doesn't seem to care about the actual boxing?
21. American Psycho - 7/10.
22. Contagion - 7/10.
23. Borat - 7/10. I like that SBC is willing to do some demeaning things in the name of comedy. There are small things like washing his face in the toliet, and that entire naked wrestling scene... I really didn't think I would see something like that "on TV". There was one review that I saw prior to the movie that I still agree with - this movie is supppose to show the bigotry of rural America. Notably, the gun shop owner and the car salesman that nod to killing Jews. But another interpretation is that these people are just being polite when interacting with what they think is a vastly different culture. The dinner scene comes to mind, where Borat poops in the bag and brings it to the table and she tries to teach him how to use the toliet. It's funny that the only "real people" that were good sports about the movie were the Jewish couple that hosted the BNB.
24. Limitless - 7/10. Retroactively bumped from 5 -> 7. The scenes where he takes the pill really do look like what it feels to be in a higher cognition.
25. Toy Story 4 - 7/10. I watched the first Toy Story, and probably the 2nd and 3rd although I don't remember. It was okay. I made a joke about organ harvesting when Woody went into that creepy shop, and it turned out that's actually what happened. I don't like how in kids movies, the bad guy turns good. Bo Peep is so awesome. I love competence.
26. Prisoners - 7/10. Decent movie but a bit slow in the middle. We paused the movie throughout to try to piece togetehr the details but weren't able to. I was expecting a "Enemy/Arrival-esque" twist but it never came. Most of the actors performed really well - Jake G. in particular. Hugh Jackman was ok. This post gave me a lot more insight into the religious symbolism.
27. Death on the Nile - 7/10. Katie and I watched this movie on a flight to Denver. It far exceeded my expectations and made me an instant fan of the series. I watched Murder on the Orient Express and will certainly watch the future installments. This felt like the perfect movie for a flight. It's entertaining but doesn't require much concentration to follow the plot. The reveal at the end of the whodunits always take me for a surprise. I enjoy Poirot's character. Also, I didn't get to finish the all the way to the end, but I read the plot summary on wikipedia.
28. Aladdin - 7/10. Exceeded my expectations. I liked the songs (Speechless was hilarious in the movie but I like the song, Prince Ali, Friend Like Me). The plot in the beginning with the lamp was rushed.
29. Ghost in the Shell - 7/10. I watched this movie sped up as well. I didn't completely understand the politics going on between the different sectors and that might be because of the speed. I thought there were some interesting philosophical questions.
30. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - 7/10. So much anticipation for this movie but the plot moved so slowly. Margot Robbie barely did anything and had almost no dialogue. Leaving the theater, my rating was a lot lower, but after looking at the reviews, I understood the movie better: the Manson family + murders, Margot Robbie had a great performance. The ending was pretty fun to watch and Brad Pitt's character was soooo badass.
31. Moneyball - 6.9/10. I will watch every single movie made from a Michael Lewis book. I also think I enjoy sport movies. I did not like the scenes of the GM and his daughter.
32. Before Sunrise - 6.5/10. The characters weren't very likable separately and as a couple. I love this scene though - two people pretending to talk to a friend to express how they truly feel about each other. I also find myself wanting to finish the triology. I do like the idea of watching a couple over the years, similar to Jim and Pam in the Office. Also, the girl is fucking scary. I keep thinking she's gonna kill him.
33. The Royal Tenenbaums - 6.5/10. Movie felt slow and a bit random. It was not narrative driven. Margot is an interesting character with an iconic sense of fashion that alone makes this movie worth watching. My favorite scene was the "Hey Jude" playing over their introduction as characters.
34. Mad Max: Fury Road - 6/10.
35. Tenet - 6/10. The opening was awesome - super exciting, lots of quick shots, lots of confusion, large scale, very Nolanesque. I remember thinking to myself here (and during the airplane crash scene) that I'm so glad Nolan is at the level where he can have multi hundred million dollar budgets. I want him to keep doing this stuff. I enjoyed the exposition where the Protagonist goes from city to city and learns more about Tenet. The Protagonist was just so cool. I think my opinion of action films has changed considerably. In the past, I didn't really find the appeal, but now I see it as an spectacle. Overall, I found the plot incredibly confusing. It also didn't help that I couldn't hear much of the dialogue. When we first learned about the inverse bullet, I could grasp the concepts. When they had the first fight in the freeport, I could follow what the fight was going to be like. After that point, I was just lost... As with the other films from Nolan (in particular, Interstellar) I'm glad I saw this in theaters. It makes a world of difference to have an insane about of sounding being blasted at you. This viewing felt similar to if I had watched Inception - confused as hell on the way out and would need an explanation from Youtube. That being said, I will watch every Nolan film that comes out in theaters. It's great that he produces big budget, non-franchise films!
36. The Good the Bad and the Ugly - 6/10. So long, not good; Edit 3/8: Music is good, bump up 2 ranks!
37. American Beauty - 6/10. I loved the beginning. If the entire movie were Lester monologuing, I would have enjoyed it immensely. I found all the characters to be deplorable (in a good way). Directing style is strange, uses a lot of playbacks. I can see why the movie is iconic. Lester has a nice redemption arc.
38. Snowpiercer - 6/10. This is my second time watching the movie. My impressions are about the same - I think the ending sucks and it totally blotches the movie. Why do they destroy the train and kill all of humanity? Why does the main character condone this? Personally, I would have preferred if he became the conductor as planned.
39. Murder on the Orient Express - 6/10. This was weaker than Death on the Nile but still quite entertaining. We also watched the original film but it was far worse. Much lower budget - the train scenes were magnificent in the modern version and dinky in the original. Hercules sounded like Mario in the original. Although the resolution, that everyone was equally involved was interesting, it certainly made the plot feel weird until the reveal. Compared to Nile, it felt too coincidental that everyone on the train had some connection to the previous murder. I also wish that they gave a little more context like revealing the Armstrong letter early in the movie instead of in the middle. That would help the plot feel more coherent (just like the first scene at the dance floor in Nile). At times, the dialogue can feel cringy. I assume that it's dialogue that's directly from the book. Still, I'm a fan of the series and I'm looking forward to the third installment.
40. Les Miserables - 6/10. What an insane performance by Anne Hathaway, definitely oscar worthy. I saw that scene many times on Youtube before watching the movie but it was still amazing. The second best performance is Borat opening number with Sweeney Todd woman (wow it's basically the same character no?) The rest of the movie was mediocre. Act 3 was probably the most boring. I just didn't like any of the new characters that were introduced. This is one of those movies where 2:30 really feels like that long. I found myself checking the time because there were a lot of subplots that I just frankly wasn't interested in. The music is pretty good, although I like other recordings more than the movie ones. At this point, I've noticed a common pattern with almost all the musicals I watch - I almost never like it right after watching, and it grows on me because of the music, over time. It happened a lot sooner with this than JCS, but yeah I like the album. The plot and all though... not great, not great at all.
41. Promising Young Woman - 6/10. What a fucking ending! Seeing "act 5" come up was so satisfying. Of the movies in recent memory, this ending was second only to Midsommar. Bo Burnham was so good in this movie, his comedy style really shines and he is hilarious in all the scenes he's in. A lot of it reminds me of his standup routines and I'm looking forward to watching more movies with him. Overall, the pacing of this movie felt really weird to me. After she and Bo got together for real and had a love montage, I wondered "is the movie over?" There were some scenes that felt a bit surreal. I'm guessing this was a stylistic choice but I'm not a huge fan of odd scenes in a realistic people movie. I thought the music was a little over the top. There were a couple scenes with loud music playing over a shot Cassie. The movie felt a little slow in the middle because I couldn't understand which direction it was going in. Overall, it was decent and the ending made up for the flaws in the middle.
42. Casino Royale - 6/10. Prior to watching this movie, I watched the poker scenes on Youtube (I spoiled the movie by reading the plot summary at some point when watching those videos). I was surprised at how much of the movie takes place at the poker table, I thought it was limited to a single scene. I didn't expect the movie to end on a "cliffhanger". There isn't a real ending. I didn't enjoy the action scenes so I skipped most of them. I did like Vesper though :)
43. Planes, Trains and Automobiles - 6/10. Not an amazing movie, but it was Thanksgiving, so you watch a Thanksgiving movie. Plot is obviously quite predictable. Nothing extraordinary or worth noting.
44. There Will Be Blood (rewatch, originally unfinished) - 6/10. I originally watched this movie a couple years ago with Horace and couldn't get through it. I finally decided to finish this movie by myself. The intro is definitely quite slow. There's no dialogue for ~20 minutes but it's cool - you see Daniel Plainview's origin story. I liked the scenes where he pitches oil contracts to the farmers. I don't care so much about the themes of family. I was most interested in the power struggle between Eli and Daniel. It feels very skewed in Daniels direction because Eli looks like a kid for so much of the movie. In that vein, there are two great scenes in this movie - the first is Eli baptizing Daniel and forcing him to confess that he abandoned his son. The second is the final scene, where Daniel makes Eli admit that he is a fraud. The ending was a banger but the other two hours aren't on par. I watched this movie at a slightly faster speed so it didn't feel as slow. Overall, I would not recommend.
45. Crazy Rich Asians - 6/10. The texting sequence in the opening scene was really cool. I remember when texting was first introduced in Season 1 of House of Cards. The way it's shown has really progressed in a good way. The wedding and the water was also really cool. Besides that, it feels like any other rom com, except with Asian people. I did not like the Majong scene at all.
46. Harold and Kumar go to White Castle - 6/10. This is difficult to rate because it's the first movie that's "so bad, it's good". It's a funny movie with more character development than 1917.
47. Roma - 6/10. Very pretty film but the plot is underwhelming. At the start, I had a hard time figuring out who I was following. There were a bunch of major movie events that I didn't quite understand (biggest example being the student protest; I didn't know it was a protest until I read about it). I don't feel particularly drawn towards any of the characters except the dog. There's probably a lot of symbolism and stuff to read into but I just don't feel it for this movie. What does the scene with the guy singing over the wildfire mean?? no idea. The only one I thought that I "got" was when her alcohol spilled on New Years - bye bye baby. Not enough going on and uninteresting characters which means it's really just the cinematography pulling things together in this movie.
48. Clue (1985) - 6/10. Really does feel like board game that's turned into the movie. The acting felt a little off and there's a very cartoonish tone even though the movie is set in real life. The ending redeemed this movie a lot. It was fun to see all the different alternate endings. I certainly enjoy mystery movies though. It's fun to start with a bunch of unknowns. The last line to the movie is pretty great - "I'm going to go home and sleep with my wife".
49. 1917 - 6/10. There were a few cool shots like the waterfall scene. I felt scammed when the pudgy boy died thirty minutes into the movie. Overall, the one-shot limit made the movie feel super slow. Espeically in the beginning where all they do is walk. The ending was also quite lackluster. He gets a "fuck-off" and has a "emotional" moment with the brother. I wasn't particularly moved. After this movie and Dunkirk, I think it's possible that I just don't like war movies very much. WW1 also seems less interesting to me than WW2.
50. Molly's Game - 6/10. I enjoyed the scenes with the poker games. I found all the scenes between Molly and the lawyer to be particularly bad. There was something about the dialogue that made me think "this is no Tarantino". I'm not sure what the message at the end of the movie was and overall it wasn't super coherent. Basically felt like the movie was saying "look at how crazy this story is". I also thought the father psychiatrist stuff was weird... I mean Freud is completely debunked is there anyone who actually believes that shit? It seems like the psychiatrist equivalent to hackers writing code in movies.
51. On the Basis of Sex - 6/10. It was interesting to learn more about her life - I never hear anyone talk about her husband. Overall, it was a decent movie, but I think in this case, real life is so remarkable that any dramafication isn't necessary. I thought the last scene where real RBG walks up is cool. I thought the final court case was way too dramatic and unrealistic. I don't beleive that she just spoke for a few minutes without being interrupted for questions. Or that they extended her time so she could finish her points. I wish they leaned more heavily on the transcript. Interesting to see that she got appointed with a 96-3 vote. Very different from Supreme Court nominees today (ACB was very recent.)
52. The Fountain - 6/10. Cool visuals and good soundtrack, but otherwise a budget Cloud Atlas
53. The Two Popes - 6/10. The movie was cute but a bit cliche. The popes felt one dimensional. Classic leader who doesn't want to lead trope.
54. The Maltese Falcon - 5.5/10. This is really a review of Chinatown. The beginnings of both movies are incredibly similar. The femme fatale comes in and hires our protagonist. She is mysterious and arouses suspicion We are introduced to a character who dies a few scenes later. Our PI falls in love with the femme fatale. Okay, if this is the first "noir film", then a lot of progress was made in 30 years. In Chinatown, we follow the PI and see the same clues that he sees. In Falcon, the clues are mainly revealed by people - there's nothing for me to figure out at any point and I feel like a spectator. The romance in the movie feels so strange/forced. I didn't really understand that they were in love with each other; I thought Sam was just a womanizer. They profess their love for each other at the end, where the fuck did that come from?? Now I see the spin on the femme fatale from Chinatown. Sam has some really clever scenes where he "Harvey Spectre"'s everyone else. Not a good film in isolation, but it made me appreciate Chinatown much more.
55. Frozen 2 - 5.5/10. Honestly, I'll watch any Frozen sequel, I like the characters (Anna) enough. Character development kinda sucked though. Olaf is in some philosophical phase that doesn't make too much sense to me. He keeps talking about change... who is the target audience here? The kids that watched Frozen that are older now? There was a decent amount of expoisition to say that everyone is a few years older now (Oh I see the first movie came out six years ago so the Frozen universe is in real time.) That's actually pretty cool. I think something similar goes in in HTTYD and the Before Trilogy and it works out well. Anna... I really wish she got some powers. There was some plot points about her being powerless so I thought she would have some kind of magic. Instead she becomes the queen. Honestly that was a big twist for me - should she really be queen...? Kristoff has the stupidest arc, he's basically a blubbering idiot the entire movie. I couldn't believe what I was watching when I saw his solo song. It felt so out of place in Frozen. Elsa makes negative progress as a person? We dedicated an entire movie to her not shutting others out and she does it again (not in a redeeming way either, she does it towards the end!) Plot wasn't great either. Who is the person singing? There was so much anticipation for it but I left that scene confused. Was it their dead mother? Was it Elsa the entire time? Why did Elsa freeze? What happened to the parents? This was a man vs nature type movie which is unique, I suppose. The film itself is also a lot darker than the first, both in color and mood. As an aside, the Into the Unknown melody is basically this. The music was not amazing. The mysterious melody did get stuck in my head though and it seems like "Into the Unknown" is suppose to be the flagship song (I'm basing this off the fact that Weezer and Panic! did covers of this song). I feel kinda snubbed with "Show Yourself" though. Who was it? The theme just doesn't have the same appeal as "Let it Go". The animation was absolutely amazing. I remember the Elsa running into the ocean scene from the trailer. The way that scene ends with her taming the horse is awesome. I enjoyed every scene with the water horse. The chameleon was ok as well but I wish it actually did something. The callbacks to Frozen 1 were good too - Olaf summarizing the plot and Elsa listening to herself sing Let it Go. This time around, I notice that Frozen has a top notch cast! Idina (Elsa) played Elphaba, Kristen Bell(Anna)... Well Eleanor from the Good Place which is top notch to me, Johnathan Groff (Kristoff) is King George in Hamilton and Jon Gadd (Olaf) is Elder Cunningham in Book of Mormon. These are big names in the musical world!
56. The Wandering Earth - 5.5/10. Ambitious movie and I like end of the world movies which is why it's this high. However, I don't like the changing of plans. Feels Deus Ex Machina
57. Dunkirk - 5.5/10. 5 means the movie was barely enjoyable and that's how I felt about this film. Generally, don't like war movies. The beginning of the movie is very slow.
58. I Am Legend - 5/10. Pretty shallow movie. I thought Dissect talked about this movie when it was referenced in Kendrick Lamar (and maybe Kanye West?) so I wanted to understand the references better. For some reason, I remembered this movie having a weird alien ending and that there was some divine intervention at the end. I don't know how I got there. I guess there is a bit of God in the movie. Will Smith did a good job, it's just not that interesting of a movie.
59. Inside Man - 5/10. I was looking forward to a classic heist movie like Ocean's 11. Instead, this is more of a hostage situation than a bank robbery. The biggest flaw in this movie is how little it made me care for the auxiliary characters because they were so bland. I didn't care about the bank president nor Jodi Foster enough to give a damn about the B plot (more like the central plot). The most interesting part of the movie is the actual hostage negotiation. I am taking this at face value, but I didn't realize how involved these negoatiations are. The ending also left be deeply unsatisfied. Sure, all the loose ends are wrapped up but being a Nazi supporter is just not a juicy plot! I don't care if the CEO gets exposed or not. I also hate how Jodi's character gets set up as this big brain power broker only to fail in the end. I was hoping for some twist ending to turn the movie around, but it really ended on a sputter.
60. The Help - 5/10. Viola and Octavia were great. This movie did feel a bit like a "white savior" though.
61. Hell or High Water - 5/10. This movie just felt so cookie cuter... The Sheriff who's a few weeks out of retirement, some bank robbers, in the West. Basically, this movie was nothing special. Also, I'm done watching films about the West. I don't have a particular complaint, but I guess the guns get old for me. (For reference, I've watched the Good the Bad, and the Ugly, There Will Be Blood, No Country For Old Men, probably some others that I'm forgetting... and I've had enough of this genre, it is NOT for me)
62. Being John Malkovich - 5/10. ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
63. Alien - 5/10. This movie was barely enjoyable. This is incredibly disappointing to me because it's quite highly rated from many sources. The CGI is outdated so the film wasn't scary at all. The monster doesn't move in a lifelike way (a modern day remake could make the difference) and the explosion of the main ship was laughable. The characters go out one by one and get picked off by the Alien. I was a little annoyed that the Alien grew into it's full form after a few hours leaving Kane's stomach. I also had a hard time processing what happened in all of the action scenes. The only reason this is not <4/10 is because there was a nice twist that the science officer is a robot. This explained all of his questionable actions, but adds a plothole of why he is a robot but the rest of the crew is human.
64. Game Night - 5/10. The opening sequence of the movie is a pleasure to watch. The "one shot" action scene in the house with the fight club is well done. I credit these to David Fincher. The homage to Pulp Fiction was awesome! The the middle and end were too actiony and not as entertaining. The plot and dialogue are very "bad moviesque". This movie feels like a breath of fresh air after watching things from the 1940's for the past few weeks. Besides all this positives, everything else was pretty bad. It certainly wasn't as funny as I'd want a comedy to be. The trailer is quite good which is a huge bait.
65. Chef - 5/10. Movie is mediocre but the food scenes are great. There's a ton of star power but it's just not that exciting of a movie.
66. Taxi Driver 5/10 - Ending ?????? -> okay (1/17/20 update: I think that just like Drive, I would enjoy this more on rewatch)
67. Sweeny Todd 5/10 - This movie was not what I expected at all, there was so so much killing. The first few minutes felt really really slow and I didn't care much about the characters. I thought the movie was the most interesting when they had the barber/pie shop combo going in full. The killing spree at the end was meh. This movie reminded me a lot of Oldboy. I think the general trope is a main who is sucked into revenge and ends up in the dumps because of it. Some of the songs were good though.
68. Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) 5/10 - Horace sent me the eponymous song, which convinced me to watch the film. This was definitely the best part of the movie but unfortunately, it happened at the end and the rest of the movie didn't live up to the same standard. I'm not super familiar with Christianity, so maybe I'm missing some of the context, but I didn't follow the plot very well. In particular, after Judas betrayed Christ to the cruxifiction, I didn't know why there was so much plot - I thought it would just happen faster. There was a song about Christ from Mary that I thought was bland and didn't feel like it should be part of the musical. I wish there was more comedy. I think the middle of the movie was relatively boring. I wanted to see more of the 1973 juxtaposition with 4BC. All of Judas's songs were fantastic and he had a great performance. I will need to learn a bit more about the Bible stories to understand the plot a bit better.
69. In the Heights - 5/10. This was a pretty disappointing movie, although I didn't have high expectations going in. Musically, it's similar to Hamilton but not in a good way. I feel like the style of Hamilton works well in a historical fiction, because you can imagine that the speach/rap "actually happened". The gravity of the situation felt less compelling than "building a nation". Overall, it really just doesn't work out. All the minor characters have their own song but they are all pretty forgettable. None of the songs really stood out to me. "Do the Right Thing" is thematically similar to "In the Heights". There's a bunch of loosely related subnarratives, it's hot in NY during the summer. But the former movie actually builds up to an interesting climax. What is the climax of In the Heights? It's so forgettable that I don't remember anymore.
70. Our Time - 5-/10. This certainly is no Citizen Kane. The entire movie could have been 30 minute short film. It could have even been 10 minutes. It was two hours but it felt super slow. The two movies I watched before this were Chinatown and Casablanca. Both movies have good "narrative economy" in contrast to this film, which has many unnecessary scenes. I don't usually like foreign films and this one follows that trend. The directing style is different from Hollywood - fast forwarding and flashbacks feel weird to me. I also don't like movies about high school, although the Chinese HS setting interesting. I read a review about Casablanca that said "two cliches make us laugh, a hundred cliches move us". Why doesn't that apply to this movie? It's no fun watching Lin being an idiot. I hate incompetent female characters. The most notable scene was when all the boys crowded around the one guy with the book. Close second is Chinese Highschool Spartacus/Dead Poet's Society. Overall, it was barely enjoyable - the lowest possible rating that isn't F tier.
71. Circle - 5-/10. this was barely worth watching

---

F tier - did not enjoy <4/10

These movies suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

1. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - 4/10. This is the worst marvel movie I've seen and also the worst movie I've seen in theaters in recent memory. Maybe I only like marvel movies that are origin stories.

• This multiverse business is so dumb. Rick and Morty did it well. EEAAO did it well. The problem with Marvel though, is that you care about these specific characters. Any connection I have to these characters is lost if there are infinite Dr. Stranges, Ironmen, etc. The movie is incoherent and feels like it needed 6 more months in post-production. The best example that comes to mind is in the fight between the two Dr. Stranges, there is a musical motif. This motif is present in the subsequent fights but completely absent for the first 2/3rds of the movie... That's so sloppy!
• I think that this movie is suppose to be like a bad horror movie? I don't really like the genre so this didn't really appeal to me. Really, it includes the worst parts of horror. We get jump scares but never feel scared so what's the point?
• Scarlet Witch's dialogue is laughable. Now that I've had a few days to digest, I recall that in pretty much every sentence, she's saying exactly the same thing. "You wouldn't understand what it's like to be a mother"; "I'm doing it for my boys." It's pretty much those two sentences remixed for two hours. The actress did a good job though.
• I don't like how many new characters are introduced in this movie. I think about a movie like Captain America - there's Steve, Carter, the scientist and the bad guy. It's a tight cast. I have problems with fodder characters that are named and have dialogue. The 7 superheros from the alternative universe are a farce. Is this suppose to be satire? Why would you introduce 7 superheros only to have them die? It's honestly unnerving to see superheros die. The only difference is the superheros we care about have plot armor so they survive anything. I also can't take John Krasinski seriously when he's talking about "the future of the multiverse". Similar to the cast, the "things" that are introduced are equally dumb. Oh the bad book got destroyed but it's actually a copy? And the real one isn't even a book? Oh there's a book of good that we need to find? This is fine if the whole plot was focused on these two items but it's not. The book of good gets destroyed so it didn't even do anything. And how does this have to do with any of the other themes?
• America is a stupid name for a character. I mean she doesn't even have American origins. In the one memory we see of her past, she's on some alien planet. I didn't like the character nor the actor.
• In general, I don't give a hoot about these Marvel characters. To me, this feels like the B-list. Ok, I know that Ironman and Captain America are gone, but those are the guys I care about. I hate the way Dr. Strange fights. His powers aren't well defined in the same way that IM, Capt A, Spiderman are so everything he does feels like bullshit.
• What was Dr. Strange's arc? I couldn't really understand what the resolution was. Is it that acknowledges that he's not happy? Or that he has understood (though the multiverse) that he and Christine are not meant to be together and he can move on? This is a weak resolution and doesn't resonate with me at all.

1. Uncut Gems - 4/10. Why is this considered a good movie? I feel like not a lot happens... He gets the opal, he gives the opal away, he tries to get it back and fails a lot. Then he gets it back. It auctions for less money so he bets it off. Then he dies. A lot of screentime is just screaming - "fuck you, you cocksucker, fuck you pal, you fucking bit me. What the fuck did you say? ..." Idina Menzel's performance was good and it was interesting to see her in a different setting. The family scene was the best. Besides that, I didn't find the plot very engaging. Obviously you want him to get the opal back, but that feels like such a cheap way to get you hooked on the movie. It's like clickbate. Adam Sandler's character is super sleazy and I didn't care for him at all. I didn't care that he was failing or that he succeeded or even that he died. Let's talk about the ending - is the fact that he gets shot suppose to be some big wow? It feels random to me. I imagine that the people who enjoy this movie would say "wow what a poignant ending". I don't see that at all. It was sudden and it happened, but it was nothing special. This movie sucked.
2. Annette - 4/10. This one is a little too arthouse for me.
3. Clueless - 4/10. I watched this at 1.5x-2x speed which admitted made the overall experience worse. I also watched the movie over two days about a week apart. I was just a very plain movie that didn't feel incredibly moving. I suspect I may be missing some context for the movies at the time and this movie might be a play on the genre (similar to the Maltese Falcon), but it was lost on me. I didn't get why it was such a classic. This movie sucked
4. The Pursuit of Happyness - 4/10. This movie had a lot of potential. I thought the beginning was great and after 15 minutes, I wanted to see more. I thought Jaiden was cute but that's about it for the positives. The whole plot with the wife was random. I didn't understand why she left and why she left the son. It's very strange for a character to be a part of the first part of the movie and just leave. I was looking forward to an underdog story about hard work and achievement and becoming a stockbroker but I didn't get that. You don't really see him at work, and it's only in montages. His meeting the pension fund CEO was a bit random too. The 'I title this part of my life _____' also seemed a bit drab. Maybe the problem is the movie adhered to the real life story too much (I didn't know going in that this was 'based on a real story'). Maybe the story itself was not interesting anyway. I had higher expectations from the beginning, but this suuuucked
5. Annie Hall - 4/10.
6. The Lion King - 4/10. I'm not a huge fan of this movie in the first place and the live action remake was even worse. The characters don't show any emotion through their faces and animals talking in english is weirder when they look realistic. Kid Simba was cocky and annoying. Adolescent Simba was totally nihilistic and still annoying. The animation was pretty cool, looked like animal planet. Yeah, I also just find the story stupid, not really inspiring.
7. Unbreakable - 4/10. Pacing was slow. They spent so much time convincing us that the main character was unbreakable. We GET IT, he is unbreakable!!! The twist ending is not satisfying at all. This was recommended as a movie where the villain is competent. Unclear if that was the case. Horace picked this movie and it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked.
8. Steve Jobs - 4/10. This movie suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. I have this gripe dramatizations because the question "did this really happen?" takes me out of the immersion. The movie is about Steve's relationship with everyone else. The movie is divided into three acts. It's VERY convenient that each relationship features a bit of development and every time, it's in the 30 minutes right before the presentation. Yeah I don't buy it. I think for this topic, a documentary would be far more interesting. Also, Jobs is an asshole and has no redeeming qualities. I hoped that he would acknowledge the Apple II in the last presentation, but nope. Perhaps I identify more with Woz because I am an engineer. Some scenes are pretty cool but overall, the film was not enjoyable at all.
9. There Will Be Blood (unfinished) - 3/10.
10. Mulholland Drive - 3/10. Horace framed this movie as the "ultimate feminine fantasy". Apparently it's also considered the best film of the 21st century. Second to Brokeback Mountain, I was quite excited to watch this movie. And it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. The most enjoyable part was teasing Qian with Horace about what "ultimate feminine fantasy" was referring to. She got mad whenever we said it, so we started passing a packet of M&Ms to codify what we meant. This movie was incredibly confusing. At least half the scenes don't make sense. I lost interest around halfway into the film and suddenly the main actors play a new character with a different name. It took a 20 minute video to explain the movie and I wasn't satisfied afterwards. The actor for Betty/Diane was superb. The audition scene was also excellent.
11. Drive - 0+/10.
12. O Brother Where Art Thou? - 0/10. I wasn't in the mood for a high brow movie and also I was feeling tired. About a 1/3 of the way through, I read the rest of the plot and wasn't particularly interested so I stopped watching. Might have enjoyed the movie on a different day.
13. My Neighbor Totoro (unfinished) 0/10 - I guess I don't really like kids movies. I didn't really get the conflict and didn't feel compelled to finish the movie so it suuuuuuuucked.
14. Into the Woods (unfinished) 0/10
15. Under The Skin (unfinished) 0/10 - This movie suuuuuuuuuucked!
16. Field of Dreams (unfinished) 0/10 - Are you fucking kidding me? I can't imagine how a movie can be salvaged after that beginning. "If you build it, he will come". Woah is that the baseball gods speaking? The plot is just so weird compared to the tone of the movie which is set in reality. This movie fucking sucked.

Qian

Real Comedies

1. Tropic Thunder
2. 22 Jump Street
3. 21 Jump Street
4. Hot Fuzz
5. Anchorman
6. Mean Girls

Not Comedies >:(

1. This is Spinal Tap
2. Airplane
3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
4. The Big Lebowski
5. In Bruges

Kevin

S (10/10)

1. Harry Met Sally: One of the first movies that I saw where I never really felt bored, didn't see big flaws in any part of the movie, and at multiple moments in the film was incredibly impressed with the framing of the shots. The way that it's cut with interviews with couples threw me off a bit first, but ended up being really charming as well.
2. Parasite: As a movie, I think it should be enjoyed without much knowledge about it going in. Beyond being captivating from start to finish, I found Parasite to showcase great set design and cinematography, especially in the scene in the middle of the movie with the coughing housekeeper. For a decent chunk of the movie, I forgot that I was watching a foreign film, but knowledge of Korean culture certainly seems to elevate it further. Another great movie. Unsure about whether to put this above or below Parasite, so I'll put it below for now. I will probably watch Snowpiercer and The Host because of it.

A (9/10)

1. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri: I thought this was going to be a really artsy movie that I wouldn't enjoy, but I thought that the characters were really fascinating.
2. Good Will Hunting
3. Silence of the Lambs
4. Casablanca: If you're thinking that this movie doesn't hold up, that it is boring because it is in black and white, or that the tropes introduced in this movie would have long-become cliche, don't worry. I found this movie refreshingly relatable outside of a few moments where Ilsa transforms into a helpless plot point instead of a person. This movie could have been a 10/10 but there were a few too many moments with an awkward timing or non-sequitor, perhaps because of the age of the film. Zaibo made the movie watching experience worse since he knew a few details going into it and was waiting for certain lines to be said. Spoiler ahead: I also was positively surprised that despite the happy ending, it was still bittersweet for Rick. Casablanca is effective at telling a love story without it being only a love story.
5. Miss Americana

B (8/10)

1. The Aviator: I don't know how to feel about this movie. I enjoyed each scene, but the movie starts to drag on due to its length. Also, it was kind of neat but it was also about some guy I don't really care about.
2. Avengers: End Game: Actually kind of similar to The Aviator, in that nothing in particular was terrible but it dragged on. Also, time travel sucks and moments felt like pandering. Not just the women charging scene, which was really dumb, but also lots of moments where Captain America did cool things and various power level imbalances (why didn't Captain Marvel do more?).
3. Coherence
4. Chinatown: My movie rankings are not based on historical impact or cultural significance, which would move Chinatown up the list. While I enjoyed the movie's numerous trope reversals and the continual references to what could have been throwaway moments in the first act, I thought that the movie demanded too much of the viewer. Part of the problem may have come from simply confusing the characters with each other. In terms of technical aspects such as lighting or Nicholson and Huston's performances, the movie was impressive as well. I could see this movie rising in my rankings as I think about it more, but ultimately it was somewhat disappointing compared to expectations.
5. Ghost in the Shell: I wish I could have enjoyed this movie more. I'm certain that if I followed it up with delving deeper into the lore of the various other adaptations that I would better appreciate the subtleties of this film, but on its own it's fairly confusing. Still pretty enjoyable for an animated film from over twenty years ago.
6. The Greatest Showman
7. Primer
8. Before Sunrise: A slow start, but then the last hour sped by and I forgot I was even watching a movie. I might have been biased by Zaibo's review but I did find that I desperately wanted to start the next movie to learn out more.
9. Scott Pilgram v. The World
10. Brokeback Mountain
11. Spider Man: Far From Home

C (7/10)

1. American Psycho
2. The Maltese Falcon: We watched this for insight into Chinatown. Yet when the movie ended, I felt more confused than ever. Why was there barely anything shown on screen? Almost everyone gets shot off screen, there are a ton of points left unexplained, and the romance plots begged to be better fleshed out. In particular, why was Archer's wife even relevant after we determine that Spade didn't kill Archer? One example of what is wrong with this film is that there was no indication that the love between Spade and O'Shaughnessy was real, which perhaps was the point. However, the constant lying and twists meant that I couldn't take anything for face value, making me not both investing any effort into trying to figure out what was really happening. After all, why bother when nothing is real and everyone is lying anyway? There were a number of shots which now simply feel dated and juvenile, most noticeably the obvious upward angle when Spade and Gutman are speaking at Gutman's apartment to make Gutman appear more imposing. It may have been more effective if it had been less obvious, used for less time, or even if Spade and Gutman weren't clearly the same height. For a famous movie, I expected the film to feel memorable.
3. Children of Men: I put this movie up here not because of a good plot but mostly out of respect for the cinematography on display.
4. Mad Max: Fury Road - This is the last good movie on the list; there's a heavy drop-off. Surprisingly good, funny, and more memorable than it has any right to be, perhaps because of memability. A rare C movie I'd watch again.

D (6/10)

1. Captain Marvel
2. Our times: Unlike the movies below this one, it was actually kind of enjoyable to watch, with the knowledge that it was going to be cliche as all hell and full of cheesy, awkward tropes. Any movie that I would consider watching again or enjoyed means that it shouldn't be an F in my mind. With that in mind, why does it deserve an D? I understand that it is a very different style, yet by the end of it the excessive narration and flashbacks were far too frustrating. At one point, the main male character had monologued for two or three minutes, followed by another taped monologue for another few minutes. It also felt like the director wanted see how many times he could go for a shot that was supposed to be a shocking reveal, yet have everyone watching say "I knew it" when they see it. There's no need to revisit the same scene three or four times, with the same slow pans. This isn't the Clue movie. Still, there is some charm in the hopeless romanticism and over-the-top dramatics, and if you're looking for something where you can turn your head off and yell about the movie and talk over it without missing anything, this might be the movie for you.

F (1-5/10)

1. Drive: 4/10
2. American Beauty: 4/10
3. Unbreakable: 2/10
4. Limitless: 2/10. I went into this movie hoping it would be a fun, indulgent exploration of what it would be like to be addicted to a drug that made you brilliant. Instead, I got a childless, mindless exploration of what it would be like being addicted to a drug that made you godlike, and then wasting it, and then somehow ending up on top of the world without ever deserving it.
5. Under The Skin: 0/10. We left this movie unfinished. Thank goodness, because it was pretty unwatchable. It felt like someone went to film school for a year, thought "hey, I can do this," and then dropped a fat load of money to blackmail Scarlett Johansson into actng in it without learning plot, characters, or when do use certain shots. This is the only one unfinished because of the movie being terrible, and also totally felt like a waste of time.

**Isay

S tier - 10/10, masterpiece

1. none yet

A tier - 8-9/10, excellent

1. none yet

B tier - 7/10, very good

1. none yet

C tier - 5-6/10, solid/good, worth my time

1. none yet

D tier - 4/10, bad, not worth my time, but had a signficantly large number of decently enjoyable moments

1. none yet

F tier - 1-3/10, very bad, definitely not worth my time

1. American Psycho: "Although it's first on the list, I give this at most a three out of ten." Decent premise of a neurotic businessman who can't contain his neuroticism and goes on secret killing rampages as a result. Mostly kind of a pointless movie about how society at large doesn't care about the wrongdoing of the upper class as long as surrounding individuals can maintain their bottom line and make money. Pretty banal message. A bit gory at times, overall not particularly necessary. 3/10.
2. Unbreakable: At first, I thought this was a bit of a cute movie about a medically fragile man, "Mr. Glass", looking to find a superhero by becoming a real-life villain perpetrating various homicidal crimes. Overall the pacing was far too slow, almost sluggish at times. Small twist at the end. Overall, decent but unremarkable. 3/10.

Garbage tier - 0/10, refuse in the form of a film

1. Children of Men: Frenzied, melodramatic pile of garbage. This film is about a post-apocalyptic society that has become infertile. During the movie, a woman is found to be pregnant, and the plot is about making sure she safely delivers the baby while trying to keep her out of harms way in a dangerous world. The overall premise sounds alright, but the driving chaotic pace of catastrophic events felt rather unnecessary and annoying. Additionally, the director seems to have a penchant for melodrama. The main character's wife dies, best friend dies, and eventually the main character himself dies. These events are crafted to happen in a very dramatic heart-pulling fashion, but overdone to the point of being pathetically mawkish. My best guess is that the chaos and melodrama were the director's best attempt to disguise the lack of any kind of substantive content. Overall this movie is a heaping pile of garbage, filled with consecutive chains of melodramatic cliches, a disorganized, anarchic plot line, and lack of any meaningful subject matter. 0/10.

Ozer

Tbh I was probably playing Monkey Ball during most of these :(

Queue

1. Kill Bill
2. Full Metal Jacket
3. Tree of Life (Horace never did and never will finish this movie lol)
4. Akira
5. Dallas Buyer's Club (Zaibo watched this solo :'( )
6. The Graduate
7. Movies you should go in with out trailers or descriptions
8. There Will Be Blood
9. Zaibo kinda wants to watch Taxi Driver again
10. Gravity
11. A Clockwork Orange
12. Devil's Advocate
13. Ameli
14. Carlisle
15. Happiness
16. WallStreet
17. Bird Box

10/14

1. The Third Man
2. Fruitvale station