51 – The Last Exorcism (2010)

Surprising meld of various genres – horror, fauxumentary, family drama – all of which are done quite well. This movie likely benefited from low expectations as I had barely heard of it and just was in the mood for a horror flick when I put it on, but this was much better than….well, than it had to be.

50 – Wind River (2017)

Jeremy Renner can act? Who knew! Not that he’s *bad* as Hawkeye or anything, but he’s not exactly stretched in the role. This isn’t the feel good movie of 2017 but I was truly rooting for these characters not just to solve the mystery but to heal themselves.

49 – El Camino (49)

Completely unnecessary and ultimately doesn’t disclose anything about Jesse that we didn’t already know, but I was so very happy to revisit these characters again. Bonus for the in-depth examination of Todd’s complete amorality.

48 – Us (2019)

Lupita Nyong’o so deserved an Oscar nomination for her captivating two-character performance, and Us is spooky as hell, but it doesn’t fully hold together – what’s with the Hands-Across-America thing again? Still, whatever Jordan Peele wants to make next, I’m in.

47 – Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017)

Intense and captivating, hyper-realistic ultra-violence. Extremely well shot, edited, and choreographed. Try not to think about the underlying politics, which are at least less prominent than some of Zahler’s other movies.

46 – The Invitation (2015)

Slooooowwwww burn mystery. Exactly what is happening here, and why? Is this as bad as it seems or just uncomfortable? The less you know coming in the better, so I’m not going to say anything further.

45 – Unsane (2018)

Fantastic tense psychological drama/thriller. Great performances and interesting direction from Soderbergh, as always. It would’ve been several categories higher if they had kept the question open longer about whether Foy’s character was truly crazy, but the action stuff and the realistic level of “why will nobody believe her?” stress in the second half was a decent runner-up payoff.

Up Next: Not Great Art, But Tons of Fun (8)

58 – House of the Witch (2017)

Precisely 1.43 standard deviations above your replacement-level haunted house movie. Good witch without too much explanation, really great ending.

57 – Eli (2019)

I really don’t want to say much about this but it’s really considerably better than it looks just from the description. Recommended.

56 – In Bruges (2008)

Much better in its contemplative moments than the action ones – thankfully most of the movie is spent as a meditation on life as the main characters wait in purgatory to see their fate.

55 – Jumanji (Welcome to the Jungle) (2017)

Fantastic cast plus a script and direction that somehow kept everything from being too over the top (keeping Kevin Hart *and* Jack Black from overacting? Impressive). The apparently stereotypical high school kids are even kept in the middle between the Breakfast Club traditional archetypes and the 21 Jump Street “kids are diverse and accepting now.” A perfect exemplar of a movie that could’ve made lots of money with much less effort but they actually bothered making it a quality show.

54 – Layer Cake (2004)

Who knew that the best Shane Black English gangster movie wouldn’t even be made by Shane Black? Daniel Craig makes a much better charismatic mob enforcer than he does a Bond (although he’s a perfectly fine Bond) and the snappy script has all the good parts of a movie of this kind (sharp dialogue, fully realized characters, calm in the midst of what should be terrifying situations) without the trap of making it all too convoluted to be comprehensible.

53 – Paranormal Activity (2007)

Probably unfair to rank this so many years after its release, having seen so many derivative movies, but the groundbreaking gimmick used here is still incredibly effective and creepy. No interest in the sequels that apparently delve into the mythology – the demon is much more effective without knowing anything about it, just like our poor, doomed, heroes.

52 – The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015)

Oh A24, please keep producing and distributing twisted psychological horror movies. This is a slow-burn mystery that could’ve been spooky as a straightforward horror film but is so much better as an unfolding mystery.

Up Next: Better Than It Had to Be, Part III

Slightly over halfway through the list, and we’re now into movies that I actually recommend! Huzzah! The films in this group can be somewhat formulaic but have that special something, whether in a more ambitious script or a special performance or whatnot, that elevates them into something more than what they needed to do to just churn out an okay picture. This is the “Hey, nice job!” of movies.

66 – The Girl With All the Gifts (2016)

I don’t normally go for zombie movies, but the philosophical underpinnings of this are excellently done and thoughtfully examined. Evolution doesn’t root for a species, after all.

65 – Sicario (2015)

The rare government action thriller that doesn’t either glorify the black-ops agents or portray them as pure villains. Del Toro’s character clearly thinks he’s doing the right thing, but so does Emily Blunt’s and since they are at cross-purposes much of the time the film evades the easy characterizations of an Olympus Has Fallen.

64 – Brittany Runs a Marathon (2019)

Warm-hearted but also taking the time to flesh out realistic characters. Much better than the typical feel-good movie of its type.

63 – As Above So Below (2014)

Mind-bendy horror with an unusual lack of reliance on CHUDs or evil demon spirits. Well paced to keep the tension up without going overboard. Good performances from a largely unknown cast helps prevent the predictability of which characters might live or die.

62 – Klaus (2019)

Turned on by familial obligation over the holidays, I had staggeringly low expectations that were quickly exceeded. Excellent voice performances by a surprisingly all-star cast, a quality script with a largely new take on the mythology, and actual character development. Yes, somehow, I am actually recommending an animated Netflix original Christmas movie. Who knew?

61 – I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House (2015)

Delightfully creepy, atmospheric ghost story that keeps you guessing as to how much is reality and how much is in the potentially slipping mind of our protagonist. I feel a little bad rating this higher than The Others given that this film clearly owes so much to its predecessor but I found the plot more compelling and the tone of this film even creepier.

60 – Head Count (2018)

The evil spirit is killing off the group one by one after being accidentally summoned by foolhardy youngsters. An ancient tried-and-true premise, but this is heightened by its take on identity as the group slowly realizes that there is an extra person in the group. Someone in two places at one. Didn’t that person leave to pick someone else up, but there they are outside instead? The movie walks a very difficult line between “things just happen because they happen, shut up” and overexplaining everything so that I didn’t feel cheated but it also wasn’t fully explained what the evil force was and what it was after.

59 – The Informant! (2009)

Great performance by Matt Damon as a man supremely convinced of his own importance despite a history of general bumbling. The plot doesn’t really hold together, but it’s fun watching the story unfold nonetheless with Damon’s fundamental sense of self slowly disintegrating.

Up Next: Better Than They Had To Be, Part II

This is the most baffling of the categories for me – I genuinely liked all of these movies! But I just can’t help but feel like I should’ve liked them *more*. Whether it’s because people whose opinions I respect all say that a movie is great when I just thought it was pretty good, or if I just can’t come up with an explanation for why these just left me a little bit flat. I preemptively accept all criticism for my failure to “get” these films.

73 Shirkers (2018)

A highly unusual first-person documentary, where the subject is the narrator and the filmmaker. In ways it’s a fascinating story, but we never really get close to the answers – why did everyone fall under this older man’s spell? Why did he run off with all the film? How did it really affect our subject? All of these things are examined somewhat, but I never got the feeling that there was anything more than a fairly superficial examination. More interesting than compelling, if that makes sense.

72 – Night Moves (2013)

Can a movie be a character study if the character being studied is completely inscrutable? I never had any idea why Eisenberg’s character did anything he did, and for that matter the same goes for Dakota Fanning’s. Interesting things happen, important questions about morality and what actions are justifiable are examined, but in the end it feels more like an academic paper than a movie.

71 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 (2011)

Boy howdy do I love the Harry Potter books. And I thought they did a good job with the first few movies. (I also owe them a debt for finally teaching me how to pronounce “Hermione.”) But ultimately the films are just…unnecessary. The books evoked everything that I needed to see already, to the point that good performances and great F/X notwithstanding, these just felt so unnecessary that I waited 8 years to even see the last one.

70 – I Remember You (2017)

Classic Iclandic horror – angry spirits (with every right to be angry), dark family secrets, tense moody atmosphere. I can’t really put my finger on anything it did wrong and I normally like this kind of thing, but this just didn’t grab me and keep my interest. The twist was interesting, if not difficult to anticipate.

69 – Shin Godzilla (2016)

Just an incredible idea – a look at the Godzilla story exclusively through the lens of Japanese governmental responses and processes. And what is presented is fascinating but ultimately bloodless. It’s difficult to keep full interest in a movie without any emotional connection to the characters, no matter how interesting the intellectual exercise.

68 – Audition (1999)

Lots to like here – good performances, especially from Eihi Shiina, a clever reversal on who exactly is trapping who and a nice raising of the stakes. But ultimately there are too many coincidences and plot holes for me to completely buy in.

67 – Parasite (2019)

I strongly suspect that I’m the low man on this one. I do appreciate that there is no right and wrong side among the characters (obviously the “bad” is the economic / social system in place). But this is ultimately just a big allegory with too many stretches to be believable as a story outside of that. It’s interesting, it makes some good points, it just didn’t pull me in.

Up Next: Better Than They Had To Be (22)

79 – Coherence (2013)

Nice little SciFi morality play. Not nearly as twisty as it was reputed, but perhaps I’m more encoded for such things since one of my favorite movies is Primer. Good ending though and of course I’m always happy to see Nicholas Brendan working. Seriously, he’s a better actor than a lot of other guys in his demographic who keep getting jobs…

78 – Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

There is a cap to how good a movie like this can be, and this pretty much hits it – the platonic ideal of the “Attack Against the President” flick. (Independence Day is a whole different and better thing.) But this is not-too-goofy fun, Gerard Butler is a much much better version of Russell Crowe, and everyone has a good time blowing stuff up real good.

77 – Villains (2019)

I’m just not even going to try to describe this. A great cast elevates a fantastically strange script, although I kept wishing that Tim Olyphant was playing the Jeffrey Donovan role – I’m still not entirely sure what Donovan was going for with his performance but Olyphant’s slow-burn cool would’ve been perfect. Yes, I think I’m a casting director now. Shut up.

76 – Hotel Artemis (2018)

Less than the sum of its parts – lots of fun stuff, good fight scenes, Jeff Goldblum as the ruthless mob boss that he probably is in real life, great chemistry between the non-Jodie Foster leads. But you can just feel how hard they’re trying to build this into a Hotel Artemis Cinematic Universe. Would’ve been better as a more self-contained adventure.

75 Touch of Evil (1958)

I suck and get a zero.

Look, it’s clearly not fair to judge a 60-year-old groundbreaking masterpiece by contemporary standards, but the pacing is slow, Orson Welles’s acting was…woof…and, you know, Charlton Heston is not, in fact, Mexican.

I’m not such a heathen that I didn’t enjoy it, and the opening tracking shot is pretty great, but for my oldies I’ll take some snappy dialogue like The Philadelphia Story thank you very much.

74 – The Others (2001)

Rated this high for the consistent atmosphere and tone that is a perfect match for the story. But the “mystery” is far too obvious for me to put it any higher.

Up Next: I Liked It, But I Feel Like I Should’ve Liked It More (7)

85 – Triangle (2009)

Interesting thriller with SciFi touches. The idea is much, much better than the execution but it’s still a solid watch. Depressing as hell ending – the worst case scenario of Groundhog Day situations.

84 – I Am Mother (2019)

The Big Secret is pretty obvious, although the lengths to which Mother will go in the end are pretty surprising. Rose Byrne gives an excellent voice performance – maternal, comforting, but with a hing of the (ahem) iron fist lurking behind it.

83 – Insidious (2010)

Perfectly acceptable example of the run of “scary demon” horror movies that followed Paranormal Activity. Elevated somewhat by Rose Byrne (I guess I like her generally? Who knew?) and by one of the single scariest shots I saw all year (when, in a perfectly normal daytime scene, the demon suddenly appears in a painting).

82 Harpoon (2019)

Slightly better Bad-Things-Happen-On-A-Boat-Lost-At-Sea movie than Triangle. It also features a better triangle (ha! hahaha!) than the latter, as all three actors give solid, tense performances. The director could’ve policed the tone better – the device of the omniscient narrator is completely superfluous and distracting and some things (including the ultimate ending) are strangely played for laughs. But an interesting watch nevertheless.

81 – American Gangster (2007)

Denzel is always a great watch, particularly when he’s playing someone…shall we say morally compromised. The gangster portions of the plot and pretty much anything with Denzel really pops, but the half of the film dealing with Russell Crowe’s boring narcotics task force brings the energy of the movie way down every time it changes focus to him.

80 – Them That Follow (2019)

An intimate portrait of a peculiar subculture. The problem is that the subculture in question (snake handlers) is just not sympathetic, and when a young character is going to freaking die because these nuts are withholding medicine in favor of the power of prayer, there is not an inkling of a quandary like the movie tries to set up. It’s more of a horror movie at that point.

With Walter Goggins, Olivia Coleman, and Kaitlyn Dever (from Justified and Booksmart, among other things), you know that the acting is great. I just wish it was in service of a story that was less black-and-white, or that at least acknowledged how black-and-white it really was.

Up Next: Perfectly Cromulent, Part IV (the last installment of this bloated category!)

92 – Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (2019)

Why does this film exist? It’s perfectly well done, but what was the point? No serious person doubts that Ted Bundy was a serial killer, and the movie even cops to it at the end, but until then it presents the story principally from his perspective and is dramatized as though the suspicion of him and his eventual prosecution might be horrible miscarriages of justice. Are we supposed to sympathize with freaking Ted Bundy???

91 – Aquaman (2018)

I may be the low man on this one, but I didn’t find this to be particularly fun. Yes, the war-drumming giant octopus was great, but I did not get the sense that the movie was really getting into the kookiness of, you know, Aquaman, as much as had been advertised. Better than all the other recent DC movies aside from Wonder Woman, sure, but that is a pathetically low bar.

90 – 1408 (2007)

Nice little haunted house mystery box thriller. Solid performance from Cusack, as always.

89 – First Man (2018)

I understand that the whole point is that Neil Armstrong’s stoicism and unnatural calm was what was necessary for NASA’s success, but boy does that make for a bloodless movie. Just presenting the real story is much more interesting (see Apollo 11, much much much higher on this list).

88 – In the Shadow of the Moon (2019)

One of the better Netflix Original genre movies, and I don’t mean to damn with faint praise. Unlike many of them, this makes sense, the effects are pretty good, and the acting is at a solid level. It is a pretty cheeseball story, but reasonably effective.

87 – I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore (2017)

What a weird little movie. It is jammed full of interesting fully-realized characters who to whom some very strange things happen, most without particular importance (with an obvious exception or two). The combination of believable people in unbelievable circumstances kept me from being particularly comfortable with the film as a whole, but it was far too well done to be bad. Consider this a compromise ranking.

86 – The Dark (2018)

Someone saw Let the Right One In and thought hey, I can do that! And they did pretty good! Not exactly, you know, original (yes, okay, the girl is a zombie or something instead of a vampire, bully for you). But pretty good!

Up Next: Perfectly Cromulent, Part III

It is a happy coincidence that after 1/3 of the total movies we are now getting to the bulk of the curve with the Perfectly Cromulent movies. I wouldn’t recommend any of these but if you said you saw one I’d respond “Oh, yeah, I saw that – what did you think?” without being horrified if you loved it. These were all fine.

99 – Next (2007)

They let Cage be at least somewhat weird here, but still tried to make him a somewhat conventional leading man and romantic lead. Did nobody actualy *watch* Vampire’s Kiss?? This is a better background movie than something to actually pay attention to, as you really don’t want to contemplate how his ability to see 7 seconds in the future works on a practical level (does he feel twice as old as he is? does he have trouble differentiating now from future? given that he can change the future based on what he sees, can he keep seeing the changed future over and over, adjusting each time?). But if you don’t think about it it’s perfectly fine fun.

98 – Downton Abbey (2019)

A nice extended episode of a pleasant, unchallenging show. I liked the series, I liked the movie.

97 – Malicious (2018)

Standard-issue malevolent-supernatural-entity / haunted-house fare. Nothing original or innovative but a nice example of the form.

96 – The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley (2019)

Elizabeth Holmes is a freaking sociopath who should be locked up for a long, long time. Unfortunately, this documentary is fairly surface-level as these things go, telling the basic story and giving short shrift to some of the (IMHO) most interesting details. If you want to know more about the Theranos scam (and credit to the film, I sure did after seeing it), I highly recommend the podcast The Dropout.

95 – Villmark Asylum (2015)

A solid creature feature, distinguised primarily for how very, very long it takes our victims to recognize that the abandoned asylum for the criminally insane that they are working in is, you know, pretty spooky.

94 London Has Fallen (2016)

Lots of famous landmarks blow up real good. Plot barely makes sense and the evil plan relies on a freakishly high amount of coincidences and plans that had to go just exactly right, but hey it is what it is. Did I mention that stuff got blown up real good?

93 Bird Box (2018)

I read the book a few years back and, I swear to god, it was one of the scariest things I’ve ever read. Like, turn on all the lights in the house level terrifying. When I heard they were making a movie I wondered how they could possibly translate it to the screen. And, well, my confoundment was well-placed. I think I still liked this more than most people, likely because of my great memories of the book. Probably too late for anyone who saw this to read and really enjoy / be horrified by the written version, but if by some chance you missed this on Netflix and like scary stories, check it out.

Up Next: Perfectly Cromulent, Part II

105 – The Innkeepers (2011)

Very strong idea, but the script wasn’t quite sharp enough, the acting not quite interesting enough, and the spook-ums not quite scary enough.

104 – Enemy (2013)

I believe I said something earlier about having too much trust in Jake Gyllenhaal’s projects. Weird does not necessarily equal deep. There’s a nice allegory buried in this somewhere but the movie assumes you’re on its wavelength and that you’re going to follow it wherever it goes, and that faith is not warranted.

I am also on record with no liking movies that end with “it was a spider all along” (allegorically or otherwise).

103 – Cold Case Hammarskjold (2019)

Truly fascinating story but the documentary was hampered by having the…um…peculiar director playing such a central role in all of the proceedings. The things he uncovers are almost literally unbelievable and thus could’ve really used more credibility than the film allows for. I would love a credible journalistic follow-up.

102 – The Monster (2016)

The movie tries really, really hard to be both a monster flick and a meditation on a complicated mother/daughter relationship, and unfortunately ends up not quite getting either to be particularly good.

101 – Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)

A true classic of the “Lesser than the Sum of its Parts” genre. Gyllenhaal (man, sure did see a lot of him this year didn’t I) is interesting but mostly a bunch of tics shoved together into a character. The art world parody aspect is funny but not particularly fulfilling. Plenty of good scenes but ultimately not a story that I thought was compelling or particularly interesting.

100 – Sorry to Bother You (2018)

LaKeith Stanfield gives one of the best single performances I saw last year, and this film has a great great idea at its base, but ultimately goes too far off the rails, what with the centaurs and whatnot, for me to say it worked overall. The first half on its own would’ve been rated considerably higher.

Up Next: Perfectly Cromulent (27) – the middle of the curve!

111 – Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

By all rights I should’ve loved this movie. It’s the kind of thing that was deliberately made just for me – genre mystery thriller with a post-modern twist with a strong cast and written and directed by the creator of Cabin in the Woods, for god’s sake.

Unfortunately it ends up just being a lesson on how hard it is to make a quality film, and how lucky we all are when it actually comes together. This just didn’t work – primarily a scripting issue, as there are just too many coincidences, flukes, and unexplained nonsense.

110 – The American (2010)

A meditation on the assassin as expert craftsman, this just did not land for me at all. Clooney isn’t given much to do beyond smoulder and spend long scenes silently crafting guns. He’s being hunted, but we’re not entirely sure why. (Leaving him alone after going to ground in a tiny foreign town should be more than enough to satisfy the same ends as having him killed, while obviously being much less dangerous than going after him.) The love story also felt very flat, to the point that I long assumed that she was part of a plan / setup.

109 – Drag Me to Hell (2009)

This needed to be at least 50% more camp. A very weird thing to say about a Sam Raimi movie, but the attempts at pathos and dread were difficult to take seriously in the midst of what was otherwise a fairly silly story. Also, I am very very tired of horror movies revolving around there being one person who might know what is causing the mysterious freaking thing that is happening, and they are always completely correct. I saw a lot of horror movies this year and oh my god that almost always happens. Ugh.

108 – The Perfection (2018)

By contrast to Drag Me to Hell, The Perfection really should’ve been 50% *less* camp. There is an interesting story here, particularly with the big twist that Allison Williams’s character may be crazy, but she is the “good guy” of the movie and not the villain. An attempt to look at the psychological trauma that would’ve led her to take such drastic steps would have been much more interesting than something that effectively avoided a serious conversation by making the formerly-beloved director purely and obviously just evil by the end instead of a villain that truly thought his actions were justified and making Williams just an avenging angel.

107 – A Cure for Wellness (2016)

Another movie I bad wanted to like, this ended up as a lackluster attempt at Shutter Island with incredible set design.

106 – Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018)

Notwithstanding the endless stories about acting coaches and such, I actually thought Alden Ehrenreich did pretty much as good job as possible playing a young Hand Solo. Of course, the assignment was an obvious blunder regardless – who is going to have the charisma of a young(ish) Harrison Ford, particularly while having to ape someone else’s character and style.

Still, what really did this in for me was a devastating misunderstanding of why most people love Star Wars. The original trilogy, especially A New Hope, created not just a story but a galaxy. There was a sense that anything was not only possible but was likely actually happening somewhere out there in those thousands of worlds. By contrast, Solo never stops looking inward. How did Han and Chewy meet? What was it like when Lando and Han played cards for the Falcon? How did Han Solo get his name? (The latter being a question I doubt that any fan had actually asked in advance of this movie.) By far the most interesting thing in this movie is the introduction of a genuinely new and different character in L3-37….who of course has to die by the end.

Don’t get me started on the love story, or the ending.

Up Next: Misfires, Part III