Delayed Reaction: Serenity

Premise: A fisherman gets hired by his ex to kill her abusive husband.

When it comes to bad movies, confidence is the thing that really sets them apart. A lot of movies are incompetently made. The pieces barely fit together. The performances are amateurish. The filmmaker's understanding of the basics of filmmaking are suspect. Most bad movies are simply forgotten. I haven't thought about Need for Speed or Transformers: The Last Knight since I saw them. When a bad movie is made with incredible confidence, that's how you get Showgirls or The Room. These are movies that aren't just bad. They put everything that's bad about them front and center under the belief that those things are its greatest assets.

Serenity is a great bad movie. The kind people build drinking games out of or build midnight screenings for. It's so bad, that there will be people who tie themselves into knots to find a way to call it a secret masterpiece. It's not the worst movie ever made. Those are the wrong terms to think of it in. It ranks high as one of the most boldly bad movies though.

As with all of my Delayed Reactions, I'm assuming it's fair game to spoil this movie. And I will. The fatal flaw of Serenity is that it thinks its twist can sustain the movie. The twist? It's all a video game. That's supposed to excuse the underwritten storyline and the thinly constructed characters. And, in a version of this movie where the mystery really did hook me, I could see forgiving all that. I didn't care at all about what was going on though. I half-guessed the video game angle early on, then ignored the thought because that would be stupid. That meant I spend the rest of the movie looking for anything else to latch onto. In a vacuum, Matthew McConaughey's performance could've worked. In a world in which he's been doing those insane Lincoln commercials for 5 years, what he's doing in Serenity is basically parody. I was weirdly fine with Anne Hathaway who is great at being in on the joke. After people turned on her earlier in the decade, essentially for trying too hard, instead of responding with nothing but grounded roles, she's just as often owned the reputation and leaned completely into camp. I mean, Serenity, The Hustle, and Ocean's Eight are the roles of someone who has heard what you said about her.

People have tried to crack the "trapped inside a video game" formula for years. Tron just focused on the style of the world. The Matix sequels (computer, not video game) took a lot of grief because they went too deep into the idea. The last two Jumanji movies used the idea as a means to an end only. Then there's Pixels. Enough said. And there are many others. Serenity attempts to use the "uncanny valley" aspect of video games - the fact that characters in a game don't pass the Turing Test - to make a mystery thriller. It boldly misses the mark though.

And, I'm not even going to attempt to understand the logic of how McConaughey in the game comes into contact with his son in real life. I think the answer is that the boy reprogrammed the game, but the whole thing feels like the tail wagging the dog.

I appreciate how nuts this movie is. It didn't half-ass what was trying to do. I took a big swing and missed big. It's a bad movie. At least it's interestingly bad though.

Verdict: Strongly Don't Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Peterloo

Premise: A dramatization of the Peterloo Massacre.

It's December, which means it's about time for me to find as many streaming options for 2019 releases I haven't seen as possible. I went from having never heard of Peterloo to watching it in about a week, which is pretty aggressive for me. It's one of those movies that a lot of people like me are discovering right now. I even heard rumblings that it's really good. For the most part though, the only thing I knew about the movie was what I could learn from the poster. I'm into well produced historical epics, so it was worth giving a chance to.

Peterloo as a bit different than I expected. I haven't seen a Mike Leigh movie before. Perhaps that could've better prepared me. This is a chatty movie. It's 2h30m long, and the first 2 hours is just different groups of people in different rooms having long talks, prone to breaking into monologues. I'm not sure what I expected from the movie, but this wasn't it. Leigh spends an endless amount of time foregrounding the assorted political discussions of the day. I get the sense that historical accuracy is important to him, so everyone and everything looks appropriately dressed for that time period. Although, it still looked like a lot of the actors were playing dress up. Those two hours had me begging for more plot and less ideas.

The last half hour is the Peterloo Massacre. It's somehow both sensational and mundane. The actual Peterloo Massacre had 60,000 people in attendance. Leigh had hundreds of extras but still had to shoot everything strategically to mask the numbers. The massacre was both understated and exaggerated. It happens without a score or point of view. Leigh does a good job of capturing the carnage and confusion of the situation. I needed a bit more grounding though. I only barely understood how it escalated in that way or what the British Cavalry were even trying to do (Did they want the people to disperse? Were they trying to arrest them? Was the goal to maim them? Did different groups have different instructions?). Frankly, the mounted soldiers looked kind of silly swinging their swords haphazardly at people below. Maybe it's because no one looks right in that motion or because those actors didn't look comfortable swinging a sword. I think a lot of it was the fact that much of the time, the people they were swinging swords at weren't recoiling as much as I'd expect them to. 

Peterloo feels oddly bound by historical record. Mayhem isn't as cinematic as you'd think. It happens more in short bursts than in 20 minutes climactic scenes. The number of deaths at Peterloo is disputed but generally estimated around 15. In terms of cinematic mayhem, that's hard to stretch out. The film virtually checks off each death to make sure it gets all the carnage it can without being accused of exaggerating it.

I'm afraid I'm not doing a good job of making that last point. Let's try this instead. How many people died at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre? My first guess was at least a dozen. The actual answer is 7. That's a lot, but when you think about gangster movies, 7 is the body count in an opening chase scene, not a massacre. Similarly, the 15 dead in Peterloo is tragic in actuality but seems tame when put into a movie.

Finally, Peterloo felt a lot like working-class idealism porn. The members of the land-owning aristocracy were comically overplayed. I kept expecting them to have boils on their skin by the end, just to make it extra clear that they're bad people. I'm not saying that I need to be rooting for them at all, but it clashes with the rest of the movie. Everything else in the movie is striving for realism. Having mustache-twirling villains undercuts that. I would've preferred it if the movie had cut their perspective out entirely. It would've been more thematically fitting; the poor people being so ignored that the movie doesn't even let us see what the aristocracy thinks.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Top 100 Movies of the Decade

I recently posted my top 100 TV Shows of the decade, and that was really hard. Like, all-November-to-prepare hard. Now it's time for my top 100 movies list, and I'm just not going to put in that much time. Don't get me wrong. I still lost a week just to narrowing the 1200 movies down and ranking them. I've been writing about movies since 2011. I've been writing about every movie I've seen since about 2013. That means, I'll let my past self do most of the work now. Instead of trying to re-litigate my opinion of a movie, I'll just link up to my Reaction to it when I saw it. (Hopefully this will also confirm that I've gotten better at this than the days of my Drive Reaction...oof.) Instead, you'll get a brief blurb about why each movie is remarkable to me.

I'll throw out my standard caveats. The further down the list I get, the less the exact ranking matters. This is my list of favorite movies, not some foolhardy attempt to find the "objective best" movies. (I think Moonlight is a brilliantly made film, but I've watched it three times, in a variety of circumstances, and it just doesn't do anything for me. Sorry.) I have my blind spots. There are things I'd like to improve. I'd like to see more foreign films in the coming decade. I have only a handful of female filmmakers represented on the list, which is some mix of my fault and the film industry as a whole's fault. The years are surprisingly balanced in representation. 2019 is a little light for obvious reasons. 2010 by my numbers is by far the weakest overall year. Otherwise, I think it's a good mix of genres and formats. I really loved the last decade of movies.

I hope you enjoy. For my sake, if you see a movie that you think belongs on the list, let's just pretend I haven't seen it.

1. About Time 
I've seen this movie 14 times since it came out late 2013. It knocked me out the first time I saw it and buried itself deep in my heart ever since. I adore this charming, funny, sweet, sincere, thoughtful movie. 

2. Warrior 
I can't explain it. This movie revs me up every time I watch it. It's such an obvious movie, but I stand up and cheer every time Joel Edgerton gets some guy to tap out. I never would've expected a mixed-martial arts movie to win me over this entirely. 

3. Mad Max: Fury Road 
This movie rules. It's sort of the go-to "movie nerd" action movie. I'm sure some people are tired of the outpouring of love for it. I don't care. This movie ruled the first time I saw it. This movie ruled the last time I saw it. This movie will rule the next time I see it. 

4. Bridesmaids 
It's the most I've laughed watching a movie this decade. The dress-fitting scene is comedy escalation at its finest. And that ensemble. 

5. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Force Awakens 
I love Star Wars. I have no objectivity about it. I'm aware of this. The Force Awakens took everything I love about Star Wars, repackaged it for a new generation, and put together a cast that made me think they'd hacked my computer. Nothing is better than the wonder I get from a Star Wars movie when it's working. 

6. The Nice Guys 
This is the second most rewatchable movie the decade for me. I never would've guessed that Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe would be my ideal comedy duo. 

7. A Ghost Story 
This movie tapped into something in me. It's more of a meditation than a movie, and I dig it. It's this beautiful detached story about loss and the passage of time that, if I'm being honest, should be insufferably pretentious. I could watch Rooney Mara eat a pie or Casey Affleck in a ghost sheet aimlessly walk around a house for hours though. 

8. The Martian 
The most crowd-pleasing movie of the decade. You can pick apart its artistic merit all you want, but you can't tell me this movie isn't a blast. Beyond just being funny, I love how it's a movie about coming together and bringing the best out of everyone. There were a lot of depressing movies this decade. This isn't one of them. 

9. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi 
As I said, I'm a shill for Star Wars. I don't get all the hate out there for this movie. It's a Star Wars movie. It tried some things. Some worked out great. Some didn't. It has the feel and rhythms of a Star Wars movie down. It used the cast well. It's full of iconic imagery. That last hour is pure gold. What more do people want? 

10. V/H/S/2 
The doomsday cult sequence alone in this horror anthology would've been a top 20 movie this decade. This installment of the franchise went bigger and bolder and cemented itself in my horror Unholy Trinity this decade. 

11. Inception 
No working director creates more spectacle with a massive budget than Christopher Nolan*. The precision of this movie is incredible, and the magnitude of some of those sequences is something few directors can pull off. 

*Sorry James Cameron. Try taking less than a decade to make a movie. 

12. V/H/S 
Give some talented indie filmmakers a decent budget and tell them to make a found footage horror movie. It's a simple concept executed marvelously. I love the variety and success rate of all these shorts. It's an October staple for me. 
13. Ex Machina 
Trap Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander in a room for 90 minutes and let them fuck with my head for a while: Yes, please. 

14. Oculus 
It's amazing how much scarier horror movies are when they have smart protagonists. This movie gives its characters a well thought out plan and has them slowly realize that they still can't beat this malevolent force. Few horror movies have actually kept me awake at night after I saw them. This one did, and I saw it in the afternoon. 

15. Inside Out 
I'm still not over Bing Bong. Pixar is special people. Try not to take this for granted. They make movies that are actually enjoyable for people of all ages and become increasingly bittersweet the older you get. 

16. Inside Llewyn Davis 
Coen magic, man. I looooove the soundtrack for this movie. Even though Llewyn is a directionless man, I love hanging out in the world with him. 

17. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl 
When a Sundance movie hits me, it hits me hard. This movie is too cute by half, but I dig the quirky humor. Most importantly, there are a couple moments toward the end that hit me as hard as any recent movie. 

18. 21 Jump Street 
Owning a bad idea is a great comedic trick. This was Lord & Miller's formal introduction as the guys who spin gold out of the worst or toughest premises. And who would've thought that Channing Tatum would be such a gifted physical comedian*? 

*OK, probably anyone who saw Step Up. That guy can move. It's only the jump to comedy that's surprising. 

19. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol 
The biggest late surge on my list. It would barely crack the top 50 even a year ago. I've watched it twice pretty recently and it just keeps getting better. Brad Bird stages an action sequence better than any director out there outside of maybe George Miller. 

20. Nightcrawler 
Jake Gyllenhaal's chilling performance shook me. After seeing this, I left the theater shell-shocked. I imagine I feel about this movie the way everyone else seems to feel about Network. 

21. Eye in the Sky 
The way this story expands out to so many people and places then narrows back down is masterful. 

22. Free Fire 
I still get a kick out of how much I was the only person in the theater loving this movie when I saw it. Trap a bunch of big personalities in a room together. Make it a shootout and put them in fly 70s clothes. What's not to love about this? 

23. The Edge of Seventeen 
Hailee Steinfeld is too talented. This is a marvelous coming-of-age story and Woody Harrelson is an unexpectedly perfect scene partner for Steinfeld. 

24. Hugo 
Like everyone, I'm a victim of circumstance. I doubt that people who didn't see it under the same conditions as me were so affected by it. I went into this movie with no idea what it was about. I came away full of wonder. I was not expecting to like this movie so much. It's a charming love letter to cinema history and one of the best uses of 3-D. 

25. Spotlight 
I give this movie 2 Sleeves Rolled Way Up. I love a process movie. Life is plenty hard enough. No need to add insane narrative complications. Just give a group of reporters a big story and see how they break it. That's really all Spotlight is, and it's done incredibly well. 

26. Tomorrowland 
It took me a couple tries, but I've come to love this movie. Once you accept that it's not the movie that was advertised, there's a lot to love about it. I kind of love the fact that you can tell that there's a mythology-rich 300-page draft of this screenplay out there. 

27. Room (2015) 
I've rarely been as tense as I was during that big escape scene. Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson are so good in this movie. And props to the cinematographer for shooting the hell out of that small room for half the movie. 

28. Searching 
I suspect this movie will age poorly due to the reliance on technology, but I love the challenge of this movie: making a thriller told entirely from a computer screen. 

29. American Animals 
It's hard to even categorize this movie. It's part documentary, part scripted movie. It's a classic heist film but also a farce based on true events. The best thing about it is how it uses an unreliable narrator as a feature, not a bug or an easy way out. 

30. This is the End 
I have a weakness for the Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg collaborations. They are covertly savvier writers than people give them credit for, but their movies still have the "who is giving these fools money" feel that I love. This Is the End really is a blank check set on fire, and I love it. 

31. The Handmaiden 
This Korean sexy crime story is an absolute blast. Just as soon as you think you know what the movie is, it changes again. Watching this movie going in blind was one of the most rewarding movie-watching experiences of this decade. 

32. Gone Girl 
It's best to view this movie as a comedy disguised as a drama. I'm still not sure why this failed to get more Oscar attention. Was the comedy just too dark? Were people just afraid to list Tyler Perry as a supporting actor contender? The world may never know. 

33. The Witch 
I'm a huge fan of how Robert Eggers fully immerses you in a world on screen. He went a little too far for my taste with The Lighthouse, which started to feel like the tail wagging the dog, but in The Witch, it's pretty much perfect. I love a horror movie that's more concerned with getting under my skin for the next week than getting jump scares that last only a few seconds. 

34. Take This Waltz 
Michelle Williams kills in this movie, however it's my go-to movie when someone tells me Seth Rogen isn't much of an actor. What's really heartbreaking about this movie is twofold: 1) There's nothing really wrong with the marriage, but it falls apart anyway. 2) After all that mess, Williams finds herself in the same pattern as before. It's a movie I can only watch so often, because it's a gut punch. 

35. The Act of Killing 
Speaking of movies I can only watch so often. I've had my Blu-ray of this on the shelf waiting for a second viewing for quite a while now. I really can't express how jarring this documentary about the Indonesian genocide is. It's an important document of what it looks like if men aren't forced to reflect on evil things they've done. 

36. Margin Call 
This is the best movie made in response to the Great Recession. It takes an inside look at the kind of corporate structures that allowed for the crash to happen, focusing on the byzantine management ladder, and does so by turning the movie into a thriller that's set to a low boil throughout. 

37. Crazy, Stupid, Love. 
This movie gets less remarkable the more that I come to learn writer Dan Fogelman's rhythms (This Is Us, Life Itself), but I still love it. The cast is full of people I like, playing to their strengths. Mostly though, the scene in the back yard when everything comes together is one of my all-time favorite scenes. It's filled with payoff after payoff and twists I never saw coming. 

38. Whiplash 
Greatness at the expense of happiness. Not many of us choose that, but Whiplash is an excellent attempt to understand it. And, I don't care whether or not J.K. Simmons is playing a realistic teacher. It's a perfect villain performance to the very last note. 

39. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 
Tony Kebbell actually outdueled Andy Serkis in a motion capture performance, which is unexpected and awesome. 

40. The Imposter 
This documentary plays just like a crime thriller. This is an insane story. If someone made the story up and turned it into a dramatization, people would call it too implausible. 

41. La La Land 
This is an empty calories movie. Even I like to make fun of it. But, I love the two leads, I love the music, and I love the production design of the movie. It's a lovely distraction. 

42. Hell or High Water 
I still can't totally put my finger on about what I like so much about this movie. It's kind of like watching two great buddy cop movies happening at the same time, except one buddy pair is chasing the other buddy pair. It's a great reminder of how having the right characters and the right setting does most of the work for a filmmaker. 

43. Tucker & Dale Vs. Evil 
This movie was a blast seeing at a midnight screening with friends who were enjoying it just as much as I was. Cabin in the Woods is the smarter horror comedy riff on the remote log-cabin slasher premise, but I appreciate that Tucker & Dale vs. Evil isn't trying so hard to be cool about it. It's a weirdly sincere movie that's making fun of a pretty insincere premise.
 
44. The Florida Project 
The Disney World-loving part of me was worried I wouldn't like this movie about people living in squalor in Disney World's backyard. That was a stupid concern. This is an empathetic look at characters you don't tend to see in movies. Willem Dafoe does yeoman work in a supporting role that should've earned him all the awards. Brooklynn Prince does unbelievable work for a six-year-old (or a 16-year-old or a 60-year-old - It's just a great performance) 

45. What If (2014) 
This is a dumb, unremarkable RomCom, yet I've watched it many times and will watch many times in the future. Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan have terrific chemistry and Adam Driver and Mackenzie Davis have a blast as the "best friend couple". Watching it, I start to wonder if Canada just discovered RomComs 20 years after the US, which makes this sort of a modern throwback with charm to spare. 

46. The Big Sick 
Another Zoe Kazan RomCom. I don't care if I'm predictable. This is a once in a lifetime kind of story. Screenplays don't get much more personal than this and it shines through in every scene. 

47. Dunkirk 
Each time I watch it, I appreciate the convergence of the three timelines more. 

48. Pitch Perfect 
Anna Kendrick and her friends sing and act funny. What's not to like? This movie is aware of how silly it is and makes lemonade out of it. 

49. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 
The movie is more supplemental than stand-alone, but it's a damn entertaining supplement. 

50. Thoroughbreds 
Either I misread it, or that ending is one of my favorite twists of the knife in any movie. This is a nasty little dark comedy. 

51. Creed 
One of the whitest movie franchises ever got one hell of a remake with Ryan Coogler directing and Michael B. Jordan making a long overdue star turn. 

52. Neighbors 
Simple premise. Tight 97-minute runtime. Strong cast. Rose Byrne using her actual accent. Too many comedies overthink the formula. 

53. Lady Bird 
This screenplay is a marvel. The number of characters it establishes and stories it juggles is a feat that doesn't get enough appreciation because people are too busy noticing how great the cast is. 

54. 22 Jump Street 
Lord & Miller took a bad idea for a remake and made a sequel about how bad of an idea sequels are. These guys are wizards. 

55. Looper 
This movie made me believe that Joseph Gordon-Levitt could grow up to be Bruce Willis. That's some kind of accomplishment. 

56. I, Tonya 
This twisted comedy does a fantastic job of getting me to feel bad for Tonya Harding. This better not be Margot Robbie's last Oscar nomination. 

57. The Cabin in the Woods 
But seriously, how is "comedy" not included as the genre for this movie on IMDB? It's the cleverest horror comedy of its generation. It's ridiculous how poorly it continues to be pitched to audiences. 

58. Mission: Impossible - Fallout 
While Ghost Protocol is the pinnacle of action sequence staging in the franchise, Fallout holds the record for most audacious stunts. 

59. The Legend of Tarzan 
I'm not sure what it is about this movie, but I really love it. It's pulpy and sexy and fun. I love how David Yates structures it like a sequel to a movie that never existed. They gave him a blank check, and he really went for it. 

60. Blade Runner 2049 
This is a long movie. I would've been fine if it was twice as long. I loved hanging out in the beautiful cinematography of this world. 

61. Sleeping with Other People 
This is Leslye Headland's messier take on the RomCom. It turned out to be a lovely marriage of filmmaker and topic. I'm still not sure how this didn't lead to a dozen great leading roles for Alison Brie. 

62. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 
This movie surprised the hell out of me. It plays on the ubiquity of superhero movies as well as any movie I've seen with how it rewrites a familiar origin story over and over. 

63. The Death of Stalin 
Who knew the guy behind The Thick of It and Veep would produce such a hilarious take on peak-era U.S.S.R.? The touch of brilliance though is how it occasionally veered away from the levity to remind the audience of how dangerous these petty squabbles were for everyone not in charge. 

64. Hail, Caesar! 
If you can get through the "Would if it were so simple" scene without cracking up, then we can't be friends. 

65. Love, Simon 
High school coming-of-age stories about your first love are my kryptonite. I was powerless against the charms of this movie. 

66. Before Midnight 
I sure hope we're only three years away from another "surprise" installment of this unlikely franchise. Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke make the "walk-and-talk" movie look so easy that several other filmmakers have tried and failed to mimic the formula for years. 

67. The Raid: Redemption 
Oh my god, this movie is nuts. A guy fights his way out of a housing complex filled with henchmen. That's the whole movie and it's a blast. Gareth Evans needs $100 million from a studio to do whatever he wants right now! 

68. The Look of Silence 
This sequel or companion documentary to The Act of Killing is slightly less shocking but even more full of tension. How many movies have you seen in which half the crew's names have been redacted for their own safety? 

69. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation 
Look, the Mission: Impossible series completely won me over this decade. This one added Rebecca Ferguson to the mix, which was one of the best casting movies in recent memory. She's tremendous. 

70. Young Adult 
Charlize Theron has never been better. She dares you to hate her from beginning to end is this dark, dark comedy. 

71. Booksmart 
When I call this "Female Superbad", please understand, that's akin to knighting it. There's no higher honor. 

72. The Dark Knight Rises 
The IMAX sequences more than make up for the fact that the story is mess. 

73. The LEGO Movie 

I never thought a movie could capture the anarchy of playing with LEGOs as a kid so well, so consider this a triumph. 

74. Under the Skin (2014) 
This is an unnerving movie that still haunts me. It's a massively underrated Scarlett Johansson performance. 

75. Knives Out 
It's hard to fit 2019 movies in here, because most of them are still so fresh in my mind. This one was so much fun though. Like a donut hole, inside of another donut hole... 

76. Easy A 
"High school movies riffing on classic literature" is a subgenre that I never get tired of.  This was the moment when I think we all realized that Emma Stone wasn't going anywhere. 

77. 50/50 
I really do miss when Hollywood was determined to make sure Joseph Gordon-Levitt a star. This movie had a surprising amount of heart. 

78. Sausage Party 
So, basically, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, and company came with a one-note premise, then took a thousand passes at the script to load it with as many jokes as they possibly could. This is a very crude movie that had me laughing throughout. 

79. Everybody Wants Some!! 
This is Richard Linklater's spiritual sequel to Dazed & Confused. And, much like that movie, I just was to hang out with all these characters forever. 

80. Wind River 
As much as I like this moody crime story, I can't get myself to watch it in the winter. Just thinking about it makes me need a sweater. I guess that means it's an effective use of location. 

81. Spring Breakers 
I think my Movie Theater MVP of the Decade award belongs to the preteen girl in my theater who did not realize what she was signing up for in Spring Breakers and left the theater multiple times when things got too intense. Tracking that was as funny as anything I saw in a movie this decade. 

82. War for the Planet of the Apes 
How did none of these movies win the Visual Effects Oscar? It makes no sense. 

83. Paranormal Activity 3 
Look, the Paranormal Activity movies are the same trick being pulled again and again. I love that trick though, and this is the best installment of the franchise that aired this decade. 

84. Solo: A Star Wars Story 
As much as I enjoyed this movie, I'll always wonder what the Lord & Miller version would've looked like. I'll also wonder what the sequel would've looked like. I'd happily watch several more movies with Alden Erinrich, Emilia Clark, and Donald Glover 

85. The Disaster Artist 
My favorite actors making a movie about making a movie. And, not just any movie: one of the worst movies ever made. Of course I'll like this movie. 

86. Ocean's 8 
Sandra Bullock. Cate Blanchett. Helena Bonham Carter. Mindy Kaling. Rihanna. Awkwafina. Sarah Paulson. Anne Hathaway. With that cast, it almost doesn't matter that it's missing the slickness of Stephen Soderbergh's direction. Almost. 

87. Tim's Vermeer 
This documentary is a fantastic story about the intersection of art and technology. 

88. The One I Love 
It's nice when going into a movie blind ends up being as rewarding as this one. Such a nifty premise. 

89. The Raid 2 
No one stages a fight scene better than Gareth Evans, who felt especially emboldened to go as insane as he wanted this time. 

90. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 
France McDormand is a beautiful, nasty mess. 

91. Don't Think Twice 
Mike Birbiglia is a little limited as a director, so he writes what he knows. I feel like he knows a dozen people just like each of the characters in this movie. 

92. Toy Story 3 
I'm not crying. You're crying. OK, and I'm crying too. 

93. Rush (2013) 
Ford v Ferrari is a hit. How in god's name did this movie make 1/4 as much money? I don't get it. This movie is a ton of fun. 

94. Parasite 
The Jessica Jingle is what won me over. Is it too short to justify finding it on iTunes? 

95. True Grit (2010) 
It's striking to watch this and realize just how deserving 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld was of that Oscar nomination. 

96. Good Boys 
When I call this "Preteen Superbad", please understand, that's akin to knighting it. There's no higher honor. 

97. The Farewell 
Wait, Awkwafina is a legit actress? Like, she could get an Oscar nomination and she'd deserve it. I did not see that coming. 

98. Frozen 
I don't have any kids, so I never had this movie ruined for me. 

99. Tangled 
That reminds me. How much longer before Mandy Moore and Zachary Levi star in a live-action RomCom? That should've happened by now. 

100. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker
Look. It's late in the year. I just saw this and haven't had much time to sit with it. I'm sure this will eventually land somewhere in this 100 though, because I'm a shill for Star Wars, so I'll just place it here and be done with this.