Tag Archives: Netflix

V/H/S

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MV5BMTUwODAxMzMwNF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMTk3MTQ5Nw@@._V1__SX1859_SY893_I was so confused by the overarching “plot” of V/H/S that I watched the sequel before writing this review, in the hope that it would clear things up for me. Answer: maybe it did? But since I’m going to end up writing two reviews anyway, I may as well wait ’til then.

Anyway, there’s this group of punks with a camcorder documenting their asshole exploits and re-editing them together in exactly the sort of way that someone with a VHS camcorder would never, ever do. Then, later, they break into an old abandoned house. The IMDB summary says they were being paid to find something, but if that was actually communicated in the movie, I sure missed it. What they do find is a dead guy who was watching about 15 TV screens all hooked up to VCRs, and surrounded by piles of VHS tapes. Then, while all the other punks search the house for whatever it was they were looking for, one of them sits down to watch some of the tapes, which is the actual point of the movie, because they portray various horror short story events that are clearly set in a future beyond when anyone would be filming their exploits on a VHS camcorder. (Plausibly, I am thinking about this too much.)

The important part, though, is that the short story segments were really well done, scary, suspenseful, and affecting in the way that I always want my horror to be and it so very rarely is. So, if you wanna watch something modern and reasonably frightening (and with an adequate amount of breasts, which like being scary have also abandoned the horror scene of late), this is your movie. Just don’t try to understand anything that’s going on outside of the short stories.

The Interview (2014)

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MV5BMTQzMTcwMzgyMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzAyMzQ2MzE@._V1__SX1859_SY893_I want to say that The Interview was helped a great deal by the North Korean hacking incident and all the related press. After all, I probably would have skipped the theatrical release, and yet I saw it last week instead. But, then again, I didn’t see it at the theater, and I assume they don’t get nine bucks or whatever when it’s streamed on Netflix. So, y’know, probably some kinds of press are bad press after all?

Which is to say, other than all that money they probably lost, the only obvious difference between the two timelines is I saw the movie and have to write this review. And… it made me laugh quite a bit. I’m not precisely recommending it with that statement, but if you’re not allergic to the type of movie Seth Rogen and James Franco would make, I can definitely say that the movie is a lot deeper than the previews for it indicated. And the previews are why I would originally not have bothered to see it by now. So… I guess I am recommending it after all? Yeah, pretty much.

At least, it definitely didn’t feel like a waste of time. And can you ask for more than that? Not very often!

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

MV5BMTYyNzUxMzc1MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDE3MDM3Mg@@._V1__SX1859_SY893_This is weird. On the one hand, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is a perfectly serviceable spy movie, in the fish-out-of-water subgenre. It hits all the right beats, it has compelling stakes, both international and personal, and it’s a story worth telling. On the second hand, it’s also a perfectly serviceable Tom Clancy prequel never written, if for some reason you didn’t like that The Hunt for Red October covers the same territory or (more likely) you cannot successfully launch a new franchise reboot while treading international political waters that are 25 years out of date.

The problem is that, despite both of these things being true, the confluence of them feels unnecessary. I mean, I’m completely fine with a Jack Ryan reboot and I hope it worked out and there will be more, because I liked the characters and the premise and I want to see more. Nevertheless, if they had not tacked the name onto the title, I never would have felt like this was a Clancy ripoff. It just did not, in ways I cannot easily express, feel like a Tom Clancy story. This is not, per se, an indictment. Like I said: pretty good movie. I just feel weird saying I liked it without saying that it was also inexplicably branded.

If there are more, I think I hope they feel more Clancyish. Because otherwise, what was the point, really? Oh, but before I forget: Kenneth Branagh did a great job of acting a character that deserved a bigger arc. I cannot speak to his direction because, clearly, the film has left me bewildered for reasons that are unrelated to its factual quality.

Pontypool

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MV5BMTYyNzUxMzc1MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDE3MDM3Mg@@._V1__SX1859_SY893_How to write a review of something that you’d prefer to say literally nothing about, and in fact regret having put genre tags down for? It’s a tricky conundrum, is what. Well, that’s not fair. It’d be very, very easy if I didn’t care whether you watched it, but the truth is that you should, because it’s a very intriguing premise and execution.

Pontypool is, aside from being a movie, a very small town in Ontario. I know this because about twenty minutes into the movie, I looked it up out of curiousity. From my ability to extrapolate Google Maps into the real world, it should have maybe one stop light that goes to flashing after sundown. Four square blocks? Big enough to have a radio station, which is relevant in that the entire course of action occurs in the local AM station, where smooth-voiced news host Grant Mazzy, um, reads and hosts the news on the morning after he has an inexplicable encounter on a foggy road during his commute. For the rest… I want to say nothing, but I can’t justify saying nothing, so I’m going to quote the opening paragraph of the movie, which is Grant broadcasting on a day recently prior to the day the movie takes place. If you can dig the quote, I reckon you will dig the movie.

Mrs. French’s cat is missing. The signs are posted all over town. “Have you seen Honey?” We’ve all seen the posters, but nobody has seen Honey the cat. Nobody. Until last Thursday morning, when Miss Colette Piscine swerved her car to miss Honey the cat as she drove across a bridge. Well this bridge, now slightly damaged, is a bit of a local treasure and even has its own fancy name; Pont de Flaque. Now Collette, that sounds like Culotte. That’s Panty in French. And Piscine means Pool. Panty pool. Flaque also means pool in French, so Colete Piscine, in French Panty Pool, drives over the Pont de Flaque, the Pont de Pool if you will, to avoid hitting Mrs. French’s cat that has been missing in Pontypool. Pontypool. Pontypool. Panty pool. Pont de Flaque. What does it mean? Well, Norman Mailer, he had an interesting theory that he used to explain the strange coincidences in the aftermath of the JFK assasination. In the wake of huge events, after them and before them, physical details they spasm for a moment; they sort of unlock and when they come back into focus they suddenly coincide in a weird way. Street names and birthdates and middle names, all kind of superfluous things appear related to each other. It’s a ripple effect. So, what does it mean? Well… it means something’s going to happen. Something big. But then, something’s always about to happen.

Rubber (2010)

MV5BMTU2Nzg2NDQ2Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDk5MjMzNA@@._V1__SX1859_SY847_I find myself with more time to look at Netflix lately, he lied glibly. No, but seriously, what I mean is what I’ve always claimed: I’ll watch movies at home if there’s someone to watch them with, and lately there has been. In fact, I’ve probably missed a couple of reviews, but my commitment is returned; from here on out, new-to-me movies will happen on Netflix viewings too. (I’m streaming these days, though; I gave up on my ability to return DVDs like a year ago.)

Therefore, I watched Rubber last night. Rubber is a horror movie about a tire that rolls around the desert, killing people. No, seriously. It’s somehow a great deal more than that, though. See, there’s a monologuing sheriff, a Greek chorus of sorts, a sometimes naked French lady, and metareferentiality that goes so deep it actually turns inside out on itself. If you liked carrying around no tea for the duration of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Infocom game, or if you like absurdity for its own sake, or if you like watching things explode, this movie is for you.

If you would spend the entire movie asking why there’s a tire with motivations and psychokinetic powers in the first place, this movie will try very hard to be for you anyway. If you let it. It’s an 80 minute flick that felt like it lasted less than an hour, though, and I mean that as a compliment. So maybe give it a try?

Dead Like Me: Life after Death

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One upon a time, there was a television show in which the always enjoyable Mandy Patinkin (as Rube) wrangled a group of grim reapers, those randomly selected dead who remain alive to harvest the souls of the living as part of the cycle of life and death. Think the personification of Death, if it were a worldwide non-profit business organization instead of one guy in a robe, or perhaps girl wearing an ankh and black casualwear. Anyhow, Mandy was the district manager for this group of people assigned to handle accidental deaths in the Pacific Northwest, and the series opens on one such death of a teenage girl and focuses on, in addition to the reaping, Georgia Lass’s slow process of moving on with her life after death, and on her family’s slow process of coming to terms with their dead daughter. It was a good, funny, occasionally moving show.

In the curse of time, it was canceled, as tends to happen. And then, unexpectedly, a direct-to-video movie was made. Life after Death covers a couple of plotlines, one following Rube’s replacement as the regional boss and one following George’s assignment to reap a teenage boy who happens to be her sister’s boyfriend. The second plotline was everything that I would look for from the show when it was on, funny and moving all wrapped up in one well-written package. The first one, on the other hand, was meaningless from start to finish. There was no good explanation for or resolution of Rube’s disappearance. The remaining side characters all ditched their past motivations, in ways that are slightly believable, but only if I fill in the gaps for myself; the script did not explain adequately. And the resolution felt episodic rather than like its own story; that is, the situation at the end of the story was exactly the same as it had been at the beginning. Which I assume was an effort to leave a space for Mandy to return if another movie is made, because his absence was a glaring hole. But it still made what was half of a good movie turn into half of a good episode and half of a terrible one. The idea of a film doesn’t offend me, but if it’s only going to be a long episode, they should bring the series back instead. And write it the better way it used to be written!

Lost and Delirious

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MV5BMjYzMDk0NDEzNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNzQzNTcxMTE@._V1__SX1217_SY887_My latest Netflix movie is Lost and Delirious. And I’ve watched it, which was a positive experience. Yet I have been staring at this mostly blank screen for the majority of the day. I think it’s that my opinions are too many and too contradictory. In short, the chick from The O.C. is sent to an all-female boarding school, where she becomes roommate with a pair of seniors, one hard-nosed and feminist, the other vivaciously popular. At first, it looks like one of those coming-out-of-the-shell stories in which Mischa Barton would have been the main character embarking on her journey toward personhood. Then, at the end of the first act, it veers sharply into one of those obsession thrillers in which our purported main character mostly serves as the audience’s window on the action when it is revealed that her roommates are engaged in a sexual relationship.

And I think it could have made a fine obsession thriller too, except that it couldn’t make up its mind to commit to that. For every scene in which a new boyfriend is about to die in a sword fight and simply isn’t taking it seriously enough yet, there are three in which someone screams and runs out of a room / across the school lawn. And it’s not like that’s unrealistic high school obsessive behavior; it’s that the swords and the pet falcon are, and after it was hinted that I might get that movie, it became the one I wanted. Still, what was left behind was good stuff. Surprisingly good acting from a variety of very young actresses, modernly relevant sociosexual politics, not terribly many overwrought or thematically pushy scenes. And, y’know, sword fights.

Hard Candy

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mv5bmtc0mzgznti3n15bml5banbnxkftztcwndk3mdizmq-_v1_sy1000_sx675_al_Ah, Netflix. How I have forsaken thee! Well, mostly how I have watched TV on thee instead of movies, but definitely there was forsaking that occurred as well. It’s cool, though, we made up. Which, come to think of it, is probably not the best metaphor with which to open this review. So forget the Netflix stuff entirely except if you care about where I got the movie from, and pretend like I started with the next paragraph instead.

So anyway, I watched a movie last night. Except, that’s not where it started. Around this time last year (except imdb tells me it was more like two years ago), I saw a preview for a movie. I’m not convinced it ever got wide theatrical release, and I am quite sure I never found a place it was showing. If I remembered where I saw the preview, that might help, I guess. But I only remember the preview itself and my reaction to it, instead. Basically, it was a series of scenes implying a cat-and-mouse game between an adult photographer and a teenaged girl, but with the added spice that it was difficult to say who was the cat and who the mouse. Which, of course, made it ironically clear that the sexual predator guy was going to end up the mouse. But this is a good thing, because I think it would have been impossible to want to watch it, without that assurance. Instead, I was filled with intriguement. So, I waited and watched and eventually slipped it into my Netflix queue, the payoff of which occurred last night.

The movie went largely as predicted, which was not any kind of problem at all. Of course the ending stayed shrouded in mystery, but knowing all the stuff up to then wasn’t the point. Because the acting was really good and the situation was compellingly disturbing from the first moment until nearly the last. I know it’s not a particularly controversial position to take here, but I really had no idea just how visceral my negative reaction to the predator guy was going to be. Going in, I had the thought that maybe I was going to end up feeling sorry for him being trapped in Hayley’s web (Hayley being the Hard Candy in question), but that never happened. Sure, some of her actions were horrific or at least uncomfortable, but not once did I feel like his targetting was unfair.[1] Which (I’ll assume) says something else positive about the acting quality.

It’s hard to say I liked it, because it was so unpleasant to behold. But it was really very good, and it’s easy to say I was impressed by it. I don’t think I’d watch it again if I could help it, though. Those movies that really root around in the darkness of the human psyche (8MM and Schindler’s List spring to mind) tend to provide everything on the first viewing, as starkly as possible, as if to say, “See this? Don’t do this! Ever!”

(Footnote contains spoilers, sort of.)

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The Poseidon Adventure

I thought I ought to ground myself in history, so thanks to my good friends at Netflix, I snagged The Poseidon Adventure no more than a week after its remake’s release date, to watch prior to catching said remake. (Because I am nothing if not timely. Also: product endorsements deserve to be rewarded with free stuff. Just saying, good friends at Netflix.) The seventies were a different time is what I have learned. Sure, blah blah blah special effects cakes, but that’s not the thing. The thing is the acting. With the exception of Ernest Borgnine (who was frankly superb) and Roddy McDowall, every single male in the cast acted via angry loud voice. It was just bizarre to watch, especially in Gene Hackman, who I have certainly seen perform well enough in other (notably later) roles. Meanwhile, the women were mostly called upon to scream a lot. This is somewhat less surprising on the whole, but still pretty sad. As the main exception here was Ernest Borgnine’s wife, I am forced to assume that it was talent by osmosis.

As for the plot? Well, you know, boat flips over, people try to survive in upside-down boat. Is there more that you need to know? I will say that the set design did an almost non-existent job of conveying upside-downness, which robbed the movie of a good third of its purported impact. I expect that the remake will handle that part, at least. And maybe less shouting. But mostly better special effects traded in for someone not as good as Borgnine. Probably this is a bad thing; it certainly would be if the original had been a tour de force, but since it was not, I’ll take what I can get.