Netflix pick for 5/12/14 – ‘In Bruges’

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Written and directed by British playwright and screenwriter Martin McDonagh, “In Bruges” is a dark comedy about a pair of hitmen forced to take a little sabbatical in a tiny historical tourist trap of a town in Belgium, while their homicidal boss tries to figure out what to do with them. Many swear words and story twists abound. And it is all delightful.

In “In Bruges,” Colin Farrell plays Ray, a depressed hitman for the mob, super sad because of how a job had gone horribly wrong, and being sent to Bruges by his boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes) ends up being a sort of purgatory for him, as he has no idea if his muck up will cause him to be damned. Fortunately for Ray, Harry sent along with another hitman named Ken (Brendan Gleeson), who makes things a little easier for Ray as he tries to sort through his problems. What happens in the rest of the story is what you need to discover, and trust me on this one, it is worth it.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 5/5/2014 – ‘Swimming With Sharks’

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“Swimming With Sharks” was part of that indie film revival of the early to mid 90s, movies made on the cheap, with one or two slumming movie stars, made by people are writer/directors, involving lots of fast dialogue and a splash of violence meant to shock.

From 1994, this is the story of young aspiring Hollywood writer Guy (Frank Whaley) who gets a career opportunity of a lifetime by getting an assistant job for movie mogul Buddy (Kevin Spacey). The problem for Guy is that Buddy is sadistic asshole keen on heaping as much abuse on his assistants as humanely and legally possible, so Guy gets beat down for awhile before HE CAN’T TAKES IT NO MO’! Know what I mean?

It is a pretty good story, well acted, and with a good ending that was definitely meant to be a little twisty like “oh shit surprise!” but given the satirical tone of much of the film (truly much of Buddy’s action border on criminal), the ending falls in line pretty well with everything else and still packs a punch. A little indie punch.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 4/28/14 – ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’

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Hey kids, here’s another one for you, a movie that us adults remember fondly, and which upon revisiting, holds up remarkably well as a very solid piece of entertainment. “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” is a throwback hard boiled detective film noir movie, with the added bonus of being a movie that features a seamless (especially for its time) blend of animation and live action, as the story is set in a world where cartoons are real beings. Which of course also makes this movie rather silly.

But “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” is more than just silly because they managed to balance out the inherent cartoonish antics and nature of the story with much more dark, adult things; there is an element of danger in this movie, especially with the murder of toons with a substance called the Dip, and lead character Ed Valiant (Bob Hoskins) being an alcoholic driven to drink by the horrendous murder of his brother (they dropped a piano on his head. Right smack on his head). There’s a Femme Fatale (Jessica Rabbit, voiced by Kathleen Turner), and this movie features one of the most disturbing and intense movie villains of all time in the form of the awesomely named Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd).

There is a lot to like about “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” which is both an homage to old film noir movies and the awesome cartoony past of both Disney and Warner Brothers. The animation looks incredible, and the movie even starts with a Roger Rabbit cartoon, which is distinctive for actually looking BETTER than most cartoons of this nature have ever looked. And it is a ton of fun just watching all the ways the cartoons interact with the real world set and props in the movie, like how the bad guy Weasels walk around with real guns, and how Roger Rabbit smashes real plate after real plate over his fake cartoon head. Brilliant stuff, chaps.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 4/21/2014 – ‘Mud’

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Alright alright alright, here is yet another recent example of why Matthew McConaughey is suddenly so beloved again as an actor, just another in a long succession of stand out performances in good to great projects, so you can be forgiven if this one slipped past your radar. But now you know…you gotta see “Mud.”

And you see the thing is that “Mud” is actually much more than just a great McConaughey performance, as it is primarily a coming of age movie about a 13 year old kid, working out his increasingly complicated feelings on the opposite sex, the whole while also helping McConaughey’s character try to reconnect with the love of his life, which ends up being more complicated than it appears. And write/director Jeff Nichols is a new filmmaker…well, not THAT new anymore, as this is his third movie and he just keeps getting better, which is a surprise because his last movie “Take Shelter” is DAMN good. But “Mud” is even better. And his style is one that really emphasizes the locations and locale flavors and characters as much as possible, making the locales just as integral to the story as anything else in the movie.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 4/14/14 – ‘Scrooged’

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“Scrooged” really sells itself, does it not? Bill Murray in the lead of an update of A Christmas Carol, but with more alcohol, homelessness, parental neglect and slapstick comedy. And 100% more Bill Murray. Which is always a good thing.

The Great Murray plays Frank Cross, who is this story’s version of Ebeneezer Scrooge, and he is a morally reprehensible television executive who is producing a live broadcast of A Christmas Carol, and he is either going crazy from the stress of the job or he really starts seeing different ghosts and spirits very much in the tradition of A Christmas Carol.

Look, goddammit, we all know the story of A Christmas Carol. The basic beats, anyway. We even saw the Muppets version with Michael Caine as Scrooge and we saw Captain Professor Jean Luc Xavier Picard play Scrooge on television, we know what the story is. Just THIS one has Bill Murray. That’s all you need.Continue Reading …

Netflix Pick for 4/7/14 – ‘The Good, The Bad and the Ugly’

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“The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” is pretty much my favorite movie of all time. So there you go.

What? That’s not enough to make you want to drop everything right now and watch this masterpiece? Sheesh. Okay then, how about this lil bit from this piece I wrote on this movie back in my Examiner days:

“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a perfect storm of movie making awesomeness. First, the movie has a feel completely different from the westerns that came before it because it is not just a western, it is a spaghetti western, made by an Italian director with an Italian-Spanish production crew. Leone’s films actually have more in common with the French New Wave movement than they do with the Hollywood-produced westerns. Secondly (and this ties into the first point), the film soundtrack by Ennio Morricone has become ridiculously iconic. Everyone (and I mean everyone) knows the “wah-wah-waaaaah” refrain, even if they have no idea which movie it comes from. And Morricone’s scores (starting with A Fistful of Dollars and continuing with For a Few Dollars More) were incredibly unique. His mix of traditional orchestral instruments with electric guitars, fiddles, whistles and singing had not been done before, and as a result, it adds another level of ingenuity to Leone’s movies. Third, Leone’s direction itself is quite stellar, and he had his own style that translated beautifully to this genre. A key to making a western is the landscape shot, a nice wide shot showing off the natural terrain of the land. Leone gets plenty of epic landscapes, but wisely juxtaposes these wide shots of nature with extreme close ups of people’s faces (and not just any bunch of faces but some of the ugliest, wrinkliest, weirdest looking faces possible). Leone was also a master of creating tension; just check out the scene where Blondie is alone in his room, cleaning his gun, while Tuco and some friend try to ambush him. Or any of the public hanging scenes that literally comes down to the last second.”

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Netflix pick for 3/31/14 – ‘Reservoir Dogs’

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Here is another one for the kids. You know, all you folks born in 1990 or after, far too young to even realize back in 1992 that a new hot young director had just exploded on to the scene with “Reservoir Dogs,” his first movie which just peeled back faces and made a lot of people sit up and take notice. Now that you folks are older, you may think of Quentin Tarantino as this dude who has been making crazy movies for the last twenty years. But once upon a time, he was the new kid on the block with a fresh new movie and if you haven’t seen this directorial debut from one of our finest filmmakers, then you need to do yourself a favor and rectify that quickly!Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 3/24/14 – ‘Donnie Brasco’

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“Heeey, fuhgedaboutit!” For sure, “Donnie Brasco” is the more underrated gangster movie of the 1990s that still managed to make sure this particular stereotypical exclamation embedded itself deep into our lexicon, forever associated with wise guys and undercover agents who went too deep into the mob in order to get their targets.

Directed by an Englishman and starring Johnny Depp, “Donnie Brasco” on the surface is one of the least authentic Italian-American mafia movies to be made, but actually they pretty much nail everything about what made real life FBI agent Joe Pistone’s story as an undercover agent so incredible and ended up with a critically acclaimed film, one that does not get mentioned enough when it comes to portraying the mafia lifestyle and enterprise on film. Great acting (including from legend Al Pacino, still a number of years and a few performances away from the current Pacino we all know and tolerate), an incredible story, strong direction, compelling characters and relationships, it is all here and it is pretty damn great.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 3/17/14 – ‘Dirty Pretty Things’

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“Dirty Pretty Things” is a movie about illegal immigrants in the UK and how they are exploited, but that’s a tough sell, so really “Dirty Pretty Things” is about an illegal immigrant with a medical background being forced to take part in some black market type of stuff, while another illegal immigrant has to deal with her sexually exploitative boss at the sweat shop at which she toils away for little money, and how these two people find each other and help each other overcome some serious odds.

This is a really well made movie, captivating and interesting in that “thriller” sort of way, what with our leads being fugitives from the law and constantly hiding their illegal status, but also taking the time to really explore these characters and their few relationships and daily lives and rounds out the whole picture, so that when the ending comes around, the characters are actually developed and feel like they arrived somewhere that they worked hard to get to, as opposed to just going through the motions of a plot because the screenplays says so.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 3/10/14 – ‘Day of the Dead’

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There was a time not too long ago when zombies were most certainly not the cultural force they are now in this present day. There were no “zombie walks,” no hugely successful zombie-based television shows or comic books, nothing to indicate that popular culture would one day be inundated with zombie-related materials. Hell, back in 1985, zombies were strictly the province of comic book wielding, put-upon geeks and nerds, and there was one undisputed king of the undead, and that man was George Romero, and he had just released the capper to his undead trilogy (a trilogy which he would end up adding to in the 2000’s zombie boom), and like many trilogies, while the third installment is not as good as the two that came before it, it, “Day of the Dead” has plenty going for it to make it a Netflix Instant Pick of the Week.Continue Reading …