Netflix pick for 8/4/14 – ‘Tetro’

Francis Ford Coppola, he of “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” and “The Conversation” and “Apocalypse Now,” after spending some time not making movies and out of the business, instead manufacturing wine to the delight of the masses, found that he could tell some crazy stories that he always wanted to tell thanks to the new age of digital cinema, a liberating time in which anyone with a few bucks and a proper digital camera and make an entire movie easier than ever. And with this new found digital freedom, Coppola made “Tetro,” an operatic family drama about reunited brothers and the weird past which unites them.

Vincent Gallo (yes, VINCENT GALLO) plays the eponymous Tetro, an artist who suffers for his work and has some serious baggage that he is trying to sort through, and Alden Ehrenreich plays his younger brother who arrives unannounced, looking to reunite with his big bro after a decade apart. Shot in black and white (and looking gorgeous), Coppola is an old school filmmaker, one who not only knows his film history but also contributed to it already, and here he is definitely throwing it back to the black and white noirs of the 1940 and 1950s, with lots of very strong shadows and scenes swathed in intense blacks and extreme lighting. And the family drama is very operatic, building up to a pretty explosive final ten minutes or so, making the admittedly somewhat uneven though still interesting journey fully worthwhile.

Want to know what I am talking about? Watch “Tetro” right here in the good old Netflix Instant and enjoy the show!