Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Some extremely brief reviews of the Netflix I have watched relatively recently:

This Film Is Not Yet Rated: Snarky documentary, a bit full of itself, but makes a good point about censorship and the movies.
Boyz N The Hood: Don't quote me boy, I ain't said shit. Long overdue viewing.
The Weather Underground: Shadowy film, hard to get ahold of, just like its subject. Watch it only if you're particularly interested in the subject. I was.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: Most entertaining movie I've watched in a long time. Kilmer's best work, and possibly Downey's too, and that's saying something.
Control Room: al-Jazeera documentary. Probably one too many documentaries in a short time, but I was bored.
Thank You For Smoking: Very funny, and treated the lead character with more humanity than I expected.
Shaun of the Dead: Closest competitor to Kiss Bang squared. Can't wait to see their new movie.
Mean Streets: Exactly what you'd expect from early Scorcese/Keitel/DeNiro, except maybe 10% less fun. Still solid.
Black Sunday: The Super Bowl X footage was probably the most entertaining part. But I'm a Steeler fan.
Bottle Rocket: My favorite Wes Anderson film, which is to say 2.5 stars out of 5.
Beyond the Sea: Before this movie I didn't know much about Bobby Darin; now I know way more than I needed to.
Ray: I'll take the Johnny Cash movie of the two, but that's probably more of a musical preference since they're almost exactly the same movie.
Wake Up Ron Burgundy: They had about 1.5 funny movies worth of material when they made Anchorman; still, if you like those characters and that humor, you could do way worse.
Avalanche: I'm clearly out of good '70s disaster movies and am scraping the bottom of the barrel. If they get any worse, I quit. Note: If you ever make a disaster movie, establish the physical space and where everything is, or people won't understand what's happening when the disaster hits.
The Fall of Fujimori: Really interesting and even-handed documentary about a country (Peru) and a leader I didn't know much about; also notable is that it's the first movie I've watched Netflix's new streaming "Watch It Now" feature, which is particularly good for documentaries, comedy concerts, and anything where the appeal is not particularly visual, since you're watching on a computer screen.
Reality Bites: Irony (n.): a movie soaked in pop culture retro kitsch becoming retro and kitsch itself; doesn't hold up particularly well; Winona still chooses the wrong guy.

1 comment:

WestBerkeleyFlats said...

I liked "The Weather Underground." Then again, after I saw it in the Landmark on Shattuck a guy got up during the Q&A with one of the co-producers and started out with, "I was in the 101st Airborne in Vietnam in 1965, and then came how and joined SDS, and went underground with the Weathermen in 1969," and then having established his street cred proceeded to dispute things that Naomi Jaffe had said in the movie.

Good times.