Twentieth Century-Fox
Okay, here’s the situation. You want movies and Netflix has got them, but they’ve got too many of them. Nobody has time to scroll through all those menus and try out all those movies. Except that we kind of do, because we’re dorks, so we can help. Here’s our monthly list of new additions to Netflix that are movie dork approved. As always, click on their titles to be taken to their Netflix pages.
Pick of the Month: Laura (1944)
There were a ton of murder mystery movies released in the 40s, but very few that are as fun to watch as Laura. This movie, from legendary filmmaker Otto Preminger, is full of memorable characters, it’s got a score that includes an iconic main theme, and it comes from a script that’s full of quotable quips and one-liners. Just the scenes where Clifton Webb and Vincent Price trade barbs would be enough to make Laura a great movie on their own, but then it goes and offers up a million other delights as well.
Watching this one is basically a free trip to film school in regards to scene construction. Pay special attention to the climax and how well everything that comes into play during it has been established, how thoroughly the geography of the location has been laid out, and how the scene is shot and edited so that you can always follow who’s doing what where. It’s perfect. And then there’s Laura. The central image of the film is the deceased, Laura, which means that the role required an actress who was gorgeous enough that you could buy everyone around her being enthralled by her, even as she played her as a blank enough slate that her admirers could imprint their own reality of who she was over the image of her pristine face. Gene Tierney is that actress. Wowzers. You’re going to want to watch this movie just to gawk at her.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
This isn’t the first time that 2001 has been on Netflix, right? Couldn’t be. Well, anyway, it’s either here for the first time or it’s back, which provides the perfect opportunity to set aside an evening to cut the lights, turn off your phone, and put it on. This is one of those rare movies that’s able to transport you completely to another place, no matter how many times you’ve seen it. In addition to the usual attention to detail and masterful direction that comes from a Stanley Kubrick movie, 2001 also has the added benefit that, given today’s modern technology, it’s started to look like a sweeping sci-fi epic about a race of men who evolve from apes in order to worship giant smart phones, which is funny. No wonder the HAL 9000 lost all respect for us.
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013)
A lot of people have opined that Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is just writer/director David Lowery doing a Terrence Malick impression, and that’s certainly not wrong, but it also doesn’t matter, because it’s him doing a really good Malick impression, and more specifically it’s him doing a really good impression of early Malick when he was making his best stuff, like Badlands and Days of Heaven.
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints looks gorgeous, it tells a story that goes deep into exploring themes like love, responsibility, and making hard choices, and it features nuanced and impressive lead performances from Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, as well as a strong supporting turn from an unusually subdued Ben Foster. More people need to check it out.
Batman Begins (2005)
Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies didn’t really blow up into being unstoppable juggernauts until the release of the second in the series, The Dark Knight, and while that movie does represent the highest highs he was ever able to reach while telling the story of a sad rich boy battling bad guys, when you go back and re-watch the trilogy now you realize that it’s Batman Begins that’s the most consistently solid film of the three. It tells a more focused story than the other two, and doesn’t have any of their pacing or plotting problems. It does the most with the Bruce Wayne character. It contains the best moments between Christian Bale and Michael Caine, moments that turn into pretentious speechifying in the sequels and start to feel like parodies of themselves. It does the best job of painting Nolan’s version of Gotham as a unique city and a memorable environment for a movie.
Sure, it’s true that The Dark Knight contains all of the iconic moments of the series, but they couldn’t have existed if Batman Begins didn’t give them such a solid foundation to build off of. This is a moody, interesting, really satisfying superhero movie, that’s maybe been a little forgotten.
Netflix
Beasts of No Nation (2015)
When Netflix decided to produce its first original feature they didn’t mess around. They hired Cary Fukunaga fresh off of his directing of the beloved first season of True Detective, they got acting powerhouse and perennial panty dropper Idris Elba on board, and they made Beasts of No Nation, an unflinching drama about a young boy who is forced to become a child soldier in the midst of an African civil war. Terrible stuff happens in this movie, terrible stuff that’s very hard to watch—but it’s the important sort of stuff that sucks you in and makes you feel. It’s the kind of stuff that needs to be seen, and seeing as it was put together by a visual genius like Fukunaga, you know that a lot of it is still going to look beautiful despite the difficulty. Elba is creepy and intimidating as the twisted commander creating a child army, and newcomer Abraham Attah is affecting and completely natural as the young boy whose journey we follow. So far Netflix is one for one when it comes to making movies.
Boogie Nights (1997)
The best thing about Boogie Nights is that it contains all of the transcendent filmmaking common to all of PT Anderson’s movies, but it’s much lighter and breezier than the other stuff that he’s done. Sure, it goes to dark places and it has its uncomfortable moments (including an all-timer in that drug deal gone bad scene), but it’s also so much more bright and colorful and silly than anything else he’s ever done. This is a movie you can throw on and watch casually, not one that you have to set time aside for and lock into. The soundtrack is so great you could dance to it. Mark Wahlberg and John C. Reilly make for such a great comedy team that they could spin-off their characters into a film that was pure slapstick, and it would be just as successful. This movie has Philip Seymour Hoffman wearing shorts and belly shirts and Heather Graham wearing nothing but roller skates. What more incentive do you need to fire up Netflix?
A Christmas Carol (1938)
I hate to be the one to bring it up, but the holidays are almost upon us. Yeah, gross, but the silver lining in that dark cloud is that there are a lot of holiday movies out there that are pretty fun. A Christmas Carol is a classic, and the ’38 version of the story is one of the best adaptations of it out there. This is a story that’s all about setting and mood, so the older the version of it you watch, the more it actually feels like you’re entering a world where coal smoke pours out of apartment chimneys and street venders pour scoopfuls of warm chestnuts into customers’ woolen pockets. Also, despite the corniness of Terry Kilburn’s performance as Tiny Tim, there’s really nothing in this one that dates it in a way that modern kids wouldn’t be able to get into it, so this is a film that you can gather the whole family around for. It’s never too early to teach a kid that ghosts will come for them in the middle of the night if they start acting the fool, after all.
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Any time you watch a movie directed by Stanley Kubrick you know you’re in for something that’s going to be dense, interesting, and gorgeous to look at. Few of the movies he made are as wickedly and wildly entertaining as A Clockwork Orange is though. This movie is full of so much dark humor, so many iconic images, and it has so many quotable lines that you can’t help but have a great time watching it, even given how bleak and disturbing its dystopian subject matter is. Have you somehow missed that devilishly charming rogue Malcolm McDowell and his droog buddies getting wasted on milk and then beating a homeless man to death? Then be ignorant of this classic no more. Fire up your Netflix machine and watch the movie that inspired a million college freshman Halloween costumes today.
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