The Orchard
February isn’t great. The weather hasn’t broken yet and everyone acts super neurotic because of Valentine’s Day. That’s why it’s smart to leave the house as little as possible. Good thing Netflix has your back. They’re adding new movies to their streaming service all the time to keep you entertained. We have your back too. We’re always going through their vast catalog and picking out the gems that are actually worth watching. As always, click on the films’ titles to be taken to their Netflix pages.
Pick of the Month: The Overnight (2015)
If you’ve watched director Patrick Brice’s 2014 horror film, Creep (which is also available on Netflix), then you know how good he is at creating situations that are uncomfortable for his characters and even more uncomfortable for his audience. There’s a good deal of tension and humor that can be mined from watching other people cringe through socially awkward interactions, and with The Overnight Brice has utilized this unique type of humor better than anyone else since the British version of The Office was a thing.
The story told here is that of a dinner party shared between two couples that gets increasingly weirder as one of the couples (Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche) attempts to get way closer with the other than just sharing drinks and conversation, and the other, more straight-laced couple (Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling) does their best to politely dodge their aggressive advances. All of these actors are hilarious, and they’re given multiple prosthetic wieners to create gags with, so it was pretty much guaranteed that The Overnight would end up being something special, and it is.
Amadeus (1984)
Not only is Amadeus an epic story of greed and jealousy and all of the sorts of base human urges that tend to propel history forward, and not only is it an enthralling biopic that gives us insight into the life of one of the greatest musicians who’s ever lived, and not only does it take place in lavishly appointed sets that are filled to the brim with impeccably costumed performers, but it’s also the greatest excuse that Tom Hulce ever had to do his ridiculous and amazing coke head laugh on screen. It’s perfect. Add in F. Murray Abraham playing a villain with the sort of scowling disgust that only F. Murray Abraham can muster and assured directing from Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and there’s no question why this one is considered to be one of the greatest movies of all time.
Cartel Land (2015)
If you want to learn more about what’s going on with the Mexican drug cartels and how they’ve basically taken over swaths of that country, and how they’re starting to move their operations over the border into the US, or if you’re a fan of gutsy documentary filmmaking where artists take cameras into dangerous places that cameras don’t usually tend to go, then Cartel Land is a must-watch. This one simultaneously follows around a group of militia men who patrol the Arizona border apprehending illegals as well as a group of Autodefensas who have formed in southern Mexico to go town-to-town and physically push out the cartels and take back control of the areas. The stark contrast between the bored, angry Americans and the desperate Mexicans who are fighting for their very survival is stark, despite the similar structure of their organizations.
What’s so cool about Cartel Land though is that it eventually manages to find more similarities than differences between all of the players. There are no heroes or villains here—the reality of the situation is much too complex for that—so Cartel Land manages to become more nuanced and more interesting as it goes on. Also, it has shootouts.
The Faculty (1998)
The 90s were a notoriously bad time for horror movies. For the first half of the decade they were basically nonexistent, and in the second they were largely relegated to being teen slasher movies. Nerd favorite Robert Rodriguez’s The Faculty is one of the more fun teen movies from the second half of the decade though. It’s a high school-set take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers that features a gross alien monster, some squirmy body horror, a little bit of gore, and a pretty great ensemble cast that includes names like Robert Patrick, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, and all of their awful 90s hairdos.
Honestly, Josh Hartnett tends to have terrible hair in all of his movies, but whatever he’s got on the top of his head in this one has to be seen to be believed. Also, John Stewart shows up with one of the worst 90s goatees on his face that’s ever been grown. It’s even worse than all of the 90s CGI in the movie. Come to The Faculty for the horror movie fun, but stay for the dated hair.
Dreamworks SKG
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Don’t worry, even though Tim Allen stars in Galaxy Quest, it’s not the sort of movie that Tim Allen usually stars in. This movie is actually subversive, and funny, and none of his co-stars have to be Christmas elves or old guys trying to ride motorcycles. Plus, what a great damned group of co-stars he has. Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, Alan Rickman, and the list goes on. Rickman is the main event here though. He was so amazing at playing put-upon and disgusted, and his role here as a washed up, pretentious actor who doesn’t feel that he was given what he deserved in his career gives him ample opportunity to be exasperated by his situation and revolted by everyone around him. He gives great sneer. Sure, the bits of this movie that try to be legit space opera action stuff are pretty lame, but the character work and the comedy are top-notch and are more than enough to pull you through to the end.
Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
There’s a narrative out there that says Intolerable Cruelty is the worst movie Joel and Ethan Coen have ever made. That may well be true, but it doesn’t mean much in a world where the worst movie the Coen brothers have made is still better than 95% of everything else that gets released. It’s true that Intolerable Cruelty lacks the thematic depth and emotional weight of the best of the Coens’ stuff, but it’s still a really fun throwback to screwball comedies that puts their absurdist senses of humor and skill for crafting stylized dialogue on display. The patter in this movie is infectious, and it gets delivered by huge stars that everyone loves like George Clooney, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Billy Bob Thornton as well as first-rate actors who everyone in the know loves like Richard Jenkins, Edward Hermann, and Geoffrey Rush. Intolerable Cruelty may not be the Coens at their best, but it nonetheless contains enough Clooney charm to power a thousand space ships. Give it a chance to win you over and chances are very good that it will.
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)
Often Tim Burton can get pigeon-holed as being the weird guy who makes creepy-looking movies using gothic and expressionist design principles. That view of him ignores the fact that he’s usually at his best when he’s doing absurd humor, and that one of the best movies he’s ever made, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, is packed full of kitschy modern Americana rather than anything dark or gothic or geometrically weird though. This movie is great. Its humor is broad and silly, but the unique charisma that Paul Reubens brings to the table makes everything land anyway. He’s just so comfortable playing this character that it’s hard to imagine him doing anything else. The gag where he has to pull an increasingly ridiculous amount of animals out of a burning pet shop is enough to sell this movie alone. Bonus good news: If watching Big Adventure creates a craving for more Pee-Wee deep in your guts, Netflix has all of the seasons of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse available for streaming too. What a time it is to be alive.
Pumping Iron (1977)
If you think that a documentary about body building sounds boring, then you’ve never seen a body building documentary where Lou Ferrigno dedicates his entire life and every fiber of his being to beating Arnold Schwarzenegger in a body building competition, just to have Schwarzenegger shit talk and belittle him throughout the whole process, never taking Ferrigno or anything else around him seriously, because he’s just so damned certain of his own superiority. You want to know where the charisma that made Arnie a huge Hollywood star came from? This movie is basically its origin story. The dude is so likable that somehow you don’t even feel bad for Ferrigno as all of this is going on. Everyone has their favorites, but for my money the best scene in any movie ever is the one here where Schwarzenegger smokes weed, drinks liquor, and eats fried chicken while wearing a shirt that says “Arnold is Numero Uno,” all while everyone else in the body building world tears their hair out trying to figure out how he does what he does. Any way you cut it, that’s movie magic.
The Quiet Man (1952)
If you want to be a respectable movie nerd, then you have to get a handful of John Ford movies under your belt. The man has a massive catalogue, was a master at telling stories, and is definitely the guy who was able to put the star power of John Wayne to its best use. The Quiet Man is a bit of a weird role for Wayne because it’s mostly a romance, but it’s got a lot of throwback charm, it takes good advantage of its small town Irish setting, and it builds up to one of the most drawn-out and ridiculous fist fights ever put on film.
It’s true that there are a couple of uncomfortable scenes in here where Wayne’s courting of Maureen O’Hara starts to too closely resemble a “rape it until you make it” philosophy, and in general the whole film is full of gender politics that look really offensive to modern eyes, but this was a movie made by a couple of whiskey and tobacco smelling white guys in the early 50s. What are you gonna do?
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