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Netflix has really stepped up its original series game in the past year. Just this month we’ve been given both Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp and Sense8 to work our ways through. Those are high profile projects. For most of us, our addiction to Netflix was originally formed around the cheap, quick, and easy access to movies that makes it fun to chain them into double and triple features though. Got a movie night coming up soon with some hot hunk or honey? No problem. We’ve got your back. Here’s a list of great new additions to the streaming service that you can structure your heavy petting around. As always, click on their titles to be taken to their Netflix pages.
Pick of the Month: The Guest (2014)
For my money, writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard‘s The Guest was the best movie that came out last year. After wowing audiences with You’re Next in 2011, the duo revisited the thriller genre to tell a story with a mystery at its center that managed to be a love letter to 80s-era genre films without ever winking at its audience or becoming simple homage. The Guest doesn’t rip off movies from the past (though it does share a vibe and an approach to tension-building with things like The Terminator and Halloween), it just feels like something that could have come out in the summer of ’84 and been one of the best movies of that year.
Dan Stevens stars as a mysterious stranger who shows up at an average family’s doorstep claiming to be their recently deceased son’s army buddy. Even though he’s a little bit too earnest to not have ulterior motives, and a little bit too intense to not have some mental issues, the family doesn’t want to be rude, so they invite him to stay for a while, and that’s where all of the tension and dread begins building to an eventual climax where things become completely crazy. So crazy. The Guest is fun and well-crafted, Stevens and Maika Monroe (who plays the family’s teenage daughter) both give star-making performances, and the music (both the original score by Steve Moore and its soundtrack of pop songs) is some of the best that’s been in a movie in years. Don’t sleep on this creepy, crazy, totally entertaining throwback.
Almost Famous (2000)
Despite his disastrous recent output, it’s still fair to say that Cameron Crowe is a beloved filmmaker, isn’t it? Yeah, of course it is. He’s made so many films that so many people have loved, going back several decades now. Out of all of that good stuff, Almost Famous is probably his best loved movie (barring maybe Say Anything?), and that’s because it tells the story that was closest to his real life experiences. Crowe was a budding young music writer in the early 70s, and so is this film’s protagonist, so what you get feels like an authentic, if not slightly nostalgic look at the rock scene of the time.
The soundtrack is great too. It’s almost pandering how many big pop hits are packed into it, but sometimes being pandered to just feels right. Also, this was the movie that momentarily convinced the world we had a crush on Kate Hudson. The honeymoon didn’t last long, but for a brief, shining moment it felt like she was going to be the next big thing in acting. It’s time to revisit this one and remember what she can accomplish when she’s actually used right.
Batman (1989)
Not only have you already seen the ’89 version of Batman, chances are you’ve owned merchandise that came from some sort of fast food restaurant that was inspired by the ’89 version of Batman. Or, at least you owned the Prince soundtrack. Have you seen the ’89 Batman anytime recently though? Sure, it looks a little bit childish and campy in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s brooding reboot of the franchise into a gritty crime drama, but it’s still full of fun moments and a whole bunch of quotable lines—especially from Jack Nicholson’s Joker. Tim Burton’s direction really shows off how interesting it can be when a visual artist puts his own unique spin on a pre-established world, as well. With just a touch of gothic and expressionist weirdness, Burton is able to make Gotham City really pop off the screen.
The key to success when it comes to taking artistic liberties with pre-existing worlds are the words “a touch” though. I’m looking at you, Joel Schumacher.
Big Daddy (1999)
When would you say it was that Adam Sandler’s career completely imploded? Some might say that the writing was on the wall after The Waterboy, but I don’t think he was truly committed to going into the toilet until he made Little Nicky. That means that there’s still a lot of good stuff in Big Daddy, which came out in between. It’s not as funny as Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore, and this is where a little bit of the schmaltz that sinks Sandler’s later movies starts creeping in, but it’s funny enough in general to be a good lazy afternoon movie, and the bonding stuff between Sandler and the boy works well enough to make it seem strange that Happy Madison had such a tough time injecting heart into their later projects. If for no other reason, throw this one on for Steve Buscemi, who steals the show as always—this time as a McDonald’s loving hobo (Sandler movies gotta go after that product placement, yo) who hates rollerblading yuppies.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc.
Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
If you thought Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure was weird, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve checked out Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. It takes the stoner metal-heads traveling through time in a tricked out phone booth conceit of the first film and throws evil robot doppelgängers, the grim reaper, the afterlife, martians with excellently huge butts, and about a million other crazy things on top of it. At times it can feel a little low brow or childish, but the chemistry that Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves developed in the first film is enough to pull you through any low points, and then every once in a while something like an extended The Seventh Seal reference happens that makes you feel stupid for ever thinking it was stupid in the first place. This is the movie that Hodor and Groot owe all of their success to, and from where I’m sitting it’s still more fun to say, “Station!”
Chocolat (2000)
Back when it was being advertised, Chocolat was made out to be an erotic but too softcore to be interesting movie about Johnny Depp seducing Juliette Binoche, so you can be forgiven if you’ve never watched it. Truth is, that’s not the movie this is at all. It’s way better than that. This is actually a pretty dynamite feminist story about a mother/daughter relationship and the establishing of a safe place where women can feel free to explore themselves and create in the face of a world that wants to subjugate them and put them into boxes. Sure, Depp shows up and is all suave, but he’s really quite a small part of the story. And, even given his involvement, this was before he devolved into a cartoon character, so it’s nice to see him looking like a human being and doing something that resembles acting more so than it does clowning. Also, Binoche is radiant and just phenomenally talented. She should be in every movie.
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
When John Milius made Conan the Barbarian, he wasn’t so much making a movie as he was making a meditation on biceps and loin clothes. This is warrior poetry translated into a visual medium, with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s funny accent thrown in for good measure. How badass is Conan the Barbarian? It opens with a broadsword being forged out of molten metal and a young Conan being informed that the only thing in the world he can trust is steel, and then it goes on tell a story where adult Conan chops the heads off of person after person, not letting up until he’s crashed a big, weird orgy James Earl Jones is throwing that involves not only free love, but also a huge, steaming cauldron of green goop that has rubber hands floating in it. Yuck. Of course, Conan kills most of these people too, so eventually he just gets declared the awesomest guy in the world or whatever. There are so many muscles in this movie. So many glistening man-muscles.
Creep (2014)
A lot of people have seen Mark Duplass do comedy on The League, and many around these parts have probably seen him handle drama while acting in the movies he makes with his brother, Jay, but have you ever pictured him as being intimidating? You’ll be able to after you watch Creep, a found-footage thriller that gets so threatening and uncomfortable, I’d call it a borderline horror film. Creep sees Duplass playing a mysterious figure who hires a videographer (co-writer with Duplass/director, Patrick Brice) to help him make a video diary. He at first makes his new employee uncomfortable by being a little too familiar, and then gets him freaked out by being way too weird, and eventually makes him utterly terrified once it’s revealed that his quirks go far deeper than anyone could have imagined.
Duplass is great, so if the found-footage aspect of the film is scaring you away, don’t let it—this one actually works. If you saw Brice’s recent release, The Overnight, you know how great he is at crafting comedy-of-manners-based awkwardness, and it’s interesting to watch him use those powers to create scary situations rather than laughs here. Creep is a very appropriately named movie.
Dutch (1991)
Ethan Embry has got to be a shape-shifter or something. The kid he is in Dutch looks nothing like the teenager who showed up in Empire Records and Can’t Hardly Wait, who looks nothing like the adult who’s recently popped up in things like Cheap Thrills and The Guest. No matter what age he is or what he looks like at the time, Embry always connects with audiences though. He’s amazingly chokeable here playing a snooty prep school kid who’s forced to take a road trip home for the holidays with Mr. Blue Collar himself, Ed “Al F’n Bundy” O’Neill. This one comes from a John Hughes script, so you pretty much know what kind of tone it hits just based on that. Take the plot structure of Planes, Trains & Automobiles, mix it with the unlikely authority figure humor of Uncle Buck, add in a dash of the daddy issues the Cameron character dealt with in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and then you have Dutch—a thoroughly entertaining film that’s probably the most under-appreciated of the Hughes canon.
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