The Cinema Guild
Looking for an easy way to watch movies? Then streaming them on Netflix is the answer. Looking to watch only good movies, though? That’s a little bit trickier, because Netflix has piles and piles of crap that you could spend your whole life scrolling through. That’s where we come in. We’ve got recommendations for solid new additions to the service, like clockwork, every month. Here’s a list of what’s new and good in October. As always, click on the films’ titles to be taken to their Netflix pages.
Pick of the Month: About Elly (2009)
Given that recent additions to Netflix include both a Wes Anderson movie and the movie I most wore out on VHS as a kid, it’s pretty danged impressive that something else got dubbed ‘Pick of the Month.’ Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly is just that good though.
Much like Farhadi’s Oscar-winning film from 2011, A Separation, About Elly is a very simple, human story that’s able to elevate things like breakdowns in communication between its characters and the social awkwardness that comes from societal constraints into high drama. The story starts with the disappearance of a young school teacher (Taraneh Alidoosti) during a weekend holiday with friends and goes on to explore the mystery of whether she just ran off or if she’s dead, what the repercussions are going to be when it’s revealed to her family that she was on a trip alongside a single man (Shahab Hosseini), and who’s going to take the heat when the truth of what happened comes to light. About Elly is insightful, character-focused, full of great performances, and better at building tension than can be conveyed in words. If for no other reason, watch it for Golshifteh Farahani, who throws herself completely into her role, going to deep, dark emotional places, and giving one of the most affecting performances you’re likely to see all year.
Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996)
When Mike Judge’s demented skewering of youth culture, Beavis and Butt-Head, was at its peak in the mid-90s, it was absolutely everywhere. The animated duo were showing up on awards shows, on merchandise, they were all over the evening news, and middle schoolers everywhere would talk in their voices all day long, driving anyone over the age of twenty insane—so of course Hollywood got involved and made a Beavis and Butt-Head movie. It was a pretty good one too. Sure, Beavis and Butt-Head are a relic of the 90s, but there are plenty of evergreen gags in here that still work. If you haven’t watched Beavis and Butt-Head Do America because the cartoon had a reputation for being dumb, but you’ve gone on to like other things Judge has done like King of the Hill or Silicone Valley, then now’s your chance to catch up with what everyone was loving back in the day. You’ll probably be surprised at how much smart satire got snuck into all of the lowbrow humor in here.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
It’s true that The Blair Witch Project was such a phenomenon upon its release that it created a huge and inevitable backlash, and it’s true that we’ve spent the last sixteen years suffering through the deluge of horrible found footage imitators that it spawned, but there has to have been something great about the film itself in order for it to be able to have such a profound effect on the movie industry, right? Right. People tend to forget just how good Blair Witch is at building tension, and how it knows better than to show the audience too much, instead leaving its threats mostly off camera and in the viewers’ imaginations, where spookiness is always more spooky. There probably still hasn’t been a found footage movie released that’s been able to do basic horror movie stuff as well as this one did since it kicked off the whole craze. If you somehow didn’t see it when it was big, and you’ve been avoiding it because you think you hate all found footage horror, give it a try. There is a way to do this genre well, and it turns out Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez cracked the code all the way back in ’99.
Comet (2014)
Before he started building a buzz by creating the technology and mental health drama Mr. Robot for television, writer/director Sam Esmail made this comparatively low-concept romantic drama, Comet, for the big screen. It’s one of those indie movies that shows us the lifespan of a romantic relationship between two characters, but shows the big moments of their time together out of sequence, in order to create interesting juxtapositions in behavior and to give us insights into character and whatnot. It’s a pretty well-worn storytelling strategy at this point, but Esmail has nonetheless been able to take one of the more interesting pokes at the conceit. Comet’s shot beautifully, it’s well-written, it adds an interesting wrinkle by focusing on a main character (Justin Long) who’s pretty inherently unlikable, and it puts Emmy Rossum in hipster glasses, as if checking off a list of my fetishes was a prerequisite for it existing.
Long and Rossum are both good as the leads, but it’s Long especially who’s able to shine here by first completely alienating you with narcissistic behavior and then bringing you back around to his side after he experiences a moment or two of emotional truth. He gives a big romantic speech near the end that’s moose pimple-inducing. Who knew he had it in him? Keep this one in mind next time you have a Netflix date night coming up.
Roadside Attractions
Dear White People (2014)
Discussions regarding race relations have been all over the media for the past few years, for dour and depressing reasons. Justin Simien’s satire about a group of black students attending an Ivy League college, Dear White People, comparative to real life, is able to tackle the divisions that exist between people of different races with much more wit and humor, with considerably lower stakes, and without reducing people to stereotypes, which makes the debate not just more palatable, but downright entertaining.
The characters here are well-developed and three-dimensional, the quips they throw at each other are biting and hilarious, and in general there’s just a lot to love about this movie. The biggest asset it’s got going for it is Tessa Thompson though. She plays a conflicted young woman who hosts a college radio program that shares a name with the film, and she’s a revelation. This girl’s got a real star quality, and she’s bound to start showing up everywhere, very soon. Get on the TT train now so you can look cooler than everyone else later.
Fido (2006)
Sick of the same kind of zombie movies that tell the same kind of zombie stories? Then Fido might be the movie for you. This one takes place in a world that looks like a strange satire of 1950s suburban life, but with zombies. You see, instead of living in an out of control place where survivors are constantly stalked by the undead, the people in the world of Fido have harnessed the potential of zombies by creating personal servants out of them. Co-writer/director Andrew Currie mixes humor with horror grossness well here, and he manages to tell a story that throws some effective satirical shade at things like our consumer culture, the way that we treat the sick and elderly, and the rot that exists under the glossy surface of suburban life. Fido is sick and fun, it’s got Tim Blake Nelson and Billy Connolly in it, and it features the sleaziest Dylan Baker performance this side of Happiness. That should be more than enough incentive to give it a chance.
Hackers (1995)
Look, nobody’s going to pretend like Hackers is a good movie. It’s dated as hell, and even back when it was first released it played as being mostly silly. If you were a teenager in the 90s though, chances are you hold it dear as a guilty pleasure. It offered up the allure of letting you peak inside of a hidden subculture, it pandered to a young audience by doing that thing where teenagers are portrayed as being competent and revolutionary while adults are painted as being ignorant and obsolete, it introduced a generation of young, straight boys and young, suddenly curious girls to Angelina Jolie, and it’s got a solid techno soundtrack that not only makes the era come alive, it proves that this current generation of kids has just stolen the music and the drugs of the previous generation and given them new names. Now that Hackers is on Netflix, you’re going to give it at least one drunken, late night watch. You know you are. Even if it’s just to see Fisher Stevens skitching behind a limo on a skateboard while wearing a black trench coat, AKA, the most 90s thing that’s ever happened.
Hardball (2001)
It seemed like a lot of movie fans were recently caught by surprise that Keanu Reeves had the power to make them cry while they watched John Wick, but true Keanu fans have known for a long time that stoner astonishment isn’t the only emotion he has to offer. Hardball is a little cheesy, and it sticks way too closely to the inspirational sports movie formula, but cheesiness paired with inspirational sports stories usually works well, so it makes for good comfort food. Hardball is like a cross between The Mighty Ducks (Keanu goes from sleaze to good guy) and The Bad News Bears (the kids he coaches are foul-mouthed street rats), which has to sound appealing, unless you’re a monster.
As for Keanu, a good deal of his patented awkwardness shows up in the first part of the film where he’s trying to play a rapidly flaming out gambling addict, but he nails the earnestness of the second half in true brow-furrowing fashion. I’m tearing up again just thinking about how much he loves those kids. Oh, and also this movie has Diane Lane!
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