Forty Great Films Streaming on Netflix

I have intended for some time to do a top-ten list of foreign films streaming on Netflix, but haven't had the time. This will have to do, for now. I offer up these great films in no particular order (and please keep in mind that I'm posting this list in January 2012--there's no telling when or how often Netflix shuffles its streaming lineup):

1. The Widow of St. Pierre*

2. Europa Europa*

3. Delicatessen*

4. Gosford Park

5. This is Spinal Tap

6. Whale Rider

7. The Year My Voice Broke

8. Children of Heaven*

9. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

10. My Left Foot

11. The Son*
12. Brokeback Mountain
13. Ponette*
14. Me and You and Everyone We Know
15. The English Patient
16. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her Lover
17. Y Tu Mama Tambien*
18. Baran*
19. The Bicycle Thief*
20. Heaven*
21. Let Me In*
22. Cinema Paradiso*
23. A Clockwork Orange
24. The Piano Teacher*
25. Microcosmos
26. The Motorcycle Diaries*
27. Malena*
28. Broken Flowers
29. Day Night Day Night
30. Kadosh*
31. Syriana
32. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
33. The Grocer's Son*
34. Happy Go Lucky
35. Memento
36. The Graduate
37. Rivers and Tides
38. The Virgin Suicides
39. Shadows and Fog
40. Carrington
* = primarily in a language other than English

BONUS DOCUMENTARY: Food, Inc.

I intend to come back to this post from time to time, to add notes about each film, schedule permitting.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: I make no claim that these are the best films streaming on Netflix, but they are certainly the best among the ones I've seen. That said, I have a lot of catching up to do. 

25 May 2010

C'est moi.

Too often, lately, I forget about Godard, Truffault, Malle, and the rest. I hereby swear off television (as soon as Breaking Bad is done for the year) and pledge to watch as many French and Italian films as I can get my hands on this summer.

UPDATE: Like, three or four, at least!

19 February 2010

I generally enjoy NYT film critic A.O. Scott's film reviews from start to finish, whether or not I'm interested in the movie he's reviewing, and today's critique puts that claim to the test.

From the first ten seconds of the TV spot for the new Scorsese film--from before I knew it was, in fact, a Scorsese film--I felt repulsed. But why? This movie seems tailor made for me. I admire DiCaprio. I appreciate well made imagery. The juxtaposition of gloom-and-doom with saturated color lures me in like honey draws flies. Yet, when DiCaprio says, in a comically ominous voiceover tinged by a cheeseball Boston accent, "These are all violent offenders--they've hurt people, murdered them in some cases," well, I'm done. You see, if you have to define the keyterm "violent offenders," then you clearly don't think highly of your audience. You are appealing to the village idiots of the world. Which is fine, I suppose, but not for me.

(Shutter Island at IGN.com)

In any case, Scott takes all of ten seconds to dispense with the pretense that "Shutter Island" is yet another serious piece of work from Scorsese:

“Shutter Island” takes place off the coast of Massachusetts in 1954. I’m sorry, that should be OFF THE COAST OF MASSACHUSETTS! IN 1954! since every detail and incident in the movie, however minor, is subjected to frantic, almost demented (and not always unenjoyable) amplification. The wail of strangled cellos accompanies shots of the titular island, a sinister, rain-lashed outcropping that is home to a mental hospital for the CRIMINALLY INSANE! The color scheme is lurid, and the camera movements telegraph anxiety. Nothing is as it seems. Something TERRIBLE is afoot.

Sadly, that something turns out to be the movie itself....

As the kids were fond of saying not too long ago, SNAP!

Later, among so many others, Scott gets in this zinger:

All of these riddles send out tendrils of implication that end up strangling the movie, the plot of which does not so much thicken as clog and coagulate.

Scott has developed into a master of using verbal play to burst the bubbles of pretension blown by the objects of his disdain.

And that's the reason I link to a review that will surely reach its fair share of readers: Rather than letting his wit drive his writing (as I am prone to do), Scott uses wit in service of a broad vision of the possibility, potential, and reality of cinema. His outlook reveals a smart critic, a compassionate man, and a film lover with a zeal for placing new works within the context of cinema history. His razor wit is, itself, just another red herring.

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Read the rest of the review here: "All at Sea, Surrounded by Red Herrings."

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On a related note, yes, Scorsese has made a handful of good films, but is there a single more overrated figure in American cinema? I can't think of anyone even close.

Which makes me wonder: who's the best we've got? Wes Anderson comes to mind, and Clint Eastwood, and, well, hmm....

Suggestions?

3 August 2009

Alice is the first mediocre Woody Allen movie of his later, faltering years, bringing an end to a solid run of good and great films that begins with Sleeper in 1973 and ends with Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989 (though I'm sure I'd dislike 1987's second Allen movie, September, if I had the stomach for it now). It's also Mia Farrow's first outright awful performance in an Allen movie. I know some hate her work and most are indifferent to it. I've always been a fan, myself, but her performance in the title role here is embarrassing. There's a scene when she takes secret Chinese herbs that supposedly make her bold and seductive; instead, she comes off as utterly, pathetically goofy. I suspect she was imitating some schtick Woody asked her to give, a la his flirtation scene in Love and Death:

Consider yourself lucky I couldn't find a youtube clip of Farrow's Alice pulling those faces. It gives me shudders to think of it.

But Farrow's empty performance is not the only problem here. Alice, herself, is the only semi-believable character. The rest are static. They're stereotypes: the wise Chinese herbalist, the rich gossip, the aggressive TV executive, the ne'er-do-well musician. Judy Davis is squandered in this, though she gives the only passable secondary performance. Even William Hurt is wasted as the stuffed shirt husband, despite his best efforts. That's because this movie lacks warmth and humanity. It's all flights of fantasy, dream visions, and cheesy special effects--A Christmas Carol for the uber-wealthy. We get none of the heart, none of the wit we've come to expect from Allen (and, for that matter, from Dickens), and dumb contrivances are apparently supposed to show us it's better to give your kids an experience of real life and real love than to raise them in some sanitized cocoon of wealth. I don't know, and don't care, what Allen wanted to say here.

I only finished watching Alice because back when it came out I thought it was all right. I don't remember why I felt that way. Of course, our Woody Allen comes back strong after this, with a few more good films (especially Husbands and Wives, Bullets Over Broadway, and Deconstructing Harry--the last of which works similarly to Alice but gets better every time I see it). Still, with Alice, we see the beginning of the end.

I'm not saying Allen is finished, but this is where he begins to lose his grip on what works--and what works is definitely not "whatever works." I need to watch Husbands and Wives again soon, to cleanse my palate.

(As an aside, I'm happy to note that Woody's next project is another movie set in London.)

26 May 2007

Rachel and I finally watched Pan's Labyrinth on DVD this evening. I found it gripping and disturbing, though occasionally juvenile. I haven't read a thing about the movie, so I'm utterly unfamiliar with how others have interpreted it. I'm struck by its unapologetic embrace of violence as a legitimate response to oppression and aggression.

At the risk of spoiling certain elements of the plot for those who haven't yet seen the film (tune out now, or skip to the next paragraph if you haven't yet seen the movie), I'll give an example. Writer/director Guillermo del Toro establishes his story within the context of Spanish insurgents battling Franco's fascist forces in 1944. Del Toro contrasts the relatively ineffective pacifist approach of Dr. Feirraro (who treats those on both sides, and whose bravest act of resistance is turn his back when he's about to be shot by the fascist Capitán Vidal) with the quite sane and ultimately effective (at least within the scope of the film) acts of violence perpretrated by the insurgents. This is emphasized in the transformation of Mercedes, the head of el Capitán's housekeeping and kitchen staff. Early on in the story, she restricts her resistance to the insignificant act of delivering mail and tobacco to the insurgents under the cover of night. At one point, standing in the woods alongside the partisans, she realizes she's a coward for continuing to work for her boss. Only when she is finally caught in an act of subversion does Mercedes pull a knife from the folds of her dress and assault Vidal. She lets him live, at first, but kills him in the end--in what may be one of the darkest happy endings I've ever seen.

At the risk of oversimplification, and with only a few minutes of reflection since the end credits rolled, I can't shake the feeling that this film is on some level a call for violent resistance to oppression and aggression. The historical setting and fantasy-genre trappings serve to make such a message palatable and subtle enough to be swallowed virtually unnoticed by a mainstream audience. But there it is: a ringing endorsement not just of skepticism but of radical, violent action.

I wonder what Ward Churchill makes of this movie.

I don't mean to conflate the fascism of Franco with the fascism of Hitler--or anyone else's particular brand of fascism--but when I think about fascism this famous quotation comes to mind:

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

That's Herman Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Luftwaffe-Chief, speaking privately with Gustave Gilbert, an American intelligence officer and psychologist, while awaiting trial at Nuremberg. What he says is well worth remembering.

11 May 2007

A.O. Scott gives a favorable review to the sequel to 28 Days Later (which I loved), called 28 Weeks Later. This one comes complete with American soldiers patrolling a "Green Zone" where the not-yet-zombified are supposedly safe from "the infected," at the heart of "a shattered country needs to be put back together, its remaining population protected and reassured." That country is, of course, England. And, lest we conclude that the allegorical elements are too heavy-handedly political, Scott assures us that "as in any good science fiction fable, the analogies it offers to contemporary reality are speculative rather than obvious."

Here's the review's lead:

Nothing satisfies the appetite for allegory quite like a movie about flesh-eating zombies. Somehow the genre, at least as practiced by its masters, has the capacity to illuminate some brute facts about the human condition and its contemporary dysfunctions. There are not many recent movies that match, for example, the social criticism undertaken by George Romero in his “Living Dead” cycle.

Danny Boyle’s “28 Days Later” and its new sequel, “28 Weeks Later,” directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, may not quite be in Mr. Romero’s league, but at their best they come close to his signature blend of grisly horror, emotional impact and biting satire. There is, of course, plenty of literal biting as well, since the virus-crazed creatures known as infecteds crave the flesh and blood of their erstwhile fellow citizens.

And also their metaphorical flesh and blood. The first movie, set in the early days of a pandemic that nearly wiped out the population of Britain, followed a small band of strangers who came together to form a makeshift tribe. This time, after the first wave of the virus seems to have run its course, the focus is on families and comrades split apart and set against one another by paranoia, moral confusion and the endless conflict between the survival instinct and the call of duty. If “28 Days Later” was, in part, about the emergence of solidarity in the midst of crisis, “28 Weeks Later” is about the breakdown that occurs in what seems to be the aftermath.

Conservative critics aren't responding so favorably. Here's Jan Stuart of Newsday:

A despairing tale of a virus that stopped London dead and turned England's populace into man-eating monsters, "28 Days Later" was a modest but stylish endeavor with a surprising degree of heart, humor and, in the final clinch, hope.

"28 Weeks Later" gets the despair. Period. As directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo as if he and the entire cast had guns trained at their heads (which many of them do, as it happens), this sort-of sequel is a screeching and wearyingly hyperbolic exercise in film-school nihilism that finds buried meaning in the term overkill.

Can't please 'em all.

It's pretty tough to justify getting out to a movie when you've got a two-year-old at home and another kid on the way, but if there's any movie this summer that I'm craving to devour, it's this one.