Five Additional Netflix Instant Suggestions

A friend of mine who just finished school asked me if I could suggest some films for him to watch on Netflix Instant. Here are five additional recommendations. I've previously written about a few of these films and included links to the past reviews of them. Each of the films below were available on Netflix Instant in the USA at the time this was published.

Fish Tank
2009, UK/Netherlands
Andrea Arnold

On paper, Fish Tank sounds rather pedestrian: Mia, a teenage girl from the projects, tries to escape her grim existence by winning a dance competition. But on the screen, it's anything but, thanks to Andrea Arnold's spectacular vision and a dynamic central performance from Katie Jarvis. While the film is consistently breathtaking, there are at least two individual sequences that are just about heart-stopping. Older Post about Fish Tank: Down... on the Ground

With: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing, Rebecca Griffiths, Harry Treadaway, Sydney Mary Nash, Jason Maza

Network
1976, USA
Sidney Lumet

A fine example of the stellar films coming out of Hollywood during one of its richest periods, during the 1970s, Network is a brilliant satire that only feels more relevant today in our world of reality programs and trash television. On one hand, it's sad to see how far we've fallen from a time when a TV station would be creating a news show following a group of political terrorists, but on the other, I could cite plenty of examples of how the television narrative as evolved. You take the good with the bad, I guess. Faye Dunaway (and the rest of the cast) is impeccable.

With: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, Robert Duvall, Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty, Beatrice Straight, Bill Burrows, Jordan Charney, Kathy Cronkite, Ed Crowley, Jerome Dempsey, Conchata Ferrell, Ken Kercheval, Ted Sorel, Lane Smith, William Prince, Sasha von Scherler, Marlene Warfield, Lee Richardson

Open
2010, USA
Jake Yuzna

A surprisingly tender and whimsical film following two separate pairings of gender dissidents: one a hermaphrodite who goes on something of a road trip/hometown-discovery-adventure with one-half of a couple who have undergone cosmetic surgery to look like one another, the other an FTM transsexual who ends up pregnant after having sex with a cute boy he meets at a show. I've never seen a film handle gender like this; it's honest, unique, and, well, open. Winner of the Teddy Jury Prize at the 2010 Berlinale.

With: Gaea Gaddy, Tempest Crane, Morty Diamond, Daniel Luedtke, Jendeen Forberg, Jill Sweiven

Don't Look Now
1973, UK/Italy
Nicolas Roeg

Easily one of the greatest horror films of all time, Don't Look Now follows an American architect (Donald Sutherland) and his wife (Julie Christie) who relocate to Venice after the death of their young daughter. While Donald Sutherland works on restoring a crumbling church, Julie Christie meets a pair of sisters, one of whom claims to have psychic visions of the dead girl being close-by. Nicolas Roeg used the city of Venice masterfully and created not only one of the great what-the-fuck finales but the greatest sex scene ever committed to film. Older Post About Don't Look Now: Boo!

With: Donald Sutherland, Julie Christie, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania, Massimo Serato, Renato Scarpa, Giorgio Trestini, Leopoldo Trieste, David Tree, Ann Rye, Nicholas Salter, Sharon Williams, Bruno Cattaneo, Adelina Poerio

Night of the Comet
1984, USA
Thom E. Eberhardt

One of my personal favorite apocalypse films, Night of the Comet finds the population in jeopardy when a comet hits earth and turns nearly everyone to dust, except for a duo of sassy teenage sisters from the Valley. Where so many films like it fail, Night of the Comet does a good job balancing its intentional and accidental cheese; it has just enough awareness of itself to keep things playful and annoyingly/hilariously trendy.

With: Catherine Mary Stewart, Kelli Maroney, Robert Beltran, Sharon Farrell, Mary Woronov, Geoffrey Lewis, Peter Fox, John Achorn, Michael Bowen

You're a whore, darlin'

Because you know they just love doing it, Entertainment Weekly made another list... this time counting down the 50 Sexiest Movies of All Time (you can find 1-25 here, and 26-50 here), most of which is pretty asinine, although I (sort of) applaud their choice of Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight at the number one, even though I'm not sure it's "sexiness" resonates throughout the whole film enough for it to be the sexiest.

Shame, however, should be brought onto the mag for even mentioning 300 (which falls at number 50), which I will always lovingly refer to as gay porn for soccer moms (I didn't coin that, and forgive me for forgetting who coined it), a slice of ham like The Notebook, a cheese-fest like Dirty Dancing, an unsalted cracker like Cruel Intentions and a turd like Ghost. Shakespeare in Love and Mr. & Mrs. Smith could have also been omitted, and don't get me started on their ridiculous placement of fucking Once at #11. But props of course are to be given for the inclusion of In the Mood for Love, Mulholland Drive (duh) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (and, of course, that impossibly sexy scene in Don't Look Now between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland)... If EW was so intent on choosing so many non-traditional "sexy" movies, where was Persona, which contains easily the hottest, fully-clothed, non-sex scene ever?

For a more inspired list, you can check out their 25 Least Sexy Movies of All Time, which goes from Showgirls to Batteries Not Included to Requiem for a Dream to Gone Fishin'.

Kickin' off award season

The National Board of Review started the ball rolling for the year-end film awards, naming the Coen brothers' No Country for Old Men the best film of the year. Keep in mind that the National Board of Review is probably one of the less reputable sources to hand out awards each year. The awards are as follows:

Best Picture: No Country for Old Men - dir. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Best Director: Tim Burton (Sweeney Todd)

Best Actor: George Clooney (Michael Clayton)

Best Actress: Julie Christie (Away from Her)

Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)

Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone)

Best Ensemble Cast: No Country for Old Men (Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Kelly Macdonald, Woody Harrelson, et al)

Best Foreign Film: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - dir. Julian Schnabel

Best Documentary: Body of War - dir. Phil Donahue, Ellen Spiro

Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille - dir. Brad Bird

Breakthrough Performance by an Actor: Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild)

Breakthrough Performance by an Actress: Ellen Page (Juno)

Best Directorial Debut: Ben Affleck (Gone Baby Gone)

Best Original Screenplay (tie): Diablo Cody (Juno); Nancy Oliver (Lars and the Real Girl)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men)

2-11 of the Best Films of 2007 (in alphabetical order):
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Atonement
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Bucket List (seriously?)
Into the Wild
Juno
The Kite Runner
Lars and the Real Girl
Michael Clayton
Sweeney Todd

Harvest Moon

Away from Her - dir. Sarah Polley - 2006 - Canada

When embarking on making a film that focuses on people over the age of 50 (not counting Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford, or Susan Sarandon films), an age group often pushed into supporting roles, the word “mature” would almost be essential in critique. Actress Sarah Polley, here directing her first feature film, is in her 20s (as most people reviewing the film will point out) and could have been wholly unfit to create a film about a married couple, together for nearly forty-five years, dealing with the heartbreak of Alzheimer’s. That she chose Away from Her, based on a short story by Alice Munro entitled “The Bear Came over the Mountain,” to be her first film would seemingly require a closer look to determine whether or not “mature” could both describe the film and its subjects.

Thankfully, for us, Polley’s direction is so assured that a closer look would be unnecessary. She handles the movie-of-the-week premise of painful disease and makes Away from Her far more complex. Away from Her is, instead, a film about memory, not losing it but dwelling upon it. As Fiona, Julie Christie is fantastic, a smart woman, living with her husband Grant (Gordon Pinset). As her memory begins to leave her, she makes the decision to go to a home, causing distress and anxiety in her husband, whom she’s never spent more than a month apart in their forty-four years of marriage. When the film chooses to follow the struggle of Grant instead of the pain of Fiona, one might assume a cop-out; however, it’s in this decision that makes Away from Her a poetic piece of cinema and not a Miramax-produced biopic like the awful Iris with Kate Winslet and Judi Dench.

What Polley truly has working for her is that she seems hardly the sentimentalist. The emotions in the film are both authentic and grounded, and the course of events never feels dramatically-fueled, but instead richly realized and naturalistic. The film is cut between Fiona’s attachment to a fellow patient and the memories washing away of her husband and Grant’s pleasing with the patient’s wife (Olympia Dukakis) to allow Fiona and Dukakis’ husband to be together. The answers are never easy, and Polley has the advantage of working with seasoned actors who can pull it off. Though the final Vertigo moment where Fiona recognizes Grant after many failed attempts and the dreadful coffee-shop wench song that closes the film ring loudly as mistakes in an otherwise flawless film, Away from Her may stand as Polley’s finest achievement so far in her career, which is saying a lot coming from someone who’s admired her since she was a pre-teen in Exotica by Atom Egoyan (who also serves as producer here).