SARAH SILVERMAN: JESUS IS MAGIC

You do like to laugh right?

SHERLOCK

Another BBC special. Netflix is really good for British TV and British TV is really good in general. Basically it's Sherlock Holmes updated for the 21st century, which sounds kinda lazy and forced, bu this show is anything but. Each episode (there are 3 in each season) acts as a self-contained 90 minute movie focused on a single case. So basically if you like this, you get 3 Sherlock Holmes movies, which is pretty damn cool. But it's a TV show so naturally there's character arcs and through-lines that carry over through each episode so it's like the best of both worlds-film and TV. Sherlock is sort of cast as an autistic, anti-social dickhead who is always the smartest person in the room and let's everyone know it. Basically nobody likes him, including Watson. This thing makes those terrible Guy Ritchie movies look like a joke.

LUTHER

This show really sucked me in. It has all the same silly contrivances as most American cop shows, but I don't know... the British just carry this kind of shit off with more style. Luther is basically a super-humanly smart homicide cop who has mental issues stemming from a previous case and a wrecked homelife. Sounds pretty standard right? But this shit is soooo intense! Part of it is Idris Elba who rules in whatever he's in, and the other part of it is the balls-to-wall scripts for each episode which keep ratcheting up the tension and taking the show into darker and darker places. This is really good.

MR. MOM

YUP!
Keaton can fucking do anything! He can play a psycho, a devil-may-care mental patient, fucking Batman and even a cgi snowman! You fucking best believe he can handle staying home with the kids when he gets downsized.

THE SHADOW

It's hard to know what to think about A-Ball. I mean in one sense he's basically a suave, 300-pound silky voiced waste of potential. And in another sense, he totally rules and is doing exactly what he should be doing.
From the late 80's to the very early 90's it looked like A-Ball would either become the "greatest actor of his generation" doing edgy shit or a totally bonafide leading man. But neither really happened. He's incredible in Miami Blues, but from what I remember, just kinda lost in Hunt For Red October.
Anyway, it ultimately doesn't matter because he made The Shadow, which is a total Batman ripple-effect abortion that shouldn't even exist and helped to seal his fate as just a fairly rich actor who will be able to work for the rest of his life, but probably never achieve anything great.

Is The Shadow good? No. But it RULES!
The opening scene alone had me rolling on the floor. I saw this in the theatres way back when, but I wasn't really as fascinated with Baldwin then as I am now, so it kinda just stunk. But now it stinks in an amazing way!

Btw, Alec Baldwin has a great podcast where he talks to people and is exactly as dickish and pompous as you think he is. It's great!

THE BLOB

I always really liked this remake. I owned it on VHS. Johnny Drama as a leather-jacketed motorcycle rebel vs. a killer blob from space.

RUNAWAY

Whoo-weee! Look at that fucking cop-stache! That ain't your regular, run-of-the-mill cop-stache neither. The only kinda cop I know that could support a stache like that is a cop from the future who works in the Robotics division and hunts down rogue robots who go on murder-killing sprees.

DREAMSCAPE

The good Quaid fights his way through some fucked up dreams. It was great then, it's still great now, but you damn well know you weren't going to rent it. Netflix!

ARLINGTON ROAD

I always thought this was one of the better '90's studio thrillers. Maybe it's a little too clever for it's own good, but I really appreciated the fact that it was really going for it and mostly hit the mark. If you get off on conspiracy theories and you love Jeff Bridges (and what asshole doesn't) than this movie's got you covered.

MR. BROOKS

There are a lot of bad movies being made these days, but if we're honest with ourselves and can look past the veil of nostalgia, we'll recognize that there has always been a lot of bad movies. Maybe it's the script. Maybe it's the performances. Maybe the director just can't keep the film's disparate elements from spinning out of control. Maybe Dane Cook is in it.

Bad movies are everywhere and happening all the time. But the badness of Mr. Brooks is an elusive, rare kind of terrible. It's like a comet or a leap year, you're only going to be around to see one or two in your lifetime. Mr. Brooks doesn't just have a bad script, or a bad performance, or an unfocused director or bad editing or too many plot points, or Dane Cook. It has ALL OF THESE THINGS. Mr. Brooks is firing on every bad cylinder and it becomes a beautiful thing to witness. And I haven't even mentioned the tiny fact that Kevin Costner plays a serial killer with an imaginary friend.

BLUE PLANET VOL1-3

Before there was the epic BBC Planet Earth series, there was Blue Planet. It makes sense that these two series are separate when you think about it because Earth's oceans really are planet's unto themselves. The 3 volumes in this series are FUCKING INCREDIBLE and will blow your minds! You think you know the oceans? You don't know the oceans, smartguy. You don't know.

THE KILLING

I held out on watching this early Kubrick movie for some reason. But when I saw it on Netflix I said, "okay, let's finally do this!" That's the beauty of Netflix, people! It gives you the opportunity to the pull the trigger on films you might not otherwise rent or invest your time in.

The Killing was pretty good. It felt like a heist movie where God is fucking with the characters.

AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER

I don't know if it's just cuz I'm getting old, or I'm just a pussy by nature, but this was really good. And it's on Netflix!

Here's my longer review for it: http://cinemaconcarne.blogspot.com/2010/04/review-affair-to-remember-classy.html

NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

This is another no-brainer, but still. Just in case you haven't seen this yet, you're very welcome! If you've already seen it, it probably won't hurt to see it again. Like a particularly dark and twisted Grimm brothers fairytale updated to the American South and starring one of the screen's ultimate rebel badassess.

THE EIGER SANCTION

Look, I'm a HUGE Clint fan so it's no surprise that I'm recommending this movie. But seriously, The Eiger Sanction is just so much crazier than I ever could've hoped for.

Here's how I imagine the deal for The Eiger Sanction was made back in the 70's:

Clint walks into Universal Studios head office smoking a cigar and says: "I just watched The Man with the Golden Gun. Why does everybody like this Bond shit, he's half a fag AND a limey! Let's make a Bond movie with 100% All American Beef and I'll direct it."

The Eiger Sanction is Clint's twisted, ultra-macho answer to the Bond franchise and it's the BEST! The whole movie is like a 70's issue of Playboy--articles, ads, pinups and all--translated to the screen. It's also sooo wrong. Rape jokes, a dog named "faggot", and a drug-addicted Indian sex slave/assassin.

Awesome note: Clint did ALL of his own stunts in this movie, including all the mountain climbing. So when you see Clint dangling off the precipice of a mountain, he's REALLY DOING IT!

HOSTEL 2

I like being surprised and Hostel 2 really surprised me. Not in a "Whoa, the guy with the meathook hand is ACTUALLY the girls dead father resurrected as a killer who knew what she did last summer?" kind of way, but in a having-negative-expectations smashed kind of way. Hostel 2 was a lot smarter and dare I say--relevant--than I ever imagined it would be. It's essentially about American xenophobia taken to comical extremes. It's also about how rich white men are youth-killing psychopaths whether they pay to torture them in sex dungeons or simply destroy the future with reckless capitalist annihilation. It's not particularly subtle about making these points, but I appreciated the subtext all the same. It spoke to me.

It's also waaaay less bloody than I was expecting. Basically it's an hour of set-up where nobody dies and then 20 minutes of carnage. But the setup was kinda interesting and funny.

KUNG FU HUSTLE

Yeah, I know everyone's pretty much seen this movie, but if I can stop at least one person from being stupid and not seeing it, than I've done my job. This movie is JOY. In fact, if you were to double-bill Kung Fu Hustle with Happy-Go-Lucky you might just die of smiling. I wish Netflix also had Shaolin Soccer and God of Cooking because they are all powerhouse fun-times. Stephen Chow is China's Steven Spielberg, Jim Carrey, and Charlie Chaplin all rolled into one.