Netflixgiving 2016

"Netflixgiving" is a pseudo-tradition I've established for myself in the last 4 or so years, since whenever I finally got a Netflix account. I spend Thanksgiving day at my mom's occasionally being allowed to help cook, but no, mostly just eating food and watching Netflix. What follows is my end-of-the-day breakdown of my entire Netflixgiving experience.

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This year, my Netflixgiving started... early. Mom's house is right near a high school football field who have a yearly Big Game on turkey day which I never remember because who could give a shit. This year the festivities started at 10 a.m. with someone playing that "Tonto! Jump on it!" song through the PA system at the field. This is, for me, a somewhat surreal thing to wake up to. Your life may be wildly different from mine, maybe you wake up to "the Tonto song" (*1) every day of your life. More power to ya.

(*1) It was bugging me that I couldn't remember it, so I checked: it's "Apache (Jump On It)" by Sugar Hill Gang.

More power to ya.

This was followed by what I first thought was "Twisted Nerve" by Bernard Herrmann, a.k.a. "The Whistling Song from Kill Bill" (this one I knew by name somehow) but turned out to be a hip-hop track that sampled it.

I decided to drown all that out with the entirety of "Sing the Sorrow" by AFI while eating ginger snaps and drinking a hot mug of tea.

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I officially started Netflixgiving with probably my favorite episode of 30 Rock, the 3rd season episode "Gavin Volure" (2008). Steve Martin guest stars as the agoraphobic title millionaire (billionaire?) who falls for Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) after she is a guest at a party he'd thrown. The B Story is Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) being so afraid that his kids will "Menendez" him that he buys a Japanese sex doll of himself as a decoy. The C Story is Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) investing Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer)'s money poorly. All three storylines coalesce in the final scene the way a well written episode of TV should.

You'd never know Glen ate all his peanut butter.

All of 30 Rock is super-quotable, but this episode has the added bonus of Steve Martin's delivery ("I miscounted the men, Liz!"). Also, as a wrestling fan, I appreciate that in the final scene Martin makes climbing a ladder look much more difficult and dramatic than anyone who's ever been on a ladder knows it is.

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I checked regular non-Netflix TV to see that The Last Witch Hunter (2015) was coming on. On Netflixgiving I always try to watch things I haven't seen before rather than just re-watching the same old stuff over and over. So why not?

Vin Diesel plays Kaulder, the several hundred years old Last Witch Hunter of the title. He hunts evil witches for a (semi?) religious organization called the Axe & Cross, who assign him a "Dolan" which is a title passed down from one handler to another (think Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Alfred from Batman). His most recent Dolan, (Michael Caine, who actually played Alfred!) is retiring because he's in his eighties (the 800+ years old Kaulder still calls him "kid" which I found charming) and being replaced by a new Dolan played by Elijah Wood. The Michael Caine Dolan shows up dead the very next day and Diesel and new-Dolan Wood investigate. Blah blah blah, murder; blah blah blah, magic. You get it.

This is not a still from the movie. This is a still from Vin Diesel's life.

Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I was anticipating. It's really heavy on exposition, to an absurd degree in some cases, especially early on, but the result of that is some pretty interesting world-building. I though more than once "I would read / play this" (*2) There are some pretty great visuals and I found myself honestly wanting to know more about the world when the movie was over.

(*2) The character is based on an old Dungeons & Dragons character Vin Diesel played, so that makes sense.

But the best part? The best part was that in his Tragic Backstory, Vin Diesel has the same haircut / facial hair combo as WWE performer Braun Strowman. I have dubbed this look "The GQ Caveman".

Twinsies! Right down to that lone braid.

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Next I watched H. (2014) on Netflix which... was kind of a bummer? The story revolves around two women named Helen living in Troy NY around the time that a meteor (but maybe not) explodes in the sky. This comes in the midst of some strange occurrences (like screws falling up and keys inexplicably falling from secure hooks) and presumably causes even stranger ones (like people going into "waking comas"). The two Helens, their significant others and their "children" are all affected by these evens in different ways.

This is definitely a sci fi film, and definitely a drama and it definitely left me feeling... a little sad. Besides that, the performances were really wonderful; very real feeling. But man, it's open to interpretation and discussion. I would recommend it for fans of the writing of Don DeLillo (White Noise).

I have no pithy caption for this.

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I had a plate of bread, cheese, tomatoes, peppers, olives and cauliflower and put on High Rise (2015). Man! I really enjoyed this movie despite some uncomfortable subject matter. Tom Hiddleston plays Dr. Robert Laing, who has just moved into a luxury apartment block. My most succinct breakdown of the movie would be the phrase "lavish class warfare ensues". Boy howdy!

It's based on a dark, satirical novel by J.G. Ballard (one of his better-known works) and directed by Ben Wheatley who also made Kill List, which I enjoyed greatly as well. Wheatley is a very stylish director and it shows through in every scene here. The world he establishes reminded me a little of something like a lower-key Judge Dredd; somewhere in the "uncanny valley" that is almost but not quite recognizable as our own. Also it's the 70s. Despite not really taking place in a recognizable world you get drawn in really quickly.

I will absolutely be watching this again.

Remember the Seven Nation Army video? It's like that, but if Jack White ate a dog.

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Dinner time! Turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy, peas & corn and brussel sprouts. Mom, finally finished cooking, picks the next movie; the Peter O'Toole / Audrey Hepburn art heist rom-com How to Steal a Million (1966). The basic plot is that Hepburn's father (Hugh Griffith) is an art forger (strictly for the lols, too) and when he ends up in a position to be found out, Hepburn enlists the super charming O'Toole to steal the incriminating piece from a museum right under the noses of the French security guards.

Relationship goals.

This was the perfect movie to watch over dinner; light, fun, cute, clever and not exactly mile-a-minute plot-wise (though there are a few twisty, double-crossy bits). Here's three fun facts:

1 - This movie features an appearance by the late, great Eli Wallach, to whom I am tangentially related.
2 - One of the actors playing a security guard is named only "Moustache". You will know which one he is.
3 - Hugh Griffith was (according to IMDB) fired from the movie for "persistent bad behavior, including walking around naked through the (hotel they were in) holding a 'Do Not Disturb' sign over his privates, which he'd altered to read 'Do Disturb'. "

"DO Disturb"

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Over a piece of pie and a cup of coffee, we moved on to Brian DePalma's The Fury (1978). I had never heard of this one, despite it being a DePalma movie about psychic teens (and made two years after his amazing Carrie). DePalma is once again directing an adaptation of a novel, by John Farris this time as opposed to Stephen King. The movie was just okay, but I feel like maybe the things that didn't add up might work better in book-form.

So Peter (Kirk Douglas) has a teenage son named Robin (Andrew Stevens) who has psychic abilities. Ben Childress (John Cassavetes) heads an agency that "trains" these special teens to use their abilities (if by "train" you mean "turn into weapons for the government"). Childress betrays Peter and half-kidnaps Robin, who thinks his Dad is dead after what appears to be a terrorist attack, but isn't. With me so far?

Peter gets put on the trail of also-psychically-powered teen Gillian (Amy Irving) who helps him track Robin, but only after a LOT OF OTHER SHIT HAS HAPPENED. Meanwhile Robin has become an insufferable brat with an obscene amount of power that he just throws tantrums with.

Honestly, I love that logo font.

This is a tough call. I don't know if I would out-and-out recommend anyone watch this. I guess it would depend on what they were watching for. On the plus side: DePalma, psychic teens, some good action, some fun comedy bits kinda, solid character development for the female characters (*3), a score by John Williams and effects by Rick Baker! The negatives: it's a little unfocused and rambling, some of the motivations don't make sense and it's 2 hours long but feels longer.

(*3) We have trouble developing female characters now, let alone in '78, so this could have easily ended up being left by the wayside in favor of more Kirk Douglas action.

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I ended the night by myself watching Final Girl (2015). Abigail Breslin is a young sociopath trained by Wes Bentley to be a professional killer. He sics her on a group of 4 young men who have made a habit of taking young women out into the woods and hunting them for sport.

The Trump kids' album drops any day now.

I didn't love this. It's stylish looking, and as a concept there are good things here but it mostly falls flat. It's shot through with huge logic problems, both within the world of the movie as well as in the movie itself. Logic problem within the movie: Bentley has been training her for 12 years and has never explained his aversion to firearms to her before? Logic problem with the movie itself: Why would we (the audience) give a shit what any of the boys' biggest fears are?

I could, but will not, go on and on and on about this. Honestly it seems like it was originally a music video concept that somebody expanded to feature-length. I'd skip it.

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It's 4 a.m. and I have to work like 14 hours tomorrow. Goodnight everyone, and happy Netflixgiving!

"The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)"

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This was written for Shit Movie Fest for their 25 Days of Shitmas.
It appears here pretty much exactly as it does there.
But why not be cool and direct a little web traffic their way?
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Y'know how it is post-Halloween: maybe you only sort of feel like watching a Christmas movie, but don't wanna get all "TBS 24-Hour A Christmas Story Marathon" with it quite yet; you only wanna dip your toe into all the tinsel and twinkle lights. A lot of people would go Die Hard, some would go Gremlins, everybody's got a favorite. Mine? The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996), an overlooked gem of the the alt-Christmas movie season.

This movie comes from writer Shane Black who 1) always sets things around Christmastime, 2) always has snappy dialogue and 3) I thought for a LONG time had written Die Hard because of reasons 1 & 2. What he actually wrote was Lethal Weapon which is totally set around Christmas and has snappy dialogue. The director, Renny Harlin had directed the second Die Hard and was at the time married to Long Kiss Goodnight star / my celebrity crush Geena Davis. Black's and Harlin's names show up at the end of the opening credits over shots of Christmas ornaments and a grenade respectively. There's such a perfect, if very specific, duality to those two images that I'm honestly surprised Shane Black has never had anyone armed with weaponized Christmas ornaments before (he may have). SPOILERS: there is a group* of carolers that are not quite weaponized exactly, but used as a Trojan Horse.

* If there isn't already a collective noun for carolers, might I suggest a scarf? It just sounds right, y'know? "Oh, honey look. There's a scarf of carolers outside!" Merry Christmas, English.


SPOILERS from here on out, if you care.


Long Kiss Goodnight follows Geena (Miss Davis if you're nasty) as school teacher Samantha Caine, living a Norman Rockwell life in upstate Pennsylvania with a fiancé, a daughter and no memories from before 8 years ago. Her opening voiceover tells us that she has, over time, stopped hiring the expensive private investigators and has moved down to the cheap ones, and has all but completely given up on finding the woman she used to be. She has "kissed her goodnight". Except what kind of movie would that be?

Three things happen to Caine all at once: she's Mrs. Claus in the town's Christmas parade (the first spoken line of dialogue is a teenage boy bystander yelling "Mrs. Claus is hot!"), she gets into a car accident which shakes loose some of her old personality and a pre-amnesia credit card turns up, leading one of Caine's aforementioned cheaper detectives to show up at her home. This detective is Samuel L. Jackson as Mitch Henessey, scene stealer.

Caine's Mrs. Claus ends up on the local news where she's seen by One Eyed Jack (Joseph McKenna) a hitman doing time in New Jersey who shows up at Caine's home, using that Trojan scarf to launch us into the film's first big action scene (unless you count chopping vegetables with intense skill as an action scene. I watch a lot of Food Network, so I do not). The action in this movie is great. Renny Harlin really does action well: focused, bombastic and stylish. At the scene's end Jack is dead, Henessey has arrived and Caine can't continue to pretend nothing's up.

Now, I'm not going to go beat-by-beat with you for this movie. I totally COULD, but if you haven't seen it, I'd really be doing it a disservice. You should see this for yourself. Again, Renny Harlin knows his way around action sequences and this movie has the type of action you don't see as much anymore: memorable.

With computer generated effects becoming more and more common, the tendency is to make everything huge; a spectacle, because there aren't the limitations that there are with practical effects-driven action. There is definitely an appeal there, but something as simple as Geena Davis ice-skating across a frozen pond, shooting at a car full of bad guys has stuck with me since I was a kid. A big part of that is the way these scenes and set pieces are executed, but obviously Shane Black can write. Besides the action, the dialogue in Long Kiss is incredibly great. Very quotable, especially Henessey, but early in the film Caine has a few quips that feel like extra Riggs dialogue left over from the first Lethal Weapon.

One thing I want to cover briefly is Brian Cox, always a welcome addition to any movie! Earlier, when I referred to Mitch Henessey as a scene stealer? That's still true, but Cox's Dr. Waldman steals the show. Back when Samantha Caine was a covert government agent named Charly Baltimore, Dr. Waldman was her handler. There is a moment when Waldman is describing a notably phallic doodle of Henessey's, and he holds it up so the audience can see it. It definitely does kind of look like genitalia. Henessey quips "That's a duck, not a dick." and your eyes go back to look again, and Waldman does too! Brian Cox always makes these little acting choices and that's one that really clicked with me and has made me laugh since I was a kid.

On the topic of kids, parenthood is a definite through-line in this movie. Charly Baltimore's rejection of Caitlin as being Samantha Caine's daughter and not hers is an emotional thematic reminder of the changes this character is going through. She doesn't just cut & dye her hair and start smoking (not to mention shooting people), she is denying a piece of who she is. "Sam Caine had to come from somewhere" Henessey tells her, "I think you just forgot to hate yourself for a while". Henessey too has issues with a son he's barely allowed to interact with, but clearly wishes things were different; "I've never done one thing right in my life. That takes skill".

Speaking of parenthood, I might as well mention that my mom loves this movie (she has very good taste). When I told her I was gonna be writing about it for Shitmas 2016, she was very excited. "I remember the soundtrack as being right on!" she told me. Her favorite bit comes near the finale: Geena Davis' Caine/Baltimore (it's hard to say which personality is running the show by this point) has been beaten up, blown up, shot, stabbed, I dunno... maybe poked in the eye? She's been through the ringer physically and emotionally and when she pulls daughter Caitlin out of the spot she's been hiding in, Caitlin whines "Mommy, I hit my head..."

This makes my mother laugh. Every time. Just does.

I could go on about Long Kiss Goodnight being ahead of its time with regards to female action stars (straight action, non-genre), how Sam Caine / Charly Baltimore is Jason Bourne before Jason Bourne (or before the films brought him to a wider public awareness anyway), or even about how David Morse is in it (David Morse is in it!) but I'll just urge you to watch it this holiday season and see what you think.