Netflixgiving 2017

Netflixgiving is a tradition that I, as far as I am aware, invented 5 years ago, on the first Thanksgiving for which I was a Netflix subscriber. Spending Thanksgiving at my mom's meant I wasn't going to get a chance to help cook (apparently I'm somewhat of a distraction in the kitchen) so I usually just taste-test things and kill time, but now I had Netflix and a world of unwatched possibilities expanded out before me. So I decided to try to watch as many things from my queue as possible.

Of course occasionally I use the opportunity to watch that DVD I've been meaning to watch for forever, or sometimes I get lucky and something good just happens to be coming on TV... and nowadays I have access to a few more streaming services so maybe next year it'll just be called Flicksgiving? Time will tell, I guess.

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My Netflixgiving Day began too early. I actually wasn't spending it with Mom this year so I'd volunteered to go in to my (closed for the holiday) job and do some cleaning and upkeep stuff that had been needing to get done, so I was up at 8 a.m. to get over there. Anyway, three cups of coffee and a couple episodes of the excellent We Hate Movies podcast later, I was done and could head home.

On my way home I saw three pigeons strutting confidently down the sidewalk and it was inexplicably funny.

It probably *wasn't* the GoodFeathers but I'm not positive.

Once home, I still had dishes to do, a shower to get and milk to buy, but after all that was done, I could start watching things.

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I started with a DVD of SHERLOCK HOLMES (2009), which I've actually seen several times before, but had recently just been hankering to watch again. I love this. I like the scenes that show how Holmes' mind works, and really love the score. I'm a sucker for Mark Strong and especially as a villain but the whole cast is fun. And then there's Robert Downey Jr., who is just on another level as Holmes. His interplay with Jude Law's Watson is incredibly fun.

Oh hello, I didn't see you there.

I recently mentioned how Edgar Wright's HOT FUZZ is an action movie that is also somehow soothing, which I understand feels like kind of an odd thing to say but is still true. Well Guy Ritchie's HOLMES is another one: despite having action scenes and explosions and whatnot, I find the rhythm of the movie kind of hypnotic. Like I said; soothing. Relaxing.

I regret not getting a chance to catch Ritchie's KING ARTHUR (2017) in theaters earlier this year.

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At this point I stopped to cook dinner (which, coffee aside, was also breakfast and lunch): roasted brussels sprouts, mashed potatoes and baked mac n cheese. It was my first time making baked mac n cheese and, all things considered I think it came out pretty great. I wasn't crazy with the crumbly topping so I'll probably leave that off in the future.

So delicious, I wish I was eating it right now.

Dinner in hand, I turned on JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND (2017) on Netflix. This is the documentary about Jim Carrey's experiences filming Milos Forman's MAN ON THE MOON (1999). It's also about experiencing Jim Carrey filming MAN ON THE MOON. My dude went... a little nuts. But I guess he felt that overall it was a very freeing experience, so good for him, y'know?

Jim & Andy, in that order.

Composed of all Behind-The-Scenes footage shot during the filming, cut together with a more recent interview with Carrey (as well as some TV & film clips), it was a very interesting snapshot of what it was like on set. Watching it really made me vacillate about whether or not I thought Jim Carrey was too crazy to be friends with or possibly just crazy enough. Overall, I feel like we'd probably get along but we couldn't hang out every day. While the Jim interview was pretty interesting, I wish there were other people interviewed. Danny DeVito and Paul Giamatti especially.

The best part for me was Jerry "The King" Lawler in the BTS footage.

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I've had SICARIO (2015) in my Amazon Prime queue for quite some time, so it finally seemed like the right moment (plus I finally saw ARRIVAL (2016) about a week ago, so I'm kinda high on Denis Villeneuve at the moment).

Damn.

This film is incredible. I really really enjoyed it. It opens strong and just keeps running. The performances were great, especially Emily Blunt & Benicio Del Toro. Apparently Del Toro cut his character's dialogue down a wild amount which lends everything he says more gravitas. There's a lesson there somewhere, but also the dialogue itself, by Taylor Sheridan, is amazing. For instance, early on Blunt asks Del Toro how the cartels do things and he replies "You're asking me how a watch works. For now let's just keep an eye on the time."

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I've been making my way through all the James Bond films on Hulu, so I put on the next chronologically, 1965's THUNDERBALL.

This is all the best parts in one image.

You know that old complaint (often voiced by me too) that "all the best stuff is in the trailer"? The same goes for THUNDERBALL and its poster. Every single cool, spy-stuff, James-Bond-y thing that happens in the movie is in that poster.

Maybe it was just that SICARIO was a tough act to follow, but THUNDERBALL was a *real* slow starter for me. I mean, Bond does use a jet-pack in the cold open (and a hilarious car gadget that sprays water at two guys chasing Bond who seem incapable of just stepping out of the way), but after that most of what Bond does is pretty much just shenanigans until around halfway through this movie.

For example: Bond is at a spa, on some automated stretch-your-back machine and the bad guy turns it all the way up (which is dumb for a death trap) and Bond only survives because the attendant comes back and turns it off. Worse, to get revenge, Bond uses a broom to lock the bad guy in a sauna box. It's... silly.

Add in the fact that a bunch of the 2nd half takes place underwater and that underwater fight scenes become tiresome pretty quickly and you'll understand why the underwater Bond films were always my least favorite growing up.

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By now I was pretty tired and full of carbs and could feel sleep (or possibly death) coming for me, so I decided to fall asleep to the 2nd season of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT back on Netflix. I'd left off on the fourth episode "Good Grief" where the family thinks George Senior (Jeffrey Tambor) is dead in Mexico and, ultimately Gob (Will Arnett) decides to perform an illusion at at the wake to celebrate George Senior's life (as well as bring Gob the notoriety he feels he deserves).

Cue Europe's "The Final Countdown"

This is one of my favorite episodes as well as being one of the most-quotable (which for ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT is saying something). "It's as Ann as the nose on plain's face", "Where the F#@! are my hard boiled eggs!?!" & "I deserve to be in that Poof..." all come from this episode.

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Anyway, then I fell asleep, slept pretty well, woke up and wrote this. Happy holidays, y'all! If you enjoyed reading this, you can find me on Twitter or Letterboxd if you wanna find me on either of them and I'm a contributor to MovieJawn which is a really rad site for movie discussion that you can actually get in zine form as well (if you like getting cool stuff in the mail).

To everyone reading this, I hope all of your holidays go smoothly and may they be filled with the movies that you want to watch. Cheers!

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!