Saturday, April 16, 2011

Netflix Challenge: Under 10

We need to catch up on the Netflix Challenge. In the last two weeks, it's been all about the French frogging up our queue. But now, les films sont retirés de la file d'attente.
Thank you, Google Translate!

The Horse Boy
A documentary about a family of an autistic boy as they travel to Outer Mongolia in an attempt to heal their son. Still not quite sure how I feel about this one. Is the effect real or wishful thinking?




Swimming Pool
Whoah! A good Hitchcockian thriller about a cranky, middle-aged British mystery writer who travels to France for peace, quiet and new literary inspiration. She finds it, along with a heaping helping of bare French breasts, sex and big tubs of yogurt.




Delicatessen
Before there was Amélie, there was Delicatessen. This is a visually striking and funny French movie about a retired circus clown who finds work at a strange apartment building full of hungry tenants.




Dark Matter
Didn't really know what to expect from this one and it ended up shocking me right out of my pantaloons. This first film by opera director Chen Shi-Zheng provides a look into the world of academia and the hidden lives of all those genius foreign students who come to the U.S. to study. It won a Sundance award for best feature film about science or technology.




The Stranger
I got on a real Orson Welles kick and knocked out two of his noir films I'd never seen before. This one has the great Edward G. Robinson, the realy nugly Loretta Young and Welles with a great mustache and haircut. Robinson is a UN war crimes commission investigator and Welles is a Nazi war criminal hiding out as a professor in a small Connecticut town. I highly recommend this one. Apparently, you can watch the whole thing for free right here on the YouTube.




The Third Man
Another classic noir with Welles playing the bad guy. This time he's Harry Lime, a suspected black market profiteer in post-war Vienna, who also happens to make one of the best, most dramatic screen entrances ever.




To Be and To Have
This is a sweet little documentary about a tiny, one-teacher school in the French countryside with a bunch of sweet, tiny French kids. There's just something about little kids speaking that poo-poo, oui-oui French that gets me every time. Although, the whole thing is spoiled a little when you learn that the nice teacher sued the filmmakers after the fact.



Just eight titles to go. We can do this.

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