I just got my e-mail from Netflix saying that they've decided against the Qwickster thing. As a man who took the Netflix Instant Queue Challenge and won, I feel like I'm qualified to say this is a good move.
I love Netflix. They saved my soul from Cockbusters just a couple of years ago, but what's going on? Is it that they have no backbone or are they just great listeners?
It seems like a focus group might be a good idea. Maybe they haven't seen Mad Men? It's available to watch instantly.
It's all over. Che is done and I even knocked off a few re-adds and automatically added films -- Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun, the awful Goya's Ghosts and the totally awesome Oceans for good measure. I highly recommend Oceans.
I started the Netflix Instant Queue Elimination Challenge back on Aug. 10, 2010, as a way to clean out all the films I was hoarding on the queue, but not actually watching. I vowed to not add any new titles until the backlog was cleared.
Exactly one year and four days later, on Aug. 14, 2010, I was done.
A lot has happened since then, including one very nasty price increase, and I'm glad it's finally all over. Here's a little breakdown of the experience
Last Film: Che was the official end, but Goya's Ghosts was the last to be watched after it somehow sneaked back onto the queue.
Best Film I Hadn't Seen Before: Based on my Netflix ratings, I guess it's got to be Mary and Max, since it was the only one to get the hard-to-come-by 5-star "Loved It" rating. I don't just hand those out, unlike my wife who gives five stars to entire seasons of Roseanne.
Worst Film: I'll Believe You. This was horrible. The only Netflix Challenge film I couldn't finish, despite it featuring Chris Elliott.
Surprise Film: All of the Ramin Bahrani's U.S. immigrant story movies: Goodbye Solo, Chop Shop and Man Push Cart. I had never heard of this guy before, but I'll be sure not to miss any of his movies in the future. No wonder Ebert called him "Director of the decade."
It's been nearly 10 months since I first accepted the Netflix Challenge (Aug. 10, 2010) and I'm proud to say we're down to the final film.
At least I want it to be the final film. I'm not sure what the rule book says about this, but a few films that were initially on the 73-deep queue when the challenge was first issued (Goya's Ghosts, Manhattan Murder Mystery)but then disappeared, have now magically reappeared, while a couple of films that were in the DVD queue (Cold Souls, Tetro) have now popped up in the Instant Queue. Crap.
So, while we wait to convene a bipartisan panel to rule on whether or not the queue is down to one (Steven Soderbergh's four-hour Che) three, or five, here's the breakdown of what we've recently eliminated:
The White Ribbon Just like director Michael Haneke's previous entry on the Netflix Challenge, Funny Games, The White Ribbon is physically draining to watch. It's also painfully German.
Chop Shop/Man Push Cart Two great American immigrant stories from Ramin Bahrani.
Broken Embraces It's hard to go wrong when you get to spend two hours with Penelope Cruz, including a few seconds of bare-chested Penelope Cruz, but this one definitely falls into the Pedro Almodovar-Is-Overrated category. Just not that entertaining.
The Beaches of Agnes An autobiographical documentary by the really interesting Agnes Varda. I didn't fall asleep once!
A Nos Amours French awesomeness from the early '80s about a young girl from a dysfunctional family blossoming into womanhood with promiscuous sex. Not sure how the French get away with filming a 16-year-old girl all naked, but they do. It's art.
Here's the trailer in French. It's more fun without the subtitles:
Hounddog Dakota Fanning in a dark Southern tale featuring Elvis and rape. Why do we put ourselves through this shit?
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, lesfilmssont retirésdelafile 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.
SNL: The Best of Dan Aykroyd An excellent reminder of the genius of Dan Aykroyd, whose sketches hold up better than many of his SNL contemporaries of 35 years ago: Irwin Mainway and his dangerous Halloween costumes (Invisible Pedestrian); Fred Garvin, the nerdy male prostitute serving the entire Quad Cities area; pitch man for the Bass-O-Matic 76; and the list goes on.
Goodbye Solo Director Ramin Bahrani's critically acclaimed film about Solo, a Senegalese cab driver in Winston-Salem, N.C., who takes it upon himself to prevent an old man from committing suicide. A great, great movie that lets you take a peek into modern immigrant culture in America, far away from the big cities. Plus, Red West, a key figure in Elvis' "Memphis Mafia," plays the old man.
The Messenger A tough-to-watch drama about two soldiers assigned to the casualty notification unit. Amazing movie with great performances by Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster, but I'm glad it's no longer on the queue.
Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson I'm ashamed to say I didn't know very much about Hunter Thompson, this documentary rectifies that. Features interviews with Jimmy Carter and Jimmy Buffett, not to mention readings by Johnny Depp.
Shanghai Kiss Based on the poster that features a big picture of Hayden Panettiere, I thought this was going to be horrible. It wasn't. In fact, she's barely in it, and the movie is pretty interesting.
Despite what the poster implies, the film is actually about a Chinese-American actor in Los Angeles, suffering in his career due to Asian stereotypes in the industry. He does have a weird, unhealthy relationship with a teen girl (Panettiere) who obsesses over him. When his grandmother dies and leaves him her home in Shanghai, he visits China for a view days just to sell off the place and make some cash. Instead, he meets a nice Chinese girl and finds himself longing to reconnect with his ancestry.
According to Wikipedia, this went straight to DVD. It's better than that.
In an attempt to cleanse myself of this Oscar mess, I crawled back into the loving arms of heady European cinema.
First, it was the 1929 Luis Buñuel/ Salvador Dalí collaboration, Un Chien Andalou. Sixteen minutes of surrealist goodness -- razors to eyeballs, ants crawling on hands. Fun!
Then, it was on to one of my all-time favorites, Jean Luc Godard's masterpiece,À bout de souffle (Breathless). It's an important film in the history of cinema for many reasons, but if it were nothing more than just 90 minutes of staring at Jean Seberg, I'd still love it. She's a 1960s intercontinental American Dream.
Oscar season has taken up all of our movie-watching time, so it's been slow going on the Netflix Challenge.
Here's a quick recap of what's been taken off the list since December.
I'll Believe You This one made the queue because I saw Chris Elliott on the cover. It was horrible. I couldn't finish it.
Taps A good cast featuring Sean Penn and Tom Cruise early in their careers, but its only value today is as a document of the crazy return of "tough guy" military war mongering of the Reagan '80s. Sucked.
Kicking and Screaming Finally, one I sort of liked. Not to be confused with Will Ferrell's very funny film of the same name, this is writer Noah Baumbach's (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) first movie. It's about a group of guys in the mid 1990s who can't quite move away from their college campus after graduating. It's one of those, "I wish I'd written that" movies. There's definitely room for improvement, as a lot of the dialogue sounds very written in the way that Kevin Smith's movies always sound very written.
Capitalism: A Love Story A good Michael Moore movie. If you like him, you'll like this.
Cheech and Chong's Nice Dreams I remember seeing this a long time ago and thinking it was funny. Stone sober, the comedy has not aged well.
Downtown 81 The real Jean-Michel Basquiat hangs out with artists and musicians in New York in 1981. Super cool with good music.
Others removed from the list before viewing: Paloma de Papel Dirty Harry
We're over the half-way hump on our quest to whittle the Netflix Instant queue down to zero, so it should be smooth sailing from here.
David and Layla Another indie culture-clash (American Jews vs. Iraqi immigrants) romance film, but without all the stuff that would make it enjoyable. It received decent reviews, and Carolina liked it, but I thought the lead actor was a little over-the-top and the writing not so hot. The only enjoyment for me was seeing a street and some shops very near where I once stayed in Brooklyn. Besides that? Blah.
Jerry Maguire This is almost a better football movie than it is a romance -- and that's a compliment. It's one of the Cameron Crowe movies that's Cameron-Crowey in a good way. People will watch this one in 40-50 years on the future version of Turner Classic Movies and get nostalgic for the 1990s.
But don't believe me. Listen to my hero, Harold Ramis:
The Headless Woman Arthouse Argentinian movie about a woman who hits something with her car, then gradually begins to think she killed someone. There's an interesting subtext here about class and race in Argentina, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. Maybe you should give it a shot.
The King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters is, perhaps, the best movie featured so far in this Netflix Challenge. It's a riveting documentary detailing one mild-mannered, OCD father's quest to beat the 25-year-old world record high score in Donkey Kong. The original record holder, Billy Mitchell, is one of the all-time great film villains, and the supporting cast of classic video game nerds are hilarious.
Thanks to my boy, Mike Little, for recommending this one to the queue.
Teeth Just your run-of-the-mill tale of a pretty and chaste young high school abstinence advocate who discovers she's got Vagina Dentata. Three weenies get chomped by film's end, including one attached to that weird dude from Nip/Tuck.
Legion I fell asleep during this one. Carolina says she liked it, and I have to admit, the trailer makes it look pretty cool.
Also eliminated by default is The International. The only reason this one was added in the first place was because I liked the look of the poster:
And unless I get to it tonight -- and right now it's not looking good -- The International will be joined in the default bin tomorrow by Sidney Lumet's version of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.
I really, really liked Moon. It's a dark thinker full of Stanley Kubrick references (Kevin Spacey does the voice of a HAL-like robot) and a great performance by Sam Rockwell.
I was interested to learn on the old Wikipedia that the budget was $5 million. It seemed way more expensive.
This was director Duncan Jones' first feature. His next one is Source Code and will come out next spring. I'll go see it.
Last night it was Edward Burns' She's the One, starring Jennifer Aniston and Cameron Diaz in all of their mid-90s glory, followed by the always entertaining Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Farley.
I'd never seen an Eddie Burns (as Drama calls him on "Entourage") movie before. This was his follow-up to the Sundance award-winning The Brothers McMullen, so I'm sure everyone was real pumped to see it in 1996. Fourteen years later, it serves as a nice time capsule for Aniston's legendary haircut. Tom Petty also did the music with the same haircut he's always had:
The Chris Farley compilation always makes me laugh and wonder what he'd be doing nowadays.
Side note: In searching for that Farley video, I landed on SNL's site, which implores visitors to "Check out" this or that link seven times on the front page. Too much!
Funny Games This Austrian film was one of the last movies to get piled on the queue before the start of the challenge and now I regret it. It only got there because we had recently watched another in the Netflix recommendation category "Foreign Film Featuring Crazy Kids Tormenting Rich People in Big Houses For No Apparent Reason," and I just wasn't in the mood.
The strange thing is I vaguely remember seeing it before and enjoying it. It's intentionally painful to watch at times as this dim-witted family fails to rise up against two not-so-intimidating kids in short white shorts wielding only a golf club as a weapon. It's not scary, just hard to watch, as they fumble with duct tape and never run away fast enough. What makes it sort of different than other voyeur torture films, though, is that the fourth wall is broken down a few times by the lead bad guy, who'll turn to the camera Ferris Bueller-style and wink or ask the audience if they think the family will survive until morning.
The director, the respected Michael Haneke who won the Golden Globe for best foreign language film last year, actually did a shot-for-shot remake of his own film ten years later with Naomi Watts and Tim Roth.
Surrogates An interesting idea, and I'm a Bruce Willis fan, but this one was a little on the hokey side. It's the future and nobody does any thing for real anymore, they just link their bodies up to life-like robot surrogates who go out and do all the fun stuff. People live longer, but only because their robots do all the drinking and driving, coal mining and soldiering. Everybody is real pretty, too, and Bruce's surrogate even has hair.
Independent Lens: Between the Folds Who thought a movie about folding paper could be entertaining? Not me. Interesting, but definitely not a laugh-a-minute thrill ride. Too much paper folding.
The Netflix Challenge continues on the non-fiction tip with the powerful documentary, Off and Running.
This is the very interesting story of Avery, a young girl struggling to find herself. Nothing super special about that, except Avery is the teen-aged African-American daughter of two white Jewish lesbians.
We meet Avery as she begins efforts to contact her birth mother. The decision to do so effects everyone in the family, including her multiracial older brother and Korean younger brother, and the film deals heavily with questions of race, identity, culture, religion and sexuality.
My mind is still reeling a little bit from this one, so I called upon Carolina to sum up the message:
"Adopting a kid and loving that kid is not enough. That kid might need more and you have to make your peace with that. No matter how loving and giving your home is, that kid will always have questions."
The most important thing is Off and Running is off the queue and we've got just 60 more titles to go.
We've lost some ground on the Netflix Challenge this week and I blame my wife. She's the one who put Modify on the queue and Modify is the reason I've felt sick to my stomach for most of the week. Thisis a documentary featuring interviews with people who have engaged in various forms of body modification -- that can mean anything from simple makeup, tattoos and piercings to branding, those giant earlobe stretchy things and horn-like forehead bump implantation.
And that was all well and good, but then they started with the plastic surgery footage, penis piercings and other genital oddities, and I just couldn't stand to watch.
Honestly, I missed a good bit of this movie because I had to close my eyes. There were even moments when Carolina felt it necessary to cover my already closed eyes. I don't even want to imagine what was going on then.
This one is definitely not for the squeamish, or anyone with a normal gag reflex.
Among the small number of movies I find entertaining enough to justify repeated viewings is the 1984 screwball college comedy classic, Revenge of the Nerds.
Once we hit puberty, my best friend Erick and I would watch this movie every chance we got. And we weren't even high. I know we truly and soberly believed every bit of it was hilarious, but let's be honest, our devotion probably had as much to do with the Tri-Lambs' panty raid and Betty Child's ass than the witty repartee between Lamar Latrell and Wormser.
Until I hatched this scheme to watch every title on my Netflix instant queue, Nerds just sat there like an old jar of icy hamburger dills in the back of the fridge. I didn't necessarily plan to use it, but it made me feel safe knowing that it was there and ready if I ever needed it.
After watching it last night, I'm pleased to report that while some of the jokes have grown a little stale, there's still genius to be found in Revenge of the Nerds.
Filmed right smack dab in the middle of the Reagan '80s, an era ruled by hard-bodied heroes like Stallone and Schwarzenegger, Lewis Skolnik and Gilbert Lowe blazed the trail for what would be termed "geek chic" in the new millennium. You can get the commemorative bootleg T-shirts here.
We first meet Lewis and Gilbert as they head off to their freshmen year at Adams College. Maybe they should have gone to City Tech? Nah! Adams has the best computer department in the country!
Although the two nerds are hoping for a fresh start in college, they quickly learn that the campus is dominated by the good looking and athletic party crowd in the Greek system, specifically the Waspy Alpha Beta fraternity and Pi Delta Pi sorority. When the Alpha Betas burn down their frat house and push the freshmen out of their dormitory and onto cots in the college's gymnasium, Lewis, Gilbert and a group of other social castoffs (a sleazy nose picker, an allergy-prone geek, a Japanese guy with broken English, an effeminate gay African-American) band together to form their own fraternity.
Only one national fraternity agrees to give them a chance at a charter, the all black fraternity, Lambda Lambda Lambda. Sensing a brotherhood in the shared torment and injustice suffered at the hands of the white majority (a point driven home when the Alpha Betas burn "Nerds" on their front lawn), Tri-Lamb chief U.N. Jefferson agrees to make the nerds full-fledged members of the fraternity.
Using the talents that God gave each of them (and some muscle from their Tri-Lamb brothers), the nerds are able to rise above the Alpha Betas' brutality, win the prestigious homecoming carnival and control of the Greek Council. It's an underdog story for the ages. With plenty of T&A, to boot!
Supporting Evidence:
1: During the party the nerds' throw to impress U.N. Jefferson and the Lambda Lambda Lambda brass, Dudley "Booger" Dawson saves the day by breaking out the "Wonder Joints." Soon, everybody's high, horny and dancing to "Thriller."
Example 2: Sometimes the cheapest jokes are the best and what's cheaper than poking fun at the way Japanese speakers have trouble pronouncing Ls and Rs. And, WTF are "robster craws" anyway?
Gilbert: I just wanted to say that I'm a nerd, and I'm here tonight to stand up for the rights of other nerds. I mean, all our lives we've been laughed at and made to feel inferior. And tonight, those bastards, they trashed our house. Why? Cause we're smart? Cause we look different? Well, we're not. I'm a nerd, and uh, I'm pretty proud of it.
Lewis: Hi, Gilbert. I'm a nerd too. I just found that out tonight. We have news for the beautiful people. There's a lot more of us than there are of you. I know there's alumni here tonight. When you went to Adams you might've been called a spazz, or a dork, or a geek. Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you're a nerd or not, why don't you just come down here and join us. Okay? Come on.
Gilbert: Just join us cause, no one's gonna really be free until nerd persecution ends.
Take that, instant queue! You just got one shorter.
Another night, another Netflix instant queue title obliterated. This time, it was the 2009 British film, The Damned United.
If you ask me, never has a better movie been made about late '60s, early '70s English professional soccer. It definitely made me want to go out and learn more about the whole Premier League set up.
Not quite a drama and not quite a comedy, it is a good sports movie without the usual cliches found in American sports movies. Plus, Peter Pettigrew is in it, as well as the guy who plays Liz Lemon's bad British date.
