SNOWPIERCER (2014, dir. Bong Joon-Ho)
Available on Netflix
I don’t know what’s happened recently that has left dystopian fiction on my mind, but considering you’ve already seen me wax rhapsodic about Bong Joon-Ho’s spectacular English language debut, it should come as no surprise that I’m pointing out its availability on Netflix so more people can join me in their appreciation of this dizzying blend of kinetic cinema and revolutionary ideals. To plagiarize myself, Snowpiercer is “both viscerally exciting and intellectually stimulating. It is everything I want out of my filmmaking. We so often have to settle for visually dynamic but soulless cinema or a movie jam-packed with ideas hamstrung by a miniscule budget or lack of visual ingenuity that we need to treat the release of a movie like this that balances both interests with such dexterity as the minor miracle it is. Incendiary, thrilling, hilarious and gut-wrenching, Snowpiercer is sci-fi filmmaking at its finest.” Well said, me.
PHASE IV (1974, dir. Saul Bass)
Available on Netflix & Amazon Instant Video
I wracked my brain trying to think of an appropriate movie to celebrate the immense spectacle that is Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar making its way to theaters this weekend, and I can think of no more audacious a sci-fi epic than the only movie Saul Bass ever directed in his career, an absolutely bonkers story of ants undergoing rapid evolution and engaging in a battle of wills with a scientific crew sent to research this sudden development. I don’t believe either Amazon or Netflix have the unfortunately cut psychedelic final sequence that Bass had originally included in this film, but the movie is wildly entertaining even without it. You find yourself rooting for the ants as they develop a hive mentality and begin to execute their mysterious plans just as much as you’re rooting for scientists to rally and prove human dominance over this previously ignoble species. This is probably the least known of the films I’m recommending here, and as such I sincerely hope you take the chance on it and end up as amazed as I was.
A MINI-2014 MFF FESTIVAL:
PARTICLE FEVER (2013, dir. Mark A. Levinson)
Available on Netflix
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON (2013, dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)
Available on Netflix
WE ARE THE BEST! (2013, dir. Lukas Moodysson)
Available on Netflix
If you’re still suffering from festival withdrawal I’m here to tell you plenty of films that played this year’s MFF have now made their way to Netflix for your viewing pleasure. These three in particular I can particularly recommend all of them quite different from the other but each more than worthy of your time. Particle Fever is a wondrous documentary that charts the construction and execution of the Large Hadron Collider by the CERN institute as a means of recreating the circumstances behind our origins, colliding two particle beams with one another as a means of discovering the matter that our very existence might be owed to. Edited by the great Walter Murch, it’s a propulsive doc that conveys the passion of this endeavor to laypeople and is one of the most thrilling movies I’ve seen all year.
Like Father, Like Son is definitely much less rousing of a picture than Particle Fever, but it is expertly crafted nonetheless. From master filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda (whose After Life is one of my very favorite movies ever made), it follows two families in the aftermath of the discovery that their children were accidentally switched at birth. Attacking ideas of nature vs. nurture and a parent’s desire to see something of themselves in their children, Koreeda brings his delicate sensibilities to the story with ease, crafting an immaculate portrait of a complex situation. Each Koreeda film is worthy of examination, and his newest is one of his very best.
Lukas Moodysson has earned his reputation as one of our best international filmmakers, and We Are the Best! is an adaptation of his wife’s graphic novel detailing three teens who find an outlet for their adolescent anger in punk rock music, specifically working on a song that decries the worthlessness of gym and participatory sports. It’s colorful, energetic and precisely humane in bringing the story of these girls to the big screen and is the perfect capper to this mini-MFF that you can hold at home with just a click of the remote.
PATHS OF GLORY (1957, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
Available on Netflix
In honor of Veterans Day, why not watch one of the most gripping portraits of war ever assembled in Paths of Glory? Banned in France for nearly two decades after its release, it magnificently captures how meager our humanity appears when faced with the utter inhumanity at the center of man taking up arms against one another. Kirk Douglas does some of his very best work here, and it is another in a long line of movies that flirt with perfection from Kubrick’s storied career.
WINNING TIME: REGGIE MILLER vs. THE NEW YORK KNICKS (2010, dir. Dan Klores)
Available on Netflix
I’m a sports enthusiast (more honestly a sports dilettante), and there is no sport closer to my heart than basketball, so you can imagine my excitement for the beginning of this new season. Be sure to keep up with our Bucks coverage on the site. And as a means of trying to impart that enthusiasm to you, I present the highly entertaining documentary Winning Time, chronicling the storied rivalry that developed between one clutch offensive basketball player and what eventually mounts to an entire city. This reached its apex with Miller’s unforgettable ‘8 points in 9 seconds’ against the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, but there’s plenty of other great moments in the rivalry and great talking heads that add lovely color to the periphery of the story. And if you still need some sort of further cineaste-driven impetus to check this out, know that Spike Lee plays an integral role throughout the story. This is a delightful doc that gets at what I love about the sport and the personalities that have made their mark within it.
STRETCH (2014, dir. Joe Carnahan)
Available on Netflix
In honor of Movember and our national championing of terrible facial hair decisions (speaking from experience, every month is Movember with the right amount of apathy) I bring to you some of the most ridiculous facial hair I’ve seen in a movie this year via Chris Pine’s bonkers millionaire in Joe Carnahan’s action/comedy romp, Stretch. Scratching a cinematic itch that hasn’t been reached since the last Crank movie came into my life, Stretch is a movie with reckless forward momentum and no concessions made toward good taste (I’ll only point toward Chris Pine’s entry into the picture as the starkest evidence of that). It follows Patrick Wilson’s titular limo driver over the course of one crazy evening as he ferries Pine’s character about while simultaneously trying to come up with $6,000 dollars to pay off a debt that will be collected in either money or broken bones by midnight. It’s not perfect by any means (it takes a while for the tone to fully assert itself), but there’s a sense that anything could happen and Carnahan is always a filmmaker worth seeking out. However, going in be aware this is much more Smokin’ Aces than The Grey in terms of his oeuvre.
