Hidden Gems of Netflix's Watch Instantly

My wife and I just finished Archive 81 and really liked it.

Me, I'm almost done with season 2 of Supergirl. I'm jut a little behind on this one...

Grenn wrote:
kborom wrote:

I've a low bar for zombie stuff but this didn't make it. Scenes of zombies turning whilst everyone stands around watching before suddenly going full into panic mode, race to a new hideout, rinse and repeat.

That's all zombie media. Are you sure your bar is that low?

To a degree, but it is all about the execution.

All of us are Dead up to ep 4

Loving the show so far. The one big down point I have with it is in this world zombie movies exist and these zombies seem to follow movie rules. However, nobody is acting like they know the rules. The actual zombie kill count is pretty low.

Spoiler:

Interesting how they spend a lot of time on one lady only to have her die as soon as she gets to the school. Black Monday did the same thing I guess. However, I think they could have cut her plight in half and still told the same story. I don't think her run needed to be two episodes long since it wasn't very interesting.

Something new I haven't seen before was the making of the tempoary bathrooms. It wasn't needed but I liked it. People need to poop and pee right.

The girl with the baby was another long plight but it paid off. I liked at how in the end she tied herself up in a way that would keep the door closed after she turned into a zombie. I missed when she got bit or did she die from complications with the baby?

The one girl that murders the boy just because he is poor was interesting. I like the idea of a evil person but it seems a little to crazy to turn into a murderer over nothing. I know the show was making a statement on class but this was a little to heavy handed.

The live streamer was interesting. Some of the comments were translated but not all. I used google translate them to English. Nothing special "hey don't go there", "keep running", "are we going to see him turn", that sort of thing.

They go back to bullying and a suicide attempt. This all started because a father was trying to save his son that attempted suicide. Everyone at the school tells the father to let it go. They don't want to punish the kids that bullied the boy. I think this might be a class issue. They don't say but I think the bullies are rich kids.

I wonder what is up with the cellphone girl. Is she immune or will she change soon. We shall see.

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is also a satire, but of what I guess must be suburban crime thriller trash novels. It's not confusing that some people can't even tell it's a satire. What threw me at first was that almost the entire first half of it seemed to be played particularly straight, but with an excess of cliches through it all. The second half lets each of its cliche's spin out in amusing ways, but I guess like Space Force, it's less a straight comedy than a deconstruction of what it would look like to push some of those cliches to some illogical heights, like the full circumstances of her daughter's death.

Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood is also a movie people can't tell is satire.

Kurrelgyre wrote:

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window is also a satire,

I've watched the first episode and found it very unsettling. Not sure I picked up much satire in the show yet

Spoiler:

except maybe for the British accent fake-out at the very start.

I'm not saying it won't become more apparent later, but right now I'm focused on the darkness of having an unreliable narrator telling the story who is clearly dealing with mental illness and trauma. I plan to continue watching, but this is one of those show I don't see myself binging because I need a break between episodes.

If you've read The Girl on the Train or any of Gillian Flynn's books, it's super obvious what it is satirizing. If you haven't, it's probably going to mystifying and weird and off kilter.

I liked the show a lot, and it isn't exactly subtle (Take your daughter to work day!), but it does expect that you know and appreciate the tropes of the "wine mom noir" genre (my spouse's phrase, I didn't come up with it).

A lot of the humor is in subtle sight gags, while most of the dialog is played straight.

All of us are Dead up to ep 5

Spoiler:

Knife to the back fake out was dumb. However, the library bookcase chase fight that followed was cool. I really like how karma came for the kid that pushed our hero down to the floor to get eaten. Also the rapist bully dies or does his. If he is still alive I think I know what is up with the cellphone girl. My guess would be that a super intense drive beyond staying alive might keep a person from going full zombie.

During a press briefing they go into how fake news is spreading fast. I wonder where they got that from. The government also cutoff all communication on purpose. This issue also came up in the real world. Now that I think about it the show took away cellphones early on I think in episode one. This came up in the real world at Amazon and Fedex I think. They didn't allow people to have cellphones so people couldn't communicate when a storm destroyed part of a amazon building and when fedex had a gunman go on a killing spree.

Oh the rapist bully didn't go full zombie. Looks like we got a zombie show going rogue. They also had a flashback. So apparently this zombie virus can learn. Maybe at the end of the series the human race will be replaced by smart thinking zombies.

And now rapist bully zombie is claiming to be god.

Well they are doing something different.

polq37 wrote:

If you've read The Girl on the Train or any of Gillian Flynn's books, it's super obvious what it is satirizing. If you haven't, it's probably going to mystifying and weird and off kilter.

Of that, I'm only familiar with the movie version of Gone Girl. I am very much finding this very weird and off kilter. I want to keep watching- mainly because I can't quite figure it out, but want to.

For example... take your daughter to work day...

Spoiler:

I watched this thinking there's NO WAY this is what really happened. This is a warped version of reality that the main character is telling herself to shield her from a more personal/painful story. But then in the next episode she's talking with a detective who confirms/tells her about the day "Mike" was arrested. So is it real, or is the detective part of her hallucinations too? What's satire here and what's from the broken mind of the main character. I can't tell.

I mean, things are all set up to not believe anything she sees- the handyman who is perpetually working on putting a door on the mailbox? Clearly he's not really there... right?

I'm going to keep watching for answers, but also, I'm keeping myself open to maybe there ultimately won't be any... only more questions.

Also, I'm not asking for hints or spoilers, I'm just trying to work things out and this post is part of that process.

When I saw The Fifth Element in the theater, I hated it. I was a hard sci fi fan and I just didn't understand what it was trying to do. I was defensive about my appreciation for the genre (this is back before nerd culture took over) and I was oddly mortified by how it played with sci fi tropes. It was only years later, as a more relaxed, hopefully wiser person that I understood what a wonderful masterpiece it was. But the point is, I wasn't looking at the movie through the right interpretive lens because I fundamentally didn't understand what it was trying to do.

The "take your daughter to work" bit works because it's an extreme bit of black comedy that plays on the kind of overwrought tragedy porn trope common in women's literature. If you're looking at The Woman in the House as a dark psychological thriller, it may be that you don't quite have the right interpretive lens. It's dressed up as dark psychological thriller, but that's not what it is.

The Fifth Element is legitimately my favorite movie, but people tend to look at me funny when I say that. There are objectively better movies out there, but this one is just so much fun, with utterly brilliant comedic timing, action, sci-fi, romance, and of course, opera.

Leelu Dallas multipass.

It's brilliant

I was the biggest Fifth Element fan there was. I wanted the same tattoo as Leeloo. I trick or treated as Leeloo on Halloween (the white shirt, tan leggings and orange straps outfit of course). I knew the entire script by heart and had the soundtrack’s eighth track, “Five Millenia Later” on repeat on my boom box.

That enthusiasm has been somewhat dimmed since then and in no small part due to Luc Besson being the worst kind of predator there is.

My dog is named Leeloo. The shelter had named her “Lilu,” I was reminded of the movie, and thought “perfect being that is love? Sounds like a great dog name to me if we correct the spelling.”

I learned the full name but my wife wouldn’t let me put it on the vet paperwork.

Eleima wrote:

had the soundtrack’s eighth track, “Five Millenia Later” on repeat on my boom box.

The Diva Dance for me

Vargen wrote:

My dog is named Leeloo. The shelter had named her “Lilu,” I was reminded of the movie, and thought “perfect being that is love? Sounds like a great dog name to me if we correct the spelling.”

I learned the full name but my wife wouldn’t let me put it on the vet paperwork.

Leeloominaï Lekatariba Lamina-Tchaï Ekbat De Sebat wouldn't fit in the space provided?

Anyone check out Murderville yet? It looks funny as hell.

Just watched episode 5 of All of Us Are Dead.

Spoiler:

Oh crap. That’s not good. That’s not good at all.

Nevin73 wrote:

Anyone check out Murderville yet? It looks funny as hell.

I love the premise of Murderville, but I had a hard time wading through the first episode. It didn't get better after that....

Edgar_Newt wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:

Anyone check out Murderville yet? It looks funny as hell.

I love the premise of Murderville, but I had a hard time wading through the first episode. It didn't get better after that....

I liked the Conan one but the second was less interesting, I guess the reactions of the celebrity make the show. Apparently it is a bit of a copy of Murder in Successville which is on YouTube from a few years ago.

I enjoyed the 1st and 3rd episodes of Murderville so far. The reactions definitely make the show since it is unscripted, like the hot sauce with Conan. It is far from great but a good watch when looking for some comedy with some laughs.

My son wanted to watch Murderville with me, and I somewhat assumed it would fall flat for me. I then I thought it was really, really funny for whatever reason. Okay, some of what I find funny is trying to spot tiny, tiny moments of everyone not-Conan breaking character. Usually I lose myself in the premise of movies and just enjoy it without being critical, but for some reason, seeing Conan make anybody on the show break character in the tiniest, hardest to detect way, really got me laughing.

Spoiler:

And when Conan says, "Diana Feinstein" and one of the women completely loses it, I did LOL.

I've watched the first 5 episodes of Godless. It's a western limited series with good writing, acting, and likable characters. If you like westerns I highly recommend it.

polq37 wrote:

The "take your daughter to work" bit works because it's an extreme bit of black comedy that plays on the kind of overwrought tragedy porn trope common in women's literature. If you're looking at The Woman in the House as a dark psychological thriller, it may be that you don't quite have the right interpretive lens. It's dressed up as dark psychological thriller, but that's not what it is.

Agreed, the satire is absurdity of it. That backstory was so over the top I actually did laugh out loud.

There's not really any gotchas that I can recall, so spending too much time trying to "figure it out" so to speak isn't going to be time well-spent. The narrator IS unreliable, but the satire and humor is in the tropes being taken right to the edge of (and eventually complete over into) ridiculousness.

I think Kurre's description of the second half letting those cliches/tropes spin out is an apt one.

"AND THE MAILBOX STILL ISN'T FIXED!"

Spoiler:

The slapstick and repeated incompetence of the husband was a high point for me, too. "I didn't think you'd want him to be our handyman." and "Turns out you were taking 50mg of anti-psychotics when what you should really have is a prescription for Xanax."

If it’s supposed to be a joke that the handyman is taking forever to fix the mailbox, I’m really not approaching this show in the right way. I’m seeing him as a hallucination and wondering what’s the symbolism of the broken mailbox and the fatherly-like figure who can’t fix it.

Tscott wrote:

If it’s supposed to be a joke that the handyman is taking forever to fix the mailbox, I’m really not approaching this show in the right way. I’m seeing him as a hallucination and wondering what’s the symbolism of the broken mailbox and the fatherly-like figure who can’t fix it.

It might more sense by the end of the show.

Light spoiler.

Spoiler:

That whole whole thing is a multilayered spoof of a number of tropes of the genre, as well as a fun absurdist piece of the back and forth game of spot the red herring that basically is the core conceit of the show.

Each time he appears it feels like the bit is DEFINITELY a send up of a specific trope. And then he appears again and it's clearly a different trope. And by the end when it's finally revealed what trope he ACTUALLY is, the show pretends like the whole clearly silly and artificial thing was supposed to have made sense the entire time, which is a wonderful send up of another goofy thing that's often core to the genre.

It's one of a great many things in the show that show the great love and understanding the creators have for the genre, and perhaps one of my favorite, because it also was such perfectly delivered absurdist comedy every time it came around. See also: everything to do with pouring wine.

Just noticed the Coen brothers' version of True Grit is on Netflix.

Also know as young Hawkeye's western origin story.

MannishBoy wrote:

Just noticed the Coen brothers' version of True Grit is on Netflix.

Also know as young Hawkeye's western origin story.

I really liked that movie when it came out.

MannishBoy wrote:

Just noticed the Coen brothers' version of True Grit is on Netflix.

Also know as young Hawkeye's western origin story.

THAT’S what I’d seen her in previously.

MannishBoy wrote:

Just noticed the Coen brothers' version of True Grit is on Netflix.

Also know as young Hawkeye's western origin story.

I have watched that movie at least six times and it always seems fresh which each rewatching. There is not a weak performance from start to finish. The dialog is truly some solid stuff.