Universal Pictures
Are you into horror movies? Well, good news for you, it’s October, which means that there’s going to be a horror moving playing on a screen in basically any direction you look for the whole month. But what of the people out there who are too anxious to be in the room as things are going bump in the night, or too squeamish to watch as gore erupts into geysers? There’s no need for them to worry, because plenty of other types of movies are always being added to Netflix, and here we have a list of 20 recent additions that will get them past Halloween and into November.
As always, click on the films’ titles to be taken to their Netflix pages.
Pick of the Month: High Noon (1952)
Old cowboy movies are fun. Generally they’ve got dusty frontier towns, a handful of good guys trying to uphold the law, a handful of bad guys trying to break the law, and eventually a big shootout where someone falls off the roof of a building and into a horse trough. High Noon has all of that stuff, and it even features a lead performance from Gary Cooper that raises it up a notch above the other old cowboy movies out there. That doesn’t really paint the whole picture of what this movie is though. This is truly one of the greats—the sort of thing that rightly gets studied in film classes—and that’s because it’s just such a goddamned marvel of structure.
High Noon is one of those movies that just moves. It has no wasted moments, and it’s absolutely optimized to pack as much entertainment into a brief 85 minute run time as possible. It accomplishes this feat by picking its climax, making sure everything that happens before the climax builds to it in some way, and then ending the second the action is over. The first third of the movie is all about setting up a shootout and establishing the severity of its potential danger, the rest of it is a ticking clock tension-builder where our protagonist races to get ready for his life or death ordeal, then the thrilling confrontation occurs, and then the credits roll. Quick, to the point, and perfect. So many modern movies could and should study and learn from it.
All the Light in the Sky (2012)
Joe Swanberg has been on a real roll recently thanks to his making very inexpensive movies that nonetheless earn a good deal of buzz. Thanks largely to their stellar casts, Drinking Buddies and Happy Christmas both turned a lot of heads. Right before those two movies were released he made this one though. It’s called All the Light in the Sky, and despite the fact that it doesn’t feature any truly mainstream actors, it’s still just as authentic and dramatically effective as the two that came next. The film was co-written by and stars Jane Adams (Happiness), who’s been doing great work for a lot of years, but who was probably never going to get her chance to anchor a film as its lead unless it was in something like this where she’s creatively involved. Turns out it’s an opportunity that someone should have given her much sooner.
All the Light in the Sky is consistently funny, it creates engaging, authentic characters, and it has a whole lot to say about the entertainment industry, aging, and how our society treats women in weird ways. There are even a few thematic bits about impermanence and the futility of existence for you to chew on, if you’re the sort of person inclined to dig for stuff like that. If Swanberg’s recent pseudo-hits have been enough to get you interested in his work, then this movie is a pretty strong place to start exploring what else he has to offer.
A Single Man (2009)
It came as no real surprise when Colin Firth won the Best Actor Oscar for his role in The King’s Speech, seeing as he was the best part of that movie, which was exactly the sort of project the Academy always likes. It’s kind of a shame he didn’t get the award a year earlier though, when he was nominated for this movie, A Single Man. As good as he was in The King’s Speech, he was even better here, playing a fairly buttoned-down and repressed character, which allowed him to do more by emoting less. His character here, a college professor who has recently been shattered by a personal tragedy, is the sort of person who shoves his pain down deep and tries to hide it away, and it’s fascinating to watch Firth as he struggles with his invisible monsters, all while doing his best to keep the people around him from knowing that he’s in a fight.
The crafting of co-writer/director Tom Ford is just unbelievable too. Every bit of production design, every framed shot, every piece of music composed for this film, they all fit together perfectly in order to create a gorgeous whole that’s even greater than the sum of its beautiful parts. Watching A Single Man is like appreciating the work that went into designing and manufacturing a really expensive watch, which makes the fact that this is Ford’s only feature so far something of a marvel. We need more movies from this guy, pronto.
Beginners (2011)
Beginners is largely a love story, wherein a character played by Ewan McGregor and a character played by Mélanie Laurent meet and start to like each other, which, given how charming both of those people are, is clearly a lot of fun to watch. They’re not really the reason to see this movie though. This is also a comical character study straight from the mind of writer/director Mike Mills (Thumbsucker), but that’s not even the reason to see it either. No, the real reason is Christopher Plummer’s performance as a man who, near the end of his life, finally decides that it’s high time to embrace his true nature and see what it’s like to live as a gay man. Oh brother, is he delightful here—so funny, so touching, and so adorable that you just want to put him in your pocket and keep him forever.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989)
Despite the fact that Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a time travel movie that takes place over a whole gamut of historical eras, at its heart it’s probably the most 1989 movie that’s ever been made—mostly because it’s about a duo of metalhead slackers who speak in catch phrases and it heavily features shopping malls and water slides. Despite that sweet spot of late-80s nostalgia it hits though, it’s also one of the rare ultra-popular movies from the era that’s still fun to watch, nostalgia-aside. Despite its silliness, it’s still full of jokes that land, and Keanu Reeves’ movie star charisma is already on full display, in one of his few roles that fully understands what works about his persona. If you grew up with Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, then chances are there are still a ton of lines you quote from it. If you skipped it because you weren’t in its demographic when it came out, it’s high time you discover what a strong sci-fi comedy it really is. Sure, it’s no Back to the Future, but what is?
MGM Studios Inc.
Bloodsport (1988)
There are two types of people in this world: people who like Jean-Claude Van Damme movies and people who have tragically been raised in isolated cult communities and are completely ignorant of how much amazing art he was responsible for creating over the course of the late 80s and early 90s. Also, those of us who fall into that first camp of heroes are generally in agreement that the greatest thing Mr. Van Damme created during what has become popularly referred to as “The Golden Age of the Splits” was Bloodsport.
Van Damme’s character in this movie is hilariously named Frank Dux (as in, put up your dukes), his best friend is Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds (Donald Gibb), it includes that amazing shot from above where he does the splits on the roof of a skyscraper, the main plot involves a fighting tournament (the infamous “Kumite”) that allows him to bash in the faces of dozens of chumps, and the whole thing leads up to a big boss fight where he has to battle a ripped-to-shit Chinese guy named Chong Li (Bolo Yeung) who can bounce his manboobs like a maniac. Basically, this is the best movie ever if you’re a seven-year-old-boy or a grown man, and I was one of those things when it was released and the other now, so I love it.
Chuck & Buck (2000)
Because Chuck & Buck was a really low budget indie movie that was released in 2000—before technology made it easier for people with no money to make movies that look good—it looks pretty janky when you watch it today. Or maybe the version that got put up on Netflix is just bad. Either way, the aesthetics are going to put you off, but get past that, because everything else about the movie is really good. Mike White both stars in and wrote the film, and he’s both heartbreaking and terrifying as its lead, a sort of stuck-in-his-childhood creep-o who has developed a fixation on a childhood friend (Chris Weitz) and who uses a moment of personal tragedy as an opportunity to reconnect with him, in the most awkward and overbearing way possible. This is a stalker movie, and it will make you squirmy and uncomfortable, even as it’s being darkly hilarious. Also, Chuck & Buck comes from director Miguel Arteta, who went on to make the criminally underrated Cedar Rapids, so it’s got that kind of pedigree going for it too.
The Elephant Man (1980)
Making a movie based on the life of the man who became known in Victorian London as “The Elephant Man,” thanks to the many deformities he was born with, is a challenging proposition for a few reasons. Seeing as this guy was forced to live a great deal of his life behind closed doors, his story could have been the sort of thing that didn’t have the scope or visual appeal to suit a film adaptation. And seeing as his appearance was so extreme and unsettling, a dramatization of his life struggles is exactly the sort of thing that could have slipped into embarrassing melodrama. Seeing as this movie was directed by the king of biology-based drama, David Lynch, however, all of those fears are unfounded. Lynch’s sensibility is able to make this story come alive without it ever getting boring or becoming preachy.
In the early stages of the film, tension and horror gets built around the titular character John Merrick’s (John Hurt) appearance, in the middle section Hurt’s performance and the amazing makeup work that allows the humanity in his eyes to shine through humanizes the “freak,” and then a neat trick of tone and perspective is pulled toward the end where the normal-looking though callous at heart characters begin to become the true freaks who you turn your head away from in disgust. The Elephant Man offers you a good deal of subtext to chew on, but it wraps its thematics in a moody and entertaining package.
Escape From Alcatraz (1979)
There are a lot of prison break movies out there to choose from. Some of them, like The Shawshank Redemption, earn their notoriety by connecting the viewer to the prisoners on an emotional level. Others, like Le Trou, find their intrigue through obsessing on the details of the escape plan. Escape From Alcatraz has a little bit of all that stuff going on, but not enough for it to be as great as those movies or anything. What it does have though is a strong movie star lead in Clint Eastwood, who anchors the film well, and a bevy of character actors (including the South Bend Shovel Slayer himself, Roberts Blossom) who provide a flood of personality that constantly swirls around the chiseled rock at its center. Basically, the acting here is good, and speaking of rocks, the film also raises itself a bit above the rabble by actually being filmed on location at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, which is probably the most famous jail in human history. Escape From Alcatraz is like one part escape movie, one part historical tour, which is too much value to pass up.
Fido (2006)
While it’s true that the zombie movie genre is very quickly wearing out its welcome and probably needs to go away for a decade or so, Fido has enough of a unique flavor to it that it never makes you feel like you’re sitting through the same old shit. It’s got something of an Edward Scissorhands/Pleasantville vibe to it, which not only creates a unique environment for a zombie story, but also manages to be fertile grounds for comedy. The basic gist of the film is that the zombie apocalypse has destroyed the whole world, except for a fenced-in community a huge corporation developed that exists as a warped version of 50s Americana. The cast is amazingly strong, and includes names such as Dylan Baker, Tim Blake Nelson, Carrie-Ann Moss, and newcomer Kesun Loder, who does a great job playing basically the kid from The Sandlot if he fell in love with his zombie butler instead of with baseball. Fido is yet another zombie movie, sure, but it’s so weird and ridiculous that it’s an insanely fun one.
