I'm assuming that a lot of people on this board have Netflix. For those that do have Netflix and watch the instant movies know that while there are some really well known and good films on there, there are lots of obscure things that you wouldn't even think of watching. There have been many movies I have referred to friends and family to check out that they would have most likely never known was there or check out, and vice versa. Hell, I didn't even realize Step Brothers and Pineapple Express were on there until months after it was there even though I search my Netflix online and on Xbox all the time. I had passed Beer Wars many times and never really wanted to watch it based of the cover art which seemed lame and childish. After seeing someones post on here praising it, I decided to check it out. It is quite interesting and I would recommend to anyone who likes to drink (95% of this board) or anyone who enjoys business/marketing because it covers both. A TV show that has one season on Netflix is Party Down (Once again heard of through a post on here) is a comedy that is on Starz revolving around a catering company in the Southern California area. It is pretty damn funny and it has been renewed for another episode. So share your Netflix Gems along with other greats that you could watch on Netflix that others might not know of, or even know that they would want to watch.
I watched Man on Wire through the streaming and really enjoyed it. I never would have seen it otherwise but I definitely recommend it. It's about this French guy that tight-rope walked between the twin towers right before they were finished. Doesn't sound like it'd make a great movie but it was pretty good. Otherwise I mainly use the streaming for tv shows. That's what got me watching Dexter, Weeds, and Deadliest Catch. I still have to start the Spartacus show and Californication on there.
Agreed. Who'd think that a documentary about tight rope walking would be so good? Keeping with the documentary theme, both Bigger, Faster, Stronger and Food, Inc. are pretty good. Bigger Faster Strong deals with 3 brothers and their experiences growing up in the 80s and 90s watching athletes and actors (that they later found out were on steroids), and their own experiences with steroids while playing sports. It comes off very unbiased, which is rare for a discussion about steroids. Food, Inc. is about where your food comes from, what's in it, and how the animals and farmers are treated. It's almost enough to make you want to stop eating meat. Almost. On a side note, has anyone found out an easy way to search for HD streaming movies on Netflix? My 60 inch Sony Bravia has a built in eithernet port so we can stream Netflix right to it (which is AWESOME), but the quality of some of the videos is lacking. Right now I just add movies on the computer, and then it shows up on the TV menu if it's HD or not, but it would be nice to know before I even add it to the instant queue.
I've been watching the seasons of Lost (up through Season 3 - episode 10) on here. It's just fantastic, and all of them are in HD. I've had some issues with the connection speed auto detection acting up, but other than that it's been great. I run my setup through my 360 and 40" Samsung LCD, amazing picture. If you haven't checked out the Modern Marvels (History Channel) Documentaries, I highly suggest those. They're pretty interesting and informative. I may have to check out some of those documentaries you guys have listed so far. Oh, and they have a ton of the National Lampoon movies on there. Too bad they're all shitty now. EDIT - I can't believe they have this on instantly: The show "Dogfights". Fucking amazing and discusses legendary air-to-air combat from different wars (primarily WWII and Vietnam). If you like war documentaries, you'll be in love.
This thread is a great idea. My Instant queue contains 119 movies. Here's a few of the better ones. Documentaries: Hearts and Minds: The famous, academy award winning film detailing the effects of the Vietnam War. Errol Morris (one of the best documentary filmmakers ever) has lots of films: Thin Blue Line and Gates of Heaven are good Ken Burns: Jazz, The Brooklyn Bridge, and The Statue of Liberty are all excellent Grey Gardens: The classic 70's documentary about two of Jackie Onassis' relatives living in a dilapidated house Brother's Keeper: Weird, weird film about a family of elderly brothers who lived their whole lives in a tiny, dirty shack on their farm. One is tried for murder when one of the brothers dies in their shared bed. For All Mankind: About the Apollo program, consists entirely of stock footage and astronaut voice overs. It streams in HD and looks amazing. Wild China - If you liked Planet Earth....Those brits sure make some good nature documentaries. Classics (loosely defined): Solaris - One of the greatest Sci-Fi movies Do The Right Thing - Spike Lee's ode to Brooklyn and black people The Goonies - Relive your childhood The Killing - Stanely Kubrick's first big film. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - I shouldn't have to tell you why you should see this movie The Last Temptation of Christ Pure Cheese: Hard To Kill - Steven Seagal at his neck snapping-est Labyrinth A Nightmare on Elm Street The Core Waterworld Lesser known gems: Brick - A film noir set in a modern day California high school. Much better than it sounds. The Proposition - The first film from the director of The Road, about the Australian outback in the late 1800's. Paper Moon - A classic 70's comedy about a con man and his daughter during the Great Depression
Netflix also has an "HD" listing in its genre categories. It makes it easy to quickly see which movies are 720p versus the 480p of the rest of their library.
I watched Two Days in April on a whim and loved it. Its a documentary that follows four right out of college football players entering the NFL draft. It shows you everything from training to the combine to draft day. As a sports fanatic, I found it fascinating. Highly recommended.
Only recently got my netflix for xbox streaming, but have watched a few movies on there. Tyson - This documentary was great. The interviewer knows enough to cut out all of his questions and just let Tyson's lunacy carry the piece. There's also full clips of the "I'll fuck you til you love me, faggot," and "I'm going to eat his children" scenes if that's what you're looking for. Watching him training at 18-20 is fucking ridiculous. His speed is unreal on the heavy bag. Being John Malkovich - Apparently everyone knows about this movie, but I watched it on a whim and thought it was really neat. Everyone I've recommended it to ha already seen it, though. Cameron Diaz is odd in this movie. I'll come back when I've seen more obscure shit most people wouldn't watch.
There's a couple of independent movies I never would have watched if they hadn't been available on the watch instantly. Bickford Shmeckler's Cool Ideas, starring Patrick Fugit and Olivia Wilde was pretty decent. And Shades of Ray, starring Zach Levi (Chuck) and Fran Kranz (Topher from Dollhouse). And, you know, never miss a chance to watch Donnie Brasco.
In the same vein, Synecdoche, New York. It's written by the same guy as Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless mind, and just like both of those it's a freaking head trip. I don't pretend to completely understand what it's about (I'll definitely be watching it again), but the one sentence synopsis is "A play director begins to direct a play about his life as it's happening." I'd recommend watching it, and then reading up about it at IMDB and Wikipedia, as it helped clear up a lot of things that I was curious about.
There so many great titles for instant watch. Since I've had the PS3 Netflix disc, I've been tempted to lower my membership to just 1 disc, since there's just so much on instant watch. Here's some great ones: Classics: There's so many for instant watch here, just to list a few: Hitchcock--North by Northwest, Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds. Kurosawa--Rashomon, Yojimbo, Seven Samurai Horror: Let the Right One In--fucking awesome foreign horror movie (kind of a genre blend, actually). The Exorcist Night of the Living Dead Documentaries: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room--entertaining and informative about the Enron scandal. You may want to to on a Wall Street murder spree afterward, though. Waco: The Rules of Engagement--if you're curious or want to learn more about Waco, watch it. Anything done by Frontline. Frontline is just great journalism, so just type Frontline into a "Watch Instantly" search. Personally, Bush's War and Sick Around the World are two of my favorites.
The watch instantly feature is one of my favorite parts about Netflix. The limited availability of movies has forced me to go outside my movie-watching comfort zone Black and white classics The Bicycle Thief - Necessary for any person even mildly interested in film history. The General - I have such a hard time getting friends to sit down and watch a silent film but Buster Keaton is so damned likeable. His Girl Friday - Cary Grant is the fucking man. This is back when romantic comedies didn't want to make me punch the nearest uterus. It Happened One Night - Same for you, Clark Gable Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - An uplifting drama about politics still relevant today (plus Jimmy Stewart) Seven Samurai - Kurosawa's best in my opinion. It's long but totally worth it. Anyone who enjoys westerns, kung fu movies, and the like owe it to themselves to see this. Documentaries I'll have to go ahead and second Man On Wire. The guy is absolutely nuts. His unrelenting passion and desire to create something beautiful is inspiring. Dear Zachary - I don't really know what to say about this one. This movie wrecked me emotionally for days. It's best to go into it knowing as little of the back story as possible. With that said, it's one of the best documentaries I've seen. I'm going to assume most have seen The King of Kong. Street Fight - I avoided this movie for ages because the topic did not sound at all compelling but much like The King of Kong, I was pleasantly surprised. A good look at modern politics with a politician you'll find yourself rooting for. Born into Brothels - A look at children born... into brothels. A beautiful and sad story. It kind of shows you that kids are still kids no matter where they're from or the hardships they have to deal with. I recently watched Love Me If You Dare. It's a French film and one of the most bizarre love stories I've ever seen. I'm always a fan of love stories between two complete outsiders (like Amelie or Harold and Maude). I highly recommend it but it's certainly not for everyone. There's also a pretty good selection of TV shows. I've been rewatching Lost and 30 Rock as of late. Something that many people might have missed is This American Life. They have two seasons up and just about every episode is amazing. The episode titled John Smith in season 2 should be required viewing for every male in America. And because I'm a child of the 80s, I'm so glad to see they have movies like Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Raising Arizona, and The Princess Bride.
Seeing a lot of documentaries, so I figured I'd add "Confessions of a Superhero" to the mix. From IMDb: "CONFESSIONS OF A SUPERHERO is a feature length documentary that chronicles the lives of three mortal men and one woman who make their living working as superhero characters on Hollywood Boulevard. This deeply personal look into their daily routines reveals their hardships and triumphs as they pursue and achieve their own kind of fame. The Hulk sold his Super Nintendo for a bus ticket to LA; Wonder Woman was a mid-western homecoming queen; Batman struggles with his anger, while Superman's psyche is consumed by the Man of Steel. Although the Walk of Fame is right beneath their feet, their own paths to stardom prove to be long, hard climbs." A guy at work highly recommends "Street Thief", but I haven't gotten around to checking that one out for myself yet.
Just got done watching Street Thief. Pretty interesting. I would recommend it to anyone who likes anytime of heist or gritty documentary type movies. Spoiler I enjoyed it better not realizing completely that it was fictional. I had my suspicions though. Cool Hand Luke-A teacher in high school had always mentioned how this was his favorite movie of all time. I finally watched it on netflix and it was pretty damn good. It's pretty old but I would imagine this movie is what made prison escape movies cool.
I thought of a few more that every person who loves cinema should watch. The Birth of a Nation - This film is evil. Like in the most basic sense of the word. It is racist, xenophobic, and basically a white power propaganda piece. Why should you watch it? Because it literally was the prototype of the feature length film and quite possibly the most influential film ever. This was released in 1915, back when audiences would be confused if a film cut from a wide establishing shot to a closeup. D.W. Griffith was the first filmmaker to codify the film language that you see in virtually every single movie ever made since then. Man With a Movie Camera - This film is basically a shitload of silent stock footage of all sorts of ordinary people doing ordinary things. It'd be boring except the people are Russians and they're doing what was ordinary back in 1929. If you like history, put this on and some epic music of your choice and enjoy. Once Upon a Time in America - This movie is fucking epic which, considering it was made by Sergio Leone, should come as no surprise. Follows the lives of little jewish hoodlums in NYC from the 20's to the 60's and is told in a confusing blend of flashbacks and opium induced dream sequences. The original cut (not the butchered American cut) is 3hrs 40mins long. 8 1/2 - Probably the greatest film ever made about filmmakers, and one of the best of all time. Quintessential Italian cinema. Stagecoach - Embodies the western genre. Patton - Do you consider yourself a man? Your wrong if you haven't seen this film. Amadeus - This film is not about Mozart. It's about Antonio Salieri and the nature of genius. Night of the Living Dead - This film created the zombie genre. Psycho - Puts modern horror films to shame. It still scares the shit out of me. Taxi Driver - This should be in your top 3 favorite Scorcese films. I would also accept Raging Bull (my #1) and Goodfellas. A Clockwork Orange - Made on a budget that is equivalent to 11.5 million dollars today (just a bit more than Tucker's Movie), and yet it is one of the best sci-fi movies ever made. If that doesn't prove Stanely Kubrick's genius I don't know what does. I expect people to have seen at least a few of these. They really are required viewing if you love movies. If you haven't seen any of these you've got a shitload of catching up to do.
I just noticed Mallrats has been newly added to the instant movies. This is probably my favorite Kevin Smith movie. Sure the acting is horrible but Brodie's rants are just awesome. And Jay and Silent Bob's antics are them at their finest. If you haven't seen it give it a watch. That kid is BACK on the escalator again!
This movie was recommended to me last year but I finally got around to watching it this weekend. The Man from Earth It's basically a conversation between a group of college professors during the going away party for one of them, John who Spoiler claims to be a 14,000 year old cave man. The spoiler isn't anything too serious, as it's revealed 15 minutes into the movie, and it's what the entire movie is actually about. But considering the movie is just a conversation with no action of any sorts I really, really enjoyed it. Very unique, and highly recommended.
World's Greatest Dad: This was one of the funniest dark comedies I've seen in years. Big Fan: An underrated gem with Patton Oswalt starring as a loser Giants fan who gets his ass kicked by his favorite player.
I watched Shrink, I'm Reed Fish, Easy, How to Lose Your Lover, and The Proposal today (today is my sunday, I was hungover and didn't want to leave my couch). Shrink may end up being one of my favorite movies of all time, on par with Cashback, which I purchased immediately upon the first viewing. The rest were decent. I love the main broad from Easy, Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds are a good team, Mark Brandanowicz for Parks and Rec is really better than I expected in HTLYL, and I loved the redhead from Orange County (Schuyler Fisk) in I'm Reed Fish, though that one was a bit slow.
All three season of Arrested Development are on there now. I have never watched more than 3 or 4 episodes and will most likely be watching all three seasons this weekend. Donnie Darko which I have somehow never seen is now on there too.