It’s the “Clean Out My Netflix Queue” initiative

It’s been a while since I touched this blog, but last night as I was attempting to manage my Netflix queue, I realized I need a project to make a dent in my queue, and hey, it might be fun to blog about it too. So time for a blog refresh while watching a lot of DVDs and Instant Viewing.

So some background, unlike many people I never have trouble finding things to put in my Netflix queue (I’ll be keeping a running total below to see if I make progress), I have hundreds of things to watch, and have this way of constantly adding more. Of course suggestions of things to watch are always welcome too, just post a comment here, Tell Kite the Hero What to Watch

Starting numbers:
DVDs: 203
Instant: 295

This week in reviews

I have been negligent in writing up all of this week’s viewing fare, but I got distracted with, gasp, reading. But here’s the full summary of everything from the Netflix queue that I got around to watching this week.

Wallace & Gromit: Loaf and Death (2008) – I had high expectations for this, and frankly needed something fun to watch after a particularly bad day at work, but it was inevitable after three amazing shorts and a really good full length movie that the quality of Wallace & Gromit movies would go down a bit in quality. Still better than most stuff I watch, but this one just lacked some of the kooky inventiveness of the previous outings, 3 stars.

Place of Excecution (2009) – This was a Masterpiece Theater thing that I missed watching when it was first broadcast. Not bad mystery piece, but I figured out the major twist pretty early on (which is really a problem for me since I’ve seen so many movies), but in general it was pretty entertaining and well-done, 3 stars.

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009) – The one thing this movie has in it’s favor is that it’s only an hour and a half. Otherwise it’s pretty much an incoherent, pointless mess, 1 star.

South Park Season 11/12 – Yeah, well I don’t have cable so some of my instant viewing is catching up on some TV viewing.

The Ghost Writer (2010) – I like to think of this as a good movie gone bad. It all held together until the last 5 minutes where a character that has behaved throughout the movie in a relatively smart way suddenly does something really, really stupid for no reason that I can tell than to wrap up the movie. This might have been 4 star fare if not for the ending, 3 stars.

Boy A (2007) – This was probably the best movie of the entire week, but again I wasn’t a fan of the ending. This movie follows the assimilation a young man who was convicted of murder as a child back into society. The best thing about this film was the actor playing the main character. I haven’t seen Andrew Garfield in anything before, but I’m looking forward to seeing more of his work in the future (which I will be doing soon since he’s in the Red Riding Trilogy which is going to be available via instant viewing this week, hey sue me, I really like British Crime Thrillers). I wish Netflix would allow 1/2 star ratings because I would give this 3 1/2 stars, but I guess I have to round up to 4 stars.

Making some progress

Quite a marathon of instant viewing this weekend, between that and removing some exercise videos from the instant queue (how did THOSE get in there), I’ve made some decent progress on the Instant side.

So it’s a combination of mediocre and terrible with most everything I watched, with the exception of 3 episodes of Frontline which were excellent but depressing. So here’s the round-up.

The Blind Side – An enjoyable enough movie to watch, but it really doesn’t hold up to much though. Slick and very Hollywood, pulls at all the right emotions, but in the end is pretty empty, 2 stars.

Pressure Cooker – Documentary on inner-city school’s culinary program, resonates more than The Blind Side, but could have delved deeper into its subjects, 3 stars.

Bluebeard – French retelling of the Bluebeard fairy tale, in the end, I just didn’t get it, 2 stars.

2012 – Just in case anyone thicks I’m a film snob, I will watch pretty much anything, case in point. Ah Roland Emmerich destructo porn. Really, really terrible, 1 star.

World’s Greatest Dad – I remember a Slate article about how this was a terrific, but overlooked comedy. I should have continued to overlook it, blech, 1 star.

Billy Jack – This is a really bad movie, and it’s only in my queue because it got a mention on Gilmore Girls. I’m slightly disappointed, because this had such potential for being a really good terrible movie: villains who we know are bad because they round up and shoot horses, a misunderstood hippie school, a knocked-up teenage runaway, terrible production values, and a very calm, but apparently very violently tempered (because they tell us so), hero who’s a Vietnam vet, half Indian, karate kicking dude. And yet, it just turns out to be a pretty bad movie, 2 stars.

And a bunch of episodes of Frontline which I recommend over anything else that I watched.

The Informant! (2009)

Funny how I was just commenting on Facebook about the evils of high fructose corn syrup and the industrialization of our food, because hey, the company at the center of this movie, ADM, is one of the key players in all that, but really this movie is how truth is stranger than fiction (though of course there has been some fictionalization of this story). The story starts out as a basic whistleblower tale and evolves into a twisted yarn of multiple felonies all around.

Netflix rating: 3 stars

Red Road (2006)

No DVDs at home now, so browsing through the Instant Queue (on the PS3) I found Red Road which was described by Neflix as “Suspenseful, Gritty, Dark.” I didn’t remember how I ended up adding this, but hey, it’s there so it must be watched.

I will admit I didn’t really know what was going on during much of this movie, but frankly, I found that refreshing since I’m a little tired of American films that feel the need to spoon feed the audience every step of the way, but I digress. So here’s the basics, woman has a job watching CCTV cameras, woman sees a man who she thought was in prison on camera, woman stalks man, and woman does crazy things…but with a reason. Many unspecified relationships that get worked out by the end.

Also worth noting this movie is subtitled. I didn’t think the Scottish accent with unintelligible myself, but maybe I’ve just watched to many early Danny Boyle movies.

Oh, and I did figure out how it ended up in my queue. After reading the reviews for Fish Tank (2009) by the same director, Andrea Arnold, I put this in my Queue. Fish Tank is in my DVD queue, but it’s currently not available.

Final rating: 3 stars (hey, that’s actually a good review for me)

Starting Netflix Queue Numbers

DVDs: 203
Instant: 295

Quick Review: Baby Mama

Kite the Hero can’t be accused of snobbery when it comes to movie selection. Just finished watching Baby Mama which sadly lived up to my low expectations. If I was looking for laughs I should have watched episodes of 30 Rock instead. At least most episodes it surprises me and makes me laugh out loud.

Quick Review: I’ve Loved You So Long

Good movie, very nice performance by Kristin Scott Thomas, but think the ending was a cop out in order to make the main character more sympathetic. Definitely worth viewing.

Quick Review: Rachel Getting Married

My overall impression, wow, this is a long movie. Hard to believe 113 minutes can in fact seem so very, very long. And I’ll admit I even cheated and watched the last part of this movie in fast forward (I don’t think I missed much).

So if you’re looking to make time stand still, by all means watch Rachel Getting Married, it’ll make you’re day seem so long. Wonder what it is about watching unpleasant people that does that?

Review: The Transporter or Everything I Needed to Know About Making an Action Movie I Learned by Watching Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Transporter, 2002

Okay first I’ll admit I’ve actually seen this movie before, but since I said I would watch anything you asked me to watch I watched it again. In summary I stand by my Netflix 2 star rating (I think I’ll need to come up with an original Kite the Hero rating system).

So on the postive side this is a very watchable (though completely unsubstantial) movie, and Jason Statham does have a certain stone-faced onscreen charisma. Let’s face it, this is a good, bad movie, the kind it’s easy to get sucked into when you’re flipping the TV channels and then a hour and a half has past and you’re not sure where the time went.

However all that being said, why is it this movie seems so familiar? Possibly because many of the action sequences have been done before. So if you want to watch a fight with a big bald white guy or a truck chase, please just watch Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Other action movie cliches to be found in The Transporter:

• Any character that lives by a set of rules will break said rules
• When it appears the group of bad guys are being beaten badly, weapons will be conveniently found on hand. (Hey look everyone, there are metal pipes that were conveniently left here.)
• Escalation in weapon size. Never start with a rocket launcher if you can first start with high-powered rifles. It would be anti-climatic to just blow up the house and wouldn’t allow the hero to escape.
• Bad guys who have you encircled will always attack you one at a time. (Isn’t that a relief.)
• Cars that the bad guys drive will explode dramatically when hit by another car. (Must be all that dynamite bad guys carry around in the trunk.)
• Heroic characters have thought through every contingency. (Isn’t it a coincidence that I not only have scuba gear down here for an underwater escape, but I have two sets which is very thoughtful for someone who lives alone.)
• It takes about 10 seconds to suffocate someone. (Definitely the way to go if you need to kill someone, it’s so quick, easy and, for the squeamish, bloodless.)
• Bonus tidbit: Everyone in France has a Madeline pan in their kitchen, because after a hard day of saving the world who doesn’t want a Madeline.

So what should Kite the Hero watch next?