Category: Netflix Flick of the Week

What’s not to love about Joseph Gordon-Levitt? He’s a talented young actor who’s good-looking and very charismatic. He starred in great films such as Inception, 500 Days of Summer, and Angels in the Outfield (He played the main character who saw the angels, I just blew some of you’re minds didn’t I?). So what if I told you that not only did he star in, but also written and directed a film where he plays a Guido from New Jersey who has an addiction to pornography and masturbation? You all probably are thinking “What, Really?” Well he does just that in the 2013 comedy Don Jon.

So what’s the film about? It’s actually simple. Gordon-Levitt plays Jon, a young man who only enjoys a few things in life, his body, his place, his girls, his family, his church and pornography. Oddly enough the thing he loves most of all is porn, more than sleeping with woman. Why? Because the girls will do anything and everything in porn that girls in real life won’t do. He enjoys his simple life that is until he meets Barbra, played by Scarlett Johansson. He immediately falls for her and they start to go out. The film follows Jon as he tries to balance his two loves, Barbra and porn.

Don Jon is Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, and for his first film, he does well. The story is simple and even though it has a few clichés in it, it does enough different where it keeps the film fresh and original. The film has a great flow to it and it doesn’t rush scenes where you don’t know what happen, nor does it drag, making you wish that it would just move on. You want to know what happens to our main character and how he solves his problem. The cinematography is pretty standard for this kind of film, good but nothing great. The only problem I kind of had was that the film kept going to same places over and over again. It almost seemed to repeat some scenes, but change them slightly.

You think you’re going to hate Gordon-Levitt’s character after the first 10 minutes. Being from New Jersey and absolutely hating Jersey Shore, (If you liked it, more power to you) I was ready to root against Jon. However as you watch the film, you start to like him. He’s confident and doesn’t believe he has a pornography problem, but he’s also hard working, caring, and he does try to change for Barbra. Gordon-Levitt is so good at making you like him, even if you don’t want to. Scarlett Johansson also does a great job of being both sweet and fiery, as she wants Jon to change for her. The other main character is Juliana Moore as Esther, a student with Jon in college as she tries to help him with his problems. Moore does great as always, but it is a little weird watching playing the role she does, trying to seduce a much younger Gordon-Levitt. The rest of the supporting cast is good as well, specially Hank Azaria as the crazy Italian father.

In the end, it’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I think is one of Hollywood’s most underappreciated actors, who really sells this film. Having performed what I like to call the hat trick in films by acting, writing and directing, Don Jon is great comedy that people should give a watch.

I’ve got a confession. I will watch anything with Tom Cruise in it. Anything, no matter how bad. I watched Rock of Ages just because Tom Cruise was in it. I watched Cocktail, a movie in which Tom Cruise flips bottles and sleeps with rich women in New York City for half an hour, in Jamaica for half an hour, and then in New York City for another half an hour, with only the barest hint of a plot holding it together, and enjoyed myself. The man’s one of the last true movie stars, carrying terrible scripts on nothing but raw charisma and swagger. So, when Jack Reacher popped up in my “Recommended Movies” list, I stopped my current TV marathon (Burn Notice, in case you were wondering) because, hey, Tom Cruise.

The first thing of note about Reacher (by director Christopher McQuarrie) is the length. When I saw the preview image, Tom Cruise standing in front of an American flag, vaguely glowing, I expected this movie to be a tight ninety minutes, moving from action setpiece to action setpiece with vague exposition in-between. Instead, the movie stretches out into two hours, most of which is filled with semi-obvious investigation and moderately cliche dialog. It’s an odd fusion of crime thriller and mystery film, where every time I thought something was a little loose, it turned out to serve a purpose in the greater whole of the plot.

While otherwise this movie wouldn’t hold together, the cast keeps the movie running. The secondary cast alone is full of big names. Werner Herzog, director/writer/actor, plays our villain, giving the caricature Russian crime boss some real life, and Robert Duvall brings some real pedigree to the movie as Cash, our grizzled old soldier. Also notable are Richard Jenkins, recognizable from the recent hit Cabin in the Woods, and Michael Raymond James of Terriers, gone too soon, just like his television show. However, in a two-hour movie, none of these side characters is given much to do, and most don’t get more than twenty minutes of screen time, total.

Instead, the show is owned by Cruise and his co-star, Rosamund Pike, here showing off an American accent and an impressive range. However, she doesn’t get much to do next to Cruise’s Jack Reacher, who is always one step ahead of everyone else, no matter what’s happening. He’s a man with a mysterious unknown past, murky morals, and the skills you need to get the job done, and if that sounds cliche to you, it pales in comparison to some of the dialog written for the character. He actually speaks the sentence “I’m not a hero”, which alone should be cause for alarm, but when combined with the skills to shoot every gun, drive any car, fight any gang, and a photographic memory to boot, he’s almost superhuman.

And you know what? The fact that he was almost borrowed from a straight-to-VHS action movie from the 1980’s didn’t matter as much as it should have. This is the kind of role that Cruise excels in, taking a larger then life character and making him at least seem believable. He’s cool and confident, and that sells the fact that the audience should at least attempt to take Jack Reacher seriously as a character. I dug it, but then again, I’m not the most objective viewer of that (remember, Cocktail).

If you’re like me, and you’ll watch anything with Tom Cruise in it, then this is a must-include in your queue. Ditto if you’re into superhuman witticism machines. If you’re looking for a way to kill some time, this isn’t a bad one, but if I’m being totally honest, and I am, you could probably do better. The two-hour run time hurts, and if you’re not into the Tom Cruise variety show, guest-starring the rest of the cast, you’re not going to have too good of a time.

“Troll 2 is strangely watchable in a train wreck sort of way”. I can’t think of any better way to describe the b-movie to end all b-movies. While other films have come and sucked, “Troll 2” displays some of the worst acting, directing, writing, and everything else ever put on the big screen. So why is it so compelling of a film to watch? This is the subject of the film “Best Worst Movie”, a look at the phenomena that is “Troll 2” that aims to discover how a movie that aimed so high crashed so low, and why it’s still loved by so many.

Having started a b-horror film in my high school, not having seen “Troll 2” is like not seeing “The Wizard of Oz”. However, I realize it is possible that not everyone has seen “Troll 2”, so I will briefly recap the genius of it. “Troll 2” (No connection to “Troll”, but only named that to capitalize on its success) revolves around a family that vacations in a town called Nilbog, only to find that the town is infested with vegetarian goblins, and that Nilbog is Goblin spelled backgrounds. Along the way, there are ghost grandfathers, subtle homosexual relationships, and a boy peeing on a feast while time has frozen around him. Also, while there are plenty of goblins in the film, there is not a single Troll. You won’t recognize any of the stars because they went on to do very little to nothing else, and this is where “Best Worst Movie” picks up.

“Best Worst Movie” is directed by the man who played the young boy protagonist in “Troll 2”, and primarily follows George Hardy, the man who played the father in the film. The film opens looking at present day Hardy, a successful dentist living in Alabama, who is the most liked member of his community. Everyone interviewed from his staff to his ex-wife claims how great of a guy he is. The tone shifts, however, with this exchange between the interviewer and George’s mom.

Mother: “He’s one of the kindest people. Fun to be around.”

Interviewer: “What’d you think of your son’s performance in “Troll 2”?

Mother: (Excessive Laughter) “He’s no Cary Grant. I left in the middle of the movie.”

This small exchange demonstrates to the viewer just how bad of a film “Troll 2” would have to be to not even get his mothers endorsement. The film continues to follow George, who in the beginning of the film wanted nothing to do with “Troll 2”, and had not told anyone in his town he was in the film. Over the course of the movie, however, he begins to realize the cult status that “Troll 2” has gained over the years, and ventures to different cities to attend showings of the film. He loves the attention and the fact that people love this film, despite his knowledge that everyone realizes how awful it is. They also recruit all of the other cast members to join them, as well as the films director, Claudio Fragasso. This is where the film shifts and even becomes a little bit depressing. While the cast can accept that people hate the film and get in on the joke, Fragasso still believes that he made a great movie. He was excited to learn of the films sudden popularity, but is confused when people laugh at both what they are supposed to laugh at and what they are not supposed to laugh at. It’s a cultural barrier that prevents the Italian director Fragasso from realizing that people like to laugh at his movie because of how bad it is, while he remains certain of its high quality, even saying that the actors remember the experience wrong and that they are “full of bullshit”.

I believe that the film is asking two questions here:

1. Why are “Troll 2” and other terribly made B-films like it so beloved despite the fact that they are so low in quality?

2. Should it matter to the cast and crew that the movie sucks as long as people still like it?

Being such a fan of b-movies, I agree with the films answer to the first question. These films are so loved because of how genuine they are. People put a lot of work and heart into making the film and it just didn’t work. It’s because everyone involved really believed in what they are doing, despite the fact that it failed miserably.

As for the second question, the film suggests that the people involved should be proud of the film because people like it, even if it is horribly made. Even the director, who believes he made a great film, says that making the worst movie ever made is almost as good as making the best. Either way, he is happy that he made an impression on people, because as he put it, movies are successful when they affect people. Looking at how happy the people watching the film are as well as how happy George Hardy is talking about the film, I don’t think it matters for a second what the movie intended to do. As “Best Worst Movie” states, films like “Troll 2”, so genuine and weird, only come around once in a lifetime. I, for one, believe they should be celebrated.

The film currently has 3.5/5 stars on Netflix.

Pain and Gain is an action/comedy film directed by Michael Bay. Now before you close this page and immediately say this movie is crap, let me explain, because this film is actually pretty good. Starring Mark “Marky Mark” Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson and Anthony Mackie, the film, based on a true story, is about three gym rats who decided to get rich quick by stealing wealthy business man Victor Kershaw’s (Tony Shalhoub) entire fortune. Their plan involves kidnapping Kershaw and forcing him to sign away his money to them. The film centers on their heist, the aftermath and everything that goes wrong.

The biggest strength the movie has is that it is a comedy. Being directed by Michael Bay this could’ve easily been a poor action flick that takes itself too serious about three guys committing a theft. However the film doesn’t do that, often making fun of the situation our “heroes” are in. While not all of the jokes hit, most of them do and they had me laughing. The film itself is very surreal; ranging from the cinematography to the actual story it is based on.

Mark Wahlberg plays Daniel Lugo, the leader of the small group of criminals. While at first glance it may seem like he’s playing a typical criminal, but surprisingly, his character goes through more than you think he would. Lugo’s personality ranges from an asshole gym rat, a determined go-get’er, a (somewhat) criminal mastermind, a psychotic killer, just psychotic, and a bumbling idiot. Wahlberg has to go through a lot, but he handles it well.

However, the one who really steals show though is Dwayne Johnson’s character Paul Doyle, an ex convict who reformed through religion and Jesus Christ. Now just the idea of The Rock playing a softhearted, religious nut case alone is funny enough, but I found myself laughing at almost everything he did, like comforting the man they just kidnapped to trying to steal money. You never know what his character is going to do, but it’s hilarious either way. The rest of the supporting cast does a good job, though nothing spectacular.

I did find a few problems with the movie though. Like I said, some of the jokes do miss, and when they miss, they really miss. It takes a little while in the beginning to get going and the end of the film gets away a little but from the surreal, goofy tone that was making the movie great. While Anthony Mackie does a fine job as Luco’s partner Adrian, he’s not as a good as Wahlberg or as funny as Johnson.

If you want to have a good time with some friends and watch a silly film about three idiots trying to pull of a kidnapping, then you can’t go wrong here. It has a few moments that make you scratch your head, but as a whole, the film is crazy, funny, and above all else, enjoyable.

Written and directed by Josh Boone (the director of the highly anticipated film adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. See our review here.), Stuck in Love (2012) was Boone’s debut, and a star-studded one at that.

I’m kind of obsessed with family resemblances, and the casting is pretty spot-on there. The Mortal Instruments’ Lily Collins radiates confidence as Samantha, and Nat Wolff’s Rusty, as Sam’s younger brother, is an endearing stoner-wallflower. Both resemble their mother, played by Jennifer Connelly. Oh, and Kristen Bell plays the neighbor that the novelist father is having casual sex with! The film is about love (obviously), realism versus romance, and writers.

Samantha and Rusty grew up in the kind of house where their dad, novelist William Borgens (Greg Kinnear), would pay them to write in their journals, and sure enough, both of them have inherited their father’s writing talents. Even though I hate Samantha for getting a book published while in college, she is the one who tells her father he can’t behave like that when she finds out he has been spying on his ex-wife. Samantha is a realist, and somehow Collins plays her as sophisticated (if often cocky), even when she refuses to talk to her own mother.

Rusty is the hopeless romantic, and his writing forms the opening lines of the movie (“I remember that it hurt. Looking at her hurt.”). I would call his father, William, a hopeless romantic too, with the way that he stalks his ex-wife, Erica—but he has sex with Kristen Bell’s Tricia often enough to forgo that title.

And yet, when Erica accuses him of being in denial about everything, I agree with her; when she comes to his house in distress about their daughter, you can easily see that he thought she came back for him. Stuck in Love has such beautifully heartbreaking moments that made me love it.

Logan Lerman plays baby-faced fellow writing student Lou who “reeks of romance and good intentions” according to Samantha, and has the nice guy thing going for him while she’s a rather cynical manic pixie dream girl. Eventually, though, she admits, “You make me feel less cynical.”

And that’s not a spoiler because these characters and their relationships go through all sorts of developments and grow throughout the story. This film is very character-driven, not plot-driven, but it is exciting, heartbreaking, and surprising. The soundtrack is also pretty stellar, featuring Conor Oberst and Elliot Smith.

The film has an average rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars on Netflix.

21 & Over, directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, is an American comedy 2013 film that is recently being featured as a popular comedy on Netflix.

The movie is about two friends Casey and Miller who are high school pals and are now over 21 and want to take their friend Jeff Chang out for his 21st birthday. Jeff does not want to go out because he has an important medical school interview. However, with some convincing, Jeff accepts the offer.

Unsurprisingly, Jeff drinks too much at the bar and becomes incoherent. Casey and Miller need to take him home, but they can’t remember where he lives. Ridiculous mayhem unfolds in the midst of trying to find Jeff’s address. Throughout the comedic scenes, Jeff becomes conscious and the trio find their way back to Jeff’s house.

By the end of the film, Jeff reveals to his father that he no longer wants to attend med school. His father does not take it well, but Casey and Miller admire Jeff for standing up to his father. The film fastowards three months and the three amigos are at a music festival.

Prior to the festival, we learn that Miller has come out of his laziness and is applying to colleges while Casey is now dating Nicole, a girl he met at a bar the night Jeff got obliterated. As for Jeff, he has no plan to attend med school but is still in college. Jeff has yet another wild night at the music festival and stumbles in late to his college class the next day. Jeff discovers that his professor is a red headed man they saw repeatedly dancing in the street the previous night. The film cuts to black and the credits roll.

The movie received 28 percent on rotten tomatoes, and rightly so. The movie, while has its comedic moments, is forgettable and bland. It touches upon the meaning of friendship, but that is really the only thing that can be taken away from this film. There is really no depth to this film and there is not much that can be taken away from it.

This film is comparable to the movie Project X, with the only difference being that a plot exists in 21 & Over. I think some 21 and unders would be the only ones to find this movie enjoyable. All in all, this movie is not worth watching and does not deserve to be one of the popular comedic films of the week on Netflix.

The film currently has 3.8 out of 5 stars on Netflix.

The film Serenity is the movie sequel to Joss Wehdon’s popular, but short-lived TV series Firefly. Firefly was a sci-fi series with many western elements thrown in. Though the film does a good job of explaining things to those unfamiliar with the series, here’s a quick synopsis. In the future, our Earth that we know has been dried up of all its resources, causing the people to travel to other parts of the galaxy. There we’re able to terra-form new planets and the central planets became under control of the Alliance (the galaxy’s form of government). The series follows Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a former soldier of the rebellion that fought and lost against the Alliance, and his “lovable” crew of the starship Serenity as they travel around the outer planets, looking for any work they can get and avoiding the Alliance, as they hide two fugitives, a doctor named Simon, and his psychic sister River.

One thing that made the series so great was the relationships between the crewmembers of Serenity. The film carries the great chemistry that the actors had in the TV series onto the big screen. Each of the different crewmembers has his or her own distinct personality. From Zoë (Gina Torres) being the tough-nosed second in command, to Wash (Alan Tudyk) as the snarky, comical pilot, to Simon (Sean Maher) as the smart but caring doctor, each character gets enough time to really shine. The writing is really top-notch for a sci-fi film and the acting is spot on most of the time. Nathan Fillon, who plays the captain, brings his A-game to this film, going from a wise-ass to a cold, stern leader flawlessly. Chiwetel Ejiofor is also great as the villain. As for the story itself, it’s pretty straightforward and easy to follow. The pace is great and like I said, it does a good job of explain things to newcomers.

The main problem that I saw with the film was that while it does explain things for newcomers, it definitely helps to have watched the TV series in advance. As some things, mostly character relationships, make better sense if you watch the series. You’re also more attached to the cast going in and it hurts more when certain characters die (no spoilers). The effects in the film are also kind of hit and miss, ranging from video-game like to actually pretty impressive for the time.

Overall: While it helps to watch Firefly in advance. Serenity stands by-itself as a really solid sci-fi film. The acting and writing is what really makes this movie shine. For those who are familiar with Firefly, its everything you’ve come to expect from the series. Those unfamiliar, its still a very fun and unique film that will leave you satisfied. However, I still advise you check out the series, it’s one of my favorites of all time.

The film currently holds a 4.1 out of 5 stars on Netflix.