#netflix tidbits

[netflix-tidbits]

Title: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch

Director: David Slade

Year: 2018

Length: 1h 30min +

Rating: TV-MA

Genres: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi

Yay, Nay, or Meh: Yay

Now, this is a bit of a hard one to talk about in any extent, due to the nature of the program. Specifically, it's a choose-your-own-adventure movie. Episode? Whichever you prefer. It's a great concept, and fits exceptionally well with Black Mirror's whole deal. It's pretty damn seamless, too; every once in a while, a pop-up will appear to backtrack and do another option, but it always comes at what feels an appropriate time. I don't know how extensive the endings are. I know there are many, but I think I only ended up doing maybe 5 or 6, some of which were more official than others. The most I can explain, if you haven't happened to have interacted with the preview or any such yet, is that you 'play' as a 19-year-old developing an adventure game based on a massive choose-your-own-adventure sci-fi book. Anything beyond that, I think, would be spoilers. It's also something you can explore as much or as little as you like, so whether you're a bit more of a completionist or the type of person who goes with their first decisions no matter want, you should have a satisfying experience.....except with maybe the first choice. This also means that the length of the experience you get is widely varied. The only thing I'm going to say is that this probably wasn't the best thing to watch before I start trying to seriously learn programming in order to make my own game. XD

[netflix-tidbits]

Title: Street Food

Creators: David Gelb, Brian McGinn

Year: 2019 -

Length: 1 season, 9 episodes, ~ 40 min/episode

Rating: TV-G

Genres: Documentary

Yay, Nay, or Meh: Yay

This is a very cool idea for a food show, and I really like how they do it. This first season focuses on Asia, as you can see, and each time they're in a different town and they seem to hit a good number of the countries. Also, in each episode, they focus mostly on one individual and their story in relation to their specific street food, but they do bring up other stalls and food types that are intrinsic to the area they're talking about. There's also a little bit of history of the country on occasion, and how food relates to it, so it's great for that as well. I'm interested to see if they do end up doing a season for each continent, though I feel as though they may struggle a bit with some places more than others. But if you like food and even travel shows, and don't mind a bit of history, this is a great, fascinating look at foods that are integral to other countries. Just make sure you eat before you watch it, because holy crap I want to eat everything.

[netflix-tidbits]

Title: Deadly Detention

Director: Blair Hayes

Year: 2017

Length: 1h 30min

Rating: NR

Genres: Comedy, Horror, Thriller

Yay, Nay, or Meh: Meh

The first thing I'm going to say is that Netflix rated this as TV-MA, but it's PG-13 at most. There's very little blood shown on screen, the kills are implied but not shown, and even the sex scenes have much more clothing than most slasher/teen scream movies. This has terrible reviews everywhere I've looked, and, well, it's not a great film, but it's not THAT bad - think Breakfast Club meets Scream. I've seen much worse in my life, believe me. The main factor to consider is that this is a very campy, Sci-Fi original movie kind of thing, and if you can get over that fact, it's perfectly fine. It's actually shot pretty well, and a lot of the actors did pretty well, with the exception here and there of a line which sounds bad more because of the writing than them. And now that we're onto the writing, it's easily the weakest thing in the movie. It's pretty clear that whoever was writing it was referencing or consulting with people who were teens at least 10 years ago, because it just feels awkward and it's highly unlikely that teens today would use it, because they have even worse stupid slang now. The ending is also a bit weak, but there is a line towards the end that makes it a little less like other horror movies, and which I'm not going to spoil here for obvious reasons. Honestly, I think if you go in with low expectations, or at least expectations that things are a bit cheesy, it's not terrible.

[netflix-tidbits]

Title: Scream 4

Director: Wes Craven

Year: 2011

Length: 1h 51min

Rating: R

Genres: Horror, Mystery

Yay, Nay, or Meh: Yeh

I've been going through a bit of a slasher movie phase, because I didn't really watch any in October because last year was actual Hell, so....happy Januween? Don't worry, though, most have been not on Netflix. Anyway. I watched these a bit out of order, since I needed a movie for today, so the only other Scream movie I've watched thus far is the first one. I do enjoy them, perhaps a bit more than other slasher movies. I've never really watched them much (another reason why I am now, I guess) even though I enjoy horror, because I prefer more psychological horror, generally. These are a little more interesting, though, in that they are meant to be almost borderline comedy films as well. And meta. That's kind of the whole point, especially of this one. I think this one got a little too meta though? There's only so much of that that I can tolerate, and I think there was a point where it went a little too far for my tastes. Also, it's LONG for a horror movie. I would say unnecessarily long, though I know why it is that way. I dunno. I think most people who would be interested have already watched these, but if not, this one's on Netflix and I don't think it's detrimental to watch them out of order, if you haven't seen the others. Even if it does reference the first one loads.

[netflix-tidbits]

Title: The Outcasts

Director: Peter Hutchings

Year: 2017

Length: 1h 35min

Rating: PG-13

Genres: Comedy

Yay, Nay, or Meh: Meh

I'm sure you can infer from the poster what kind of film this is: high school comedy drama. Specifically, shades of Mean Girls but not quite. It has the same problem that most high school movies have, in that it's a warped semi-nostalgic unrealistic rememberance of high school that tries to look outside the stereotypes but mostly does more to reinforce them, but it's a fun story and not a bad thing to just relax to if you're not looking for anything too heavy. I dunno that it would be true to say that it does anything you haven't seen before, but again, it does what it sets out to do well enough that it's not necessarily a bad thing.

[netflix-tidbits]

Title: Murder Party

Director: Jeremy Saulnier

Year: 2008

Length: 1h 19min

Rating: NR

Genres: Comedy, Drama, Horror

Yay, Nay, or Meh: Nay

I feel as though I may have missed something here, because this has a much higher rating than I was expeccting, but it just didn't really do it for me. It had shades of a goofy 80s kind of deal, and it wasn't *completely* terrible or unfunny, but it was just....too much. Too much gore, specifically. I've never really been one for major gore; I'm fine with some slasher things but there's a point where that's kind of all the movie has and someone decided breaking 70 million water ballons of fake blood around the place is all they need for their horror movie. This is pretty solidly in the second camp by the end of it, once the murdeering starts properly. And that's another thing; it takes a while to get to that. It doesn't have the same suspense that other slasher movies try to go for by spreading the murders over the whole movie. It just....I dunno. I wouldn't watch it again, but I can't say I wouldn't recommend it. Though the recommendation only applies to a very specific type of horror fan.

[netflix-tidbits]

Title: The Rift

Director: Dejan Zecevic

Year: 2016

Length: 1h 30m

Rating: NR

Genres: Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Yay, Nay, or Meh: Neh

My first thought upon finishing this is what in the HELL did I just watch. It's not the worst movie I've ever seen, not by far, but whatever story it started out with spiraled out of control over the course of it. Unless maybe that was the point? Because the action in the movie also kind of spirals out of control over the course of the thing. There are a whole lot of concepts that are brought up, non-explained, and then dismissed again, and I find myself feeling way more confused than I was before the movie tried to explain itself. I was also seriously annoyed by the fact that the monster-person-alien-thing was supposed to be cryptic but was not at all cryptic but all the characters still treated it like it was cryptic. Death means nothing here? Means zombies. Dead people coming back to life? It's zombies. Death is dead? ZOMBIES. Boy in grave with picture of boy on it? DING DING DING it's a zombie. Come on now. Though why alien = zombie is something that I couldn't explain. But that's fine, because the movie doesn't know either. There's also a couple of less-than-sensitive throw-offs about a couple of the characters having mental illnesses to some degree or another,which then turn into plot points/points of conflict. That certainly could have been handled better. I can't recommend this with any good conscience, because it's not a good movie, but it is kind of fun if you're in the mood for a laugh and try not to think about it too much.

[netflix-tidbits]

Title: ศพเด็ก 2002 (The Unborn Child)

Director: Poj Arnon

Year: 2002

Length: 1h 32min

Rating: TV-MA

Genres: Horror, Thriller

Yay, Nay, or Meh: Nay

Now, I'm just going to get this out there now: this horror movie revolves completely around abortion. Specifically, an extrememly flawed view of when abortions happen in a pregnancy. Granted, it stems from illegal ones, and I guess if you want something to conjour a haunting that would be *more* likely. But still, you can't be haunted by 1- to 5-year-olds (or frankly anything that looks human, given 95%+ of them happen in the first trimester) that result from an abortion. That's just not how that works. Other than that flimsy plot thread, the rest of the movie doesn't really hold up in the horror department in general either. It starts out kind of creepy, and somehow child laughter is always scary, but it just doesn't really deliver on most of the horror. The stories also don't really seem as though they should be all connnected together, but by the time it gets to that, it isn't as surprising as I think it was meant to be. I'm generally a bigger fan of Asian horror than Western, and while that is still true in this case, I still was definitely not a fan of this one.