Netflix
Do you like movies?
My roommate and I made the monumental decision to join Netflix about six months ago and, let’s just say, it was love at first sight. I should preface this by saying that I am nuts about movies. Strike that, I’m nuts about a lot of stuff: pop culture, television in all its trashy and glorious forms, “good” music, cheap clothes, half price bottles of wine, things that can make me giggle without thinking about it, the onion av club, but, above all else, I’m nuts about movies. And that makes Netflix and I a match made in heaven. With, like, a zillion movies to choose from (ok, I obviously made that number up, it’s actually “more than 50,000 titles”), almost anything you like is somewhere in there.
For example, I did a study abroad in India last year, and, after years of resistance on my part, I gave in to the totally ridiculous, exhausting yet exhilarating genre of “Hindi films.” Though they are becoming more visible in America (a nearby theatre in Chicago actually shows Hindi movies about the same time as their debut in India), they are still hard to find in backwoods. Lucky for me, Netflix fares better.
The Indian film industry is remarkably prolific, putting out thousands of movies every year. So it would be kind of difficult to really stay on top of that. Netflix stocks a lot of the newer pictures like Veer Zaara which made a huge splash while I was in India and is prominently shown in the “Indian” section of foreign cinema. Also included are some damn good picks like Salaam Bombay, Amar Akbar Anthony (seriously, this is such a funny movie), and blockbusters like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. They even have a feature titled “Best of Bollywood” where you can browse a listing of Bollywood classics from the '60’s onwards.
Another little mini-obsession of mine is Japanese cinema. Right now I’m all about this director, Takashi Miike. My friend who is into “strange” movies got me hooked with Visitor Q, the absolutely most disturbing film I’ve ever seen. Its hard to describe, on one level it’s the story of one family’s redemption; on another level, it seems more like a compendium of random, really disturbing ideas patch-worked into a movie. Another nice feature on Netflix is that movies come with the combined rating of all the people on Netflix who have rated that movie. So you can check out his four-star work (Audition, Last Life in the Universe), his three-star stuff (Dead or Alive or City of Lost Souls—which despite the violence, I found irresistible and hilarious), etc.
Even if you’re not into foreign films (I admit, sometimes subtitles are just plain annoying to have to bother with) Netflix stocks all the American fare your little heart could desire. From documentaries to TV shows to animation, you can browse and add till your fingers ache. They also have tons of lists that you can look through from Roger Ebert’s picks to the Netflix 100—which is like a stock exchange of the 100 most popular films on Netflix, as films become less or more in demand they move up and down the list. And the beauty is you queue all of it. I can go on a bender and add 50 movies and I may not see them now but one day, I’m going to open my mailbox and there’ll be a Netflix envelope and I won’t know what’s inside (well, you can check what’s on your queue or what’s up next very easily, but I find the surprise kinda fun) and it’ll be another random movie I’ve been dying to see and that moment, my dears, is brought to you by the magic and beauty of NETFLIX!
My roommate and I made the monumental decision to join Netflix about six months ago and, let’s just say, it was love at first sight. I should preface this by saying that I am nuts about movies. Strike that, I’m nuts about a lot of stuff: pop culture, television in all its trashy and glorious forms, “good” music, cheap clothes, half price bottles of wine, things that can make me giggle without thinking about it, the onion av club, but, above all else, I’m nuts about movies. And that makes Netflix and I a match made in heaven. With, like, a zillion movies to choose from (ok, I obviously made that number up, it’s actually “more than 50,000 titles”), almost anything you like is somewhere in there.
For example, I did a study abroad in India last year, and, after years of resistance on my part, I gave in to the totally ridiculous, exhausting yet exhilarating genre of “Hindi films.” Though they are becoming more visible in America (a nearby theatre in Chicago actually shows Hindi movies about the same time as their debut in India), they are still hard to find in backwoods. Lucky for me, Netflix fares better.
The Indian film industry is remarkably prolific, putting out thousands of movies every year. So it would be kind of difficult to really stay on top of that. Netflix stocks a lot of the newer pictures like Veer Zaara which made a huge splash while I was in India and is prominently shown in the “Indian” section of foreign cinema. Also included are some damn good picks like Salaam Bombay, Amar Akbar Anthony (seriously, this is such a funny movie), and blockbusters like Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. They even have a feature titled “Best of Bollywood” where you can browse a listing of Bollywood classics from the '60’s onwards.
Another little mini-obsession of mine is Japanese cinema. Right now I’m all about this director, Takashi Miike. My friend who is into “strange” movies got me hooked with Visitor Q, the absolutely most disturbing film I’ve ever seen. Its hard to describe, on one level it’s the story of one family’s redemption; on another level, it seems more like a compendium of random, really disturbing ideas patch-worked into a movie. Another nice feature on Netflix is that movies come with the combined rating of all the people on Netflix who have rated that movie. So you can check out his four-star work (Audition, Last Life in the Universe), his three-star stuff (Dead or Alive or City of Lost Souls—which despite the violence, I found irresistible and hilarious), etc.
Even if you’re not into foreign films (I admit, sometimes subtitles are just plain annoying to have to bother with) Netflix stocks all the American fare your little heart could desire. From documentaries to TV shows to animation, you can browse and add till your fingers ache. They also have tons of lists that you can look through from Roger Ebert’s picks to the Netflix 100—which is like a stock exchange of the 100 most popular films on Netflix, as films become less or more in demand they move up and down the list. And the beauty is you queue all of it. I can go on a bender and add 50 movies and I may not see them now but one day, I’m going to open my mailbox and there’ll be a Netflix envelope and I won’t know what’s inside (well, you can check what’s on your queue or what’s up next very easily, but I find the surprise kinda fun) and it’ll be another random movie I’ve been dying to see and that moment, my dears, is brought to you by the magic and beauty of NETFLIX!
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