Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 7/30/12

Once Upon a Time in the West

From 1968, Once Upon a Time in the West is the final spaghetti western from Italian director Sergio Leone, and it's a fantastic, sprawling, epic movie that features pretty much everything you would want from a film. It has great action, great dialogue, great acting, superb direction, a great Ennio Morricone soundtrack, it's all there, making for a fantastic film. Henry Fonda plays a bad guy, which was already against type, and here he plays him as such a cold-blooded bastard that it was downright shocking when it came out in '68. His nemesis is Charles Bronson, no stranger to awesome westerns or action movies himself, and their rivalry culminates in a great finale, and at 165 minutes, it's a nice, long build up to a great pay off, something Leone always excelled at in every film he made. Check it out now!

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 7/17/12

Network

From 1976, Network is a movie that was intended as a satire in its time but now comes across almost as a documentary. This whole movie is about how television (and the television consumers) has the potential to bring out the worst in people, especially when ratings and money come into play. This movie was seen as outrageous when it came out (or says that poster up there) but what was seen as absurd and crazy in 1976 seems commonplace now, which is downright scary. This was a comedy of sorts, but now it's a portrait of all the things wrong with television culture and how it is consumed. Network is an incredible, award-winning film, made by director Sidney Lumet when he was in the midst of a hot streak of awesome movies, and it features world-beating performances and one of the most verbose, robust and explosive scripts ever, and it makes for one of the best movies available to watch on the Netflix Instant right now. So sit back and dig in to the insanity.

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 7/9/12

Lost in La Mancha


In 2000, director Terry Gilliam set out to make a weird and off-kilter film adaptation of Cervantes' Don Quixote starring Johnny Depp, and when he started making his movie, he allowed a few folks to tag along and film everything for their own "making-of" documentary. The result is Lost in La Mancha, the ensuing documentary that detailed the incredible bad luck and untimely demise of Gilliam's production, as a series of rather unfortunate events resulted in the movie being shut down and never being completed. This is a fascinating look at a movie production gone wrong - you know how many "making-of" documentaries are out there that show movies being made from start to finish? Here we have a well-made documentary about one of these big productions getting screwed up, and it's a fascinating and kind of heart breaking look at something that most people never get to see.

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 7/2/12

 The Way of the Gun

From 2000, The Way of the Gun is an excellent crime drama, written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the writer of The Usual Suspects, and it is his first directorial feature film. What happens when a pair of criminal drifters (Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro) discover that a wealthy couple has employed a woman (Juliette Lewis) to act as a surrogate mother for their baby and decide to kidnap this woman and hold her for ransom? A big old ugly mess, that's what happens. With a great cast and great writing, The Way of the Gun is a moody, cracklin', crazy movie, with some interesting character work, and a tense story that builds up to a great final shoot out that will leave you wincing at least once, guaranteed. This is a great movie and you can watch it right now on the good ole' Netflix Watch Instantly service.

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