Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 8/27/12

Deep Water

Deep Water is a 2006 documentary about a yacht race around the world and the nine men who took up the challenge. In 1968, a British newspaper put up a reward for the first person to circumnavigate the globe solo in a yacht, and they had a separate prize for the person to do it the fastest. They gave a five-month window for the contestants to get started, and eight experienced sailors made their way out to sea, each alone in their own vessels, and at the very last second, a ninth inexperienced man made it out into the water with a boat he built himself, and of course this documentary focuses mostly on this final man, as his story predictably is the most interesting and crazy. But the entire race is incredibly interesting, and let's just say there is a reason why this is not a regular event. What really makes this documentary is how the newspaper gave every sailor their own camera and audio recorder, so they were able to get some incredible open sea footage and record their stir crazy thoughts that really puts us the viewer in the same mind set as the sailors, and helps us really understand how hard this task was and what they all went through. This is a fascinating film and definitely worth watching, so dig it on the Netflix.

Read my original review here.

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 8/20/12

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is absolutely insane. I can not, in one mere paragraph, explain to you the violent insanity contained within these 90 minutes of Chinese jail movie magic. Shot in 1991 and based on a Japanese manga, the movie is set in the distant future of 2001, in which all prisons have become privately owned companies, allowing for rampant corruption in the penal system. Riki-Oh is sentenced to a prison run by a crooked warden and his assistant warden and four prisoners known as the Gang of Four, who exert control over the prison through violence, but they soon find out that Riki-Oh is no average prisoner. Loaded with some of the craziest fights and over-the-top grossly violent imagery that quickly and frequently extends into the world of the cartoonish, Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is a genre classic, a cult favorite, and surprisingly well loved by the critical community. So make sure you aren't eating anything and check out this supremely screwed up movie.

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 8/13/12

 In the Mood for Love

From 2000, In the Mood for Love is a very lyrical and quite beautiful film about an unfulfilled love and romance, born in the face of spousal infidelity, and killed through the characters' desires to not repeat their spouses' mistakes. Made without a screenplay, this movie was formed first through the actors on the set and their different choices, and then in the editing bay when these choices were parsed out and strung together to make a very good movie. Not all movies about romance have to be dumb, empty-headed and morally depraved romantic comedies; sometimes they can be grown up and introspective movies, made for grown up people who know a good thing when they see it. So check out In the Mood for Love on the Netflix Instant, yo.

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 8/6/12

Capote

In 2005, Philip Seymour Hoffman starred in the biographical film Capote, and his award winning performance in this very well made movie launched him into the next level of actorhood, a formidable professional, a force to be reckoned with, a sure fire performance regardless of surrounding circumstances, immensely reliable and likeable, even when playing bastards and straight up evil doers. It really helps that his fantastic central performance as writer Truman Capote is actually enveloped by a wonderfully made film, richly detailed and confident in its pacing and technique, with the movie itself getting some award consideration, which makes Capote really the total package. And it's the right kind of biographical film, the one that eschews simply going through the "greatest hits," so to speak, and instead focuses in a single period in a person's life, showing how that one part of their existence greatly effected the rest of their lives. And here, the portion of Truman Capote's life that involved becoming very personal and close with a convicted murderer and using their friendship as a way to make a well regarded and highly successful nonfiction book is probably the most telling about the man, the most informative about who he was and what he was after. Capote is a fantastic film, very moody and introspective and loaded with great actors doing what they do best, and it's definitely worth checking out.

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