Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 5/7/12

 Iron Monkey

Made in 1993 and released in US theaters in 2001 thanks to Quentin Tarantino, Iron Monkey is an awesome kung fu film that will totally kick your ass if you give it the chance to do so. Basically a Robin Hood type of story with a local doctor robbing from the corrupt village officials and giving the spoils to the poor, Iron Monkey features a simple but well told plot, nicely developed characters, and most importantly, incredible fight scenes. Directed by kung fu master and living legend Yuen Woo Ping (who is behind the amazing fight choreography for all three Matrix movies, both Kill Bills, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Kung Fu Hustle, and the Jet Li movies Fist of Legend, Unleashed, Fearless and Once Upon a Time in China), the first fight is a little jokey and goofy and has some comedy elements to it, and as the movie progresses, the fight scenes become more and more brutal, and the final fight between three guys standing on top of flaming poles is one of the most incredible fights ever put to film. If you are a fan of good martial arts movies or just action movies in general, then you will will love Iron Monkey. So get on it.

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 4/30/12

 Trouble The Water

Two documentary filmmakers set out to New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina and started working immediately on a film about the disaster and the aftermath. They soon met Kimberly Roberts, an aspiring rapper and resident of the now flooded and destroyed Ninth Ward, and they find out that she not only stayed in the flooding Ward with her family during the storm and managed to survive, but she also grabbed a video camera and did her own documenting, getting footage of the neighborhood in the days leading up to the storm and some scary and all too real footage of the storm itself. They smartly made Kimberly and her family the focus of Trouble The Water, their very compelling and incisive film about Hurricane Katrina and the widespread effects of this historical natural disaster.

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 4/23/12

Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance

This 2002 film from South Korea is a wild thriller about a man who goes to desperate lengths to save the life of his sister, and how his actions sets of a string of violent acts from several people, and it all adds up to an intense and incredible movie. From director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy, Thirst), this is his first in an excellent trilogy of films centered on revenge and it is weird and strange in all the right ways, while the story itself is very compelling and told with the help of some great acting and strong direction. So grab Grandma and the kids and pop some popcorn, because it is time for everyone to bond over some gruesome, righteous vengeance.

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 4/16/12

Melancholia

From 2011, Lars Von Trier's Melancholia his the controversial Danish director's most accessible and adult-minded film, as he skipped the usual "shock" cinema he seems to enjoy pushing so much and instead concentrated on his themes and characters instead, ultimately serving the story as opposed to his own desires. In Melancholia, Kirsten Dunst, who won the Best Actress award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for her role in this movie, plays a depressed woman who can't break out of her funk even on her wedding day, and the first half of the movie plays almost like a comedy of ill-manners as her family deals with her depression during the wedding reception. And the second half of the movie focuses on her severe depression leaving her immobile and despondent, while her sister, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, tries her best to help. And the entire time, there is a distant planet called Melancholia, recently discovered and believed to be making a pass very close to the Earth, which thrills many people, but leaves others in fear, as they suspect this planet Melancholia will actually slam headlong into Earth, killing them all. An interesting, intense, and surprisingly poetic and beautiful film about depression, Melancholia is a great movie that isn't full-on science fiction but instead uses it's great science fiction premise to meditate on a very emotional and reality-based subject matter, and it's done extremely well (click here for my original review).

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 4/9/12

Monsters

From 2010, Monsters is a low-budget sci-fi film about two Americans - a journalist and a tourist - struggling to get back home from Central America to the United States. Why are they struggling to get home? Because in this world, Mexico has been walled off and declared an INFECTED ZONE, in which a NASA satellite crashed, unleashing a host of alien creatures and monsters onto Earth. Overcoming their obviously limited budget with smart camerawork and a dash of surprisingly well done CG effects, Monsters is a very strong film, which also excels thanks to a good story and good acting, and it should interest fans of science fiction as well as people that normally wouldn't see a movie along these lines. And this movie should definitely interest people who are into independent films, especially those low-budget ones that do a lot with very little (click here for my original review).

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 4/2/12

Hunger

A 2008 film from British visual artist and first-time feature length film maker Steve McQueen, Hunger is about the 1981 Irish hunger strike in the Maze prison, in which IRA volunteers were held without any sort of political status, as that was stripped from them by the British government in 1976. Led by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender), the prisoners strike first with a "no-wash" strike, in which they don't wash or shave and get as dirty as possible (much to the prison guards' displeasure), and then they build up to the hunger strike - in the meantime, the guards are depicted as savage monsters, mistreating the prisoners at every opportunity. Full of strong acting, especially from Mr. Fassbender, and filmed with style and interesting directorial choices from Mr. McQueen, Hunger isn't exactly easy watching, but it is a very well made and incredibly interesting film, and definitely worth checking out.

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Netflix Watch Instantly Pick of the Week - 3/26/12

Confessions of a Superhero

From 2007, this documentary follows the lives of four separate people in Los Angeles, all of them aspiring actors, all of them relegated to dressing up in costumes and standing on the sidewalk to take pictures with tourists for money. There is a Superman, a Batman, a Wonder Woman and an Incredible Hulk, and the people in these costumes are all fascinating in their own ways, as they all came from vastly different backgrounds to only find themselves standing side by side, vying for the attention of the same tourists and their dollars, selling themselves one digital picture at a time. This documentary is both very funny and kind of sad, but never in a mocking or cruel manner - these people are given the proper respect and sometimes just enough rope to hang themselves - and it makes for a very entertaining and surprisingly insightful ninety minutes.

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