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Netflix recs?

candrew said:
I saw two decent thrillers on Netflix recently that I can recommend:

Darling: Kind of an art-house horror movie about this mousy chick that house-sits an old, supposedly haunted apartment on the upper east side (very rich part of NYC) that slowly turns her into a nut. About 35 minutes in the movie takes a total left turn that is not for the faint of heart. Very stylistic, B&W, a bit pretentious at times but I thought worth the watch - I think it only runs about 75 minutes so low risk anyway.

The Invitation: Starring Logan Marshall-Green who is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors. About some damaged guy who goes to party along with a bunch of douches thrown by his ex-wife and her new husband and he's convinced his ex has gone crazy and is up to no good. Kind of runs like overly long Twilight Zone episode but Marshall-Green more than carries the film.
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I’ve seen the latter and loved it. LMC is just a steady dude. He has no particularly great range but he’s pitch perfect in that and the movie’s mood is excellent throughout. I would def recommend too.
 
PG_AB said:
They often pay exorbitant amounts... The fact that the deathnote movie took 40-50 million dollars to make is... a stain on humanity...

they took 50 million dollars and used it to try and condense this fantastic source material thats like 20-something hours runtime (or originally tons of comics)into some bizzaro-world basterdized americanized "re-imagined" steaming pile of white-washed ****.

and in the process they ****ing completely ruined watered down the fantastic characters, including Light the main character and L, my favorite detective character of all time.....and then slash and burn style huge chunks and essential scenes were cut out..

they ****ing changed the setting from Japan to Seattle... I knew it was gonna be terrible before I turned it on, but I was truly not expecting how bad they screwed it up..

I wonder how many people really get the original material anyways.. The people who recommended it to me in the first place say they liked it but not the ending, which doesn't really add up...... Cuz watching the Netflix interpretation it seemed like a blatant grab at some target market -- not based in quality.. (not an anime dude at all, only 2 I like I found on Netflix, Deathnote and One Punch man -- and I treat em like a supernatural thriller and a super hero tale..)

That **** is truly an abomination... They say the comic (manga) is better than the animated show, this movie certainly takes the distortion to a whole new level..
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Having both read the manga and then watched the anime, I can confirm that the Netflix adaptation screws up Death Note in the most epic way. Sometimes fanboys of source material will cry and whine over changes that ultimately aren't that harmful or stuff that might actually be improvements, but there's no disputing that in this case the decisions they made were just awful. They seem to have had no concept of what made the original story interesting in the first place.

In the original, Light was a genius-level student, top of his class, with a stable home life and good relationships with his family (father, mother, sister). When he gets the death note, he is quickly established as a genuine psychotic anti-hero, a cold and calculated killer who desires to be a god and judge others while maintaining his facade of social and academic perfection (trying to maintain this facade in the face of using the death note and evading the police is what creates much of the tension).

In the Netflix version, Light is smart, but constantly in trouble at school. The sister character doesn't exist, and for some reason the mother has been killed, which has created tension between he and his father. When he gets the death note, we are encouraged to think that his screwed up home and school life are what lead him to use it, i.e. a misguided sense of purpose, or of sticking it to his father or society. This perspective is further encouraged by the fact that the really evil one turns out to be his girlfriend Mia; it is she who pushes him to keep using the death note against his better judgment... he is not particularly driven, as he very much is in the original, and is very wishy-washy about everything. So we get an indecisive, uninteresting main character who lets his choices be driven by others, and meanwhile, the tension of needing to maintain his perfect facade is largely gone, because his life is screwed up to begin with.

In sum, they basically they took a story about a compelling, self-driven psychotic anti-hero and turned it into one about an indecisive, troubled kid who makes some bad choices. And that's just talking about the main character. Forget all the other changes they made that were similarly terrible. About the only thing they got right about the movie was casting Willem Dafoe as Ryuk. There's just nothing else to salvage in that movie. What on earth were they thinking?

Go watch the anime instead, which is also on Netflix, and pretty faithfully adapts the original manga. It is 37 twenty-minute episodes, and FWIW, the high point of the whole series for me is episode 11. If you're not hooked by the end of that episode, you can safely write it off and stop watching. Lastly, although I normally prefer to watch an English dub these days if it's halfway decent, I thought the voice casting for Death Note was... kinda bad. L, for instance, is supposed to be kind of a weird geek; his English voice actor sounds like friggin' Christian Bale. It just sounds all wrong to me. So I'd recommend watching it in the original Japanese if you're able.
 
AtheistPreacher said:
Having both read the manga and then watched the anime, I can confirm that the Netflix adaptation screws up Death Note in the most epic way. Sometimes fanboys of source material will cry and whine over changes that ultimately aren't that harmful or stuff that might actually be improvements, but there's no disputing that in this case the decisions they made were just awful. They seem to have had no concept of what made the original story interesting in the first place.

In the original, Light was a genius-level student, top of his class, with a stable home life and good relationships with his family (father, mother, sister). When he gets the death note, he is quickly established as a genuine psychotic anti-hero, a cold and calculated killer who desires to be a god and judge others while maintaining his facade of social and academic perfection (trying to maintain this facade in the face of using the death note and evading the police is what creates much of the tension).

In the Netflix version, Light is smart, but constantly in trouble at school. The sister character doesn't exist, and for some reason the mother has been killed, which has created tension between he and his father. When he gets the death note, we are encouraged to think that his screwed up home and school life are what lead him to use it, i.e. a misguided sense of purpose, or of sticking it to his father or society. This perspective is further encouraged by the fact that the really evil one turns out to be his girlfriend Mia; it is she who pushes him to keep using the death note against his better judgment... he is not particularly driven, as he very much is in the original, and is very wishy-washy about everything. So we get an indecisive, uninteresting main character who lets his choices be driven by others, and meanwhile, the tension of needing to maintain his perfect facade is largely gone, because his life is screwed up to begin with.

In sum, they basically they took a story about a compelling, self-driven psychotic anti-hero and turned it into one about an indecisive, troubled kid who makes some bad choices. And that's just talking about the main character. Forget all the other changes they made that were similarly terrible. About the only thing they got right about the movie was casting Willem Dafoe as Ryuk. There's just nothing else to salvage in that movie. What on earth were they thinking?

Go watch the anime instead, which is also on Netflix, and pretty faithfully adapts the original manga. It is 37 twenty-minute episodes, and FWIW, the high point of the whole series for me is episode 11. If you're not hooked by the end of that episode, you can safely write it off and stop watching. Lastly, although I normally prefer to watch an English dub these days if it's halfway decent, I thought the voice casting for Death Note was... kinda bad. L, for instance, is supposed to be kind of a weird geek; his English voice actor sounds like friggin' Christian Bale. It just sounds all wrong to me. So I'd recommend watching it in the original Japanese if you're able.
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You going to watch Devilman Crybaby?
 
DownUnder said:
it had some moments but you are truly overrating it. A number of scenes were long winded inane drivel of little to no meaning. Although Tom Cruise was remunerated handsomely for it no doubt i'd hazard a guess.
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I don't really care to needle you, but i'd love to connect the dots on whichever parts u find to have no meaning tho, it's all about infidelity and primal urges, those themes are swiftly and thoroughly beaten like a speedbag.. I know the movie like the back of my hand I've read the original source material too (not in German tho) Traumnovelle....

It's a gestalt of repeating themes and images... Thats why I think that Kubrick liked this film so much, it's his best in that sense, and I think he identified with those type of films more so than lets say his final Project - which turned into the Speilberg Movie A.I. -- Kubrick said that was more of a Speilberg type of film, which is why he took over and completed the project after his death, and EWS was more his type of thing..

Cruise KILLS this movie... Look at the range of emotion on his face...
The shot with him in the cab with the 1000 yard stare after she tells the story. the look of utter dispair and "i don't know what to say" in the pool scene.. thats what they pay the big bucks for... His face at the hookers place twice... and then contrast that with the opening party scene, which has perfect dialogue!!

It;s super easy to espouse how this wasn't received well right away, for one people expected it to be about ****ing, and it's about not ****ing... but also after a 12 year wait from Full Metal Jacket they were probably plenty of people who had no idea what they were walking into..
 
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AtheistPreacher said:
Go watch the anime instead, which is also on Netflix, and pretty faithfully adapts the original manga. It is 37 twenty-minute episodes, and FWIW, the high point of the whole series for me is episode 11. If you're not hooked by the end of that episode, you can safely write it off and stop watching. Lastly, although I normally prefer to watch an English dub these days if it's halfway decent, I thought the voice casting for Death Note was... kinda bad. L, for instance, is supposed to be kind of a weird geek; his English voice actor sounds like friggin' Christian Bale. It just sounds all wrong to me. So I'd recommend watching it in the original Japanese if you're able.
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Yup I watched it in Japanese. Heard the voice actress for Misa was annoying ahead of time. I always keep the subtitles on anyways for many reasons.

When I first put it on, I turned it off before the title sequence ended cuz I was so sure I was gonna hate it.. few weeks later I tried again and realized I just hate the title sequence LOL.. Some of this music just kills me,, the soundtrack to street fighter 4 made the game unplayable..
 
AtheistPreacher said:
Haven't yet, but I should. Just busy. But I will probably check it out soon. Helps that it's only ten episodes, not too big a commitment.
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I watched the first four when it came out. I will probably return to it at some point, but it didnt really grab me. I thought that Castlevania Netflix series was way better.
 
Dont know if its on netflix or not and I cant remember if I already mentioned it before but No Activity is one of the funniest shows i have ever seen.
 
The new Sci fi Noir show, Altered Carbon, rules so far. It's not perfect, but hard sci fi shows like this never get a huge budget. Its flaws are very easy to overlook. I think this show is going to be big. Wouldn't be surprised if it ends up becoming Netflix's game of thrones or walking dead. It just seems like it will have a huge worldwide appeal. Check it out if you like quality science fiction.
 
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