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The Netflix Thread


John Austin

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Any suggestions for the Foreign films available on Netflix?

 

Also any thoughts on Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance? I wasn't a big fan of Oldboy, but I did think it was a good film.

I love the whole trilogy. Lady Vengeance is either underrated or under viewed, I can't tell which. It's just as good as Oldboy. If you watch them like a trilogy, Lady Vengeance has this added bonus of finality. You really feel like you've made it out of the black with that one. The story is great, and it was refreshing to see the vengeance theme through the eyes of a female character. Sympathy is usually considered weaker than the other two, but has the oddest collection of characters of all the films. It feels dirtier, covered in sweat and congealed blood, but it's sense of humor is a little more deranged. At least to me anyway. I would say check them out.

 

15 Other foreign flicks on Instant that I really liked. 

 

I Saw The Devil - After you've seen enough revenge flicks this is a good one to come to, because it takes the theme and refreshes it. Great performances from the two leads as well. 

The Man From Nowhere- The plot should feel pretty familiar, with a guy trying to get back a kidnapped girl, but the set pieces are really well done and the action is well shot that it makes the concept fresh again.

13 Assassins - One of my favorite movies the year it came out, this is what happens when you take 7 Samurai and have Takeshi Miike(Audition) direct it. High blood, high body count, memorable characters, and a very cool ending.

Jackie Chan's Project A - One of my favorite Kung Fu movies. Raucous. 

The Host - One of the best monster movies ever. Incredibly memorable characters, great humor, and some thrilling sequences. A great movie.

Holy Motors -  Bizarre, but totally accessible. It's about an actor who's job is to play roles in people's lives. Says some great stuff about the bleeding between reality and reality TV. Denis Lavant is tremendous in this.

Outrage - Yakuza + Beat Takeshi = Watch it. Beat is like the surliest Yuji Nagata fucking dudes up. 

Biutiful - One of my favorites in the last few years, Javier Bardem is amazing in this as a black marketer with cancer. This takes some wild turns, and the complexity of Bardem's character remains thoroughly engaging throughout.

Dogtooth - About a family that raises it's children completely shut off from the outside world, teaching them bizarre shit(Imagine if you grew up thinking the word for Chair was Sea, and that's just the start). Just totally fascinating and original.

Election - A really well shot movie about the Chinese Triad electing a new president. The last scene in particular has some tremendous shots that tell an amazing story. Very fucking cool movie.

Nobody Knows - About a group of siblings who try to survive on their own when their crap mom abandons them. Absolutely unforgettable.

I'm a Cyborg, But That's Okay - Also directed by Park Chan-wook(Oldboy) this is a really nice quirky romance about two people in a psych ward, one of which believes she is a robot. A totally sweet movie.

Sonatine - Beat Takeshi + Yakuza x Goofing off on a beach =  Watch it.

Lust, Caution - I think this is Ang Lee's best movie. Some actors join up with some freedome fighters in WWII Shanghai, and send one of their women in to seduce Mr. Yee. Mr. Yee works for the Japanese, turning in Chinese people to get killed. Great movie. The sex is used incredibly well to tell the story and further character development(something you don't see much of) and Tony Leung is in it as Mr. Yee, so that should be incentive.

Mother(2009) - One of my favorite movies of 00's, this is about a mother trying to prove her son's innocence in a homicide. Hye-ja Kim gives the best female performances since Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For a Dream. I can't recommend this movie enough. I love it unconditionally.

 

There are others I left off, but these are all pretty good and it's a good variety of drama and action and awesomeness. Netflix has a pretty awesome selection of foreign right now, I just don't have the time to watch them. There's some really interesting looking flicks up like Alps. The King of Devil's Island, and Detective Dee and The Mystery of the Phantom Flame, which all look like they'll be right up my alley. Then there's some Seijun Suzuki movies I really want to watch.

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House of Cards snagged 9 Emmy nominations!  It's cool that the show gets to sit at the big boys table, but I was really rooting for Corey Stoll to get some recognition. Supporting actor is always one of the toughest categories, though.  Still, great news for Netflix and for those of us who are loving all of this original programming.

 

Count me in on the Orange is the New Black bandwagon! About 5 episodes in and loving it.

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I still do the discs, there's just too much that I want to see that isn't on Instant. Over 20 of the last 28 Best Picture Noms, for example aren't on Instant. Then there's older stuff. There's quite a few classics on here, but if you're trying to fill in holes in your viewing from the 50's like I am(or any decade prior to 2000) then the discs are a must.

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Thanks for all the suggestions jae, will definitely check out some of those. I'm a Jackie Chan fan so I'm almost positive I have seen Project A at least once though its probably been a long time since O can't remember it outside of the name. I saw the Host a few years back when I first used Netflix. Dug the hell out of it then. I saw Detective Dee a month or two ago, it was a solid film.

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My son's five and I didn't feel bad about letting him watch Drunken Master, Project A or SuperCop2(Or whichever one is PoliceStory 3, I can't remember how they ported those over) They didn't feel much worse than Looney Tunes. There might be some language in movies like Rumble in the Bronx, I can't remember. I also can't seem to recall a lot of sex in his movies. Maybe some suggestive stuff, but no boobies in the face.

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There is a part where you see a guy's bare ass, some "sexy" bikini clad gogo dancing, a few uses of profanity, and scene where a guy is put into a wood chipper (inferred, not shown).  It was rated R when it came out, but it would be PG-13 now, and a light one at that.  The body count isn't anywhere near something like the James Bond movies.

 

Most of Jackie's movies (even the ones that are rated R) would fall into PG/PG-13 territory IMO and I wouldn't have a problem with kids watching them.  Jackie has gone for a family audience for years.  The MPAA seems to have a problem with "realistic" fighting but it's pretty bloodless, and you might see an occasional bare ass once in while (such as Jackie's own in First Strike) but they're chaste for the most part.  Jackie barely even kisses his female co-stars. 

 

He's only done a handful of what most people would consider serious or adult movies, such as Crime Story, The Protector, and Shinjuku Incident.  Those I would probably not recommend for little kids, though compared to some R rated movies, they're still fairly tame.

 

Jae, Police Story 3 is Supercop.  There was a spinoff with Michelle Yeoh's character, Project S, that was renamed to Supercop 2 for the US release.

 

There are a good amount of Jackie movies on Netflix, but they are the Miramax versions, which means they're dubbed and edited.

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Sorry for the double.  These are some non-Jackie Hong Kong/Chinese titles on Netflix I would recommend:

 

The Assassins

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate

The Viral Factor

Dragon

The Great Magician

Bodyguards and Assassins

Ip Man

Ip Man 2

Detective Dee

Legend of the Fist

True Legend

Lust, Caution

The Warlords

Golden Chicken

Golden Chicken 2

Shaolin Soccer

2000 AD

China Strike Force

Happy Together

Fallen Angels

WIng Chun

Farewell My Concubine

The Heroic Trio

Days of Being Wild

As Tears Go By

Mighty Peking Man

Flash Point

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Out of curiousity, how many still do the disc-and-streaming duo?  I was thinking about dropping the disc portion of my subscription, and wondered if it took anything away from your movie viewing experience.

 

 

If you want to watch recently released movies you have to do the discs.  I love the streaming for the tv shows and documentaries and bizarre horror films and such, but if there is a mainstream movie you missed in the theater in the last few years it's probably not going to be streaming anytime soon.

 

I have the 1 disc at a time deal and I probably get about 5 movies a month.  I figure it's cheaper than most alternatives for renting movies, since ON Demand wants 6 bucks for the same movies. 

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I still do discs as well.  $8 doesn't even get you a matinee ticket in most theatres around here, and Netflix still has a lot of stuff on disc that has gone OOP like older kung fu movies and the like.  I usually get one disc a week if I watch them right away, so it works out well for me.

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I noticed my queue had gone up by one, checked and found that Peep Show had been relisted and they had added season 8.

Yay!

 

Welp, I'm not getting anything done for the next month.  Netflix seems to have become THE Britcom place.

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