For as many streaming services as there is currently are, Netflix remains possibly the premiere platform to watch movies and television shows. The first mainstream streaming service there was, it’s a platform that continues to boast some of the finest and most noteworthy movies you’ll find anywhere.
With a streaming catalog mixed between Netflix original movies and endless amounts of well-known movies like Ocean’s Eleven, Wedding Crashers, and Blood Diamond, there’s no shortage of potential viewing options when it comes to Netflix’s impressive lineup of movies.
Here are some of the movies you can currently find streaming on Netflix that we’d recommend checking out.
Updated: October 13.
New Release: Mr. Harrigan’s Phone
One of the most recent Netflix releases, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is an old-fashioned ghost thriller starring two supremely talented actors — the legendary Donald Sutherland and the skillful child actor, Jaeden Martell, who no doubt has a bright future ahead of him.
Craig (Martell) is a young man who befriends the reclusive billionaire Mr. Harrigan (Sutherland). When Mr. Harrigan passes away, Craig is shocked to see messages apparently from his deceased friend start appearing on his smartphone.
Despite some incredible performances from the two principal leads, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is relatively short on scares and even scarcer in a cohesive narrative. The pacing is a bit off, the ending anti-climactic, and the storyline infuriatingly ambiguous — but it’s still worth watching to see the actors (a star from Hollywood’s past and from its future) appear alongside one another.
Romance: Wedding Crashers
A cornerstone of 2000s raunchy romantic comedies, Wedding Crashers is a movie that’s impossible not to chuckle at, at least once. A box office smash hit at the time of its release in 2005, it’s one of the funniest films the 2000s has to offer (ranking right up there with The Hangover, Superbad, and Step Brothers).
John (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy (Vince Vaughn) are two party-loving best friends who make a hobby out of sneaking into weddings and sleeping with the single women they encounter at the ceremonies. All that changes, however, when they crash the wrong party, and are invited to stay at the home of a Treasury official (Christopher Walken) and his daughters (Rachel McAdams and Isla Fisher).
Lewd, crude, and reliant on a ridiculous amount of crass humor, Wedding Crashers is pure fun to watch. Out of all the films to feature the Frat Pack in the 2000s (Starsky and Hutch, Old School, Dodgeball, Zoolander), Wedding Crashers remains easily among the best.
Biopic: The Imitation Game
In the early days of World War 2, mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) is recruited into the British military, working with a top-notch team to break the Enigma code the German army is using to covertly communicate with each other.
Alan Turing is one of the more fascinating minds of the 20th century, handling the big question of whether machines can think when the modern computer was still in its infancy. Despite his contributions to the British war effort in World War 2, he was treated as a criminal simply because of his sexuality — his miraculous accomplishments going overlooked in favor of the prosecution he faced later in his life.
Turing’s advancements in the STEM field are beyond measure, practically laying the foundation of computer science as we know it today. In The Imitation Game, we see the complicated man Turing was in life — boastful, difficult to work with, and just as enigmatic as the machines he famously broke.
Crime: Ocean’s Eleven
There are so many great ensemble films proliferating throughout the world today, but few have as amazing a lineup of actors as everyone’s favorite heist movie, Ocean’s Eleven.
Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is an ambitious and industrious criminal who hatches a plan to rob three Las Vegas casinos at the same time. To accomplish this feat, Ocean puts together a team of 10 skilled thieves, working to avoid the detection of the casino’s owner (Andy Garcia).
Starring Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, García, Julia Roberts, Don Cheadle, Bernie Mac, and Elliott Gould (to name just a few), Ocean’s Eleven has as epic a cast reading as The Avengers. Mixing some first-rate comedy with plenty of thematic hiccups in the thieves’ plan, it’s a rare remake done right.
Action: Blood Diamond
Looking over his career, Leonardo DiCaprio rarely has a bad film under his belt. Sure, some of the movies he’s appeared in are better in overall quality than others. Yet time and time again, DiCaprio himself managed to delight audience members in terms of his individual performances — whether he’s playing a mountain man, a washed-up actor, or a Rhodesian smuggler (as he does here).
In 1999, Sierra Leone disintegrates into a rampant civil war. Taking advantage of the chaotic violence sweeping through the nation, an opportunistic mercenary (DiCaprio) searches for a massive diamond with the help of a local fisherman (Djimon Hounsou).
Like the best hidden treasure movies, Blood Diamond examines how greed can warp the human mind, twisting into doing the most desperate and despicable things imaginable. Juxtaposed with that is the film’s depiction of the horrible atrocities committed during the Sierra Leone Civil War. The result is a jarring film, one that toes the line between thriller and action movie.
Thriller: The Gift
Robyn (Rebecca Hall) and Simon (Jason Bateman) are a happily wedded couple who move to the Los Angeles suburbs. When Simon runs into an old acquaintance from his past (Joel Edgerton), the couple find themselves menaced by the aloof stranger, who begins leaving them gifts which become increasingly more sinister as time passes.
The best thrillers are the ones that build a budding sense of anxiety and paranoia as the movie progresses — not only in terms of the movie’s suspense, but in terms of the actual plot line as well. These are movies that make you slowly question what you’re seeing, providing nonstop twists and revelations about its main characters and their motivations.
The Gift is an excellent example of this, constructing a taut narrative that continuously raises the stakes as it unfolds. It’s one of the best, most underrated thrillers of the past decade, boasting a strong cast handing in some wonderfully complex performances.
Family: Megamind
Will Ferrell is one of those actors able to trigger laughter for his adult movies and more children-friendly films alike. Evidence of this fact can be found with 2009’s Megamind, an entertaining superhero comedy featuring perhaps Ferrell’s best vocal performance yet.
After defeating his lifelong nemesis Metro Man (Brad Pitt), the villainous Megamind (Ferrell) begins to believe his life now lacks any discernible purpose. Creating a new hero (Jonah Hill) to battle, Megamind instead faces a threat beyond his wildest imagination, requiring him to step into the role of reluctant hero and save the world from his creation.
In an era where superhero movies seem to be getting increasingly stale and formulaic at this point, Megamind can be a refreshing change of pace for viewers looking for a distinctly different superhero film. Fun, funny, and featuring a talented cast (Ferrell, Pitt, Hill, Tina Fey, and David Cross), it’s worth watching for both those who love superhero fans and those who love to make fun of them.
Comedy: Richard Pryor: Live in Concert
This week, we decided to go outside the box and recommend a standup comedy special in lieu of our usual comedy film recommendation. And looking at it, what better comic is there than the most influential comedian of them all, Richard Pryor?
The definitively best standup show of Pryor’s career, Live in Concert was also the first film to utilize footage entirely centered around a standup routine. In it, Pryor espouses his views on race, the police, and his own bizarre personal life in his signature darkly comic brand of humor.
Netflix has no shortage of standup shows stocking its online catalog, but every one of them owes a debt of gratitude to Pryor’s Live in Concert. It’s been praised by everyone from notoriously harsh critic Pauline Kael to Eddie Murphy, both of whom have called it the single best standup performance of all time (high praise, indeed).
True Crime: The Watcher
Ryan Murphy has been absolutely knocking it out of the park lately, fresh off the success of his most recent project, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. With The Watcher, Murphy once again hands in another chilling miniseries, one that similarly has an unnerving basis in reality.
The Brannocks (Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale) are an affluent couple who move into an idyllic house in New Jersey. Upon their arrival, they begin receiving threatening messages from “The Watcher” — a person who claims that is his duty to stalk the house’s inhabitants.
Another new arrival to Netflix, The Watcher doesn’t seem to be gaining the same traction that Dahmer received a few weeks ago, but it’s still an engrossing and chilling look at a real criminal case. Elements of the story are exaggerated for entertainment purposes, but no matter what, it’s still an enlightening look at the strange circumstances surrounding a family’s move and the horrors that awaited them there.
Underrated: Scooby Doo
The Scooby Doo gang has been getting a lot of press lately, what with the new Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! and the Mindy Kaling-led Velma series having only recently been announced. That being said, it’s worth remembering the earlier attempts to adapt the hit cartoon series onto film, such as 2002’s Scooby Doo.
Two years after they’ve officially disbanded, the Mystery, Inc. crew reunite on a tropical island to investigate a horror-themed amusement park that may be genuinely haunted.
To be fair, Scooby Doo isn’t exactly the greatest film currently streaming on Netflix. But in terms of comparing it to the original cartoon, it finds a decent blend between camp, lighthearted scares, and plenty of tongue-in-cheek humor that will please most viewers.
This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.
source https://wealthofgeeks.com/movies-on-netflix-now/
No comments:
Post a Comment