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While most horror movies on Netflix are campy and yawn–inducing (I’m looking at you, The Babysitter), a new subset of the genre is gaining popularity: foreign–language horror. These select viewings are all highly rated by critics and audience members alike, and are guaranteed to make a chill creep down your spine.
Despite its taboo, sex is almost impossible to avoid in media, and it's especially difficult to ignore in film. Directors love to sprinkle in some gratuitous nudity or a few intimate encounters, but can you blame them? After all, sex sells, and it’ll continue to sell a lot more than any “I love you” or romantic, prolonged eye contact ever will.
If you obsessively watched Disney movies as a kid, you know the nostalgic hold they have over us. Even now as adults, we can still find ourselves re–watching classics like Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid more times than we probably should. It’s because they’re feel–good movies, with captivating animation, fantastical adventures, and the promise of true love around every corner—until you grow up a little and realize they’re not as feel–good as you once thought.
To write about Netflix’s comedy television series, Grace and Frankie, through the lens of love appears counterintuitive. The show opens to the end of two marriages and the unlikely (and unwanted) partnership of the titular characters. It is clearly a recipe for a disaster—Grace (Jane Fonda) is a snobby, proper businesswoman and Frankie (Lily Tomlin) an eccentric, hippie artist. Their husbands, Robert and Sol (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterson), inform them over dinner that they’re gay and want get married to each other—the catalyst for the events of the sitcom. Grace and Frankie, forced to live together, are mismatched and miserable.
It’s a contradictory format: making fun of the genre that you fit perfectly within. But Isn’t It Romantic does just that. The movie, which will be released on February 13th, features Rebel Wilson satirizing the artificiality of romantic comedies with a plot that checks all of the audience’s expectations—and desires—for the genre. This movie gives us every cliché element that we secretly want, but gets away with it because it is refreshingly self–aware.
Sweet, tender, and adorable: Mirai is a slice–of–life/fantasy tear–jerker (if you’re feeling emotional) that might make you remember being a kid again.
A great film score elevates the best parts of a film without distracting the viewer as the story unfolds. Movies with great music can grab us with one particular song, a timeless and evocative theme or vocal performance that is forever at the hip of the film it accompanies. In any case, when movies have great music, they are all the more equipped to captivate, terrify, delight, or move us to tears. What words alone can’t do, music often can, and thus, some of the most memorable scores are the ones that accompany films about love. Whether the score gently balances the other elements of the film or directly narrates the love story, movies that move us capture the sound of love through their use of music.
To associate a genre such as the spy film with love is, in reality, a little bit ridiculous.
In Ex Machina, Caleb Smith falls in love with Ava, a humanoid robot with artificial intelligence (AI). In Her, Theodore Twombly falls in love with Samantha, a self–named operating system with AI. In Blade Runner 2049, K is in a domestic relationship with Joi, a projected hologram of Ana de Armas… with AI.
It’s that time of year that some dread and others anticipate: Valentine’s Day. It’s time to pull out the romantic comedies, sappy love stories, popcorn, and Ben & Jerry’s to help it all go down.
Stand-up comedy has reached new heights with help from Netflix. The streaming platform even has an entire Instagram, @netflixisajoke, dedicated to promoting their endless comedy series and specials. Not sure where to start? Check out the following comedians, each with a unique style to suit you. Watch to laugh, or just so you can start catching your friend's constant references to well-known comedy routines in casual conversation. Either way, there's a comedian who you'll soon find yourself Youtube–stalking, whether it's their sets from the early 2000s or their work on your favorite current comedy shows.
When we think about the point at which movies cross over from being popular entertainment to art cinema—the artificial division between the empty genre film and the poetic, slow–moving indie flick—where exactly do we place animated movies? The proliferation of animation as a major film–making medium has been a long process primarily driven by technological innovation. The special effects of classic films like King Kong would not have been possible without the use of stop–motion animation. Early computer–generated animated films, including Pixar’s first feature film Toy Story, have held up surprisingly well despite the great leaps in CGI technologies. In 2018, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse garnered significant acclaim for emulating the visual style of a comic book through computer animation. In short, contemporary 3D animation is nothing less than awe–inspiring. However, in addition to innovation at the artistic and technological level, the medium of animation has been a hotbed for inventive modes of storytelling. Many of the greatest animated films in recent memory have transcended the genres and the audiences that we set on such a flexible medium, using the liberties of limitless visual invention to tell the stories that children hold with them well into adulthood.
In Roland Barthes’ essay, “The Death of the Author,” he asserts that critics and audiences must separate literature from its author. To acknowledge the author is to unnecessarily add background context to the piece. The phrase, “death of the author,” has come up in recent criticism around artists like J.K. Rowling and the validity of her extensive addendums to Harry Potter. Now, with the current round of Oscars coming up, we face the slight alteration of Barthes’ concepts, a proposed idea for a newer medium: The death of the director.
Following Outlaw King, Roma, and Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, Netflix keeps its output of original productions rolling in 2019 with Velvet Buzzsaw, a satirical thriller–turned–comedy following several art world big–shots who begin commercializing a dead man’s artwork. When business begins picking up, supernatural tragedy befalls everyone who’s been involved with profiting off the dead artist, Vetril Dease.
Honey Boy is an explanation. It might even be a baptism. Or maybe it's about permission. Permission to hate, permission to forgive, and permission to move on.
He’s been dubbed the "Jack the Ripper" of the United States. He’s admitted to brutally violating and murdering over 30 women during the 1970s. He’s known for his disarming charisma and (literally) devilish good looks. His story has been recounted in media and popular culture countless times. Ted Bundy—the household name that plagued headlines and haunted millions for decades—is emerging once again. 30 years after his execution, we’re offered yet another allegedly unique look into the mind of America’s most infamous serial killer—this time, through a Netflix Original.
Former Street editor–in–chief Nick Joyner went to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Now Nick’s back to fill us in about all the hottest indies coming out this year.
It’s a rare thing to see a socially conscious film held with care and comedy, and Adam is just that. The movie—directed by Rhys Ernst, a queer filmmaker who has worked as a producer on Amazon Studios’ Transparent—resembles something of a queer The Perks of Being a Wallflower crossed with radical sexual politics.
Dirty God (2019) opens with a slow pan over a body of burned flesh. The sinewy, drum–tight skin looks like a tapestry in the warm morning light, so gorgeous that it becomes textural. Several minutes pass before we see a face, the face of the disembodied figure we’ve been scrutinizing.
With just under a month left before the 91st Academy Awards air on ABC, the scramble to watch as many of the nominees as possible is well underway. For those of us excited to share in the joy and outrage that will inevitably erupt in response to the Oscar results, this is our last chance to catch up on all that we may have missed in 2018. Although the nominated feature films tend to populate theaters nationwide or are available on–demand via streaming services, the 15 nominees in the short categories are often left out of the conversation. While many of these shorts may require screenings at specialty theaters, six of the 15 are available online.
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