Netflix totally rocks but I’ve just cancelled my subscription.
Huh?, you wonder. Well, it’s Spring, and now that the
days are officially and noticably longer than the nights, I’m
going to be spending any discretionary time I can outside.
Yeah, I know I can just hold onto the three movies forever,
but the temptation would be too great, and I would get even
less sleep than I’m receiving now. I’ll restart the subscription
again in September.
Last year when I did this, Netflix preserved my ratings, but wiped out
my my queue. Before cancelling, I saved a copy of my queue, currently
north of 100+ movies. I also looked at the list of 72 movies I rented
during the previous six months.
Of those movies, the absolute worst was Adaptation, a movie about a writer who has to adapt a plotless book to a screenplay. Oh, it’s self-referential! And it’s got Nicholas Cage! And some guy at NPR gushed at its self-referential cleverness with Nicholas Cage. My wife wisely gave up on it after 20 minutes but I was sucked into the cinematic death spiral. Every time I thought there was going to be a point, it proved me wrong… then as I reached for the eject button, there was a furtive suggestion of humor. Look, just because I wasted 90 minutes of my life on this turkey doesn’t mean you have to.
Adaptation narrowly edged out Dr Seuss’Cat in the Hat. I should have remembered Debbie fell asleep, but I didn’t. Ugh.
Among the disappointments:
Movies that I expected to suck, but weren’t that bad:
Star Trek: Nemesis — Given the way this thing Titanicked in the box office, I had extremely low expectations, with my hand poised on the eject button. It wasn’t that horrible, but it’s clear that I’ve outgrown Star Trek movies.
Movies I enjoyed:
Wow, I just started my Netflix and you couldn’t take it away unless you pried my dead hands off the keyboard.
Appears we have the same taste in movies. Some comments:
Adaptation – Yeah, I didn’t like this at all, although my hate level seems less than yours. I agree it was a waste of time, although you can have fun conversations with that cute, artsy secretary in accounting about whether the “twin” was real or not.
Lost in Translation – I really think that you can’t appreciate this movie unless you have been to Japan a few times, so I liked it (but thought it slow at times) and recommended my wife not see it. People who like the movie (i.e. who have been to Japan) agree with me, so I can’t figure why all the critics loved it (they have been to Japan a lot?).
Nemesis – Woah. Ditto vibes here, dude. I JUST finished watching it, thinking it would stink big time, and…sort of liked it in a guilty pleasure sort of way. Not great for a movie, but really good for a 2 parter episode of TNG.
Ocean’s 11 – Loved it. Own it. Notice how Brad Pitt is eating at the beginning of every scene he is in? Looking forward to 12.
Hudsucker – Great movie. Like you, liked the “stylized” feel of it. The best part is watching the accounting, marketing, operations, etc. departments all go through the effort of launching the product. It hit sooo close to home.
I hated Adaptation too. It was surprisingly bad when you consider how entertaining Being John Malkovitch was. It’s also the reason I’m somewhat reluctant to go see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Adaptation – While I can’t say it’s up there on my top ten, I actually liked it, and I don’t even like Nicholas Cage that much. I could relate to the familial competition aspect of it, and thought that as a film about inner dialogues in the face of impending deadlines it was pretty, it was at least an interestng take.
Lost in Translation – Another one I really liked, although I have not been to Japan, (I did make an attempt at learning nihongo). I thought Bill Murray played the perfect part of a weary middleaged man who while not having a midlife crisis is definately re-evaluting where his life has gone. It didn’t give me the instant gag reaction to most may-december relationships portrayed on film.
Nemesis – No, sorry it was just bad. I thought it would be bad, and yeah it was that and another 20% more. And not just from the point of view of watching an aging cast squeeze into those star fleet uniforms one more time (that’s for you william frakes) but stuff like Troi’s mental rape scenes just made it even more evident that the next gen’s voyage is finished.
My disappointments
21 grams and Momento – Both fall under the category of films as editing tricks. Not that I am against trying new ways to express a narrative, but I want some meat on them bones.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – I am an ardent fan of the comic it was based on, so I had very low expectations going in, but wow, this was really bad. Where’s the switch to turn Sean Connery off?
Morvern Callar – A critics choice, that just seemed long and with all the scottish accents, a bit indecipherable.
The Secret Lives of Dentists – Dennis Leary as your inner voice, interesting idea, not enough for a whole movie.
Comic Book the Movie – I like Mark Hamill and I really really really wanted to like this movie, but it had none of the genius of Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries.
Memento was a good one-shot movie. Clever gimmick in the editing, but once you saw the ending, there’s not much to merit seeing it again.
Lost in Translation and Adaptation (both via Netflix) are at the top of my “Worst of” list for rentals this year.