Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

Thought it might be fun/useful to devote a thread that flagged semi-obscure or off the radar films & tv shows on Netflix's Watch Instantly service.

A few recent discoveries:

Burnt Offerings
MST3K: The Wild World of Batwoman
American Grindhouse
Vampyr
Who Is Harry Nilsson?
Shock Waves
Nightmares in Red, White and Blue
Man with the Movie Camera
World's Greatest Dad
Rolling Stones: Stones in Exile

There are so many MST3K movies available, it is awesome.

My roommate and I watched about three quarters of the Doors doc that Tom DiCillo made. Johnny Depp narrates.
It's pretty ridiculous and awesome.

xpost -- between that, the DVD sets and YouTube it's a golden time.

yeah, I think I've gone through about a dozen MST3K's this month already

x-post - I'm not a Doors fan, but that I've heard good things about that doc

Between checking a few months ago and checking a few days ago, a bunch of Criterion Collection films have been added. I don't remember so much from the Essential Art House boxes being available before, and it looks like almost all of them are there now.

Unfortunately, I found this out after I added the Bergman box set to my Criterion order the other day. Hopefully they'll let me return it unopened so I can get the Cassavetes box instead.

you can stream a woman under the influence now so... maybe rethink that, too

oh shiiiit, Killing of a Chinese Bookie is streamable now too!

Recently I've watched and enjoyed the following: The Watermelon Woman, Suspiria, Rockers, She, The Last Picture Show, and Le Jetee (inspiration for 12 Monkeys).

Oh and a lot of old Nickelodeon cartoons from the 90s have been added but y'all probably already know that.

The White Ribbon is available!

Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum

I think all of the Paul Morrissey Warhol-produced films are on there.

Louie season 1, one of the most fascinating shows in a long time.

Dogs Decoded: Nova is an awesome doc about recent canine research. Highly recommended for any dog owners.

Loved Louie as well.

Also streaming:
The Girlfriend Experience
Slings and Arrows
Blue Thunder

And HAVOC!

i watched the happy hooker goes hollywood on streaming netflix tonight. "recommendation" is a strong word, but i had fun.

"American Grindhouse"

Haha so amusing who co-produced this (it's okay btw as talking head features like this go).

if you liked "The Wild World of Batwoman", make sure to check out "Eegah!"

Louie season 1, one of the most fascinating shows in a long time.

Yeah, I never got a chance to check this out until it was on Netflix - it's great.

"I Am Love" is pretty fascinating

if you liked "The Wild World of Batwoman", make sure to check out "Eegah!"

I did and it was great!

barking dogs never bite - korean black comedy about eating the dogs
we jam econo - awesome minutemen doc

if i start posting on this thread i will be participating in 3 different netflix streaming threads which seems excessive

There's two other streaming threads? Did I miss something?

dont feel bad, one of them is my own self-indulgent fault and the other is on I Love Games.

JJJUSTEN MAKES ONE SENTENCIRIFIC REVIEWS OF ALL THE CRAP THAT HE WATCHES LATE AT NIGHT ON NETFLIX STREAMING XBOX SOMETHING WHY BECAUSE HE BORED ALSO BECAUSE
Netflix Streaming Film Recommendations: Because You Can't Always Play With Yourself

one is jjjusten's personal joint and the other has a tmi title

xp

Sorry jjjusten! I totally missed your thread. Thought I did a search first. Look forward to reading those threads.

Tales from the Script has interviews with everyone from Richard Rush to Paul Schraeder to Shane Black about big-studio screenwriting. Lots of guys I'd never heard speak before. Good documentary.

the documentary about milton glaser (hugely important graphic designer) is on instant netflix. can't wait to see it.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (aka "The Banksy documentary") is an unexpected mindfuck, and surprisingly isn't really about Banksy at all. I recommend!

yeah that looks good

^Had me all fucked up over art, commerce, life in general, for a couple days.

Recent watches:

Soul Kitchen
Vengeance
Valhalla Rising
Centurion
Rewatched first five eps of Party Down Season 2
Planet B-Boy

Another thumbs up for Exit Through the Gift Shop. Just watched the Joan Rivers doc this weekend, too.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a good doc, not sure if it's on Netflix instant.

Rewatched first five eps of Party Down Season 2

when are they going to put up the final 5 is my question

they took mall cops away :(

i only got to see, like, 4 episodes.

you could write, like, ten doctoral thesiseseses just watching that show and never leaving your couch. amerikkka writ sad.

Just watched Black Narcissus -- so good.

when are they going to put up the final 5 is my question

up now

Milton Glaser doc is good btw.

Just watched Black Narcissus -- so good.

― pixel farmer, Thursday, December 23, 2010 12:38 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Beautiful stuff like these seems worth waiting for the disc to show up, no?

I just watch Hoarders and old SNLs

Exit through the gift shop is so awesome

I know the disc would be better quality than streaming, but streaming is definitely better quality than regular tv -- there are far fewer compression artifacts than I get on cable. Maybe Netflix can tell I have decent downstream bandwidth (10 Mbps), I dunno. Turn off the lights in my office, watch fullscreen on the larger monitor, in with the earbuds, ask the family not to mess with me for two hours (or watch in the morning before they get up), a nice near-cinema experience.

"Beautiful stuff like these seems worth waiting for the disc to show up, no?"

Not with my TV, no.

ah good point

i'm a little of worried that Netflix is gonna phase out discs before the internet connections get good enough for streams to be disc-quality

I'M STILL HERE, one of the greatest and most underrated films of the year, is now on instant. Time will be very kind to it.

Just watched Moon, pretty good.
Now starting the Red Riding Trilogy.

Just watched "I Think We're Alone Now" about two disturbed dudes obsessed with Tiffany. Pretty interesting, if a bit depressing.

Come to think of it, both of the dudes are probably ILM regulars.

Also watched the first three eps of "Salt Fat Acid Heat". Appreciated her country choices for demonstrating the various items - Fat (Italy), Salt (Japan), Acid (Mexico) - and liked seeing the local ingredients highlighted. Will be using miso more, and want bottles of barrel-aged soy sauce and Ligurian olive oil. Will keep an eye out for sour oranges, too.

When I watched that a couple years ago, it actually made me (and avowed hater of preparing and cooking food) want to cook. I really appreciated that.

Of course, I never followed through, but that's not her fault.

Speaking of gruesome kills we watched those RL Stine movies "Fear Street".

The 1994 one was TERRIBLE, they seemed to thnk the only way to telegraph "hey this is 1994" was to play 10 second snippets of 90s college goth-rock one after the other for the first hour, completely inconrous to the actual happenings on screen, and the fashions were so off they had to not have consulted anyone over the age of 30.

But ugh yeah... major gore. Was not expecting it.

I haven't and won't watch them because I can't do gore, but my impression from people who have is that 1994 sucked and the other ones were good. True?

I've watched them all over the last three nights. First was bad but had some genuine scares/hand in front of face moments but yeah, second two much better if still flawed and wearing their influences on their sleeves. Music use to pinpoint year stays pretty heavy handed throughout but quite enjoyed the tonal shifts and the Stranger Things/Home Alone final 30 minutes or so

Feature length episode of Kingdom now out

The Korean series?

Yep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTqz2QYsSeY

was wondering the same, there's like at least 3 different TV shows called Kingdom in the past decade

I still have a soft spot for the dopey MMA one (also on Netflix, last I checked) w/ Frank Grillo, Jonathan Tucker, Matt Lauria and uhh Nick Jonas

oh and Paul Walter Hauser's in there too

was curious about that one but it left US Netflix earlier this year i think

Thought maybe it could even be Lars von Trier’s Riget.

Decided to check out Nayattu, a Indian political thriller that I found out about from the Letterboxd top25 of the year so far list. Thought it was really great and tense, police corruption and brutality taken as givens. Checked out some reviews afterwards tho and apparently it's full of caste prejudice that totally went over my head? The perils of engaging w/ culture you don't know shit about, I guess.

Thought maybe it could even be Lars von Trier’s _Riget_.

Right, thought I heard something about that

Feature length episode of Kingdom now out

― groovypanda, Friday, 23 July 2021 10:42 (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

This was v bleak, from the plot to the selection of hats. Rural Korea in the 16th century wasn't much fun to live/die in I guess.

What's the Neko Case song that's featured in the Country episode of This Is Pop?

Ah, "Furnace Room Lullaby"!

I binged the first season of Never Have I Ever in maaaaayyybe two days? It maxes out on "avert your eyes from this terrible life choice" tension that I can only tolerate by spacing out and mainlining it without thinking about it too much. But one thing I am LOVING is how non-white it is!! Just out here being about Black, brown, Afrolatina, Asian, etc, people and giving zero fucks. It's delightful.

yeah i loved s1

s2 took me to the max of “ok she’s kind a nut & a terrible person? & i dont enjoy watching this?” so i stoped

I finished season 2 eventually - spacing out the episodes helped in reducing the urge to yell at Devi through the TV. I didn’t really like the show rationalising her behaviour as a response to her father’s death, some of the things she got up to were pretty terrible.

I quite liked the complicated friendship she had with Aneesa though and glad they fleshed Paxton out a bit more too.

i really really REALLY love John McEnroe as the narrator. genius move.

Shadow and Bone is quite good! Had very low hopes for a NF fantasy series, but it comes together well. A lot of world building details are packed in or not fully explained so it's easy to get lost, but the story is still compelling. Hope we get additional seasons

Brand New Cherry Flavor, anyone? A few episodes in and it’s pretty good - excellent, fucked up body horror and 90s fashion that actually looks like 90s fashion. Rosa Salazar is fantastic even if she does look like she could be Aubrey Plaza’s twin.

there were a couple posts on the not-Netflix thread...maybe a sign to have one rolling tv thread as that keeps happening and we don't all live in the same country

Ah ok, I’ll look over there. a rolling TV thread sounds like a good idea but makes it very hard to avoid spoilers if you don’t have access to certain services (e.g. Hulu isn’t available where I am)

Is anyone else as curious about writers as I am? Every time I watch an episode of a show I like and the writing seems above or below usual standard I turn to the Wikipedia episode guide and see if it's a writer who's new or whatever.

Like yesterday I watched Dead to Me s2e3, a show I've felt has been consistently good so far, and it right from the off it just seemed bad, characters acting out of character, weak dialogue, weird plot holes. I look it up and it's the first one from that particular writer. And I make a mean mental note against that name.

I'm sure I sometimes conflate it with directing or acting choices, but anyway.

Honestly, I have no idea how credits work. Meaning, there's often a writer's room, but only one or two writers gets the credit on a show. Does that mean those one or two writers wrote everything themselves, or just the bulk/concept? I have no idea. I haven't been watching White Lotus or even know what it is, but I know Mike White not only created it but wrote every episode himself, by himself. That seems sort of unusual. A lot of the top tier TV seems to be a product of a team, even if only one person gets the actual "written by" credit. And yeah, the director makes a big difference, too, maybe even bigger, because there's only one of them, even if I assume the showrunner can influence things.

I haven't been watching White Lotus or even know what it is,

okay

but I know Mike White not only created it but wrote every episode himself, by himself. That seems sort of unusual.

except

A lot of the top tier TV seems to be a product of a team, even if only one person gets the actual "written by" credit.

so... not that unusual? at least, not as unusual as not ever having seen a show or even knowing 'what it is' but knowing who has writing credit on each episode. imo!

there's often a writer's room, but only one or two writers gets the credit on a show. Does that mean those one or two writers wrote everything themselves, or just the bulk/concept? I have no idea..

you possibly could have just left it there ^

Honestly, I have no idea how credits work.

or even there!

Alba I have the same thoughts but I never actually bother to look any of it up. For instance, Stranger Things S3, Hopper was just doing all this dumb stuff that Hopper would never do. 11 too. The acting was fine, the direction was fine. They were just being made to say and do things that rang untrue to their characters. Of course this can be an interesting choice - deliberately show a beloved character who's out of sorts, or going through a transformation, but that's not really what it was.

I remember reading something about 30 Rock where they explained that they would sit around in a writer's room and come up with the general episode idea & outline, then assign it to one writer to actually come up with a script (whose name would be on the episode as 'written by'). But then of course the script would be reviewed by everyone, punched up, jokes added, etc.

But Mike White said in an interview that he didn't have a writer's room, he really did write it all by himself, which does seem unusual.

Yeah. In the UK that's how most dramas are written, actually. Sometimes big comedies will have a writer's room but in general it doesn't happen because writer's room are extremely expensive. This is the main reason there's never been a UK version of the Daily Show, for instance. You need a big team of writers.

writers' rooms would also be much more necessary for a 24-episode season

fyi, White wrote every episode of Enlightened too

lol yeah it helps that most UK dramas are like 6 episodes.

Notable exception is early West Wing, where Sorkin did pretty much write the entire first few seasons solo before completely burning out.

I was going to mention him but got distracted trying to recall whether "burning out" = got caught with mushrooms at the airport, or if I conflated the two

Probably both. And/or cocaine.

Even Sorkin had people coming up with story ideas, but he did write all the dialogue solo

Is anyone else as curious about writers as I am?

has literally never occurred to me to think about

The Chair is great and hilarious - Sandra Oh is fantastic as usual, but I really, really loved Holland Taylor in this. Also Jay Duplass as a ridiculously charming and crushable disaster <3

slightly amused that netflix paid the producers of Game of Thrones a fuckton of money to get this small-scale, six-episode satire about beleaguered English professors.

lol now seeing that discussion of The Chair is once again on that other TV thread I'm not on

Second season of Into The Night is out next week.

Can remember hardly anything about the first season other than the basic premise and that it was pretty decent.

Latest season of Money Heist has turned everything up to 11 and it was completely bonkers already

yes! is there a handy recap at the start?

No but if you look under the Trailers & More section there's short 3 minute recaps for each season so far

https://i2.wp.com/cospixy.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/941108C3-3A32-4D2B-B32E-EEC509420B60.jpeg?fit=500%2C500&ssl=1

Finally saw Never Have I Ever. Love seeing my own childhood experience represented in media but I feel like these shows often hit the same notes, the same jokes. This show was very refreshing as it wove most of the experience into a fast-moving, often laugh-out-loud funny, broader scoped show. Lot of details rang true for a show that often veers from reality

Agree that S2 was not as good, Devi was getting quite unlikable and the plot was rehashing the same character interactions. But with a great supporting cast, there was still a lot to enjoy. I'll happily watch another season

I watched the first episode of the Voltron reboot, my god what an aggravating experience.