Netflix/Blockbuster Online: Movies that you should add to your queue.

[whangarei]

I signed up for Netflix recently too. No recommendations in this post but I will share my strategy for finding good movies. I like independent, smart dramas and documentaries, so my search is geared towards those types of movies. I rely on critics' choices, especially where a movie is rated favorably by a consensus of critics. Of course the general plot line has to interest me as well.

A great website is Movie Review Query Engine. It provides links to reviews of movies. So once I find a movie I'm interested in I'll look here to see what others say about it.

Film Threat seems to be independent. They have a way to search all their reviews for highly rated movies. So, I look for movies they have rated highly then cross-reference the reviews with Movie Review Query Engine.

Movies that have won awards are generally smart and well-made. There are a number of websites that list award-winners; Netflix has a way to search for some award winners as well. This movie awards page on Infoplease is a good place to start. You can google any award to find complete lists of winners and nominees.

Another good starting point is NY Times best 1000 movies

These sites should give you a place to start to find movies you'll enjoy.

[Ajezz]

"The Celebration" by Thomas Vinterberg



Cheers to my dad; a rapist and a murderer.

[burningyen]

[ QUOTE ]
Cold Fever by Friðrik Þór Friðriksson.

[/ QUOTE ]
Sadly, this doesn't appear on Netflix.

[onlinebeginner]

[ QUOTE ]
I was not a big fan of the movie. However I was surprised by it; It seemed under appreciated. I saw it about 3 years ago, so I maybe I am forgetting if it sucked, or was awesome. Sonatine I saw a few months ago, and so I am much more fresh when it comes to assessing it.

I like the scene @ the house w/ the dog in Two Days in the Valley, it has kind of a Mullholand Drive/ Sexy Beast type of atmosphere. Essentially I agree w/ you, however I think the average film watcher will like 2 days more than Sonatine.

[/ QUOTE ]

[burningyen]

Love this thread. I've already added 7 movies to my queue. Keep 'em coming.

My nomination:

La Dolce Vita



Steiner: Qualche volta, la notte, quest'oscurità, questo silenzio, mi pesano. E' la pace che mi fa paura. Temo la pace più di ogni altra cosa: mi sembra che sia soltanto un'apparenza, e nasconda l'inferno. Pensa a cosa vedranno i miei figli domani... Il mondo sarà meraviglioso, dicono. Ma da che punto di vista, se basta uno squillo di telefono ad annunciare la fine di tutto? Bisogna di vivere fuore dalle passione e altri sentimenti nell'armonia che c'è nell'opera d'arte riuscita, in quell'ordino incantato. Vodremmo riuscire al amarci tanto, da vivere fuore del tempo, distacati...distacati.

(Sometimes, at night, this darkness, this silence, weighs upon me. It's peace that frightens me. Peace most of all: it seems to me like only a mask, hiding the face of hell. I think of what is in store for my children tomorrow... The world will be wonderful, they say. But from whose viewpoint, if one phone call could announce the end of everything? We need to live beyond passion and other sentiments, in the harmony that exists in a great work of art, under that magic spell. We have to succeed in loving so greatly that we live outside of time, detached...detached.)

[john voight]

La Dolce Vita is the second gratest foreign film ever. Wages of Fear being first.

[KJS]

Great choice. In my Top 5 All-Time.

KJS

[whangarei]

Here are a few movies I really enjoyed:

Yi Yi
Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries. NJ is morose: his brother owes him money, his mother is in a coma, his wife suffers a spiritual crisis when she finds her life a blank, his business partners make bad decisions against his advice, and he reconnects with his first love 30 years after he dumped her. His teenage daughter Ting-Ting watches emotions roil in their neighbors' flat and is experiencing the first stirrings of love. His 8-year-old son Yang-Yang is laconic like his dad and pursues truth with the help of a camera. "Why is the world so different from what we think it is?" asks Ting-Ting.


Breaking the Waves
Drama set in a repressed, deeply religious community in the north of Scotland, where a naive young woman named Bess McNeil (Emily Watson) meets and falls in love with Danish oil-rig worker Jan (Stellan Skarsgaard). Bess and Jan are deeply in love but, when Jan returns to his rig, Bess prays to God that he returns for good. Jan does return, his neck broken in an accident aboard the rig. Because of his condition, Jan and Bess are now unable to enjoy a sexual relationship and Jan urges Bess to take another lover and tell him the details. As Bess becomes more and more deviant in her sexual behaviour, the more she comes to believe that her actions are guided by God and are helping Jan recover.

Bess McNeill: "Everyone has something they're good at. I've always been stupid, but I'm good at this."



Secrets & Lies
Cynthia lives in London with her sullen street-sweeper daughter. Her brother has been successful with his photographer's business and now lives nearby in a more upmarket house. But Cynthia hasn't even been invited round there after a year. So, all round, she feels rather lonely and isolated. Meanwhile, in another part of town, Hortense, adopted at birth but now grown up, starts to try and trace her mother.

Maurice: "Secrets and lies! We're all in pain! Why can't we share our pain? I've spent my entire life trying to make people happy, and the three people I love the most in the world hate each other's guts, and I'm in the middle! I can't take it anymore!"


You Can Count on Me
A lot happens at once to Sammy, a single mom living in the Catskill town of her birth, where her parents died in a car crash when she was small. Her son Rudy, who's 8, begins imagining his unseen father as a hero; she picks up, sort of, with last year's boyfriend; she gets a new boss who imposes foolish rules; and, her wayward brother Terry arrives for a visit after months of no communication. The boyfriend proposes, the relationship with her boss takes an unexpected turn, and her brother and son bond, not always with positive consequences. When Terry asks young Rudy if he wants to meet his father, a crisis of sorts ensues, and brother and sister must re-frame their relationship.

Sammy: I don't know what the church's official position is on fornication and adultery these days, and I felt really hypocritical not saying anything to you about it before, but... what *is* the official position these days?
Ron: Well... it's a sin.
Sammy: Good, I think it should be!
Ron: But we try not to focus on that aspect right off the bat.
Sammy: Why not? I think you should.
Ron: Well...
Sammy: Maybe it was better when they screamed at you from the box for having sex with your married boss, they told you what a terrible thing it was, they were really mean to you. Maybe it would be better if you just told me that I'm endangering my immortal soul and that if I don't stop, I'm gonna burn in hell. Don't you ever think that?
Ron: No, not really.

[Jeff W]

[ QUOTE ]
Pixote


[/ QUOTE ]

They don't have it at Netflix.

[Jeff W]

Uh, random great movie:

Night of the Hunter