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Browsing through NetFlix’s online streaming collection is not unlike those late Friday nights spent browsing through the movie maze in your local video store. The search for that perfect movie is often tricky. Sometimes you have to deal with a fuming partner and/or a melting tub of ice-cream in the car. The pressure is compounded by a listless, unhelpful store clerk in some cases. This column aims to be that clerk for NetFlix Instant Watch – maybe just a little less listless and little more helpful. This is what I waded through recently – at NetFlix.

Went Looking For…

Believe it or not, I sometimes do have a predetermined playlist while browsing for movie titles. Generally, there is a week between my adding them to the playlist and actually watching them. The movies under “Went Looking For…” are typically the movies that I had slotted as “Ended up with…” the previous week.

Rashomon

To be honest, I had more fun reading about this Kurosawa classic than watching the movie. The anecdotes and trivial tidbits are plenty when it comes to Rashomon. The most compelling piece of information is the possibility that the Academy Award for foreign movies was created especially after the Academy members were awestruck with Rashomon. Then there are the articles dwelling on the intuitive screenplay that is as much about psychology as it is about narrative style. The unique selling point for Rashomon is the usage of flashback not as a factual recount of events but as the real world possibility of the narrators’ memories of events skewed by their psyche. A crime is committed – one of robbery – by a notorious robber, with the victim being a samurai warrior and the other – that of rape of the samurai warrior’s wife – may or may not have happened depending on who does the narration. The narrators include the victims, the culprit and the eyewitnesses. The Samurai warrior returns to the frames through a medium and I sided with his narration during the first viewing as he had no reason to alter events. A second viewing made me doubt my earlier decision as the samurai’s wife seemed to have a more compelling narrative. I caught myself marveling at the storytelling power that brings subtle changes to the viewer’s perception with every viewing.

Rashomon is one of several foreign classics available on Netflix streaming.





The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (original title Män som hatar kvinnor, meaning ‘"Men who hate women" in Swedish) is a gripping adaptation of the late Stieg Larsson’s novel. It is the first in the Millennium trilogy. There are three story lines that converge when the two main characters, journalist Mikael Blomkvist and professional hacker Lisbeth Salander, join forces. The movie begins with Blomkvist spending the last few days before a prison term, having lost a libel case against a billionaire industrialist. In this time period, he agrees to assist the CEO of Vanger Enterprises, Henrik Vanger, in finding his long lost niece. Lisbeth Sanders is facing her own travails at the hand of her guardian, who abuses her in return for granting piecemeal access to her trust fund. The revenge she hands out to this pervert is probably one of the most violent sequences one can see in mainstream cinema. Back in Vanger’s island town, Blomkvist realizes Salander’s role as a hacker in the scheme of things and reaches out to her to help him with his pursuit. They uncover the Vanger family secrets, which include everything from Nazis to serial murderers. The pursuit of the missing Harriet Vanger comes at great personal risk to Blomkvist and Salander. The partnership yields more than what they initially bargained for.

The sequel, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is coming to Netflix instant watch later this month (Oct 2010). I hope I get to finish the novel before that.

The Pillars of the Earth

I’ve read the Ken Follett novel of the same name from which this TV series is based upon. Set in the dark ages, it is the classic Church vs. Throne story with good and evil on either side. Follett has a fascination for that era. I can recall at least three of his novels set in that time period. They tend to follow the same pattern – a seesaw of trials and triumphs for a bunch of do gooders who fight against class, gender and financial restrictions from time to time. This particular series is spread across eight episodes. Ian McShane plays the central character of Cardinal Waleran, holding the strings of both church and kingdom. His is by far the best performance in an ensemble of some well known actors like Donald Sutherland (in a cameo) and a bunch of actors from the UK. The series has its moments but is mostly predictable in the way the story unfolds. Worth a watch.

Ended up with…

Whilst checking out the above movies, I invariably end up fattening my instant watch queue with some new additions. These go into my “Ended up with…” list and the plan is to watch them during the week ahead. NetFlix keeps tempting me to move each one of them to the top of the queue but I resist. These are movies that I plan to check out in the days ahead.

Monk Season 1

Monk Season 2

The defective detective is now available in full force on Netflix. The first two seasons are the Sharona years. Tony Shaloub will find it very difficult to shake off the Monk hangover since concluding the series after eight seasons. How they didn’t let Monk complete a perfect ten is beyond my comprehension.