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Wacky Reviews: Things He's Watched On Netflix

Coherence - So since I watched Primer I thought I'd watch something else that was supposed to be complicated. It wasn't on the complicated level of Primer and really I don't think there was anything I didn't follow by the end. It was pretty good! Nicholas Brendon was actually really convincing as the drunk actor (well he would be!) and you can imagine he would have been in Roswell in another universe. I liked the main girl too (possibly because she was pretty yes.) The ending went on a bit though. I would say it's worth watching though the shaky camera will probably annoy some people.
 
"Advantageous" is another good little scifi movie on Netflix. I won't say anything about the plot because it'd spoil it, but it stars Demora Sulu and when I mentioned on Twitter how much I enjoyed it the director retweeted me which was nice.
 
I did watch Primer once but lost interest quite quickly. I remember thinking it wasn't very well filmed. Not because of camera angles or lighting, just stuff like you mentioned with the sound. It's bad enough the dialogue being difficult to follow, without it being difficult to even hear. I'll have to give it another go, though. So many people seem to like it, they can't all be wrong.
 
Well in Primer's defence Shane Carruth did write, direct, star in and sound edit the whole thing himself for under $7,000 so under those conditions it probably looks and sounds great (though yeah I did find the sound quite annoying at the start.)

Advantageous - I liked it! It was thoughtful and intelligence science fiction. I would say in terms of a complaint that it took a very long time to get to the actual "procedure" (no spoilers) part. Like it was in the last half hour that she was in the lab (no spoilers.) I UNDERSTAND that this was to show how desperate she was and deal with all the things she was thinking about and all that stuff was done well. I just would have liked more balance with the two "halves" (no spoilers) so to speak, as the last part felt a bit rushed. And the city seemed really empty when you'd think it would be really busy (I know that would be down to budget...or it was a metaphor for her loneliness and isolation.) Good to see Ken Jeong in a serious roll.
 
I agree. I felt I was naturally biased to how she was at the beginning more because we'd spent so long with her, rather than due to issues with how she was later on. I didn't feel like I got a good enough chance to judge her character later on, and I was just told what to think rather than come to my own conclusion. Still, it gave me feels and it was a refreshingly thought provoking scifi story that didn't need loads of action action ACTION.
 
And I couldn't tell if the ending was supposed to be happy when they were all sitting stoicly in the park listening to music. But *racist remark about Asian people*!
 
Europa Report - I think Tomtrek told me to watch this like a year ago? It's a "found footage" kind of thing about the first manned mission to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. It was good becaue it took the science seriously (well it's probably full of inaccuracies but every movie is) and captured some of the awe of space travel and scientific discovery. On the down side I'd say only a couple of the characters stood out, but that's probably accurate to real space missions!
 
I liked Europa Report. The found footage thing is a bit overdone (and it's even been done on a spaceship visiting planets in the solar system. Remember Defying Gravity? And probably Virtuality as well...), but it does work and it does make sense.

I was a little disappointed by what was discovered. It wasn't very imaginative, visually.
 
I watched The Guest. It was very entertaining and pretty crazy. And really funny in places! The lead actor did a great job playing the character.
 
What We Do in the Shadows - I watched this because I saw its name when it was announced that the director is doing the next Thor movie and I heard it was good. You probably can't judge how his Thor will be from this because it's a Spinal Tap style mockumentary about vampires. In New Zealand. At the start I didn't think I was going to like it because they were all doing silly accents and the jokes seemed a bit...obvious. Like imagine obvious vampire jokes. They were in there! But also some better jokes later. I liked it more as I went on. The cast all did a great job playing their characters convincingly, considering how silly the characters were. I didn't laugh out loud all the way through but it was funny. I can see some people liking it a lot more than me and some people hating it and quitting after five minutes. I realise that isn't a helpful thing to say in a review.
 
About Time - It's the Richard Curtis time travel romcom! Richard Curtis kind of gets a bad rap but he's still capable of doing good stuff. He's not Ben Elton. This was pretty good. I mean don't expect it to have a lot of time travel because there was one point where I thought "oh yeah, he can time travel." And it is full of eccentric posh (white) people like you would expect in a Richard Curtis film. BUT they're all played by really good actors. Is Bill Nighy ever not great? No, probably not! The emotional stuff between him and his son is moving and convincing. It's a good movie. I would recommend it unless you absolutely can't stand Richard Curtis.
 
Aaaah. I've been curious about that. From the trailers it looked like a low budget (or less nicely made anyway) version of Ex Machina.
 
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