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A thread to recommend decent movies on Netflix / Amazon Prime?

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vuk said:
drood.

i'm surprised someone with your background can tolerate supernatural drama.
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It's not just tolerance. I love horror!

Some of the reasons have already been covered by other posters but there's also a natural fit between physics and horror: in the same way that science fiction can be a tool for exploring alternative political and social structures (how they might form and break down), horror gives us alternative ways to think about the natural and physical order, and how it might (conceivably) rupture. The obvious example of this is Lovecraft's fiction where space and time are often explicitly disordered by incomprehensible forces, becoming alien and inhospitable in the process. A less obvious example is the ultra low-budget film Primer. It's ostensibly a sci-fi film which tackles the subject of time travel as realistically as possible, but the gradual collapse of the natural temporal order that ensues is as subtly frightening as hany horror film. Also...

Some of my favourite directors use horror-tropes and techniques, Lynch being the outstanding example.

Horror is a way of experiencing negative emotions (fear, grief, disgust...) in a relatively safe way. It can be quite relaxing!

I grew up watching Hammer films so there is a nostalgia element to some of the stuff I watch.

If it helps, I'm no great fan of gore. I like my horror creepy and subtle.
 
I binge-watched series 1 of 'Top Boy' on Netflix yesterday. The new series that is, made by Netflix which is a follow-on from the 2011 and 2014 series of the same name made by Ch4.

I thought it was very good, depicting the stark realities of inner-city life, how kids - often without one if not both parents - can get trapped in a life of crime and end up in gangs, selling drugs etc.

Good British drama, highly recommended.
 
stephen bennett said:
Good SF for me (and where fantasy often falls) is where rules are set up that may be improbable or unlikely but they stick to those rules in their own ‘universe.’ Its the ‘what if’ that intrigues.
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Agreed. I also really like the whole time-distorted retro-future thing of vintage sci-fi movies. The things they got ‘wrong’ are such a fascinating reflection of their time from the McCarthyist anti-communist paranoia of 50s US sci-fi with all its bakelite knobs and analogue meters through to the grimy flickering CRTs of Bladerunner to the sanitised utopia of Star Trek. I’m a big fan both aesthetically and from the perspective of historical context. As a genre sci-fi has many of the best/most interesting movies IMHO.

PS I’ve never had much time for horror though.
 
Anyone watched any of I Land on Netflix?

Its provenance looked good (Neil LaBute produces), but my, how bad is the acting? It seems to be a kind of Lost + Lord of the Flies+Love Island crossover.

Like Another World, I may have to watch more to see if it can actually get any worse.

Stephen

 
With me, it's partly that I associate sci-fi with my childhood/early teens. I binge-read the stuff (basically I borrowed from the local library anything with a yellow Gollancz dust-jacket) from the age of ten to about sixteen or so, when I discovered 'proper' books. The only SF book I still own is Philip K Dick's 'The Man in the High Castle', and I very recently read his 'Time Out Of Joint', which begins as an interesting exploration of whether we can trust what we read in the newspapers/see on TV, then degenerates into some silly interplanetary suff, added at the insistence of the publishers.

Apart from watching the first series of Star Trek, and the various Gerry Anderson puppet-based TV series, I've not bothered much with SF films as a genre. I liked 'Dark Star' though.
 
stephen bennett said:
Anyone watched any of I Land on Netflix?

Its provenance looked good (Neil LaBute produces), but my, how bad is the acting? It seems to be a kind of Lost + Lord of the Flies+Love Island crossover.

Like Another World, I may have to watch more to see if it can actually get any worse.

Stephen
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I managed 10 mins. It is awful sh*te.
 
Hitman Redemption on Netflix is good if you're suffering from insomnia and can't find a cure.

Otherwise avoid like the plague.
 
I've flipped back and forth between Prime and Netflix this year. I currently have only Netflix dvd service. I don't have cable tv. I burn through the streaming I want to see in less than a month. The dvd side takes longer due to the wait times on popular titles. Short Wait means a month minimum. Long Wait translates to 'you should live so long.'

In any event, it's all a vast wasteland of law enforcement-murder, fake reality shows and chick flicks with a sprinkling of watchable content. This stuff has to damage people who depend on it at a cellular level.
 
There is more to watch streaming, but you have to find out about it and search for it. I wish Netflix's algorithms were set more to show me what I want, and less what they, for odd reasons I don't get, want me to watch.
 
I'd like to see an option to hide content I've already watched to make it easier to browse the content I haven't seen as well as to reduce the likelihood of watching something I've already seen again: I can't always tell from a title and image whether I've seen something or not.
 
windhoek said:
I'd like to see an option to hide content I've already watched to make it easier to browse the content I haven't seen as well as to reduce the likelihood of watching something I've already seen again: I can't always tell from a title and image whether I've seen something or not.
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I agree. The images change regularly, often depending on other things you’ve watched, so it’s fairly easy to look into something then realise it’s something already seen. Even simply the ability to mark something as seen would be a bonus.

Mick
 
Between Two Ferns (Netflix) with Zach Galifianakis is funny. Zach plays a tv interviewer with an insulting line in questions. Plenty of hollywood names joining as victims.
 
Just finished Twin Peaks: the Return on Now TV. By turns baffling, boring and brilliant, but mostly the latter.
 
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