Sometimes, the greatest thrill is discovering something that's been flying under your radar.
If you're chasing that feeling, you've come to the right place. There's so much
to discover on Netflix, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again.
sagas set on the fringes of New York starring actors one wouldn't suspect.
Just before the duo made the acclaimed Uncut Gems with Adam Sandler,
they concocted Good Time, an innovative and twisty heist film headlined by Robert Pattinson.
The Twilight star plays Connie, who forcibly takes his developmentally disabled brother, Nick, out of
a therapy session because he needs help robbing a bank. The getaway goes awry, and police nab Nick.
Connie, forever protective of Nick, then schemes to bust him out of police custody in a hospital,
where he landed after being attacked by another prisoner. The caper also involves, at various
turns, a valuable drug stash, an aging Long Island amusement park, the criminal underworld,
and mistaken identity. Victor Stiff of Tilt Magazine calls Good Time "a nerve-wracking
crime adventure loaded with thrills, sleazy characters, and a distinctly New York flavor."
The setting of The Frozen Ground is Anchorage, Alaska,
in the mid-1980s - or at least the seedier outskirts and underbelly of the large city,
rife with drugs and violent crime. It's a place where teenage runaways tend to disappear forever.
After one young woman escapes from the clutches of a person of interest,
job-weary lawman Jack Halcombe connects that case with those of other women whose remains have been
found in remote, wild areas and whose homicides have gone unsolved for well over a decade.
It's a chilling, suspenseful, and at times deeply unsettling cat-and-mouse movie
based on the true story of Alaskan killer Robert Hansen, made all the
more intriguing by John Cusack, Nicolas Cage, and Vanessa Hudgens all playing against type.
Hollywood loves movies about professional killers,
and with good reason. Being paid a lot of money to kill another person is a strange,
illegal, reprehensible concept - which means there's no small amount of drama involved. Being a
hitman is also absurd, and that makes for fertile ground for a hitman comedy like Killing Gunther.
"You know it's nothing personal, right. It's all business. You wanna be king,
you have to kill the king, and right now Gunther is king."
A mysterious figure named Gunther is both the envy and bane of the tightly-knit worldwide community
of professional killers. He always seems to get the best gigs and makes everyone else in
the business look bad, prompting a ragtag group of hitmen to join together and use
their prodigious skills as discreet assassins to finally, once and for all, kill Gunther. However,
Gunther is the world's greatest hitman, so it's going to be a tough proposition for the likes of
skilled killers like Blake and Sanaa. Revealing who portrays Gunther would spoil the fun,
but suffice to say, it's some perfect casting in this enjoyable action comedy.
Eight-year-old Alton Meyer is the adopted son of Pastor Calvin Meyer, leader of a rural Texas cult
known only as the Ranch. He's also got amazing powers, like being able to shoot light beams out
of his eyes, speak in tongues, and intercept satellite transmissions. The bad news for the
special child: the FBI would love to capture him and limit his unspeakably powerful gifts.
Alton goes on the lam, not only from the government but also from the Ranch,
thanks to the help of his biological father, Roy, who kidnaps the boy away from the religious
group that raised him and tried to harness his abilities. It turns out that those abilities may
be even more pronounced than previously thought, and speak to earth-shattering hidden truths.
Midnight Special is a dazzling film that takes this mystery and runs with it in profound ways.
The movie Stardust is appropriately named for a magical substance, the stuff of fairy tales,
because it feels like an age-old bedtime story. It's actually based on a rollicking adventure
novel by Neil Gaiman hat dates back only to the 1990s, fully realized in cinematic form
by an all-star cast of charming actors. Tristan lives in the small, old British village of Wall,
which juts up against the magical kingdom of Stormhold. One day he sees a star fall from
the sky, and he aims to capture it and present it as a gift to Victoria, the woman he loves,
so as to secure her hand in marriage. Those plans change when he discovers
that the star has transformed into an enchanting woman named Yvaine.
"You're the star? You're the star! Really?"
Tristan, of course, falls in love with Yvaine, and also has to help her escape the trio of
witches who wish to restore their youth by eating Yvaine's heart. As if that wasn't enough for an
eye-popping, imaginative story with something for everyone, Stardust also involves a flying
pirate ship helmed by the gregarious Captain Shakespeare, a battle between the heirs of
Stormhold, and a secret magical heritage. In short, there's something for everyone.
Some of the best horror movies generate their scares by pulling from real life.
Possible terrors lurk everywhere in the world. John Erick Dowdle's 2014 effort
As Above, So Below places its characters in one of the real world's most chilling places:
the catacombs beneath Paris, the final resting place of countless, centuries-old human remains.
The premise is also familiar, inviting in the possibility of even more effective dread.
Archaeologist Scarlett Marlowe thinks that the legendary Philosopher's Stone,
which can turn metal into gold and grant eternal life is located somewhere in the
catacombs. She assembles a crew to venture deep into the subterranean land of the dead... and
not everyone from her team may make it out. In the years since its release, As Above,
So Below has kept growing its audience among found footage horror fans, and with good reason.
In the Shadow of the Moon
Here's a wildly different and unpredictable movie that merges together movie genres that often rely
so heavily on tropes that they're overly familiar and predictable. In the Shadow of
the Moon is part sci-fi movie, part mystery, and part serial killer story. The film begins in 1988,
when Philadelphia police officer Thomas Lockhart, his partner, and his detective brother-in-law
desperately try to find and stop a prolific killer whose victims seem to lose all of their blood at
once. They find the suspect but she evades capture by jumping to her apparent death.
Flash forward nine years, and the killer is at work again. Then another nine years, and
more killings occur. Thomas becomes the obsessed detective, researching the case for decades as his
quest leads him down the unexpected crime-fighting path of time travel. In the Shadow of the Moon is
"never less than engaging, and it's just about always clever," according to the New York Times.
Safety Not Guaranteed
Science fiction movies don't have to rely on state-of-the-art special effects or be set
on some distant planet in some far-off year. Dialogue-driven sci-fi set in the present day,
and produced on a moderate budget, is possible - and it can be spectacular. Such
is the case with Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow's 2012 feature debut,
Safety Not Guaranteed. Seattle Magazine writer Jeff pitches an investigative piece about a
weird classified ad seeking a companion to travel through time. "You'll get paid after we get back.
Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before," the writer warns.
Enlisting interns Darius and Arnau, Jeff tracks down the supposed time traveler,
grocery store employee Kenneth, and Darius poses as an interested time travel companion,
hiding her journalistic connections. As it turns out, Kenneth is tragically serious about going
back in time, wanting to head to 2001 to stop the vehicular death of his girlfriend. Amazingly,
he may not actually be a crackpot. Funny, strange, and full of heart,
Safety Not Guaranteed is a masterclass in getting a lot of sci-fi fun out of a tiny budget.
According to the 2016 sci-fi horror thriller The Girl with All the Gifts,
the future looks bleak for humanity, what with an aggressive, zombifying fungus that
turns the vast majority of people into "hungries," quick and agile dead-brained,
flesh-eating monsters. Those that resisted the fungus have figured out that children
are the future - specifically a small collective of zombie-human hybrids who
still want to eat people but are also capable of rational thought and civilized behavior.
Among them is Melanie, apparently immune to the fungus and set for scientific dissection
to help create a vaccine. But then when the lab holding her is attacked and destroyed by hungries,
Melanie sets off on a journey of identity exploration against a backdrop of destruction
and a rapidly devolving civilization. The Girl with all the Gifts manages
to deliver on the horror goods while also delivering a very human story,
and offers something different for fans who think they've seen it all from zombie movies.
The 2018 sci-fi thriller The Endless starts on a high note and somehow keeps building.
A decade before the events of the film, brothers Justin and Aaron escaped from Camp
Arcadia - a UFO death cult as far as Justin was concerned, but a silly, far-out commune to Aaron.
One day the brothers receive a mysterious cassette in the mail that leads them to consider a return
to Camp Arcadia. Apparently, everyone is still alive, although Justin is pretty
sure they're still planning a tragic, mass death event to "ascend" to an alien world.
"Why do you want to go back?"
"To say goodbye, get some closure."
Welcomed back into the camp, both brothers realize that this particular UFO death cult may have
actually been right about extraterrestrial life, as it's the only explanation for some strange
events and discoveries, such as a previously undiscovered color and the existence of time
loops. Doom looms large as Justin and Aaron try to figure out just what is going on. Subtle,
inventive, and deeply atmospheric, The Endless is a masterclass in doing a lot with a little.
Maniac is hard to categorize. It's a darkly comic, often surreal and lightly dystopian miniseries
set in a future world where gadgetry and pharmaceuticals have rapidly progressed,
but a 1980s consumer tech flavor permeates the design of day-to-day life. Desperate and
guilt-ridden Annie and troubled rich family black sheep Owen lock down for a heavily controlled
psychological drug trial at a mysterious drug company operated by the eccentric Dr. James K.
Mantleray. Mantleray is literally and explicitly in love with machinery, and lives in the shadow of
his mother, Dr. Greta Mantleray, a popular pop psychologist and best-selling author.
That all fuses with journeys deep into the minds of Owen and Annie - and sometimes both at once,
when their subconscious realities intersect - who live out their deepest fears and insecurities
in disparate ways, such as an exotic animal heist and a Lord of the Rings-esque fantasy.
Not only dazzling and challenging, Maniac is visually stunning,
psychologically dense, and often surprisingly emotional all at once.
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