Netflix offers so many options that choosing the perfect thing to watch can be too much
to deal with.
Here's a look at some of the best stuff to add to your queue for the next time you don't
know what to watch on Netflix.
What if John Wick was more violent, more nihilistic, and with a gleeful undercurrent of shock humor
and an honest exploration of the mental effects of a violent life?
That's Polar, the messy story of one man's quest to relax and secure his pension.
Mads Mikkelsen, the Danish actor best known for his starring role on the stylish TV version
of Hannibal, stars as Duncan Vizla, a highly effective assassin forced by his corporate
bosses to retire at age 50 and enjoy his golden years.
Of course, his company plans to kill him off to avoid funding his payout.
From a lovely cabin in Montana, Duncan has to fight off some violent attacks while also
dealing with PTSD and forging a friendship with a neighbor with demons of her own.
Groundhog Day may seem like a comedy, but it's actually a horror movie.
Seriously: A guy is such a nasty person that the universe spontaneously conspires to make
him shape up by sticking him in a time loop from which he cannot escape.
That's a living nightmare.
ARQ takes Groundhog Day for the horror movie it is and runs with it.
Robbie Amell stars as an engineer responsible for a world-changing technology, only to find
himself dealing with a home invasion brought on by bad dudes who want his technology for
their own means.
Our protagonist gets stuck in a time loop, forcing him to experience his horrible situation
over and over again, until he can find a way out.
"Today is repeating.
Tell me you remember.
Come on, you have to remember."
"Have you lost your f---ing mind?"
Life in an especially dingy and crime-filled part on London is rough for Tom, a shy and
awkward teenager who just wants to go about his business and maybe take things to the
next level with his friend Lucy.
When he goes over to her apartment to study together, he's greeted by thugs who have just
savagely attacked Lucy and her brother.
Tom runs away and tries to call the police, only for the thugs to shoot him in the head
and leave him for dead.
The good news: He survived!
The bad news: He wakes up two days after the attack with bits of his phone stuck inside
in his severely damaged noggin.
Luckily, like some kind of Silicon Valley Spider-Man, the advanced computing technology
in the phone merges with Tom's brain to give him superpowers.
With those great powers, he takes it as his responsibility to track down the bad guys
who nearly killed Lucy.
Based on a Stephen King novel from the early '90s, Gerald's Game begins like those countless
"erotic thrillers" that populated late-night cable TV in that era: Married couple Gerald
and Jessie go away for a sexy weekend in a cabin in the woods.
But nothing good ever happens to people in a Stephen King story.
They engage in some increasingly troublesome bedtime play which suddenly ends when Gerald
dies of a heart attack while Jessie remains cuffed to the bed.
With very little hope of escape or rescue, Jessie's mind rears up to attack her, presenting
numerous hallucinations that feel real.
Gerald's Game more or less takes place all in one room, making the horror that much more
intense and palpable.
The film creates an intimacy and emotionally powerful connection with Jessie as the horror
unfolds.
"'Cause everyone's got a little corner in there somewhere.
A little button they won't admit they want pressed."
What if Baby Driver wasn't a soundtrack-driven action comedy, and was instead an unpredictable,
intricately plotted suspense thriller about a getaway driver having his worst ever day
at work?
That's the logline for Wheelmsan, which also feels like the greatest Jason Statham movie
that Statham never made.
Frank Grillo portrays the unnamed, unflappable wheelman in a bank heist scheme, just out
of prison and in debt to a Boston crime family.
Everything that could go wrong does, but it's not all that funny, it's stressful enough
driving a getaway car for a robbery, and it's even more nerve-wracking for the wheelman
when he gets more or less carjacked by another band of mysterious criminals.
Much of the action takes place inside the car and inside the head of the wheelman, speeding
along from one high-pressure situation to another.
James Badge Dale plays Clyne, one of the smartest people in the world.
Clyne is a DARPA scientist employed by the U.S. military to develop weapons technology
to use in the ongoing Moldovan War in Eastern Europe.
He's summoned to the front lines to consult on some strange findings captured by one of
his best gadgets, hyper-spectral goggles.
It would seem some troops wearing the goggles spotted some ghostly figures out in the wild
that tend to kill whatever they come in contact with.
Before the military can report to their higher-ups, they need Clyne to figure out just what it
is, and so off he goes into the war zone to stalk the beast alongside a special ops team
and a C.I.A. operative.
What they find is way worse and more complicated than they thought possible.
A harrowing war movie with elements of District 9 and Predator thrown in, Spectral is clever,
intense, and worth a watch.
Yes, there's a sequel to 2000's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
And, like so many other revivals of classic properties, it's just hanging out on Netflix.
Loosely based on the same "Crane-Iron" series of books by Wang Dulu as the original Crouching
Tiger, Sword of Destiny builds on its predecessor's magical combination of folk tales, multi-faceted
characters, and physically impossible acrobatic fight scenes.
Michelle Yeoh returns as You Shu Lien, fresh out of exile and locked in an important battle
with the West Lotus clan for control of the Green Destiny sword.
Directing Sword of Destiny is Woo-Ping Yuen, the martial arts choreographer on the first
Crouching Tiger, and he certainly brings his prowess for creating gorgeous and soaring
aerial combat sequences.
Snowpiercer is one of the most original, thoughtful, and unpredictable science fiction movies in
recent memory.
The film takes place in a dystopian near future, in which some malfunctioning technology has
triggered a new ice age and killed almost all life on Earth.
The humans that survive board Snowpiercer, a gigantic super train that never stops circling
the entire planet.
By 2031, the onboard society has split into the wealthy, who get the luxury cars in the
front of the train, and the impoverished who are forced to eat food cubes and live in subhuman
conditions in the tail.
Rebels living in the tail of the train lead a revolt after people living in the front,
led by the spooky Minister Mason, go too far.
It all gets even more chaotic and compellingly strange from there.
"I am a hat, you are a shoe.
I belong on the head, you belong on the foot.
Yes?
So it is!"
Why are period horror films so much scarier than ones set in modern day?
Is it because the relative ignorance and brutality of the past adds an extra element of terror?
Or are images of Victorian-era Londoners in bleak clothes living bleak lives inherently
unsettling?
Probably that, although blood-hungry monsters, freaky islands, and blood cults are scary
too.
Fortunately, Apostle possesses all those things.
Set in 1905, Apostle concerns a man named Thomas, who leaves London for an island run
by a cult that's kidnapped his sister.
Thomas poses as a new adherent to gain favor with the cult members and their leader, in
the hopes of rescuing his sister from them.
However, things get awfully sticky for Thomas when he realizes that the cult's teachings
aren't exactly wrong.
Imagine if Little Shop of Horrors mashed up with The Wicker Man, only ten times as freaky,
and you'll get Apostle.
There's always room for a new twist and new voices in even the most trope-heavy film genres.
Take Cargo, which revives the zombie movie genre from its funk by adding new dimensions
of humanity.
Directors Yolanda Ramke and Ben Howling based the film on their 2013 short of the same name.
It follows a man named Andy, played by Martin Freeman, who, with his wife and infant daughter,
preserves himself up in a houseboat along a river deep in the interior of Australia
following a zombie apocalypse.
Andy wants to take the boat upriver to the safety of military protection; his wife wants
to make a supply run.
Eventually, Andy heads out on land with Rosie strapped to his back, fighting off the undead.
Ultimately, Cargo is a film about the will to not just survive, but to protect your loved
ones, no matter the cost.
I Am Mother, the feature debut by writer-director Grant Sputore, takes place after an apocalyptic,
extinction-level event has wiped out all of humanity.
Fortunately, a repopulation contingency plan springs into action: a robot named Mother
activates in a secure lab facility and raises one of 63,000 human embryos pre-frozen by
scientists should life ever cease to exist.
Mother then raises her human daughter, helpfully named Daughter, through a pleasant childhood…until
things get prickly during the teen years.
Daughter discovers a living mouse and wonders if there's more life beyond her four walls.
But then she finds out there really is, when an adult human woman comes knocking at the
facility door.
I Am Mother is ultimately a thrilling, chilling, and even oddly touching allegory about parenthood
and letting go.
The Wandering Earth is one of the highest-grossing movies of the decade…but most North American
movie fans probably have no idea it even exists.
It enjoyed an extremely small release in the U.S., but earned nearly $700 million at China's
box office.
The film is one of that country's first Hollywood-style, big-budget, blockbuster science-fiction epics.
In The Wandering Earth, scientists discover that the sun is evolving into a red giant,
meaning that it's expanding at a rate that will devour Earth in 100 years and the entire
solar system within 300 years.
The globe's governments and scientists work together and come up with a creative solution:
10,000 gigantic jet engines are installed around the world, propelling the planet out
of its orbit to begin a very long journey to a new permanent resting spot more than
four lightyears away.
Things go wrong relatively early when spaceship Earth gets caught in Jupiter's orbit, which
will ensure its eventual destruction, if our heroes can't get the jets working again, that
is.
Comparable to Armageddon, The Core, and Interstellar, The Wandering Earth is a fun and accessible
sci-fi adventure.
Filmmakers can use the limitless tools and imagination of science fiction to say something
about the world, and Stefon Bristol explores some powerful themes with See You Yesterday.
Bristol and his talented young cast combine sci-fi tropes with brutal social commentary,
this time-travel thriller is about the future and the past, but really it's about the present.
C.J., played by Eden Duncan-Smith, is a precocious and preternaturally gifted young scientist
who, with her best friend and collaborator Sebastian, has constructed a rudimentary,
but functional, time machine.
They just want to go back in time by a day to look around and then come back, so as not
to "butterfly effect" the past and rewrite history.
But See You Yesterday is set in the predominantly African-American Brooklyn neighborhood of
Flatbush, and C.J's brother Calvin is horrifyingly shot down in the street by the police.
C.J. has to use her device to go back and attempt to save her brother's life while battling
against the the time loops and complications she both causes and encounters.
See You Yesterday is a heartbreaking, thoughtful movie, one that's laced with great sci-fi
references as well as the Jamaican influence that permeates Flatbush culture.
Don't waste anymore time, see this movie.
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