Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

Thought it might be fun/useful to devote a thread that flagged semi-obscure or off the radar films & tv shows on Netflix's Watch Instantly service.

A few recent discoveries:

Burnt Offerings
MST3K: The Wild World of Batwoman
American Grindhouse
Vampyr
Who Is Harry Nilsson?
Shock Waves
Nightmares in Red, White and Blue
Man with the Movie Camera
World's Greatest Dad
Rolling Stones: Stones in Exile

There are so many MST3K movies available, it is awesome.

My roommate and I watched about three quarters of the Doors doc that Tom DiCillo made. Johnny Depp narrates.
It's pretty ridiculous and awesome.

xpost -- between that, the DVD sets and YouTube it's a golden time.

yeah, I think I've gone through about a dozen MST3K's this month already

x-post - I'm not a Doors fan, but that I've heard good things about that doc

Between checking a few months ago and checking a few days ago, a bunch of Criterion Collection films have been added. I don't remember so much from the Essential Art House boxes being available before, and it looks like almost all of them are there now.

Unfortunately, I found this out after I added the Bergman box set to my Criterion order the other day. Hopefully they'll let me return it unopened so I can get the Cassavetes box instead.

you can stream a woman under the influence now so... maybe rethink that, too

oh shiiiit, Killing of a Chinese Bookie is streamable now too!

Recently I've watched and enjoyed the following: The Watermelon Woman, Suspiria, Rockers, She, The Last Picture Show, and Le Jetee (inspiration for 12 Monkeys).

Oh and a lot of old Nickelodeon cartoons from the 90s have been added but y'all probably already know that.

The White Ribbon is available!

Claire Denis' 35 Shots of Rum

I think all of the Paul Morrissey Warhol-produced films are on there.

Louie season 1, one of the most fascinating shows in a long time.

Dogs Decoded: Nova is an awesome doc about recent canine research. Highly recommended for any dog owners.

Loved Louie as well.

Also streaming:
The Girlfriend Experience
Slings and Arrows
Blue Thunder

And HAVOC!

i watched the happy hooker goes hollywood on streaming netflix tonight. "recommendation" is a strong word, but i had fun.

"American Grindhouse"

Haha so amusing who co-produced this (it's okay btw as talking head features like this go).

if you liked "The Wild World of Batwoman", make sure to check out "Eegah!"

Louie season 1, one of the most fascinating shows in a long time.

Yeah, I never got a chance to check this out until it was on Netflix - it's great.

"I Am Love" is pretty fascinating

if you liked "The Wild World of Batwoman", make sure to check out "Eegah!"

I did and it was great!

barking dogs never bite - korean black comedy about eating the dogs
we jam econo - awesome minutemen doc

if i start posting on this thread i will be participating in 3 different netflix streaming threads which seems excessive

There's two other streaming threads? Did I miss something?

dont feel bad, one of them is my own self-indulgent fault and the other is on I Love Games.

JJJUSTEN MAKES ONE SENTENCIRIFIC REVIEWS OF ALL THE CRAP THAT HE WATCHES LATE AT NIGHT ON NETFLIX STREAMING XBOX SOMETHING WHY BECAUSE HE BORED ALSO BECAUSE
Netflix Streaming Film Recommendations: Because You Can't Always Play With Yourself

one is jjjusten's personal joint and the other has a tmi title

xp

Sorry jjjusten! I totally missed your thread. Thought I did a search first. Look forward to reading those threads.

Tales from the Script has interviews with everyone from Richard Rush to Paul Schraeder to Shane Black about big-studio screenwriting. Lots of guys I'd never heard speak before. Good documentary.

the documentary about milton glaser (hugely important graphic designer) is on instant netflix. can't wait to see it.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (aka "The Banksy documentary") is an unexpected mindfuck, and surprisingly isn't really about Banksy at all. I recommend!

yeah that looks good

^Had me all fucked up over art, commerce, life in general, for a couple days.

Recent watches:

Soul Kitchen
Vengeance
Valhalla Rising
Centurion
Rewatched first five eps of Party Down Season 2
Planet B-Boy

Another thumbs up for Exit Through the Gift Shop. Just watched the Joan Rivers doc this weekend, too.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye is a good doc, not sure if it's on Netflix instant.

Rewatched first five eps of Party Down Season 2

when are they going to put up the final 5 is my question

they took mall cops away :(

i only got to see, like, 4 episodes.

you could write, like, ten doctoral thesiseseses just watching that show and never leaving your couch. amerikkka writ sad.

Just watched Black Narcissus -- so good.

when are they going to put up the final 5 is my question

up now

Milton Glaser doc is good btw.

Just watched Black Narcissus -- so good.

― pixel farmer, Thursday, December 23, 2010 12:38 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Beautiful stuff like these seems worth waiting for the disc to show up, no?

I just watch Hoarders and old SNLs

Exit through the gift shop is so awesome

I know the disc would be better quality than streaming, but streaming is definitely better quality than regular tv -- there are far fewer compression artifacts than I get on cable. Maybe Netflix can tell I have decent downstream bandwidth (10 Mbps), I dunno. Turn off the lights in my office, watch fullscreen on the larger monitor, in with the earbuds, ask the family not to mess with me for two hours (or watch in the morning before they get up), a nice near-cinema experience.

"Beautiful stuff like these seems worth waiting for the disc to show up, no?"

Not with my TV, no.

ah good point

i'm a little of worried that Netflix is gonna phase out discs before the internet connections get good enough for streams to be disc-quality

I'M STILL HERE, one of the greatest and most underrated films of the year, is now on instant. Time will be very kind to it.

Just watched Moon, pretty good.
Now starting the Red Riding Trilogy.

Just watched "I Think We're Alone Now" about two disturbed dudes obsessed with Tiffany. Pretty interesting, if a bit depressing.

Come to think of it, both of the dudes are probably ILM regulars.

Otm that accent was incredible, in an Aidan Gillen way.

it was 'reverse engineered' by a 'dialect person'! https://screenrant.com/guillermo-del-toro-cabinet-of-curiosities-crispin-glover-interview/

Who am I to argue with a "dialect person" then.

"featuring a monumental performance from shagrat brown, this might be director jungo munz's most impressive feature yet says the daily fartblast"

TELL ME WHAT THE FILM IS ABOUT YOU TURDS

A while ago, a nice person on Twitter compiled a list of the Indian films on Netflix I might like. I've been working my way through them, but now a load of them are going to expire soon and it's giving me pre-emptive FOMO. I never heard of these films before this year. My life was complete without them. But now if I don't get to see them I'll be bereft. December is an anxious enough month without this pressure.

A Chris Rock comedy special titled “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage” will be “the first-ever Netflix live streamed global event,” Netflix announced Sunday. https://t.co/8ovMB4FX69

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) December 26, 2022

Lol, “the first-ever Netflix live streamed global event." I think they cracked the code.

man, i wonder what his number was

Couldn’t pay me to watch this shit

Wednesday is a really fun show - like it much more than I thought I would. Any talk of it on another thread?

I am wary of Burton, but I've had several people recommend it.

Found Wednesday all a bit meh. Ortega is great but the rest of it is pretty sub-standard (or maybe just standard) Netflix fayre - a lowest common denominator supernatural teen drama. Think I gave up after about 5 episodes

The writing is terrible and the tone is all over the shop: aimed at 10yos but with eviscerations etc. And Burton hasn’t had an interesting idea in decades.

I was visiting my granny and we put on this remarkably stoopid Netflix thing harlan coben’s stay close and immediately I got a strong sense of déjà vu because just before the pandemic I had gone round there and we watched an almost identical thing that was also a coben thing — looking into it there are a load of these adaptations of his books that move the action to the uk & feature Brit tv mainstays like James Nesbit

I’d completely forgotten watching the other series but there’s a very distinctive flavour of trash with these that is instantly recognisable, when we talked about it before itt kinder compared it to itv 2-part dramas (netflixed and stretched to 8 hours) which is otm but there’s an extra layer of ludicrousness that has to come from coben. Literally every character is concealing a dark secret, even the 9 year olds; it has the classic bad fiction thing where it feels like the ppl making it have never been anywhere or done anything; it has, and I don’t say this lightly, the worst “quirky assassin” characters I’ve ever seen, and that’s a crowded field

I can’t in good conscience recommend but I couldn’t keep silent about it

I hate the secrets being concealed by everyone thing, almost as much as I hate the thing where characters are at a stubborn impasse or have a major falling out over something minor or incorrectly perceived, strictly because one character inexplicably refuses to explain themselves before the other party exits the room, or they themselves exit without explaining things.

You might like how detective James Nesbit simply doesn’t answer his phone ever

there was one book in the Tana French "Dublin Murder Squad" series (which I overwhelmingly liked) which had a plot point that infuriated me, where a woman he thought abandoned him actually got murdered years ago.

I don't remember the details perfectly but he had secretly planned to fly to England with her, she never showed, and he went to her family's house, neither she nor her things were anywhere to be found, but there was a note she left that said something like "I hope you can support my new life in England", and it was pretty obvious the way the letter was written that it was a note she left for her parents, who didn't know she was leaving. and that she had left the house to meet him, which meant he should have been very concerned.

instead, he assumed the letter was for him, even though it would be utterly weird for her to have chosen to run away to the same exact country they had both planned to go together, and the letter was very clearly not written to a romantic partner. so he leaves angrily, doesn't dig into it further, and like 30 years later finds out she was actually murdered that night lol.

like i'm pretty suspension of disbelief in almost all mystery tales but when a mystery hinges on someone believing something completely dumb af it kind of ruins it.

I was thinking yesterday about the trope of:

1. Lead character's spouse is murdered/dies in an accident/disappears
2. Lead character discovers their spouse had secrets, follows trail of clues, asks "did I really know this person at all"
3. Bonus points: spouse isn't actually dead

and how I really hate shows like this

imagining a The Fugitive where Richard Kimball's wife staged her own death because she thought her husband's breath stank

Xps lol I love those Coben adaptations! Probably wouldn’t if they were American but I love basically any British crime/suspense/thriller type of show.

The Harlen Coben ones are just nutso. I almost admire how they cram MOAR into everything. I reckon when I'm granny age I'll be up for watching them.
James Nesbitt lost a lot of my goodwill with the execrable recent series of Badlands too.

we watched Coben's The Stranger and hated it by episode 4 but watched till the end for resolution

that’s the curse of the coben

Aggretsuko season 5 more sweet, smart and funny business

More fun from netflix descriptions:

This 2021 action thriller featuring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Woody Harrelson was co-produced by Bryan Unkeless

Co-produced by Bryan Unkeless! Shit, let me drop everything to watch it!

watched life (2017) on netflix last night, basically "what if alien was set on the international space station". it's kind of funny how it doesn't depart one iota from the template (except, no spoiler, theres no evil android) and just how much it borrows. and though it tries even ryan reynolds & jake gyllenhaal can't make the characters a tenth as likeable or memorable. nevertheless it's the kind of corny sf I love, it's very well paced with a few good shocks and though the ending was predictable and ridiculous it somehow still freaked me out a little.

You might like SPUTNIK, a Russian version of the same basic ingredients.

yes i've seen it! that one's worthwhile for doing something a bit different with the story

the ending of Life is soooooooo hilarious, was worth it alone for that

I literally forgot that movie existed, but yea, iirc it was a fun time. Some even theorized that it was a stealth "Alien" prequel.

Fucksake etc

Some news about Lockwood and Co. I’m very sorry to say it’s not being renewed. Here’s more…
⚔️ #LockwoodandCo pic.twitter.com/DXR0TGZuRf

— Jonathan Stroud (@JonathanAStroud) May 12, 2023

Very disappointing, was flawed but much more interesting and smart than most of the stuff Netflix push:

Definitely.

I suppose at least with adaptations like that you can read the books if you want to complete the story.

Dragon Prince season 5 on July 27th!

cyrus and maria and i loved *The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House* but i don't think i know another living soul who has watched it. (actually i think we might even have a couple of episodes left. we should get on that...)

my wife watched it without me and enjoyed it.

Thanks for reminding me - love Hirokazu Kore-eda's films so have been meaning to give it a go.

Speaking as a fan of the comics, the Nimona movie is quite disappointing.

Man, the Dragon Prince has some of the biggest swings in quality of a show that I fundamentally enjoy, newest season is kind of bad: I don't think it had a single joke that landed for me, and they stretched the plot out to fill the 9-ep season to its breaking point. The last episode is pretty good though.

I gave up on it after the very weak fourth season; thanks for confirming I made the right decision. First three seasons were great tho

I actually thought the fourth season started off brilliantly, but it kind of treaded water for the rest of it.

Maybe I was not in the mood for it when I watched, but your description of the fifth season is exactly how I felt about the fourth: failed joke after failed joke. Got painful after a while, was barely able to finish it and vowed not to waste more time

Well, the finale ends on a character curling up and waiting to die, which for a kids' show, makes me want to give it a chanec.

"Well, the finale ends on [show hidden text], which for a kids' show, makes me want to give it a chanec."

let me guess. Hitler's birthday?

Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher out tomorrow.

Can't wait

S7 of Big Mouth just dropped

Previous to seeing this I had never even considered the scenario of a Psyduck softly resting its head on my shoulder, and now I know I will die an unfulfilled man because this will never happen to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zmhHLVrq0

Same studio as the excellent Rilakkuma and Kaoru I see.

Anyone watched the new season of Sweet Home yet? Didn't realise it was back

This is good!
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/movie-anniversaries-2024