Category Archives: Netflix Streaming

Agatha Christie’s Crooked House (2017)

From IMDB:

In Agatha Christie’s most twisted tale, a spy-turned-private-detective is lured by his former lover to catch her grandfather’s murderer before Scotland Yard exposes dark family secrets.

From Netflix you can stream this 2 hour complete film.

Both aging actors and young players unite to produce a classic  but somewhat dull and badly acted Agatha Christie mystery story. Among the aged are Glenn Close (elegant and beautiful),  Gillian Anderson (tired in a really ugly black wig), Terence Stamp (what an immense resumé) , and Julian Sands.  Gillian Anderson has done herself no favor with her exaggerated (embarrassing?) performance.

Except for finally learning which of these awful people is the killer, there is not much to gain is watching this sad, mediocre work.

 

Post Mortem: No One Dies In Skarnes (2021)

From IMDB:

Live Hallangen is declared dead but hours later she suddenly wakes up with a sudden urge for blood. Meanwhile, her brother Odd tries to keep the family driven funeral home afloat.

From Netflix:

It’s just another average day in this small Norwegian town
until a young woman is found dead in a field. But things are not as they seem.

From Netflix you can stream 6 episodes of this Norwegian series. Each episode lasts about 44 minutes.

Categories such as comedy, drama, and thriller have been applied to this off-beat series.  If I tell you what the series is about, I am afraid you will not watch it.  Let me begin, therefore,  by saying that no matter the theme, this is NOT a vampire story.   More than any other characterization,  for me “comedy” rings true because it shows Live (pronounced Lee-Va ), her brother Odd, the policeman Reinert. and Dr. Sverre getting in deeper and deeper in their combined efforts to conceal the truth about them and the strange secret of the town of Skarnes while trying desperately to keep the chief of police, Judith, off their trail.  Some comedies such as this one are built on a succession of outrageous events. When was the last time you saw a completely clothed woman having a mud fist fight with a completely naked man with a plastic bag tied over his head?

Well done and well worth the watch.

 

SAS: Rise of the Black Swan (2021)

From IMDB:

A small army of well trained criminals led by Grace Lewis have hijacked a train deep beneath the English Channel.

From Netflix:

A special forces operative traveling from London to Paris with his girlfriend takes action when armed, ruthless mercenaries seize control of their train

From Netflix you can stream this 2 hour 3 minute complete action film.  According to IMDB another name for this film is “SAS: Red Notice”.

Good sociopath versus bad sociopath.  Our hero is Tom Buckingham (played by Sam Heughan who played Jamie Fraser in Outlander ).  Our villain is Grace Lewis (played by Ruby Rose who played Batwoman in Batwoman ).

There are lots of good and bad guys.  Unfortunately it can be difficult to  figure out just who is good and who is bad.  Turncoat traitors abound.  You just never can tell.  Needless to say the evil doers are all part of a giant conspiracy.

Most of the action takes place in the Eurotrain underchannel tunnel. To be sure, most of the action is very violent and definitely not for children.  As usual our hero can perform superhuman (violent) feats while seriously wounded.

Sociopaths are unable to feel empathy or understand the sufferings of others. Little by little Tom’s girl friend Dr. Sophie Hart (played by Hannah John-Kamen) comes to understand that Tom feels relatively few emotions and can kill humans with effortless ease.  In that aspect Tom is well matched against Grace Lewis whose cruelty is startling even though we may think we are inured to such films.

How shocking to think that if you can stand the violence I will still recommend that you DO NOT MISS!

Gone For Good (2021)

From Netflix:

Ten years after losing two loved ones, a man is plunged into another dizzying mystery when his girlfriend vanishes. Based on a Harlan Coben novel.

From Netflix you can stream the 6 episodes, each episode less than one hour, of the serialized adaptation of Coben’s 2001 novel of the same name. French with English subtitles.

Even the reviews of Coben’s novel complain that this is not one of his better novels.  Confusing plot twists, hard to accept events, and other defects, despite the many action sequences, make the story sadly forgettable.

In fact, I was tempted to stop watching the series.  Either read a different Coben novel or find a film adaptation of some other Coben story.

Forget it!

Black Space (2021)

From Netflix:

A rogue detective with unorthodox means leads an investigation into a massacre committed by unicorn mask-wearing assassins at an Israeli high school.

From Netflix you can stream 8 episodes of this Israeli high school gun massacre series. Each episode lasts about 45 minutes.

Rami Davidi is the detective. He is losing his left eye because he was attacked in his high school days by fellow students at the same high school when the assassinations take place. As such, he carries a grudge against the school whose principle never helped him when he was attacked.

For awhile a Palestinian school maintenance man is accused. But Rami figures out that the shootings were carried out by some of the students.  When everyone finally believes Rami,  then little by little the students turn on one another.

Unless Israeli high school students are really a vicious, depraved set of people, I would prefer to assume that their portrayal in this series is an ugly exaggeration for the sake of a crime story.  Perhaps I was just plain lucky to attend an all-boys Catholic high school in Baltimore.

Overly long, almost to the point of boring, watching the fairly large set of students with unfamiliar names devour each other is a bit of a blood sport.

Yikes!

Manifest (2020)

From Netflix:

When a plane mysteriously lands years after takeoff, the people onboard return to a world that has moved on without them and face strange, new realities.

From Netflix you can stream two seasons of this fairly awful series. Season 1 has 16 episodes and season 2 has 13 episodes.  Every single episode lasts exactly 42 minutes, which may have been the only technical achievement of the series.

Holy Maudlin!  There were enough tears shed during this slop opera to irrigate California.

Holy Unbelievable! Find yourself in a tight spot?  Just invent some miraculous paranormal intervention.

Holy Gullible! How on earth could I watch all 29 episodes expecting to be satisfied with the ending.  Perhaps it is because I LOVE TRASH.

MISS!

Borgen (2012)

From IMDB:

A political drama about a prime minister’s rise to power, and how power changes a prime minister.

From Netflix you can stream 3 seasons of this Danish political drama series. Each season consists of 10 one-hour episodes.  Recent news hints that there might someday be a fourth season. Danish with English subtitles.

In Danish, Borgen, lit. ’The Castle’, is the informal name of Christiansborg Palace where all three branches of Danish government reside: the Parliament, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Supreme Court, and is often used as a figure of speech for the Danish government.

In the very first episode we see  Birgitte Nyborg become Prime Minister of Denmark.  This first episode is OK but does not begin to compare with the gut-punching episodes that follow.  Can a woman “have it all” is one of the issues.  Birgitte comes off as a morally upright and  sincere woman steering her way through the compromising pressures of political life.   She will pay a personal price for her success.

Surrounding Birgitte are a multitude of characters meaningful to the plot,  some praiseworthy and quite a few sneaky , malicious,  ambitious “villains.”  Quite a few of those characters are members of the news media.  All these many characters are involved throughout the series and often have their own personal stories to tell.

Each episode usually centers around a theme:  health care, peace negotiations,  and many others.  Don’t expect each episode to have a happy ending.  After most episodes Kathy and I exclaim “WOW, how do the writers maintain such consistent excellence?”

DO NOT MISS!

Startup (2018)

From IMDB:

A desperate banker, a Haitian-American gang lord and a Cuban-American hacker are forced to work together to unwittingly create their version of the American dream – organized crime 2.0.

From Netflix you can stream 3 seasons of this series.  Each season consists of 10 episodes. Each episode lasts about 45 minutes.

If there is any current prototype of the 21st century technical world, this series is certainly in the running.  Topics include anonymous networks, cryptocurrency, NSA, security, CIA, black ops, offshore accounts, gang violence, crime ridden neighborhoods, criminal activity, Russian mobsters, rogue FBI agents, personal betrayal, and romance to name a few.

But above all for me the most important theme was redemption in the sense that people can change for the better.  First consider the character Ronald Dacey played by Edi Cathegi (born in Kenya).  Herein is a warning:  In the beginning of the series Ronald is the brutal leader of a Haitian gang in Los Angeles.  Don’t let the scenes of torture turn you away from the series.  Indeed the “redeeming” feature here is that Ronald in addition to being a brutal killer is also a loving husband and father.  As the story progresses, Ronald grows increasingly aware that the violence is self-defeating.  His basic and thinking humanity more and more shines through. He fights especially to keep his son on a straight path, not an easy task in their environment.  Ronald is never a saint, but his heart is more or less in the right place.

Next consider the rogue FBI agent Phil Rask played by the British actor Martin Freeman, who played Watson to Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes.  Freeman’s consistently idiosyncratic portrayal of Agent Rask is a pleasure to watch. More to the point of “redemption”, despite his many misdeeds he does have a conscience which begins to nag at him, which becomes fortunate for other characters later on in the plot.

Eventually you may become intimately concerned with the other players:  Adam Brody as Nick Talman, Otmara Marrero as Izzy Morales, Ron Perlman as Wes Chandler, and Addison Timlin as Mara Chandler.

And if you want some really nasty villains, there are two remarkable sociopaths Vera Cherny as the Russian mobstress (if there is such a word) and Mira Sorvino as the ruthless NSA-CIA black operator Rebecca Stroud.

DO NOT MISS!

Who Killed Sara (2021)

From IMDB:

Hell-bent on exacting revenge and proving he was framed for his sister’s murder, Álex sets out to unearth much more than the crime’s real culprit.

From Netflix you can stream two seasons of this never-ending Spanish telenovela. Season one offers 10 episodes. Season two consists of 8 episodes.  Each episode last about 40 minutes. Spoken Spanish with English subtitles.

As is usually the case  “Spanish Telenovela” implies “acceptable trash.”  Be prepared for a complicated, ever shifting plot and characters that seem to pop out of nowhere.  You might want to make a list of characters as this pot boiler proceeds.  Try and guess the fathers of each of the illegitimate children.  Do not get upset if the time sequence is sometimes incorrect.  Nor does it matter if sometimes the chosen actor just doesn’t seem to match the role because that is how telenovelas are made.

For a good time just muddle your way through this cinematic mess that wants to be serious.

Things Heard And Seen (2021)

From IMDB:

An artist relocates to the Hudson Valley and begins to suspect that her marriage has a sinister darkness, one that rivals her new home’s history.

From Netflix you can stream this 2 hour 1 minute horror film.

What! You waste your time on a horror film? Normally I would not except that since Grantchester I have not seen any sign of James Norton who played the priest sidekick to Robson Green’s detective. In this film James Norton plays George Claire alongside Amanda Seyfried who plays his wife Catherine Claire.  Somehow a horror film seems a step down for Norton.

Less a real grewsome horror film, the story is the gradual unpeeling of the layers of deceit which comprise George Claire. Granted there are a few ghosts haunting their house which is infamous for its tragic history.  And there is no harm in a hokey séance.   In a way the entire film is somewhat hokey.

At least give Norton some acting credit.  He can play a good man as in GrantchesterBut he can portray really evil people as in this film as well as in Happy Valley with Sarah Lancashire.

In fact you would do well to watch Happy Valley instead of this horror of a film.