I suggested last time that this feature might be a regular thing. "Semi-sorta-regular" will have to do. And I thought I'd switch it up: There are a couple of movies I really enjoy leaving Netflix June 1, so I wanted to highlight those instead of what's coming to the service. But time's running short! If only there were a three-day weekend coming during which you could have killed some time by watching them.
(I really didn't plan this well, did I? Maybe next time.)
Event Horizon (Leaving June 1)
A deeply frustrating film in that it's 80 percent effective sci-fi/horror and 20 percent god-awful climactic action, Event Horizon nevertheless always hooks me in when I stumble upon it on premium cable. It's the story of a ship that went through a black hole and brought back something evil—EVIL I TELLS YA. Superb performances from Sam Neill (note: super-hammy is a type of superb) and Jason Isaacs (who I really think should be a big star).
Director Paul W. S. Anderson ... what are we to do with you? I've been flipping through some old collections of criticism recently and happened to re-read Pauline Kael's attack on the auteur theory, "Circles and Squares." I can't help but feel that Anderson is one of those directors that some of the auteurists would have been tempted to defend—and who Kael would have savaged them for championing. Still, I've yet to watch one of his movies and fail to find something entertaining or memorable. Yes, even Mortal Kombat.
Last Action Hero (Leaving June 1)
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as action hero Jack Slater—and then as Jack Slater doing an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression after a magical movie ticket brings Jack to life and takes him into the "real" world (for all intents and purposes: "ours"). Confused yet?
Deeply underrated at the time of its release (and something of a financial disaster), Last Action Hero has undergone something of a critical reappraisal in recent years. Its biggest problem is that it was "meta" before being meta was cool; released in 1993, it presaged the irony-drenched action flicks that would culminate in the Expendables franchise. No one was better positioned than director John McTiernan (Predator, Die Hard) to deconstruct the genre that Schwarzenegger almost singlehandedly helped to create. As I noted on Twitter a few weeks back, I kind of want to do an oral history of this flick solely so I can get this story out of Richard Dreyfuss:
The Silence of the Lambs (Leaving June 1)
I can't imagine you haven't seen The Silence of the Lambs, a tale centered on the efforts of a FBI academy cadet to track down the serial killer who has absconded with a senator's daughter—and in the process gets mixed up with Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). But if you haven't watched it in a while, you could do worse than checking it out again. A master class in suspense-building, The Silence of the Lambs mercilessly ramps up the tension without devolving into melodrama.
Also worth checking out for the great performance from Sucker Punch's Scott Glenn.
Nightcrawler (Coming June 10)
From my review last year:
What’s fascinating about this movie is the way in which writer/director Dan Gilroy treats Bloom. He’s framed as a regular cinematic hero rather than a devious anti-hero, getting the girl at the end, getting all the musical cues and camera moves one would expect for a lovable protagonist.
One example: Bloom comes across a car wreck and finds a battered and bloodied (and possibly still-breathing) man has been catapulted through the windshield. He turns on his camera, climbs a rock, and tries to get a shot, but realizes the angles are all wrong. So he does what any sociopath would do: He drags the body—face scraping across broken glass, twisted limbs rolling on the asphalt—away from the car, and climbs back on his perch.
The camera pushes in on Bloom, arms raised (to hold up the camera, but mimicking a pose of triumph), eyes wide, smile huge. The music swells. Our (horrible, disgusting, despicable) hero has his shot! Triumph!